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Stormix:Yet Another Distribution
IsleOfView
wrote in with prove that there will never be a shortage of
new distributions. This one is called
stormix and its based on
Debian, but has assorted advanced installation tools.
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Redhat has lots of icons and windows. Debian scares me. It just comes up with something like "root#" and sits there! I type stuff and it keeps saying "command not found". What a piece of junk...
If anything will be the downfall of Linux (aside from the outbursts from the fanatics), it will be the multitude of "distributions".
/usr, /bin, /lib, /etc and so on. Put the "optional add-on packages" in /usr/local or /opt where they belong and don't interfere with system files.
Why? Quite simple: there is NO STANDARD. There is no way you can create a book on Linux that focuses on administration *from an admin's point of view* and say: "this is the way you do it...", etc... You can't do this when there are 40 million different distributions, each with it "own way of doing things".
The typical Linux "distribution" is not even *complete*, from a network or sysadmin point of view. There are various utilities that are simply missing from the base system (what good is a Unix without dump/restore?), which you then have to go out of your way to find, when you *could* be doing other things.
Perhaps if Linux developers would a) stop focusing on making Linux look (and run) like MS-Windows, b) concentrate on networking and server applications instead of desktop, c) make a consistent format that should be used as a *standard for all "distributions"* to provide a complete base system, then maybe Linux will stand a chance.
But as it stands, it is chaos. It will not last at this rate. Once it starts hitting the server market, admins will see it for what it has become: a chaotic, confusing waste of their time. I personally do not have time to fix "broken" distriutions.
Oh, and another thing: let's put the *essential system files* in
Linux's credibility has already suffered at the hands of the zealous fanatics, and now it's feeling the effects of its chaotic inconsistency of distributions.
Almost every small distro now has a GUI-install, but Red Hat and Debian have not. If we want to have "World Domination", we'd better shape up the installation process, and I find it very strange that Red Hat has not yet made a GUI-installer.
I hate the cli-installation-style. I hate IRQs. I hate system administration. I want to code.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
>Then make your own Super-Installer. Submit it to
>the community.
Perhaps, but I have to become a better programmer first. I could perhaps start after christmas.
>Just because the installer sucks ass (CLI)
>doesn't mean that you have to start a whole new
>distro. That's just stupid.
I agree, but Debian could use the installer from Stormix.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I meant democracy in the ancient Athenian sense, where things are decided by the land-owning class of citizens.
I said 'democratic' as a counter-example to the benevolent tyranny of Red Hat or Slackware, where a corporation or extremely select group of individuals decides what goes into the distro.
AFAIK, all it takes to be a Debian developer is the willingness to read the mailing lists and a well-signed PGP/GPG key. There's no 'code quota' that says you have to contribute a certain amount to be able to vote.
Commercial vendors like to make money. That's what they're in it for. We, the community, like for the vendors to port to Linux. Why? So we get cool stuff. So Linux gets bigger and better. Everyone's happy.
However, if there are fifty distributions, then they will inevitably wonder, "Wait, if we're going to support Linux, which distro do we port to?" Sure, you can compile it for Linux, put it in a tarball and be done with it - and leave the install specifics to the user.
But what happens with support? "Oh, I see, you're using SuperDuper Linux?" Where is such and such installed? What version is your whatchamacallit binary? And so on...
From my perspective, I think it would make commercial vendors feel a whole lot better about getting into Linux if they didn't feel like they were porting to a moving target.
Personally, I could care less - use whatever you want or roll your own. I'm just thinking that commercial vendors will get scared off and end up not porting to Linux because "there are too many choices."
have you even done any research into what these guys are doing?
its debian linux with a nice install and eventually a configuration program.
all the changes are gpl, and the developers are active on debian-devel. while i don't exactly agree with their ideas (getting rid of text file configuration in favor of a binary database) their work can only help debian in the long run.
fragmentation is bad, but this distribution is based closely on debian, which is as close to a standard as you can get.
another distribution != fragmentation, or at least it doesn't have to.
i'm certainly willing to at least give them the benefit of the doubt, and possibly to download it once it gets a little further along and give it a shot...
