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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."
So, what exactly is wrong with Konqueror?
Here: http://www.extremetech.com/print_article2/0,1217,a =186517,00.asp
Konqueror shares libraries with other KDE applications so is likely to have a smaller memory footprint than Firefox.
If you're going to build a distro, or any product for that matter, think long and carefully who you really want to target.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
'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?
He says that he is dissapointed in Konqueror as the default browser (which by the way I haven't had any problem with, ever, but I still use opera) but in the summary he says this:
Price: Free download.
Pros: Easy to install; KDE desktop; good software selection.
Cons: Uses Firefox as the default browser; feels like it needs a little fine tuning to make it as slick as Xandros; didn't automatically install the right drivers for my nvidia card.
Summary: A decent Linux distro that provides a fair amount of useful software, Ark Linux lags behind Ubuntu and Xandros in polish. It seems to be trying to find its place under the sun.
(emphasis added)
This article wasn't too particularly useful, and even contradicted itself! Well, maybe next time.
Oh come on, before you start bashing them - look, they have a nice Tetris game for you to play while it installs!
That's got to be worth something, no?
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. -- G.B. Shaw
You see.. Microsoft was ahead in this "sharing libraries" game. IE was the ultimate example :)
I have been using Konqueror a lot. I got fed up with Firefox when after 24 hours of browsing it was consuming 800MB of RAM, even though the cache size was set at 32MB. I have found that Konqueror is often faster, uses a lot less memory, and is generally more stable. There are a few sites where I have had trouble, but I've also had problems with some sites with Firefox (and a few of those worked with Konqueror). Konqueror has gotten a lot better, especially 3.5. A number of additional fixes went into 3.5.4. My only real complaint is that the adblock feature needs a lot of work to catch up with the Firefox extension.
.c file in it, it loads the shared libraries for the editor, or if I click on a multimedia file, it loads kaffeine. Just about everything in KDE is a part, so they can be reused. PDFs are also great in Konqueror when it uses kpdf instead of that bloated Acrobat mess.
The file dialog for Konqueror, when I download and save binaries, is infinitely better than the one in Firefox. The UI on Konqueror is also much easier to customize, adding or removing buttons at will. Some of the buttons I find quite useful, like scaling the web page larger or smaller. I also like the fact that plug-ins run as a separate process than the browser and I can run them niced. It also means I can run a 64-bit browser and integrate 32-bit plugins.
I also like the bookmark toolbar better in Konqueror. I can easily add folders or book marks to any folder I want with only a couple clicks.
As a file browser, Konqueror is actually quite nice. It's not the big bloated mess people make it out to be. In fact, if anything is a big bloated mess, it's Firefox. Konqueror uses kparts, so that if, for example, I open a
Hell, I can't even open more than one instance of Firefox, even on different machines if my home directory is shared over a network. Konqueror has no such problems.
The Konqueror browser I'm typing this from has 18 open tabs and has been open for probably about a week or two. It's consuming 475MB of virtual memory and 116MB of resident memory, but I have had a *lot* more tabs open in the past. I can rarely keep Firefox going for more than 24 hours or so, and it gobbles up memory at an astronomical rate (even 1.5.0.6).
As far as rendering web sites goes, I believe Firefox had problems with Slashdot for the longest time, while Konqueror did not.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
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.
Simple:
apt-get firefox
enter
From the Ark Linux website: Ark Linux uses a combination of rpm and apt-get.
That wasn't so hard was it?
/* somewhat functional - fix later */
To be more accurate, KHTML is the actual rendering engine, while Konqueror encapsulates it and adds the other functionality (ie. tabs, configuration screens, etc.) necessary to create a full-fledged browser.
A quick way to compare KHTML to Gecko (the rendering engine of Firefox) is to look at the source code for each. What one will immediately notice is that while both are written in C++, the code of KHTML is far cleaner than that of Gecko. Gecko suffers from an over-architecturing, which directly leads to code bloat and unnecessary complexity. KHTML, on the other hand, has been designed to be simple and clear, without an overly convoluted architecture.
What we end up getting with KHTML is a rendering engine that is of a far higher quality than that of Gecko, mainly because the developers are so easily able to extend it. With the upcoming KDE 4 release, which will likely be portable to Windows and Mac OS X, the portability advantages of Gecko's architecture will be rendered obsolete.
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.
So, what's the mysterious "less compatible" component? Every now and then I'll find some page that won't work. Once in a blue moon, a right click Firefox open will do better, so I keep it around. The problem is mostly with non free junk like Macromedia Flash and IE specific navigation.
