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Interview With Lead Yoper Linux Developer

Posted by timothy on from the factionalism dept.

Bongoots writes "Andy Kissner from Linuxforums.org has just posted this: 'In the past few weeks, there has been a lot of hype and controversy surrounding Yoper, ranging from insults to ruthless Gentoo comparisons. I recently sat down with Andreas Girardet, who is a key developer for Yoper, to dispell all the rumors and discuss the direction in which the Yoper project is headed.' Click here to read the rest of the interview."

10 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Thought Police. by starphish · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Right now I am with IBM, and in my spare time I work on Yoper."

    Watch out. IBM might own your thoughts. Make sure you don't think about Yoper at work.

    --
    Yeah, yeah, yeah. The story is a dupe, the topic is boring, the facts weren't checked. WE GET IT!!
  2. More pointless branching by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The phrase "united front" mean anything to the linux community?

    1. Re:More pointless branching by Platinum+Dragon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The phrase "united front" mean anything to the linux community?

      Maybe not, but my hackles tend to go up when I hear terms like "unity" and "united front" tossed around, perhaps because they tend to be used by Troktskyites and other vanguardists wanting everyone to follow their way, and only their way.

      Yes, I hang around in some fringe circles. Hang around for a moment, this is going somewhere.

      An anarchist would be more concerned with solidarity between groups that share common goals--you can have tens, even thousands of different projects and groups, but they work best when sharing ideas and supporting each other instead of each group demanding that everyone else follow behind their glorious leadership.

      How might this esoteric political argument apply to software?

      I cringe whenever I hear about "the next killer distro that will take over" or silly distro holy wars over Debian vs. Gentoo vs. Mandrake vs. Fedora as "the desktop distro." OTOH, cooperative efforts like freedesktop.org, the Linux Standards Base, and some of the efforts to bridge the KDE and GNOME desktops with common protocols make me smile. In situations like these, software "solidarity" can allow for numerous distributions aimed at different groups of people to work well together because they share common protocols and technologies, interchangeable stuff when possible.

      Mind you, this submission bugged the crap out of me, precisely because the submitter came across in a combative, pseudo-underdog fashion that seems intended to bleed mindshare from other distributions in favour of one group's (or individual's) ego, rather than trying to just make a better collection of software or doing one thing better so that others can learn and benefit.

      Bah, I'm exhausted, and I'm not sure this made much sense, but there you have it--I think what the real problem facing the FOSS community is false unity versus real solidarity.

      --

      Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
  3. I'm a bit sick of Linux distributions... by zecg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...being valued based on how 1337 they are or what other distribution they have spawned from and how politically correct its roots are re: OS ideology.

    Modern distribution should focus on a system for upgrading / installing which handles dependencies well, a base of hand-picked packages covering as many functions with quality software, making the installation process as easy and transparent as possible, building a community and encouraging its members to provide well-written documentation and lobbying with hardware vendors for open drivers (e.g. ATI).

    Also, some professional-quality design work for the website and visual presentation wouldn't hurt.

    Most everyone is going to use Linux in another 10 years (barring a totalitarian world government which bans it as a tool of terrorism) - so get on with the program, people.

    --
    .i lu doi ringos.star. xu do puku'aroroi dunli dopecaku leni virnu li'u
    1. Re:I'm a bit sick of Linux distributions... by dan_sdot · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Seriously, if all the people who demanded an easy to use yet just as powerful linux distro while slagging off the rest as being too hard/a big pain in the arse actually sat down and tried to build what they wanted, we could have it by now.
      I don't think that he was saying this "this distro sucks."
      I think was he was saying was: "Who gives a crap?"
      So somebody created a new distro, wow, thats special. And what does this have to offer? Exactly what he was saying, that it super 1337. These stories come out every so often, and the /. hive mind pays the distro homage, but the thing doesn't really offer what linux really needs.
  4. Re:I've been using it since v2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    the only thing it lacks is the number of contributers.. comon people.. get in while its hot.. add more brains to this project and make it what it should be.

    And a spell checker?

  5. What distros need to do... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yoper sounds neat; and to be honest, all the modern Linux distros I've tried (Mandrake, Suse, Knoppix) work out of the box as long as you're content to use whatever is included in the initial installation.