-garrett
Strange. I've installed Debian many times on many machines, and only once had a problem (the mouse refused to work).
;-). Don't sweat it -- if the install doesn't take the first time, write to the maintainer(s) about it so they can fix it, then try again.
Compare this to my Redhat experience -- I've tried five different versions on four different computers more times than I care to count, with only three sucessful installs. Every other time, the installer corrupted the filesystem while doing the install. (Oops, make that six versions on five computers -- LinuxPPC installed perfectly without a glitch.)
My point?
Installing OSes sucks
-Billy
(A very happy Debian user -- although I do want a better install, I believe that ease of use and upgrading is FAR more important, and Red Hat just does not handle that.)
I agree with you WRT deb vs. RPM, even though I'm told that rpmfinder is a nice program which can be pointed to central distributions -- Redhat just isn't designed for that, and Debian is.
However, you asked "do people really find plain old fdisk THAT hard to use?"
People Do.
:)
Or more specifically, Linux typically asks people to partition their hard drive before it tells them what for. In my ideal installation, you'd choose the apps you wanted before you ever saw the partitioning screen. That way the installer could straight out tell you "you need to clear at least X amount of space -- that's n% of your hard drive. Here's a suggested area."
Until then, installs will require planning ahead, or dedicated systems. Planning ahead is wonderful, but it required knowledge, which is kind of a catch-22 for new Linux users (they're installing Linux so they can gain knowledge).
-Billy
Of course registering makes you less anonymous -- if you _post_ with that ID consistently.
I don't use people's emails or read their stupid (or clever) nicks; I don't even care. To me, they are what they write -- and an AC is someone who doesn't want to be associated with what they've written in the past.
Fine for them, fine for me.
-Billy
"monstrously complex"? I don't find hitting "+" and "-" and occasionally being prompted for dependencies a difficult task. Oh, you can also hit "?" if you get confused.
"The Great Unwashed" that think they wanna try Linux, but don't know the first thing about using/installing it don't care weather or not the interface is GUI or CLUI. What they do care about are things like partitions, video drivers, IRQs etc. it is those things that you want to "shield" TGUs from [and have the ability for the power user to micromanage the install]
All this gui does is show everything the textmode has in a "cute" closable window. My grandmother doesn't want to know what a partition is/ what mount points are.
To reiterate, "normal" people don't give a rats arse if the install procedure is text based or gui based, they just don't want to have to understand things like video drivers, refresh rates, IRQs, etc.
I think Stormix is missing the point of the GUI install
Blocklevel: Practical Information Architecture
Lots
We will never defeat Microsoft unless we all pull together and focus our energy!
The Microsoft == the Borg analogy is used quit often, but many people fail to look at it thoroughly. The Borg are defeated by individuals, not by another collective. Individuals differ, compete and cooperate with each other. Neither pure competition, nor pure cooperation seem to be the best strategies, evolutionarywise.
Actually, Debian and Redhat are incredibly similar. They can even use each others' packages (via alien), and except for minor differences (like the way they arrange their rc.d script directories), they are practically interchangeable. What Debian has over RedHat, which is why I use it, is that it uses deb instead of RPM as its native package format. deb is much more powerful, having such features as:
There are also many features of the distribution itself which make me prefer it, namely:
So basically, RedHat and Debian are basically the same OS, but Debian is a much better OS experience (strictly IMO). Of course, it could be argued that RedHat and Debian are different OSes than Slackware, and to that I'd somewhat agree, though they're still similar enough to have most things interchangeable (alien can also import/export "tarball" distributions such as what Slackware uses, and except for Slackware's antiquated /etc and /var layout - and this could have changed since 3.5, which is the last version I've used - they're still pretty much interchangeable).
Now, I realize that you were just trolling/flaming/etc., but I don't see that as a reason that I can't at least try to give some friendly information, right? :)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
So many distros and nobody wants to do anything meaningful such as knocking off that crazy /usr/ stuff in the directory system. Now that would be interesting and worth supporting.
