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Libranet On The Rocks
An anonymous reader writes "Following the death of his father Jon, it looks as though Tal is going to finally throw in the towel with regards the running of Libranet. Given his age and his personal circumstances who can blame in? But on a purely selfish level, is there anyone out there who can help save my favourite distribution?"
Just curious, but what is noteworthy about Libranet? Is it an especially well balenced linux distro?
Libranet is a great distro for the non geek to get up and running with a debian box. I found it to be a great learning distro that put awesome tools, including a kernel compiler, into the hands of the average person. Without it, I would not have had the successes with linux I have had. There is nothing it can do that you can't do elsewhere, and it mix of stable, testing, and unstable may put some folks off, but I feel it is an invaluable tool for a niche part of the linux community. Libranet will be missed.
both libranet and ubuntu are based on debian. They both use debian's package system. Libranet is dead, long live ubuntu.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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This is why you should never rely on one-man-wonder distros like libranet or slackware for anything beyond hobby machines.
"WTF is Libranet?"
well, judging from the link in the article, its a linux distribution.
go ahead and click on it. its easy and you'll be amazed at the results.
You just *might* have found out if you had clicked on the article link. They're there for a reason, y'know?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
is a Debian fork as I understand it...not pure Debian like Libranet.
How about you? Don't be a leach.
I'm willing to help in whatever way I can.
Libranet is one of the few Debian-derived systems that can claim to be 100% compatible with Debian. Its main distinguishing feature is the Libranet Adminmenu, which is on par with Mandrake (Mandriva) Control Center and YAST. Adminmenu is simple and effective, and has allowed novice users to see results of "technical" procedures first-hand, which they can learn from without having to pass the grade just to use their computers. The greatest merit of Libranet is its tightly knit and devout user community, where humor and spirit abound and the answer to any question is usually contributed mere hours after it is posed. Libranet has a rich history, a great following, and a future that its proprietor really ought to consider hard before giving it up. Anyone who hasn't tried this distro has really missed out on a unique and effective approach to Debian GNU/Linux.
"But on a purely selfish level, is there anyone out there who can help save my favourite distribution?""
Courtesy of that creation of ID...the GPL. Libranet will live on forever in your hearts and minds.
I'm not worried about slackware; its an original project dependant on noone but itself. But what happens to Ubuntu if Debian folds?
-everphilski-
You're replying to "BushCheney08" - so stupid, they're probably not a term limits joke.
--
make install -not war
Good now that libranet is dead...maybe they'll open source their adminmenu tool so other distros can use it.
Seriously, how many Linux variants people need ? I would rather see a new OS than 100 other Linux distributions. If you want to save something, save your-self from another linux variant.
Although not a LibraNet user (I've been using Mandrake since 9.0, now switching over to Ubuntu), I have to acknowledge LibraNet's help in getting me past Linux's steep learning curve.
Having had trouble downloading Linux, I had ordered a stack of some 20 CD's or so of every Linux distro imaginable (to me at the time). LibraNet was one of them, sandwiched among Lycorix, Peanut Linux, Slack, FreeBSD, Pink Tie linux (Red Hat was going to sue unauthorized users of the term "Red Hat"), and the nine CD's of the main Debian 3.0 distro. For some reason I would keep getting errors installing (including the vaunted Mandrake with its "user-friendliness").
LibraNet was the first to install successfully, and make it easy to switch between KDE, GNOME, and ICEwm with the click of a button. It showed me what Linux was capable of. Even more impressive was the big button which simply said, "Recompile kernel". I never used it, but it was a shock to me that one could recompile the kernel as easily as clicking on a button. LibraNet impressed me with its multitude of screensavers. (Basically these were X screensavers, for which I have yet to find an equal that works with KDE --why are KDE screensavers so sluggish?)
LibraNet gave me the motivation to keep moving forward, to find what could be done with Linux. Kudos to the maintainers.
(I should sneak in a line or two about BasicLinux by Steven Darnold, who also showed what Linux was capable of, installed on a lowly 386 through a diskette.)
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Libranet allows adminmenu (screenshot), which makes it well suited for desktops because novice users can easily configure important settings such as Firewall, DNS & IP, manage device drivers, and configure/compile a kernel, through one simple interface similar to KDE's Control Center.