    However, as a desktop OS, there are three things every user needs that no distro provides yet:

    1. Easy installation of any Linux software. Don't give me RPM-hell, dependency hell, command-line compiling, proprietary click-n-run depositories, or any other excuses. Only the Mac does it right: you drag the icon to your Applications folder. Voilà. The first distro to accomplish this will be king.

    2. Simple, centralized, user-friendly control panels for *everything*, with smart defaults. Why does Mandrake, arguably the most desktop-ready distro, still have printer settings in PrinterDrake, printer settings in the KDE control center, and another panel full of printer settings in the KDE menu?

    3. Better support for basic peripherals, like printers and scanners. It's tough shopping for printers at Staples when you know that nothing on the shelf is likely to work.

    I'm not saying I have the solutions, but these are major problems that all regular computer users have when grappling with Linux.

  6. Re:Oh well by sparcnut · · Score: 5, Informative
    Were the old 350Mhz celerons considered i686 or only i586? I can't remember, but I think they were all i686. But in the unlikely event they were i586-based, that is why it crashed and burned for you. Too bad. I was hoping to get some impression of how it would run on my old 200 MHz Pentium Pro. Anybody else try on a slower machine like that?

    Celerons are all i686 class as are Pentium Pros and Pentium IIs. Pentiums and Pentium-MMXs are i586.

    I had Slackware 9.0 running on a P2-233 with 64M RAM a couple years ago and it was reasonably fast, even running Mozilla 1.4. Expect a PPro-200 to be the same or slightly better because the PPro's L2 cache is clocked twice as fast as on the P2. Slack 9.0 is mostly optimized from i386 to i586 depending on the packages, so expect Yoper to be _much_ faster.

    I'd say it would be manageable for email, web browsing, and that kind of thing but not much more. It'd make a real nice X terminal if you have some bigger boxes on a 100mbit network.
    --
    perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
  7. Re:Just use Windows, for Pete's sake by slug359 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    A virus that spreads like like msblaster did is very easily possible, if someone discovered a flaw in a piece of popular software that runs on most linux machines, such as OpenSSH (please don't reply with stuff about openssh running as a user with no access to anywhere on some distros, it can somewhere, or home distros not having openssh, it's an example). You don't need root to connect to an IRC server, and listen for commands to fire packets at people.

    Also you mention email worms/trojans, why do you need to be root to start a program that emails everyone in your evolution/kmail/syphleed address books?
    All it needs is the ability to connect outwards on port 25 and read your address book, like your email client running as your user does.
    It could even drop a DDOS zombie into your home directory that attacks people with your ping binary (forked off multiple times).
    Additionally it it could add itself into your bash_profile/x startup file so it starts when you logon.

    Yes, it couldn't affect other users on the local machine, but it would still spread and affect the user that opened it, just like running an email virus on Windows as a restricted user would.

  8. Re:One Question by AhaIndia · · Score: 5, Informative
    I am a Yoper user. I downloaded Yoper 2.1 iso and installed Yoper on my notebook.
    Important points about Installation
    1) Text base installer
    2) Default boot-loader LILO, with Grub as option
    3) Partition type can be ext(2,3) or reiserfs
    4) there is no step for chosing the packages (mentioned in the article)
    Configuration
    1) Detects most of your hardware automatically.
    2) Launches Sax2 for X configuration (yes, it uses XFree86, not XOrg, yet)
    Yoper Desktop
    After installation, you'll have a KDE desktop, with (hopefully) all your hardware (network, sound, video etc.) working properly.
    First thing that will surprise you, will be the speed. Even an old hardware will become more responsive.
    Now you can update the system using apt (Yoper uses RPM packages and apt RPM for easy updates)
    #apt-get update
    #apt-get upgrade

    If you want gnome, then
    #apt-get install Ygnome

    Other information
    It comes with...
    1) kernel 2.6.8.1-3
    2) KDE 3.3
    3) Gnome 2.6 (installable from repositories)
    4) Sax2
    5) YoperConf (configuration utility to manage your system)
    6) OpenOffice
    ...
    And yes, it is so fast that I can play quake3 (windows version demo) with wine (not wineX, just simple wine) without any problems.


    Some more comments on azeemarif.blogspot.com


    --
    ~Aha~