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VectorLinux SOHO 5.9 Deluxe Reviewed
An anonymous reader writes with a link to Caitlyn Martin's review of the Slackware-based Vector Linux SOHO 5.9 Deluxe: "I've read past reviews by other reviewers describing Vector Linux as 'better Slackware than Slackware' or 'what Slackware should be' and I always felt that was a bit of a stretch. With this release it isn't a stretch. You get all the reliability and stability of Slackware, better performance than vanilla Slack (at least on my hardware) and the features and most of the conveniences users of distributions touted as user friendly have come to expect."
Vector Linux is a decent distro to try out if you're a distro-hopper. But it's still just one of those generic desktop distros that doesn't seem to have any specific aim. I've used it in the past on computers that struggled with other distros, and it seemed to work well.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
I remember Slackware as being the most fundamental flavor out there--where you have to meta-configure every little thing about it... aka "fine tune" if you will the thing from the ground up. Which made it a rather secure system to start with since out of the proverbial box, it opens nothing up until you do.
So; what is this "what Slackware should have" business???
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Vector's aim is to be a small stable distro for home and small business use.
That pretty much puts it in a class with a few hundred other distros. The difference with Vector is that it is a small stable Slackware based distro for home and small business use.
For most people new to Linux that difference might be like saying 'but our's goes to 11!'. However, for long time Slackware users it is a good thing. If you have year's(or even decade's) of Slackware experience and are looking for a user friendly distro. Vector would be a good choice. Especially for small businesses.
For non-Slackware users and Linux newbies you are absolutely correct that it does not stand out from the crowd.
Vector is for Slackware what Libranet was for Debian. A really great implementation based on the parent distro. I miss Libranet. I keep hoping that Ubuntu or Mepis get up to Libranet quality standards someday.
It does nothing extraordinarily *evolutionary compared to Slackware. Just a silly attempt of attracting userbase? Maybe someone should re-release Slackware as Deque Linux and label it as what Vector Linux should have been.
No 64-bit build - no deal. All modern CPUs are 64-bit, and pretending that they don't exist is not going to help you.
Walnut Creek CDROM ran for years selling CDs that you could download from them for free.
That's how many people donated to Slackware and FreeBSD, by buying the CDROM from Walnut Creek instead of downloading the ISOs from Walnut Creek.
Apparently, Vector is just taking this a step further.
I'm a Kubuntu fan, but when I'm setting up older hardware, sometimes even xubuntu and fluxbuntu are too heavy. Vector Linux light edition runs just fine on a 500Mhz box with 64MB of ram. DVD's and other multi-media run out of the box, no difficult config needed. Set up was easy too, though I wasn't using any unusual hardware. It's worth trying out.
64 bits ought to be enough for anybody!
Caveat Utilitor
When Walnut Creek made their business most people had only analog modems or no Internet at all, so it made sense to buy bunches of CDs with otherwise freely downloadable stuff on them.
try portpkg
Higuita
Which is presumably why they're taking it to the next level.
Did not you hear about the performance of Vector Linux? Oh, it performs so much better than vanilla Slackware. It performs superior (on my hardware). Well, my hardware is old, true. And yes, Vector Linux makes it perform better.
--- Buy the newest Vector Linux to make you old PCs perform better than ever! ---