I use Konqueror as my primary browser because it's file handling is so excellent. The web looks like an extension of my computer and I like it that way. It renders standard compatible web pages without a problem and it's split tab capability (think the old Windoze 3.1 file manager) makes it an excellent research tool. Integration of tools like kpdf and kget make a seemless browsing experience that is top notch. Next to that, Firefox feels cramped.
But, hey, I could be missing something. What is it?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You on the other hand fail the facts test. Acid2 is not a W3C test:
Passing the Acid2 doesn't mean all that much: So if a browser passes it can be because:Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
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.
The best way to accelerate a windows server is by 9.81 m/s2
That's the way it's done in GNOME (if you follow the HIG properly). I imagine this is because Firefox on linux was more aimed at GNOME users, rather than KDE. So this is in fact acting consistantly, if you happen to be using GNOME
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
ELinks? Supports limited Javascript, limited CSS, and does tabs. Can't quite run most Ajax stuff, but it's still a surprisingly capable text-based browser. The world isn't stuck in Lynx, you know =)
Q: What's the point of this?
A: To create, explore, understand and to share with the world. The four greatest reasons behind hacking.
Q: Who is going to use this?
A: My clients, my company, my friends. I run small but growing GNU Linux company in NJ. My clients, home users (including my best friend's 87 year old mother who "rocks on the Ark"), 3 recording studios, 2 photography studios, 1 independent film studio and last but not least me. All my critical systems user Ark Linux 2006.1. Which, btw, is the only "full sized" distro that will run on my "Hell Labs" test machine. An AMD k6-2 500 with 256MBs of RAM with a Trident 4MBs PCI video card. Ark works completely.
S: but no newbie is going to use this, they're going to use Ubuntu.
R: And almost all of them ran back to MS Windows. I convinced them to try again with Ark and they love it.
S: The people that are going to use this distro are the tinkerers that have the knowledge and capability to customize their own distro to meet their own spec.
R: Which means its powerful enough for experienced users (such as myself). Thank you.
S: Distros like this piss me off.
R: Good to know we are doing something right. Thanks again.
S: Shit like this is holding Linux back.
R: Isn't that somewhat similar to someone in the proprietary software field said regard software diversity? Can you say MONOPOLY?
S: Instead of forking every time and serve a user base of 200, why don't you use your talent and skill to polish a distro that's actually going to go somewhere!
R: It is going somewhere. Onto my clients and friends computers. I'm using Ark Linux for my company's only distro and thus far it has served me so well, I decided to join the Ark Linux team. Perhaps a tiny little company run by a woman out of "Joisey" doesn't mean much to people at large, but it certainly seems to scare the hell out of Microsoft and software vendors (I'll ask them to blog next time they call, begging me NOT to sell GNU Linux based computers).
Last thoughts:
Ubuntu, Debian, RedHat and the like have millions of dollars behind them and hundreds if not thousands of employees working for them and yet, Ark Linux has achieved nearly the same results. In some cases, they have done better than their rich, well staff counter parts. A word on Polish? MS Windows is well polished but polish, doesn't save your data when you computer suddenly crashes. Polish doesn't protect your privacy, or protect you from HOLES in the OS so large millions of viruses can get through, even with firewalls and antivirus software. Polish doesn't protect you from DRM BS that's really a smoke screen for trying to cash in more than once on a product you already purchased.
Which would you rather have? A car that looks great, costs a fortune but can't move itself out of your driveway? Or an old chevy that can make a Mac Truck leak its oil? A chevy you can recreate to match youself? You do the math.
Proudly signed,
Kate Draven
CyberPunk X Computers
I always wondered why there wasn't a decent configurator for xorg. SUSE's YaSt is pretty decent (although dreadfully slow) and SUSE Enterprise Desktop was the only one that I never needed to drop to the console for (even installed XGL without editing any text files) it seems that it's impossible to modify x settings without a decent knowledge of the xorg.conf file.
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
Hiding scrolling text is ALWAYS evil. I don't care what Windows users are ALLEGEDLY used to and prefer. Anyone who would prefer less information than more information - especially given the possibility that something can go wrong - is not someone I want making decisions about how Linux distros work.
I've never used Ark Linux before, but the idea that somehow by castrating Linux and making it look and feel like Windows it will somehow compete with or replace Windows strikes me as highly unlikely.