---
Some anonymous coward said:
YM "Windows to Redhat". ;) (Linux doesn't have DLLs, and I copy stuff between SuSE and Redhat distributions of Linux regularly. Not little programs, either...I've successfully compiled uqwk (an offline Usenet newsreader) on a SuSE box, taken the binary to both Redhat AND Debian boxen, and the darn thing *works*. :)
Now to run stuff that requires DLLs, you need a little utility called Wine. I've never seen a huge use for it myself, though. :)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
dpkg and rpm are for uberl33tz! Slackware's installpkg ownz!
installpkg may not be very sexy, but it works. So what if you're missing packages? installpkg doesn't whine at you for it, you can just go and get them later! And in GUI tools, pkgtool makes glint and apt look like tinkertoys!
I felt like I had to stick in something for Slackware.
Armando Rojas
Go to the web site and have a look at the screenshots.
Could someone PLEASE tell me why in Ghod's name you would need miniaturize/maximize/close buttons on a fscking INSTALL window? Prettying it up is OK, but let's think while we're doing it, huh guys?
http://slashdot.org /article.pl?sid=99/07/08/2047257&mode=thread
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Actually, it is possible to mix binarys between distros, its just tricky. I, briefly created a Frankenstein Debian/Mandrake beast....attempting to combine the best aspects of each. It was, well, interesting to say the least, but most binary did run.
If you're going to install required packages from source, you ought to download the source packages, and compiling them produces a binary package which can then be installed.
That beats having a lot of packages installed from source, with no idea of what individual files they have installed.
Also, if you're into compiling lots of stuff, there is a host of tools to help you create debian packages, which you can use to generate binary packages from your source (*.tgz) files.
Thusly debian will know what's installed. Also, I find your redhat comment confusing - In my experience of RH, (5.2 on my older computer), it does complain about missing packages, even if the binary file is there. I clearly remember having to use the --force option to rpm for certain things (for which I had installed hte dependant files myself)
Nope. Debian is NOT a product of the FSF, though there is a lot of good will between the two groups. The GNU in the name is a tribute to the old GNU OS which ended up being the majority of the OS the Linux Kernel was the heart of. Since that time, Linux has grown to the point where the GNU portion is fairly small compared to the rest(not counting programs compiled by gcc but written by other groups).
Casting aspersions without downloading and testing is a Bad Thing, but what the fuck. I'm bored.
They're advertising a development environment 'without the need to learn a complex widget set'.
If you're a developer, you learn complex widget sets. It's what you do. If you use Visual Basic you're not a programmer. You're a lego builder.
Of course, just because you're not a programmer if you use this doesn't make it a bad thing; anyting that lets the average user build programmes can only be good for Linux. I'll happily download this new distro and stick it onto a laptop, after which I'll be able to offer some informed criticism. Of course, no-one'll listen. They never do. They're usually right.
You're a BSD person, no? One of the things I picked up from Darren Reed's talk at CALU was that in the BSD world, the whole distribution is considered the operating system. In the Linux world, it's just the kernel that is considered the OS. The distinction may be small, but it's important to grasp the concept. You can take a Linux kernel from Debian and compile and run it on a Slackware box. Have fun trying that on a BSD system ;-)
The differences between the Linux distributions are mainly two-fold, a) the level of FHS compliancy and b) the VAR software included (packaging tools, useless GUI install programs, in some cases commercial software).
That software still runs under the same OS - Linux. And in fact you can take that software and run it on any other distribution. From what I gathered from Darren Reed, even the exact same distribution of BSD you can't do that on between minor revisions! ('ps' was a case in point)
Matt
"Debian is a very free and democratic distribution. If your ideas are good, they will be included."
:-) )
What?! Only the Debian developers get to choose what gets included. It isn't a democracy. It's an enlightened benevolent oligarchy (one of the developers is enlightened, but he's not necessarily the one who's benevolent
If there should ever be a truly democratic distribution, I'll run in terror the opposite direction. And anyone who thinks through the consequences will do the same.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
If you weren't aware, you can also use the menu-driven dselect as a front-end for apt-get. dselect does a good job of managing the dependencies between packages, so if you choose to install ncurses-bin, it will also automatically select ncurses-base if you don't have it on your system already.