While kernel compiling and other more advanced functions may not be necessary for novice users, it allows people interested in learning more about GNU/Linux a springboard to access its deeper features and perhaps become more proficient with the OS & software.
IMHO, Linux could benefit from more tools such as this, not to hold the hands of people who have no business tweaking such features, but to allow users to "break the ice" with advanced Linux ditro features.
I hope that Adminmenu or YAST could be easily integrated into other distros, as long as these tools don't cry when users want to start tweaking settings from the commandline (then again YAST has a complete curses implementation, which allows you to use the same tool for remote administration as local administration through GUI, neat).
Twinstiq, game news
Come on, can't you see the humor in an Anonymous Coward offering help?
...so stupid, they're probably not a term limits joke.
What does that even mean? And do you really think a silly little part of the Constitution is gonna stop my boy from running again? How very unpatriotic of you!
- Bush4Eva
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
Go use NetBSD
As a former Libranet user (now running Kubuntu I might add), I find this statement to be poorly reasoned as well as off-topic. Just because they both are Debian based does not preclude that one has somehow usurped the other. Furthermore, Libranet has been around longer than Ubuntu, and the founder of Libranet recently passed away. Show some respect.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
I'd say that suggesting a violation of the Constitution, as a joke or not, is rather unpatriotic.
This is why you should never rely on one-man-wonder distros like libranet or slackware for anything beyond hobby machines.
You know how the suits always tell you that they purchase IBM/Microsoft/Sun/Oracle because when the shiznat hits the fan, they want someone they can call 24/7/365?
Well what are they gonna do when Herr Kernelmeister Torvalds up and kicks the bucket? Call Alan Cox? I mean good grief - does Richard Stallman even own a telephone?
From http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ubuntu/relationship/doc ument_view
As Ubuntu prepares for release, we "freeze" a snapshot of debian's development archive ('sid').
Ubuntu is built on debian.
If Debian folds, Ubuntu will either (a) have to start their own primary linux distribution or (b) start leeching off of someone else as they are a derivitive work which was my point. Look at Slackware, despite Patrick Volkerding's health problems the releases have been steady. However a derivitive work whose upstream decides to fold will find themselves in a very uncomfortable position.
-everphilski-
Maybe so. My point stands. There are better examples I just didn't have one at the time. I'd be more worried about a derivitive work than a 1-man distro. I mean look at slackware. Despite Patrick Volerding's health problems the new versions have been rolling off the presses without a hitch...
-everphilski-
But on a purely selfish level, is there anyone out there who can help save my favourite distribution?"
Well, you're going to have to do something when they fire your sorry arse from here!
LOL!!
--Safely entrenched at the bottom of 'Bad Karma', now I can FINALLY speak my mind.. :)
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
Good to see a RTFA get a +5, insightful.
> "Slackware, for instance, had the first 'packages' as we'd recognize them."
No, actually, the packages predate the distributions -- I used to download individual packages off of funet.fi, back in the very early days when you still needed a Minix boot floppy to run fdisk and mkfs for Linux. The first "distro" was SLS, and it simply tried to provide a little overall organization for the steadily growing mass of packages that already existed. And Debian didn't "fix the flaws in Slackware's original model" because A) it wasn't "Slackware's model", it was simply the standard model that everyone used at the time (but, if anything, it was SLS's model), and B) Slackware and Debian were founded at basically the same time, which makes it hard to claim that Debian was influenced by Slackware in any way, since Slackware didn't exist back then! Of course, Slackware went from non-existence to 1.0 status in almost no time, since it relied on pre-existing technologies, while Debian took several years to reach 1.0, since they were trying to solve problems that nobody else had previously addressed.
Your poor grasp of history aside, though, I do agree with your main thesis that dealing with "one-person outfits" is perfectly safe, for the most part. I would qualify that by saying that they're safe if they're basically doing some minor refining of existing alternatives (in Slackware's case, the amorphous mass of packages on funet and other sites, and in Libranet's case, the mass of packages available on Debian mirrors). Basically, what it comes down to is: have a back-up plan. (That is to say, not a plan to make backups, but a backup to your current plan).
