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. "

Comments

I hate the phrase "easy to use".

[serviscope_minor]

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.

Re:I hate the phrase "easy to use".

[wizardforce]

I agree with you, "easy to use" is relative. Grandma's idea of "easy to use" isn't necessarily the same as any of ours. she may only need to browse the internet or play simple games, we O.T.O.H may require Bash to be handy for shell scripts to automate different tasks, to refine things etc. Then if you're reasonably familar with *nix commands it's much simpler to communicate fixes for problems, installing software etc. a single command rather than click* click* click** click more....

Re:I hate the phrase "easy to use".

[uvajed_ekil]

I've found LinuxMint to be fairly easy to use so far, at least as easy as any other distro I've tried (which is all the biggies, 15-20+ over the years). I've tinkered with Linux off an on since 1994 or 1995, but the current iteration of Mint (Daryna, based on Ubuntu and Gnome) is the first distro I've been able to use for everything I do, given my limited linux/UNIX knowledge.

My desktop still dual boots XP pro and Ubuntu, but my laptop, which I use probably 90% of the time, only runs LinuxMint now. Mint does some things well "out of the box" that other distros don't, like play DVDs and work with my wifi card, which are a must if Windows users are to be converted. Yes, it uses some closed-source drivers and stuff, but it is still free and works damn well for some of us. I've even toyed with Virtual Box and installed XP with just to see if it would work. That install went fine, and XP seems to work, even though I was previously unable to install it without the VM because there are no XP drivers for my hardware.

I may be more persistent than the typical user who feels abused by MS, but I honestly believe the current crop of desktop linux distros are getting VERY close to truly becoming Windows replacements. They still aren't "set it and forget it" easy, but they are close, and less fiddling is needed once you have everything set up. I'd love to see a bit of consolidation in the linux community, rather than the ridiculous number of distros we see now, and a focus on hardware compatibility and drivers that install without any hassle. If we get that, anyone will be able to install and use linux.

Re:I hate the phrase "easy to use".

[BountyX]

I concur, a similar instance would be the word "authentic" in the food industry. Most people use the word "authentic' to indicate that a meal is prepared similarly to where it would be prepared where the recipe originated. I just don't see how food in a box can be labeled authentic. Any alternate interpretations of the words seem to be redundant in describing the item...
 
Just like the phrase "easy to use", "authentic" seems to be so ambiguous in actual application that it only endures use for sensationalism (unless research backs it up).

I'm forced to agree.

[Zombie Ryushu]

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.

Re:I'm forced to agree.

[Captain DaFt]

"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."

Applications and hardware support that "just work" are exactly how I define "ease of use".

The OS is just the part that makes the applications work on the hardware. Ideally, an OS that "just works" means I shouldn't even notice it.

Based on

[dvice_null]

It is based on PCLinuxOS ("free, easy-to-use Linux-based operating system for the home"), which is based on Mandriva.

It attempts to be easy to use?

[arrenlex]

As opposed to all the other Linux distros which try to be hard to use?

KDE

[Psychotria]

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?

USB-based Live OS's: FaunOS and PuppyLinux

[1 a bee]

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?

How long will this distro be around?

[symbolset]

Longer than Vista I hope.

Re:It's just PClinuxOS

[ozmanjusri]

just PCLinuxOS with a different name and a different wallpaper.

Yep. The only interesting thing about this is how it was made.

The LiveCD project is dedicated to providing you with tools to create your own LiveCD from a currently installed Linux distribution. It can be used to create your own distribution, specialised CD, or to put together a demo disk to show off the power of our favourite OS.
http://livecd.berlios.de/ It dramatically lowers the barrier to producing and distributing your own Linux distro.

I suspect we'll be seeing a flood of special-interest Linux distros very shortly. It could be a breeding ground for some interesting innovations.

Re:It's just PClinuxOS

[Pc_Madness]

Because thats what linux needs, MORE distros. *sigh*

Re:It's just PClinuxOS

[hcmtnbiker]

just PCLinuxOS with a different name and a different wallpaper. Yep. The only interesting thing about this is how it was made.

The LiveCD project is dedicated to providing you with tools to create your own LiveCD from a currently installed Linux distribution. It can be used to create your own distribution, specialised CD, or to put together a demo disk to show off the power of our favourite OS. http://livecd.berlios.de/

It dramatically lowers the barrier to producing and distributing your own Linux distro. I suspect we'll be seeing a flood of special-interest Linux distros very shortly. It could be a breeding ground for some interesting innovations. Fedora, Ubuntu, and most other distributions, and one of my personal favorites ZenWalk, have their own set of tools for easily creating your own liveCD. This is nothing new.

From my experience "easy to use" means: features that get in your way when you try to do real work. Most distributions go down this road and it drives me fucking nuts. If you really want a distro to be easy, focus your attention on getting all the hardware you can to work out of box. Put ndiswrapper on it(I cannot believe how many distros leave this out be default), maybe(ndisGTK too), and just make sure the manual explains how to use it for the people not familiar.

Re:Nothing to see here

[tor528]

Focus your resources on stuff that matters.

That's how I got fired from my last job.

News for nerds?

[iamacat]

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.

Re:It's just PClinuxOS

[Spy der Mann]

I suspect we'll be seeing a flood of special-interest Linux distros very shortly.

Sometimes I've fantasized about making my own mini-distro based on anonymity, hacking and privacy tools . Maybe I'll load it with I2P, Freenet and all that.

This tool to remaster your distribution is a very nice thing to have. It's like having a RAD but for distros.

Also, having read Stallman's book, I consider this tool to be effectively supporting the spirit of software freedom. It's no use if you're *allowed* to make changes to a software and distribute it to others, if the technological barriers are impossible to cross.

Ridiculous

[jw3]

"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

Easy to use

[Iamthecheese]

Doesn't support hardware=hard to use.

Click the link

[symbolset]

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...

Easy to use is nothing new

[Lavene]

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*?

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 :P

Re:Easy to use is nothing new

[thefekete]

Second that.

I can't say I tried this distro (or read TFA for that matter), but I've been on ubuntu for the last 3 years and I don't see any reason to switch. The main reason is the documentation. At this point I could probably be compiling custom kernels and installing all my software from source with every configuration tweaked out, but I need to get some work done. Ubuntu is my choice because of it's large user base, period.

With that comes a lot of people trying to do a lot of things. And chances are that someone already tried to do what I am, and they wrote about it to boot.

The more documentation and fewer hardware issues there are, combined with alternative or ports to those high demand apps, the faster people will be dropping winturd in the circular filing cabinet.

Classic

[JamesRose]

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.

Re:It's just PClinuxOS

[pD-brane]

Put ndiswrapper on it(I cannot believe how many distros leave this out be default), maybe(ndisGTK too), and just make sure the manual explains how to use it for the people not familiar. Even though I must say that ndiswrapper is a nice tool, I tell people where I install GNU/Linux that their hardware is not supported and they should buy this or that to replace the hardware. On the other hand, why would you want to dispose any hardware? This is two-fold for me.

First, it is proprietary software (i.e. the drivers).

Secondly, is are the drivers maintainable? How good does ndiswrapper work and how do you know that when it works it keeps on working?

I no longer know what "easy to use" means

[srobert]

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.

Yet another fine distro

[symbolset]

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.

we have reached the point...

[Sfing_ter]

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.