Ark Linux Review, A Distro with an Identity Crisis

mikemuch writes "ExtremeTech has a review of Ark Linux 2006.1, which launched earlier this month. Overall, the reviewer likes this free KDE-based distro, but had to question some implementation choices, such as using the less-compatible Konqueror over Firefox for its default web browser. And for a distro that bills itself as 'a Linux distribution for everyone — designed to be easy to install and learn for users without prior Linux' the installation should hide command-line scrolling and be able to more automatically install standard graphics card drivers."

Comments

Rule #1: Don't try to please everyone

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Anything that is "xxx for everyone" is going to fail. You can't please everyone. If you do you end up with something that has no niche value.

If you're going to build a distro, or any product for that matter, think long and carefully who you really want to target.

Easy linux for masses

[QuantumFTL]

'a Linux distribution for everyone -- designed to be easy to install and learn for users without prior Linux'

Seriously, isn't this what Ubuntu (or Kubunto, for those who prefer KDE) is supposed to be? Or Red Hat? Or did I miss something?

Am I the only one who finds this article insightful, rather than funny?

Re:Reviewer missed the point

[WJMoore]

Yes they would also be the same libraries that Apple forked for WebKit, which is used by Safari. I don't think you can say that Konqueror is not a capable browser. Its much lighter than Firefox and has much better desktop integration, such as with the system wide KDE wallet and inline spell checking.

Re:Who cares about saving 4% of memory footprint!?

[dbIII]

Sharing? A User does not care about 4% less hard disk consumed or 4% less memory consumed.

Isn't the entire point of this paticular linux distribution to be to run as fast as possible on older hardware where that extra few percent may be enough to start the disk swapping?

Swiss army knife? Call it KParts integration

[vdboor]

Konqueror on the other hand is a file manager, also a file viewer. It's such a good file viewer that you can view either local or remote files, and not only pictures and pdfs, but also html files, meaning you can also view graphic html files on remote servers, aka the web. As such, firefox is dedicated to being a browser where the web is a primary focus, whereas konqueror is more like a swiss army knife where the web is an included convenience.

This myth should actually be seen as a compliment to KDE. Why? The components you mention all come from the standard KDE libraries, or they are supplied by additionally installed applications. Konqueror is just a shell, host for all of them. Just like ActiveX/OLE integrates applications seamlessly together in Windows.

Konqueror can host a KHTMLPart, KatePart (text editor), file-viewer part, image-viewer part. They can all be developed by separate appliations. Install a PDF viewer, and Konqueror can load it's PDFPart too. The networking support you mention come from the standard KDE-IO libraries, they haven't been klunged into Konqueror at all (every KDE application has KDE-IO and KPart support!).

Saying that this would remove developer resources from KHTML isn't really true. Developers working on a PDFPart likely wouldn't have ended up coding for KHTML anyways.