Libranet users have plenty of viable alternatives that will be easy to switch to if it all does go south, so I—like you—think they have little to worry about.
I'd fork her.
states that this is just another form of survival of the fittest.
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
You are a submarine troll. Know what that means? You post to Slashdot for a week looking for karma and then burn it all off on blatantly offensive comments. Remember that whole flaming tree you posted about a gay governor a few months ago? How about that whole unfounded Griffin critcism?
That's *MR.* Self-Righteous Asshat.
Mods, don't feed this guy. Maybe without a karma stash he won't go on these trolling runs.
--
Trolling all trolls since 2001.
Libranet Adminmenu, which is on par with Mandrake (Mandriva) Control Center and YAST
Is that every distro seems to feel it needs to reinvent the wheel. Both MDCC and YAST are fully open source, both mature products, both have been Q/A'ed and used by hundreds of thousands of users. But every distro I see seems to try either A) create its own clunky approach B) forge the niceties of configuration GUI's altogether in the old DIY approach.
This isn't the end of the world or anything, but I see configuration utilities as basic as DE's. Standarizing benifits the end user.
Quack, quack.
Spelling errors. Check.
Quack, quack.
No, the community will take over as it has before during PV's illness.
Right, because all Slackware servers will magically stop working the moment PV dies, and you will have no time at all to consider alternatives and devise an upgrade plan for the case that even became necessary, eh?
hey're there for a reason, y'know?
So people can complain that others have not read it, mostly. Just think of the horrific "existence" we would be subject to if we were reduced to only bitching about dupes and the editors! *shivers*
LibraNet is a Debian clone that has a very nice added administration package, and also can install Nvidia drivers off the CD. (Granted that most commercial distributions can do that, but a bog-standard Debian Sarge can't, and as a result my screen displays at unacceptably low resolution.
Official NVidia packages in Sarge
The newest version of libranet is about two years old, I think. Last time I checked, they are still trying to sell it for $90.
Folks, not many people are going to spend $90 on a two year debian distro. Especially when Ubuntu is around.
Just OSS the entire project. Maybe somebody will pick it up. But, as a viable business, I can't see it.
Unlikely - linux users are much bigger on mooching off other poeples work than actually doing it themselves, oh yeah and boasting about what radical open source freedom warriors they are.
You nailed it with the selfish word.
But what are the chances of hearing something like, "let me get back to you - I'd like to get up to speed with our customer care center." A few hours later, "I regret to inform you, but this particular issue is not within the bounds of your current support agreement. However, we'd be happy to provide immediate asstance for an additional fee of [insert $$$$ here]."
How the fuck does a comment like this get a +2? It's blatantly wrong, and the person obviously hasn't done an ounce of research to validate his facts. No wonder /. moderation really is very badly fucked. No wonder many people trash /. moderation. Since my karma is negative (for simply posting actually factual comments that others just simply dislike and mod down for inappropriate reasons) I really couldn't give a fuck what you fucked up moderators (or whatever you want to call yourselves) think.
.deb file and install it. RPM has the same problems as well.
Libranet 3 was released early April 2005. It's now November 2005. That's about 7 months by my reckoning. So, how the fuck do you get 2 years out of that?
Most of the rests of the posts on this article are just crap. Ubuntu this, Ubuntu that. I couldn't give a rats ass about a Debian based distribution that isn't binary compatible with Debian. Sorry, no thanks. Ubuntu is SOOOOO overrated it isn't funny. Vastly overrated.
For those that posted about Xandros being better than Libranet - in your dreams. Since Xandros used a customised version of KDE, try upgrading it - and lose ALL of the Xandros customisations. Go on. XFM (Xandros File Manager)? Linspire was the same, a real bitch to update and keep in synch with Debian.
YAST? sure, go have a look at the Alioth packages. Make sure you're running a mixture of unstable/experimental, and be prepared to lose half of kde (and I'm running kde 3.4.2 from unstable btw). YAST has been opened for nearly 2 years now, and not that much has really happened with it. It's still a little project over at Alioth, Debian itself hasn't shown an official ounce of interest in it.
