Brief Review Of Vector Linux SOHO

duncan bayne writes "I have just installed Vector Linux SOHO 5.0 RC2 on my old P150 laptop. Overall I was very impressed, and have posted a brief review on my blog. This distro has a lot to offer, especially to schools and other organisations trying to extract more useful life from obsolete hardware."

Comments

VECTOR?

[bjb]

Probably could have chosen a better name for the distro. I mean, Vector sounds cool and all, but the fact is that there are specifically vector processors out there (think Cray, AltiVec and probably the new cell architecture) that require specific coding to take advantage of their vector units. Given that, I'd figure this name should have been reserved for a version of Linux that better took advantage of these architectures.

My two cents..

Re:Schools and other Organisations

[harley_frog]

Not true, at least not where I work. Since education budgets are tightening, we have to make our existing computers last longer. It's often cheaper to upgrade memory and hard drives to meet Windows specs than to buy a new workstation with XP preinstalled. Of course, if the CPU is too out of date for XP or 2000, then you either 1) buy a new workstation and/or 2) install Linux (which I have on several computers in our library) on existing computers. I, for one, refuse to throw out a perfectly good computer simply because it won't run Windows. As long as it boots, has a working hard drive and network card, I'll find a use for it. And if the motherboard dies, I take it off of the inventory and cannibalize for parts.

Impressed?

[jb.hl.com]

RTFA and you find out that he had to compile many things from source, by hand, as the VLAPT system doesn't contain many packages.

Not "impressive" or "polished" at all.

There's no mention of what the default KDE is like (beyond "slow") as he uses IceWM. Nothing about hardware detection. No screenshots. Nothing.

Awful, awful article apparently reviewing an awful, awful distro; but he doesn't tell us enough to say how good it is.