Apple - which, depending on what numbers you buy into, has even a greater market share than Linux, though has barely put up any kind of substantial fight against Microsoft in terms of the number of people using it - and where the Mac *has* succeeded is in the ways it is different from Windows. I wonder how many Mac users would applaud a choice by Apple to change something in the Mac OS so as "not to scare off Windows users." Answer: almost none. Or perhaps, none. Frankly, and I'm not even a Mac user, a Mac user who took that attitude would disappoint me as someone who is at least amused by OS partisanship.
If you are going to use Linux, or FreeBSD, be ready to use a command line. Some people can get by without it because they don't do much, or have incredible luck and every upgrade works perfectly and nothing ever breaks, but frankly, the population that is served by hiding the command line is miniscule compared to those of us who appreciate - and in fact use Linux or a BSD *because* of that command line.
I'm really getting tired of this idea of making "Linux ready for the desktop" in the sense of making it flashy and "slick" like Windows. I've got no objection to making Linux look nice and function logically in terms of its GUI, but not at the expense of dumbing it down and hiding its strengths, which a lot of people want to do.
I want VERBOSE error and status messages, and as much access to the console and logs as possible. Transparency all the way down. I want this in Windows too since I'm forced to use it for work but I'm not going to get it.
The command line is what makes UNIX-like OSes what they are - to me, anyway.
I'm sick of people trying to make it Windows, or make it like Windows, or look like Windows.
I'm not particularly interested in sacrificing functionality so people who are afraid or unwilling to learn command line basics.
As for the default browser, for god's sake, can we stop pretending that it MATTERS WHAT IS INSTALLED BY DEFAULT. Can we stop pretending that the main concern about Linux is what COMPLETE COMPUTER ILLITERATES will make of it? Sheesh. INSTALL AN ALTERNATE BROWSWER IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE DEFAULT CHOICE LIKE SO MANY WINDOWS USERS DO WHEN THEY DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL FIREFOX.
Guess what? In Linux you can install what you want, change the wallpaper, and change your menus and shortcuts around. Shocker!
Macs aren't (and rightfully so) measured against Windows in terms of similarity to Windows's philosophy of design (and look and feel) and neither should Linux. By which I mean, they're not measured against it as if not being like Windows is a deficit.
The idea is to present a significant alternative to Windows which is better (verbosity of the OS is definitely a plus - how many people like the way a Windows fresh install tries to hide system folders, file extensions, and resort to other such dicketry? Not me and frankly not anyone I know, including those who have a fraction of interest in computers than I do). How many people applaud having a completely withered, pathetic command line in Windows? Not me. How many people think having everything so GUI-centric in Windows has improved peoples computing skills, overall productivity, and so forth? I'm not bashing GUIs and wizards; I'm just saying that the command line should be a transparent, well-documented alternative so if the average user wants to automate simple tasks (like rotating wallpaper hourly or something), it's clear and obvious how to do that.
It's called xorgcfg (formerly xfree86cfg).
Having a config file is flawed in the first place.
When my system boots up, the Linux kernel constructs a list of all the hardware in the system. This list is read by udev, which sets it all up by loading the correct kernel module and doing other things for each piece of hardware. It's fast, simple and works really well. So why on earth doesn't the X server do the same?
Instead we're stuck in the early 90s, with a crappy config file and sixteen different frontends to editing it, all of which are shit.
Yes, it's fine as long as you don't care about 3D, or being able to plug in a new mouse or joystick or graphics tablet or monitor without restarting the X server entirely.
It's not that Gecko is insecure, it's that the way Firefox extensions install and run mirrors (albeit at the application rather than the rendering engine level) the ghastly security hole that is ActiveX.
There must not be a mechanism in a web browser (or any other application that displays untrusted content) for a document to request privileges above and beyond those that are actually required for displaying untrusted content. Rather, the user must request privileges by installing a plugin or extension outside the encapsulated user interface.
Arklinux automatically sets up a user called arklinux who has no password and essentially root privileges. You'd think that might be worthy of a comment. The system automatically boots to this arklinux user. I thought I was using Windows. You can give arklinux a password so no one uses the account and set up a new regular account with a password, but that wouldn't necessarily occur to a newbie.
There does not appear to be a GUI tool to configure file sharing. Even Konqueror won't do it. If you right click on a folder and try to create a share and it stalls out after excreting a dialogue box. I think even KateOS is more polished (I've never actually used KateOS, but it is from Poland, hence the reference).
Oh, and the reviewer is lucky he used the System Install rather than going down the Expert path. The version of qtparted they used seems to be broken. See the Arklinux forum.