Debian may have a slightly more daunting initial install than Red Hat, but I vastly prefer dselect/apt to glint/rpm (even though glint does look nicer -- provided you are running X). I espescially like the fact that dselect gives you a current-to-the-minute list of packages on debian.org. With Red Hat, it always takes a bit of searching to find an rpm I'm looking for (or is there a way to point glint directly at a central rpm server that I don't know about?)
I saw the Stormix page a few days ago (ooh ahh an on-topic post!) and while I'm always happy to see anything that will bring new users to Linux, this particular distro just leaves me a bit lukewarm. As many have said about the new OpenLinux, all those gee-whiz pretty install screens just increase the chances of things not working right on old/unusual hardware. And do people really find plain old fdisk THAT hard to use?
Hmm...following your logic:
Microsoft is not better than BSD. Linux is.
I'm glad to be finally able to end that debate once and for all. It has been turning people against each other for far too long. Here's one:
Microsoft is not an operating system. Linux is.
OK, that one actually made sense. How about:
Microsoft is not pizza. Linux is.
I like Linux pizza. The ingredients are all open source. Here is my grand finale:
Microsoft is not good. Linux is.
QED
I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.
"That's right, I'm quoting myself."
-Upsilon
We will never defeat Microsoft unless we all pull together and focus our energy!
I thought we were just using Linux because we thought it was better. Get your priorities straight.
The kernel is Linux, but distribution are different. I have played with RedHat and Debian a lot I all I can conclude is that Debian is superior.
1) Debian has more flexible installation thethods (direct ftp install over modem, anyone?)
2) Debian does not detect any hardware during installation. Nebies might think this is a nightmare, but I have seen people who got stuck because redhat installer did not detect their hardware correctly.
3) Overall quality of packages is way better on Debian.
4) A way superior suite of package management tools. Dselect + apt-get + dpkg. You do not have to worry about dependencies at all. Whever you select a package, all dependencies and conflicts are solved automatically from dselect (of course you can alter those if you want). Also you do not need to download and install packages by hand. Just say "I want window maker", Dselect will download window maker and a bunch of packages that it depends on and install them. Another nifty feature, apt-get update;apt-get upgrade, will sync your system with the one on ftp server. In redhats case you have to visit erratas page once in a while and if there is something new download and install by hand.
5) Finally, installation and configuration of "difficult" packages like sendmail and apache is rediculously easy, because dpgk asks you configuration questions during install.
s RedHat (the best, IMHO), Slackware, Debian, SuSE, Caldera, Mandrake, Power Linux (or something), McLinux,
RedHat, SuSE, Debian... RedHat is the most broken of those three. 5.0 and 6.0 are broken beyond repair. SuSE can be thought of as the less broken version of RedHat, and Debian is on top of all of them (see my post in response to the very 1st comment) any ways.
D'oh!
:P
It's the kernel that makes the OS, not the set of packages and their configuration files around it.
init is just an application, yeah?
Next you'll be telling us Windows 95 OEM1 and OEM2 are separate OSs because of the filesystem support (FAT32), or something.
Troll!
~Tim
--
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Well, I've just had a quick look at the screenshots.
The first was the most off-putting, with "Storm linux. We make linux look good." (in caps) totally contradicting the grammar in "You must now create partitions for Storm to install on top of". Eeeurgh!
FWIW I agree that there is no need for anyone to go round replicating the Windoze GUI under linux. It's fair enough that fvwm95 exists, of course, but I for one think it would help bring it home to the population as a whole that there are more ways to operate than Maximise, Minimise and Nuke.
I didn't see that many installation methods - what was it, CD, NFS and something else? What about multi-CD-over-samba or NFS, for example?
The installer does look cuter than debian's, even in text mode. But how do the run-time package-manglement tools look?
