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VectorLinux 4.3 - Rocket Fueled Slackware

Posted by michael on from the vroom-vroom dept.

SilentBob4 writes "Mad Penguin has the first review of the latest VectorLinux release. Vector is based on Slackware Linux, but is built on a newer 2.6.7 kernel (Slackware 10 was still built on a 2.4 kernel with the option of using 2.6) and is optimized to run well on older hardware. Even old Pentium PCs run well on this distro. Complete review with screenshots."

9 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. VL by k31bang · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've been using VectorLinux(3.2) on my 760 series thinkpad for about a 8 months or so. Installing it was made easier by first installing Smart Boot Manager, which allows booting from a cd when the BIOS is too old to know how. Then, just to be a wiseass, I setup ICEwm to look exactly like windows XP(wall paper and all). Nothing like running xp on a 166. ;-)

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    -+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ *** http://www.mountainfort.com *** +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-
    1. Re:VL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I'm getting tired of these "performance" comparisons for linux reviews, unless you havnt noticed, we're all using the same software, we all have access to the same compiler, we all have the same kernel.

      so your distribution includes some awesome patchset? newsflash, thanks to the gpl we can all patch our kernels/apps/whatever and use it.

      so your distribution uses prelink? Newsflash, prelink is free software.

      So your software is Hyper-super optimised for i686? well guess what, i'll grab the srpm or whatever your distro uses, recompile it and so is mine.

  2. Screenshots by Sarojin · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Is there really a point in a review for a Linux distribution including screenshots? Hurray, we can see their GDM skin and default background pictures!

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    HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
  3. Runs well on Pentium PC (== P1) with KDE 3.3? by lonesometrainer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have not tested Vector yet, but my experiences with KDE 3.3 on Gentoo and SuSE on my Homebox (a PIII-866 with 384MB) haven't been too well.

    It looks nice, offers plenty of features. But EVEN if you turn off all eyecandy, care for running kde services (plug-ins, snap-ins whatever) 3.3 still feels sluggish.

    I just don't want to test that on a P1-166 with 128MB RAM, should feel like running OSX on PearPC on a Centris.

  4. Sounds great to me. by Hinhule · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think this may be what gets me into Linux, I have an old 266MHz computer that isn't doing anything.

  5. Re:SOHO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I agree completely.

    When I started with linux, I used mandrake, just because of its rep as a newbie distro. I found unusable slow. I was disappointed. People had told me online that "linux was faster than windows". I felt like I had been lied to. (I was upgrading from win98, they were comparing to XP)

    I switched to vector for speed alone. I was impressed. Even KDE was snappy! But, I wasn't able to install a single package.

    I've switched to debian based distros exclusively, just so I can get stuff installed. However, I still miss vectors speed. I wish someone would make a distro compatible with the debian archive that had vector caliber speed, if that's possible.

  6. Good find by Kujila · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's good to see a modern-day Linux distro that can run properly (and quickly) on older machines... Some of the newer distros seem suited for today's PC market rather than yesterday's PC market. ;)

  7. Re:Actually a *big* problem by ThJ · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've been a Slackware user since the mid-to-late 90's and I would not trade it for anything else. I tried Debian once, maybe twice. Didn't like it. dselect and tasksel were horrible... Then someone on Undernet #Linux said "Don't use dselect, then. :)" and a lightbulb switched on... I hadn't realized that the base system is all you need to get going. You can completely customize the thing after doing that. I was amazed, it was the distribution I had been dreaming about. It's similar enough to Slackware to satisfy my geek heart but it makes cleanups so much simpler... Actually, they make them possible at all. It's damn impossible to clean up anything in Slackware unless you use it's package system, for which almost no 3rd party packages are available. When I switched to Debian recently, I decided on a nazi regime for software installation. I said to myself "NEVER install anything from source" and hoped I would be able to survive on .deb's and apt alone... and it worked. My Slackware server just got cracked. I caught the cracker red-handed and threw him out. It's too much work to keep packages updated on a Slackware box where things are compiled from source and you hardly know what you have installed. I'm going to install Debian on it as soon as I can. On that point: The server is several thousand miles away and I don't want to bother the dude at the colocation facility with the re-install. Can I somehow install Debian on that box via SSH?

  8. Re:Actually a *big* problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    1. The way in which Linux shares a small set of directories for files of various purposes (bin, lib, man, etc) makes it impossible to see exactly what file belongs to what application.


    There's a perfectly good and sensible solution to all this, and it's called GNU Stow - everything you compile goes into it's own separate directory in (for example) /usr/local/stow - thus mplayer would be installed to /usr/local/stow/mplayer-1.0pre5 or whatever. The mplayer binaries will now be in /usr/local/stow/mplayer-1.0pre5/bin and so on.

    Then you run stow on that directory and it symlinks everything back to /usr/local/ ... So now in /usr/local/bin there's a symlink called mplayer to /usr/local/stow/mplayer-1.0pre5/bin/mplayer. If you want to remove those symlinks, you run stow with the -D flag on the same directory.

    Why is this a good thing? Well, if you want to uninstall a piece of software, you simply remove the relevant directory in /usr/local/stow. If you want to upgrade a piece of software, you can keep the old version around and easily switch du -h --max-depth=1between the two using the -D flag to remove the symlinks to the previous version. If you want to simply how much space each piece of software is using, just do a "du -h --max-depth=1" on /usr/local/stow. And if you want to see what old software packages are lying around, to a "dir -t" on that directory.

    In short, you've got all the virtues of installing software by source, combined with all the advantages of a package-management system, without any of the disadvantages of a package-management system such as databases that can become corrupted. Stow's been around for ages and it's so useful for power-users who want to compile from source. It always amazes me that more people don't use it, or even know about it ...