Trying to start Celestia and Stellarium (and Dog only knows what else) causes X to buckle.
Another problem with smaller distros is that there isn't much of a community to help you if you are having problems. For instance there are fewer than 200 posts on the Arklinux forum spread over two languages. On the other paw, if I'm having problems with Yetis I can go over to the Bigfootforums where there are roughly 230,000 posters who can help me out. The Ark developers respond on the forums when they can, but really, they need to spend their time being developers. One of the things I look for in a distro is a well-developed, friendly community, not so big that you get lost in the shuffle (e.g. Ubuntu) but large enough so there will be someone who can help you. Maybe Mepis or Slackware sized groups, perhaps 25-75 posts per day.
On the plus side, Arklinux does have a very snappy and responsive "feel" to it, and I rather liked some of the customizations the developers chose. Maybe part of that is due to its cutting edge nature, particularly GCC 4.1, KDE 3.54 & X.Org 7.1 (which also accounts for some of the instability and video card problems).
It seems like if you put all the developers together from some of the smaller but very promising distros, say, Frugalware, Arklinux, Ultima, and Vectorlinux Soho, for Slackware-derived up-to-date KDE-centric Linices, you could come up with a really kickass operating system. But I am not sure developer time is necessarily additive, absent a pay-check because of issues of geographic proximity and human egos.
Sun have finally seen the light, and have created packages that allow distributors to include Java in their operating systems: https://jdk-distros.dev.java.net/.
After a few back-and-forths with Sun's legal department, even Debian have packaged it for their non-free section: http://packages.debian.org/src:sun-java5. Users can simply install the sun-java5-plugin package. In a few days time, the packages will be eligible for inclusion in the forthcoming Debian 4.0 ("etch") release.
There are ways to change the Firefox No/Yes button thing. One way is here, and I think there's a way to do it in about:config
Hi,
thanks for reviewing Ark Linux!
We've read your review and found it very constructive - we're already working
on some improvements (the current snapshot
[http://arklinux.osuosl.org/dockyard-devel/iso/ark linux.iso] already does
away with most of the text mode stuff on installer startup).
There's also some things that aren't entirely accurate, and some things we
need more information on in order to fix them:
The installer offers 4 (not just 2) options, depending on the configuration of
your system -- the ones you omitted are Express Install (uses up all
unpartitioned space, leaves the rest alone -- this option is grayed out
unless you actually have a big enough fragment of unpartitioned space) and
Parallel Install (shrinks a FAT partition and then uses the unpartitioned
space) -- this option is grayed out unless you have a big enough FAT
partition).
We were a bit puzzled about the graphics card not being detected correctly;
Are you sure it wasn't detected correctly as opposed to it simply not having
the right Mode entries in xorg.conf? This is addressed in the FAQ section on
our website: http://www.arklinux.org/index.php?page_id=149&lang uage=en
If it really didn't detect your graphics card, please send me the output
of "lspci -vn" so we can figure out what went wrong there.
The browser choice is a matter of opinion -- you're free to disagree with our
choice, but here's the top reasons why we made it and why we stand by it:
registered with KDE, making it very easy to make it handle additional stuff:
For example, if you click on an rpm file in Ark's Konqueror (no matter
whether it's on the local filesystem or on a website), you get a graphical
tool that will let you install the file. There's no easy way to get
comparable functionality with any other browser.
Similarily, we can just embed kmplayer into Konqueror to play any video, in
the current version, even including WMV9. There are Firefox plugins for
videos, but they're always lagging behind mplayer.
it to do, and it doesn't use the wrong button order that causes lots of
people to click on the choice they didn't want to make (of course that bit
could be fixed in Firefox)
installation to 1 CD -- Firefox with all the libraries it depends on (even
excluding the ones we include in a default install) would need about 20 MB of
additional space on the CD.
Konqueror even passes the Acid II test, which Firefox fails pretty badly. The
sole reason why there are sites that show ok in Firefox but not in Konqueror
is that Firefox has a bigger user base, therefore web designers adjust their
pages to its bugs. This is a bit of a chicken and egg problem -- Konqueror
isn't getting accepted widely because there are some (though rather few)
sites it doesn't render correctly, and webmasters don't bother fixing it
because "nobody uses Konqueror anyway". We've decided to make our (small)
contribution to start getting rid of the problem.
you'll remember Konqueror as a bogus browser that can render only the most
basic websites correctly, while the Firefox predecessor of the time was a
pretty decent browser and Firefox has remained that. Konqueror has managed to c