Slackware? It's a nice distro. But - Slackware really has packages, no repositories to worry about. Let me explain. You can grab a Slackware package from anywhere, and install it, doesn't matter where. Debian or Debian based distributions want you to point at a particular server side repository. That's a problem. You (generally) just can't go and grab any
I've been using Libranet since 2.7. I was using Windows XP and Debian Woody at the time. I liked it. When I had some spare cash a few months down the track, I bought 2.8.1. Used that for nearly two years. I'd still be most probably using it now except for ext3 crashing and having to spend a week pulling my data off it...I was one of the many Libranet 3 beta testers, so when 2.8.1 died, I bit the bullet and installed the beta that I'd been using, which has performed flawlessly since. Like many Libranet users, I help out on the forums as best as possible (given knowledge and time). This is pretty damn well sad news, as Libranet was the first distribution that I could just install and it worked out of the box. No fart assing around. It just worked. It was Debian compatible, and obviously used dpkg. RPM just sucks major I'm afraid to say. The sooner RPM is killed off, and every distro gathers around dpkg, the better Linux will be.
Anyways, I've said my piece, so I'll shove off.
Dave W Pastern
Slashdot can go and get fucked.
I'm using the GPL 2D only nv driver, and it works fine, gives a fine resolution, super clear picture, in Knoppix 3.6, which is a Debian clone distro. True I don't play 3d games, but the official, non-GPL nvidia driver's 2D isn't better at all, and I'm just too lazy to reinstall it everytime I wipe the partition to reinstall Knoppix to the harrdrive in 20 minutes, having all my important data on separate partitions, except some emails and files I back up. Easiest way to keep your system clean and running in top shape - have a garbage heap of data drive where you toss all your junk that you may need later, and a super-clean, OS only partition, whether it's windows or linux. Everytime you mess it up, install wrong gcc, mess up your libs, clutter up your symlinks, easy does it, burn a cd from the iso image, pop in the cd, wipe, reinstall, done. No looking for needle in a haystack, just replace the haystack with a fresh one.
Are the moderators able to delete the above comment? It's disgraceful and disrespectful.
Dave Pastern
Slashdot can go and get fucked.
You never learn anything about the underlying system if you just trash-n-replace it. You're using your Linux the same way the 'techs' who maintain Windows do when they tell people to 'reinstall the OS' any time something goes wrong.
Your system never evolves or improves. Your idea of 'top shape' is whatever out-of-the-box configuration you froze two years ago, apparently.
resigned
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Sorry, but the first amendment says you're wrong. Protection of political speech and all that. Yes, the first amendment even protects idiots. I'm proof. :)
No, the first amendment just means you have every right to unpatriotic speech. It doesn't mean that any political speech you choose to express is patriotic. Nazi's aren't patriotic...yet they have full first amendment rights too.
That seems a stretch. I experessed my honest opinion and (not so typically) did it without disparaging anyone/anything. I guess some Slashdot readers can't tell what an open discussion is. Hint: then this probably isn't the right place for you.
Quack, quack.
That's right, you can point at the Debian repositories and you are good. This makes it intrinsically unlike Debian based distros like Ubuntu. In fact, Ubuntu is a horrible choice for most people who like Libranet, they have almost nothing in common other than starting out with Debian as a base.
As well, Libranet's Admin Tool is not a pretty face for apt (a la Synaptic), I guess the closest comparison would be Yast. Admin Tool is very, very useful (in fact there are two, Admin Tool is technically the command line version, while XAdmintool is the graphical version).
Anyway, a lot of us are holding out some hope for the future of Libranet. At the very least the installers are still a huge improvement over Debian installers.
The posts I have read are all seemingly positive towards Libranet and feel somewhat irked at the inevitable end of a great distro. This said, how expensive could it be to purchase and keep this distro working? If there was a core group with external developers, this is a potentially awesome undertaking, and one in which we could enjoy doing. I am open to any serious community members who would be interested in the offer posed by Tal: Invest in Libranet. I am a geek in project manager's clothing. I have more than 5 years experience using Linux for everything from hoome and work, to college, where I teach evenings. I believe in the OS and am willing to work with, for, or alongside others pursuing the same end: let's keep the distro in production - not become another expended product. Those of us who use it KNOW it's incredible functionalities and breadth of uses. Contact me if you're interested. /fred
It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and