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?"

Comments

Re:I'm sorry, but who?

[HiThere]

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.

LibraNet is really "only" a Debian that's been smoothly polished...but that only covers a lot of usability. (I prefer using my system to tinkering with it. I may be a programmer, but I prefer to work at a considerable remove from the hardware.)

ubuntu takes over?

[Janek Kozicki]

both libranet and ubuntu are based on debian. They both use debian's package system. Libranet is dead, long live ubuntu.

one man wonder distros

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why you should never rely on one-man-wonder distros like libranet or slackware for anything beyond hobby machines.

Re:one man wonder distros

[Pop69]

Slackware has a thriving community that is capable of stepping in to maintain the distro if anything were to happen to Pat Volkerding. This was pretty much proven during his recent illness.

Libranet doesn't seem to have attracted the same kind of following unfortunately.

Re:one man wonder distros

[timeOday]

Then again Slackware has already outlasted a lot of commercial software vendors I've seen.

Re:one man wonder distros

[GoofyBoy]

>there's absolutely NO REASON to avoid one-person outfits. If the maintainer bows out, at worst you can support yourself,

That, by itself, is a great reason to avoid one-person outfits.

Re:I'm sorry, but who?

[just_another_sean]

It's Debian based first off, always a good thing :)

It has a very easy to use installer. As mentioned already it has great package management based on dpkg, apt and synaptic.

It makes a great desktop system out of the box; very little effort is needed to get everything to just work. It comes with all the typical goodies for a desktop (browser, email, office suite, etc) whether you pick Gnome or KDE as the default desktop.

All in all a very good "I think I'll install this for my Aunt Tillie" type of distribution.

I am sad to hear about it going away but on a purely practical note I think anyone who used this and wants to upgrade when Libranet is gone would do well to look to Ubuntu.

Re:I'm sorry, but who?

[oscartheduck]

Libranet is, as already noted, a Debian based distribution; at heart it is pure Debian. The major innovation is an administration tool called adminmenu. Adminmenu covers a lot of stuff, from rolling in a new kernel to administering user accounts to managing print jobs, to setting up a graphics card; all the little things that are otherwise a bit of a pain in the ass to a beginner. It's a one stop shop for almost every common administration problem. It takes the pain out of administering your GNU/Linux distribution.

Re:pickup the slack

[slavemowgli]

You just *might* have found out if you had clicked on the article link. They're there for a reason, y'know?

Willing to help

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm willing to help in whatever way I can.

Libranet is one of few

[node357]

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.

Re:Libranet is one of few

[gooman]

I agree. Libranet is a very nice distro. It always seemed a bit expensive, being Debian, but it offered some unique value, first of which is Adminmenu. Adminmenu is simple, powerful and polished. Using IceWM as the default GUI makes for a familiar interface without the sluggishness of KDE or Gnome (Great for older hardware). The selection of applications is well thought out. Of course there's apt get if you need something not included. For the newbie, it is extremely friendly and fast, a great way to learn Linux. I've recommended it for years. For the experienced user, it's just Debian, but still a very nice "Linux for the Desktop" distro.

My highest compliments regarding Libranet after Adminmenu is the community. The community is very knowledgeable and helpful and generally polite. I set my parents up with Libranet for that very reason, I knew they could ask questions in the forum and get answers without getting flamed and never wanting to try that again.

Since Jon's death, this was kind of expected. Nonetheless it is very sad news for a great distro.

LibraNet helped me overcome my fear of Linux

[KWTm]

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.)

Adminmenu

[HalAtWork]

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).