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Granular Linux Distro Preview is Worth a Look
Linux.com has an interesting look at Granular Linux, a desktop-oriented distribution that's primary goal is to be easy to use. "With a single CD's worth of included programs, Granular Linux manages to cover a significant portion of normal end user needs, and those applications not already installed can be easily added through Synaptic. The slight problem with video and more serious problem with sound of my machine suggest that Granular is not without its issues, especially when most other distributions work properly on this hardware, but as this is a preview release of version 1.0 I think it can be more or less forgiven. I'd definitely recommend Granular to anyone with an interest in trying out a new distribution. "
Because I don't find any of these "easy to use" attempts easy to use. Because I know unix already, and these distros do it differently in order to make it "easy". But I'm not most people.
But my point still stands. Easy to use is not the same as "windows like" or even "shallow learning curve". It can mean "expert friendly".
That's not to say they're mutually exclusive, but this term is abused more than most.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Another "easy to use" distro. We have enough of those. Focus your resources on stuff that matters.
Nothing to see here.
Easy to use has nothing to do with it. Focus on Application and Hardware support. Easy to use doesn't help you if your applications won't install or some chipset goes unsupported. These people need to work on building the needed applications for the Linux that exists now.
It is based on PCLinuxOS ("free, easy-to-use Linux-based operating system for the home"), which is based on Mandriva.
...and that was five minutes of my life I'll never get back.
As opposed to all the other Linux distros which try to be hard to use?
Its a KDE-oriented distro. I am not sure that releasing a new distro based on KDE in the current climate is a good idea. Don't get me wrong, KDE-4 is shaping up to be great (and backports and development on KDE-3 are still occurring), but what separates this distribution from any other KDE-3*-based distro?
I haven't tried this distro, but will give it a shot. Talking new distros, especially live ones, I've been playing with FaunOS, a Linux-based live system for USBs. It's based on Arch, and its pretty damn fast. The other USB based distro that I've tried Puppy Linux is better if you want to run old hardware, or don't have enough RAM; but I find FaunOS just more complete. Anyone else out there booting from USB?
Longer than Vista I hope.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It goes against the grain!
/badpun
Maybe an announcement of the first version of Slackware was. Perhaps radically different distributions like Gentoo. But for the life of me I can't understand why another ordinary desktop disto is on the front page.
"Its primary goals are to be easy to use and user-friendly (...) Upon booting the Granular live CD ISO with the default settings my test PC, which uses an old ATI Rage 128 video card, the system froze at the loading screen. A quick reboot and selection of safe VESA settings solved this problem with no fuss."
Come on. Am I the only one to think that the above is funny?
January
If I hadn't already commented on this thread, I'd mod you up twice.
Doesn't support hardware=hard to use.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
It's about how Vista's not long for this world. It quotes a fairly reliable source.
TFA is about Yet Another Fine Distro. It seems like there are ten thousand of them now. Choice is good.
So yeah I hope this one's got more than a year left in it.
It seems like just yesterday we were discussung the death of Vista's predecessor XP. How time flies...
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I can't remember the last time I saw a mainstream distro that was actually hard to *use*. Some have been hard to set up, or hard to get working properly... but hard to *use*?
:P
Click on some menu button, find your program, run your program. Where the menu button is located, how it's shaped and what it looks like does not matter.
As a self proclaimed nerd I would like to see a linux distro that actually did something revolutionary. Anyone can take a base distro, dress it up and make it into a LiveCD. It's nothing new in that, it's nothing exciting in that and it's nothing remotely interesting in that.
Give me a few hours and I'll make "Lavenix". An easy to use LiveCD with a package selection perfect for everyone that's... well... just like me
I read the article and gave up when he couldn't install his audio hardware and was switching between OSS and ALSA (neither acronym did he explain). Normal basic user guy would never get passed that point, never. Easy to use? Maybe, but as shown in the article only for the people who always used to think a few tens of lines into the command line were easy.
Another Linux Distro! Thank goodness, I was starting to feel like I was running out of options.
Seriously folks, 64 Distributions should be enough for anybody.
If you have to manually setup Wifi with all that driver mapping crap, then it's still not friendly enough.
stuff |
Many linux distros claim to be "easy", and they are, if you are at least moderately computer literate. What I am looking for however is a truly Gran friendly Linux distro, for the quite elderly (who have done all the learning they will be doing, and will forget everything you teach them in about 1/2 an hour anyway and the just terminally stupid. Ultra, mega, hyper simple. A desktop of about 5 buttons "Mail" "Search" "Chat" "Write" "Pictures" Only one way to do anything, a simple way, in fact, one mouse button. No guess work. Like a mac, only even more restricted, locked down, and simple.
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Granular is shooting to be an easy to use Linux distribution. The big question is, what will it do that Ubuntu isn't?