~P
~Tim
--
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Actually, they ARE the same operating system. Linux is the operating system.. The distros are just sets of packages and configuration crap.
The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient... - High Road to China
This is news for nerds, stuff that matters. Linux is in the media all the time currently, and linux news certainly is news for nerds, stuff that matters... So WTF is up your big fat ass? Fine, leave!
"Slashdot sucks. Slashdot readers are stupid. Slashdot is turning into a linux site." Geez! Shut your sorry whiny ass up!
I'm sick of hearing about nothing but linux too, so for a while I just skipped all the linux stories... And guess what, it was ok. I didn't have a heart attack, or a stroke, or die of cancer. It's really ok! And I STILL got to read plenty of "News for nerds, stuff that matters"!
The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient... - High Road to China
Hey, don't start slinging insults! That's ridiculous.
/etc with another, probably wouldn't be terribly easy, but you could do it.
You sure could change
Try swapping the Linux kernel with another OS kernel...
The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient... - High Road to China
I could say the same thing about you, you certainly aren't above slinging insults. You are also an Anonymous Coward. Your reply was also irrelevant, the reply before yours put me in my place. You on the other hand just insulted me with nothing to add to the topic at hand.
It's been a bad day, I think I'll take your advice anyway and shut up.
The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient... - High Road to China
And how old are you again?
Ya like i'd believe me if I was you!
Look, only a sheep would WANT a universal standard for a *nix OS. Any of the clued would realize exactly what kind of can of worms learning about a *nix is. EVERYBODY should know that there is fragmentation galore in the commercial unices and within an hour of research will be aware of the fragmentation in the Linux and *BSD areas. Deal with it.
I use the Linuces and *BSDs to port my knowledge that I learned while working on NT and Mac networks. If you know how to run a file/web/FTP server on one OS, run it on another. The variety of OSs and distros helps and I welcome it. 'Course, I'm smart enough to read man pages. It doesn't throw me that useradd and adduser have different names. Jeez.
-jpeg
Ultimatly all these choices may seem slightly painful, but the extra competition will just feed Linux evolution. We will all benefit in the long run.
I've seen stories about all of those within the past few weeks. It's not like it's easy for them to go through tons of stories, back check them, AND move their stuff over to andover.net and keep you happy. Besides, it's not them digging up the articles, they just sort through what they can, and post what they do find. If you don't like it, don't be an AC, and start submitting stories.
The borg are defeated by
Being the bad guys
Being stupidly set up with little planning having gone into it.
Now, since we're living in the real world, we can ignore the first one.
The second one we can't do anthing about, except to exploit it. Which is fairly easy and is being done.
The other point is that the Federation are far scarier and drone-like than the borg...
- Aidan
Actually, I accidentally replaced the Debian /etc directory with the /etc from a NetBSD install on a pmax DEC machine. Debian booted more-or-less successfully. I was even able to log in and repair the damage.
/etc with a RedHat /etc, assuming you adjusted the appropriate pathnames and other minutae. Compare that to replacing the registry of a WinNT install with that of a Win95 install. No amount of tweaking will reconcile them. _They_ are different operating systems.
I imagine it would be quite possible to replace the Debian
-awc
Yep. That was one reason that I was less than screwed. The key init scripts weren't overwritten. But lots of other parts were (including the passwd and shadowed passwd files).
-awc
Although RedHat6.0 comes close, i havent yet ;-)
seen the "Perfect Distribution for Me(tm)", so i welcome every attempt to make it better than the others - after all, thats what Linux is all about: To make it better than the Others (notice the capital "O"
As long as the initial installation goes better than with debian, i'll give it a try.
Free Software is about Freedom.
The only thing i can see about the history of Unix is this: It has survived and is thriving.
