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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."
Bah. According to my experience, schools and other organisations only get new OS's with new hardware. Otherwise, looks promising if you have an old comp lieing around, and want to give it new life.
my pentium mmx piece of shit laptop i got laying around waiting a linux install doesn't have a cdrom drive... so bootfloppy started network install is just about the only realistical option for installing linux on it(or borrowing a suitable cdrom drive from someone).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
My two cents..
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
it just sounds insanely difficult to set up.
Well, not really. The installation of the operating system per se didn't sound hard. What was hard was getting the particular (somewhat unusual) package selections he wanted running.
The bar for having a wide selection of software easily installable is, I guess, set pretty high these days. Meeting that probably requires either a fairly large contributor base or a commercial backer. However, there are still a number of interesting niches that can bootstrap new distros, such as enhanced security, or live cd bootability, or, as in this case, ability to run fairly up to date software on obsolete hardware.
Personally, I found the review to be not as useful as it could be. The Vector Linux people say "VECTORLINUX is a small, fast, Linux operating system for Intel, AMD and x86 compatible systems, based on one of the original Linux distributions, Slackware." So, they are not necessarily targetting old hardware, but people who want a small, fast distro. However, the first thing the review has to do when he gets the distro up and running is shitcan the default desktop enviornment and bring up the very small, very quick IceWM instead.
This tells me two things. First, the Vector Linux folks don't have people running his vintage hardware in mind. 99% of potential desktop users are never going to even consider going with something other than the default desktop. Second, it tells me that Vector Linux isn't, in market speak, "positioned" clearly. That is to say it doesn't have a clear and consistent story it is built to support. How can you be the "small, fast" distro, and yet out of the box run a completely conventional desktop choice? It's the desktop enviornment that is the slowest part of any disto, or at least it's the slow piece that the user spends the most time struggling with if speed is a problem for him.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It seems to me that most Linux distributions stand or fall based on the quality and availability of their packaging system.
It's disappointing to see this system doesnt have packages for vim, or lyx. So the reviewer had to install from source.
Sure that's possible, and trivial for small packages without tons of dependencies - but building from source seems to me to be something you'd wish to avoid when installing on a P160 with 64Mb of RAM...
Unfortunate, I guess if the distro becomes more popular the archive will grow, but if it doesn't then there will be a big downside to using it.
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.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
The system requierments for soho state ....
System requirements
Vector Linux SOHO is relatively heavy compared to the standard version. It is recommended that your system meets these requirements:
* Processor: Pentium III compatible or better (so you may use AMD).
* Hard disk: 3 GB for the system, then you need more for your personal files.
* Memory: 128 MB, spare 256 MB for comfort.
* Video card and Monitor capable of 1024x768 resolution, 24 bits.
* Standard mouse, keyboard, sound card, CDROM, etc.
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so I can see why he may have a few problems on a p150
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Well the blogger chose the wrong version. There are two, VectorLinux that can run on just 32mb ram and needs only 850mb of disk space. (Older versions were even lighter needing only 350 mb of disk space.)
Then there is the SOHO version that needs a bit heftier requirements.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
You got a laptop with enough ram and a cd drive so you can run some of the mini (50-100 megs or so)live distros like feather, puppy, damnsmall, austrumi, etc. Try some of those out, because after they load into RAM they are *really fast*. I personally like the austrumi distro but that's just taste. Go to a truly non bloatware distro.
After reading this article, I would rather just set up a standard Slackware system and put in IceWM myself instead of getting a bunch of defaulted KDE cruft. I can't imagine trying out a distribution meant for slow computers on one of my 486's only to find the stupid distro trying to run KDE.
The machines that Vector Linux is supposed to be targetted at are precisely the ones that cannot run KDE or Gnome. What makes this distribution worth anyone's time?
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
I've added an Update section to the original post to address some of the issues you guys have raised. Thanks for the feedback! :-)