Pfft! Easy of use is weeding out those ever growing bits of software that's not easy. Modding and mashing all of the easy together to make it more easy. And then maintaining the whole easy in the face of everchanging difficult features and bugfixes.
I think the network edition is about 140mb, then you just apt-get whatever you need. Seems to be the same idea.
and it served me a 0 byte ISO. If that's not easy to use, I don't know what is!
The exact opposite is true.
The first line is not only longer, but also full of ambiguities and uncertainties. Right click what? What is Properties, where do I find them? Permissions tab? Where do I find that, and what's a tab anyway? What does "click over" mean? Where are those check boxes, and how do I execute them? What's OK?
In contrast, there are no ambiguities in the chmod line. The only variable is the filepath supplied, but if the advice was good then the filepath is correct and there is no uncertainty.
The chmod line constitutes vastly better advice, and the exact command can be recorded for posterity trivially with cut'n'paste or other means. Try doing that with the instructions for clicking --- you'd have to write down the prose, and hope that it gets interpreted correctly later.
Your example was a great one, for showing the exact opposite of what you intended.
In 1996, I picked up as Slackware distro and started playing around with it. Since then, I've installed or used Red Hat, Suse, Debian, Ubuntu, etc., and built Linux from Scratch systems several times. Now I'd have to work closely with a novice to get any insight into what "easy to use" means. If I worked with novices accustomed to Macs, PC's, or who were completely unfamiliar with computers, I'd bet they'd all have different ideas about what it means.
Distrowatch is tracking 566 distributions now, 353 of them active.
Linux.org shows 455.
There's a rather long list on Wikipedia
None of these lists is anywhere near complete or definitive. One of the challenges these days is picking a good distro. Usually people develop a fondness to one family of distributions and stick with it for a single purpose. The thing is that each distribution has its merits and fans. Each one has support forums and repositories and developers. It's a whole ecosystem of operating systems competing for the attention of users. I like the Debian based Ubuntu and its derivative for the desktop but PCLinuxOS spawned from Mandrake seems to have legs these days. It's hard to beat the Knoppix based bootables for recovery, diagnostics and utilities too.
I so much prefer that to an entire ecosystem of malware developers competing to hose my Windows box, and the antithetical software vendors selling cures (mostly snake-oil).
The cool thing about people being free to roll their own distro is that even a little guy can have grand ideas and if he implements them well, kaching! He's got a seller. A few months of good marketing and he can sell services for the rest of his days. If it's good but he loses interest or it doesn't rise to that level, someone will just fold his great ideas into their own distro until it gets absorbed by them all. That's called "progress", and you don't get it from a Windows Distro family like Vista.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
google news
If there's a tipping point I would say we're getting pretty close to it.
It would appear "get the facts" backfired.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
We have now reached a point where "Easy to Use" is no longer an issue and specialization (i was looking forward to Undead Linux but they went away). There are more and more distros/sub-distros that are providing more and more specific customizations out of the box. These distros are not for people who have using linux for years, they are for people who just want to use their computer without having to work at it. This can be easily done with linux and on their OLD computers. I have converted a few people starting with just FOSS, then when they too easily get their windows systems compromised I show them Mint, Mepis, Linspire, Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubunt/Edubuntu, and yes I have checked out Granular, it is nice. Most people just want to go on web, get their email, watch videos, play games, type a document. And any of the distros out there allow this with little or no fuss.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Granular Linux => PCLinuxOS => Mandriva Linux => Red Hat Linux
Why the cascade?
"I use a C-Media on board sound, but to get the mic to work was far from plug the mic in and it works. Windows blew on that one"
I can confirm this is a real anecdote because the C-Media mic problem hit me too. For a while I was convinced that it was actually a hardware problem, thinking it was a bad mic jack on my board, but after installing Linux it surprised me that it began to work. I didn't even have to know how to install a driver because it was detected by the installer. What I *did* have to know about was how to open a sound mixer and click on mic boost, but that was like a walk in the park compared to Windows. (Kudos to the driver writers!)
The fact is, if Windows doesn't support your chipset, you are really up the creek. Microsoft has no incentive to go back and add complete support of older chipsets and won't cry any tears if you are left with useless hardware. The chipset vendor may not have an incentive either, especially if it has moved on to a new chipset that it wants you to buy instead. In either case, you are not going to get source code to build your own Windows driver. With Linux, support for existing chipsets is often better because adapting working, open source code to a new kernel is a zillion times easier than waiting for exactly one person to be paid to rewrite a driver every time. Because it is easier, it is thus more likely to get rolled into new kernels and more likely to stay supported. Because the code is open, you don't have to wait for a company to train someone to take over support of a driver. Any qualified person can do it, and so support is far more transferable.
Windows blows because its methodology is obsolete and broken by design. And we all suspected that the inherent disadvantages of closed source would eventually come back to roost. It is now doing so and the lack of driver support is crowing in a very obvious way.
You can't send a takedown notice to an already printed newspaper.