--
Jor
Actually dropping HURD into a debian system will probably not work, becuase there is more Linux in Debian than just the kernel. The filesystem for one thing. In addition any linux distro wil always be like to other distros. Thus Debian Linux will always be closer to Redhat Linux than it is to HURD. HURD uses servers and a microkernel, and a much more updated design. The differnce between Debian and RedHat are only in installation, management and package tools. Remeber a lot of people consider Unix and operating system, and the different ones as flavors of Unix. Linux is a flavor of Unix. By their reasoning, the stucture is like this
UNIX
Linux HURD Solaris AIX IRIX
Redhat Debian, etc.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I don't agree with comment you replied to but I don't understand how posting as AC reduces the value of comment. If I register as ABC with e-mail of abc@abcabc.com, does it make me less anonymous?.
I am somewhat new to Linux and all it's many wonders, so be gentle :)
It said that Stormix was based on Debian. Now, would that mean that it's likely the same exploits could be used against a machine running Stormix as one using Debian (e.g. DOSEMU)?
Killing spammers is too good for them.
I actually chose Debian for my home machine to play with/learn on because it was the distro I was able to find the least number of exploits for.
Thanks again,
Matt
Killing spammers is too good for them.
Debian, RedHat, Slackware, etc. are all separate operating systems. They are all based on the Linux kernel. They are very close relatives in most ways, but they are not the same operating system. If you think they are, I welcome you to replace the /etc and /var directory from any one of them with any other. Other than the fact that they all use the same kernel and share many libraries, they are no more or less related to one another than they are to Solaris, Irix, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and SCO Unix.
You're getting all confused again. Not everybody who uses Linux, or wants to give Linux a try, has a pathological hatred of Microsoft and the Microsoft GUI.
Debian is "like" Slackware except it's at least ten times as complicated to install. The packaging system may be comprehensive, but it's also monstrously complex.
With a Slackware installation, you just do the install, and then where you want things customized, you use pkgtool to rip out the 'package' and build your stuff from source. That's what "hackers" do BTW.
You never hear anybody doing any dogmatic sloganeering about Slackware. Because it's old (but the new 4.0 release uses the 2.2 kernel), established, and it works.
I also like cool things like the loopback distribution called DOSLinux. You can stick such a beast almost anywhere you need the features of a Linux OS.
I am not involved with Debian in any way or form, but it seems like any time something gets big that it turns into a hierarchy. There will always be creative people 'on the fringe' of any big movement who want to have their say in ways that threaten a hierarchy, or even that just confuse a hierarchy or aren't considered important enough to pay attention to.
All of this seems like the kind of reason to fork a distribution, rather than try to work through the layers of contributing the packages to Debian itself.
The only people who should feel threatened are the people who need to feel threatened, if they even exist.
You aren't Microsoft, however, so your fantasies of what you would do if you were are irrelevant.
When did any of us start carrying on about virtue?
Oh, you just did. Oh, oops, you're just talking about not-Virtue.
My mistake.
You are partially right, and partially wrong. When the HURD is ready for the big-time, it will probably be a replacement kernel that people drop into the Debian system (you can almost certainly count on it.) The result will be an OS more closely releated to Debian as it exists now than Debian is to RedHat.
If you think init is just an application, maybe you'd rather replace it with minesweeper?
Actually, if you're willing to spend about $400 you can buy Interix to install on your Windows NT system. Then you can run a real certified POSIX subsystem (not just the crippled POSIX subsystem Microsoft ships with NT). Once you have Interix happy and running on your NT box, you can use GCC to compile Unix, work in the C shell, and build and run (not just display) X Window apps. It isn't just a layer on top of Win32 like Cygnus.
Going by the distinctions being made in this thread:
Linux is UNIX.
Windows NT/Interix is UNIX.
etc. etc.
When I stated "drop in replacement" I meant at the source level, not that someone with a Debian GNU/Linux CD-ROM distribution could just download a HURD kernel and plug it in.
I guess I assumed too much.
Maybe we should all lobby our congressmen to mandate that the DoD come out with a clean standardized version of Linux (painted green, of course) that we can ALL rally 'round. Then we can begin systematically eradicating all these other 'distributions.' (I'm kidding, of course.)
It's all kinda-sorta POSIX, anyhow, isn't it?