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Petreley on Caldera OpenLinux 2.3
A. J. Rimmer writes "Just ran across this review of Caldera 2.3 from Nick Petreley [?] of LinuxWorld. " Saint Nick likes it - says that "not only continues to leapfrog over all
other Linux distributions for ease of
installation; it also proves, beyond the
shadow of a doubt, that Linux can be
easier to install than Windows. " Pretty strong words - what do you folks like best?
Has anyone seen the new Red Hat install for v. 6.1? It is very cool! I think it is super easy and it looks very slick. Most Linux distros are getting away from the "Linux is way too hard to install" mentality that has been a pervasive issue with the media and some competitors. It is fast becoming a problem of the past.
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"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
I've been a Caldera customer since their first product, Caldera Network Desktop preview 1. At the time CND was very promising, offering a commercial GUI desktop, a "fully supported" Netscape license, and other goodies. When CND 1.0 finally appeared, priced at $99US, it was a steal because it included a copy of Xi Grapics' Accelerated X server, which was itself $99 if purchased separately. For that server, which was the only thing to support my brandy-new Diamond video card, and for the Gallium font server, which handled TrueType fonts, CND was the only choice for me. I dropped Slackware in a heartbeat.
Times change. Over the years, Caldera distributions were plagued by various problems. First, they dropped AccelX in favor of the far inferior (at the time) Metro-X server, and then for XFree. The Gallium font server disappeared. And throughout it all, Caldera was renowned for being a release or two behind most packages, major and minor. I spent a lot of time building new versions of many packages. Yet, as an early adopter, I was able to take advantage of their aggressive upgrade program to minimize costs for each new version of their distro.
By the time Caldera Open Linux 1.0 came out, I was ready to dump Caldera entirely and move on to something, probably SuSE. I had tried Debian, RedHat, SuSE, and even Slackware, and found each to have about as many problems as COL, though in different areas. The pressure to switch intensified when RedHat switched to libc 6, making most RPM files useless for Caldera systems.
Then came COL 2.2. Its GUI installer was impressive, though not quite perfect. They abandoned their conservative version selections, offering very new versions of most packages. Yes, it's KDE, which I used at work for almost a year, just to make sure I could speak with authority about it. I now use GNOME on my COL systems. And it's libc 6, making arbitrary RPMs typically useful again.
The key is, Caldera is now Just Another Distribution. The things that drew me to them originally--commercial packages, ultra-conservative design, phone support--have largely evaporated or become irrelevant. So take Caldera for what it is, a nice solid distribution with a cute installer and a fairly solid foundation. I've had little trouble building and installing free and open-source packages and my own software on a Caldera system, the price is competitive, the availability is comparable, so why not? It's not a world apart like it used to try to be, but perhaps more importantly, it's fully part of today's world.
As far as I can tell, the fancy GUI installer, Lizard, doesn't support network installs to CD-less boxen. To do such non-main-sequence stuff, you must use the "old-style" LISA install. There are instructions in the manual (and probably one of the READMEs) about how to make a LISA boot/install disk. I was able to install over the net using LISA just like I always have--the old installer is still pretty nice, though not as slick as Lizard.
This is one of COL 2.x's biggest shortcomings, IMHO--they don't seem too sure exactly what they're installing. Is it a workstation? A server? A development machine? And who made the decisions about what Lizard supports and what it doesn't? From the look of it, they let the marketers make some of the crucial technical decisions. Not a fatal drawback, but unsightly.
Uhm, he said all of Their software (ala software coded by Red Hat is GPLed) meaning that any project that Red Hat codes internally is available to the entire community. Last time I checked Red Hat did not program and license XFree86 or perl. Please check your facts before you turn into a flamer.
ftp://ftp.tux.org/distributions/OpenLinux/2.3/iso- images
I once used RedHat's disk druid and got the same result. Another time it created overlapping partitions... So Caldera is not the only one.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Or you might just whack the whining brat across the side of the head with an old basketball shoe and make him use an old blue-screen VT100 with an acoustic coupler modem until he learns Real Computing. Whatever works.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Ahem... what is Caldera's selling point? The installer and COAS? and what is open sourced? The installer and COAS? They're doing what any Linux distribution should do: innovate in an area, and release the source.
Caldera may not be playing the media darling, but they're not withholding from the community, either.
I must apologize for not mentioning OSS; I'd glossed over it since it is only there to provide compatability to unsupported hardware. (Seems like a noble enough reason for me, but, then again, I'm focussed on usability and not how free the OS is.) I also shouldn't have ignored the heavy dependence of COL on KDE, which in turn depends on Qt, which still isn't completely free. But, before you declare Redhat more holy, remember that Redhat also includes KDE with their distributions and install it by default.
I do not regard Redhat nor Caldera as being free and open enough for the GPL purists among us. I believe the fix made over rdist merely occured because of the possibility of offending their slowly growing base of corporate developers and users.
Do not forget that BOTH of these companies are for-profit institutions and are deserving of special scrutiny by the open source community. Let's not delude ourselves about how many of Redhat's new stockholders believe in Open Source.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
Great, but does Debian deal with cross-platform issues? Would Debian function just as well running off the idiosyncracies of, say, a Solaris system?
I had no problems partitioning my large seagate. Partitioning it with fdisk was a breeze and worked strait away.
I think you can do this by using the "custom" or "expert" partitioning option (I forget what they call it). This will let you set mount points on different partitions, and I think you can do this across multiple drive, although I didn't try it.
TedC
I had the same problem; I had to edit fstab and add the swap partition. This must be a bug that crept into 2.3; I don't remember having to do this with 2.2.
Also, I get grey-on-black kernel messages overwriting the graphics boot screen in the upper-left corner, which looks really tacky. This happened with 2.2 as well.
TedC
I know that caldera does use rpm but I am not sure if the file system structure is exaclty the same. I usually install from tarballs so I don't really care but if you look at their site under knowledge down load and updates you will find out that their programs you suggest to update your system with you use rpm as your package manager. My primary system is debian so don't take my word for it check it outn &11-981201-0010&130-9 12553093&14-0&15-10&25-&3-&30-
http://support.calderasystems.com/caldera?solutio
P.S. I can't spel
You've obviously never tried to get a windoze user to switch over to Linux (shame on you!).
Elegant text/script based administration tools with simple, easy to use GUI's built on top is the right design IMO.
Nerdly nerds have all the power they need, while newbies, or people who want their computer to have the simplicity of a Mac (or supposed simplicity) can be happy.
I recently sent a customized RH distribution for my 14-year old brother install Linux. I think it's progress when that's possible. But he complains about the lack of a "Shutdown Picture" and "Bootup Picture". It would be nice to see one of the Linux distro's (and Caldera appears to be positioning themselves to do this) slave over all these details.
Interesting you should pick those as the advantages of Debian, because I don't think they serve to distinguish it from COL. Upgrades: COL has RPM for package upgrades, and though many might argue, it's easily as good as Debian's system. And COL point upgrades come with an automated script that will analyze your system automatically and upgrade all necessary packages--a one-touch system upgrade. Also, I've never had any problem using source or messing with my COL system's internals--they are in no way "blocked". As for security, Caldera seems as responsive as anyone to security alerts; as for the default settings, they could be better, but it's not a wide-open system after an install.
Where Debian beats the skivvies off Caldera is in three areas: First, it's all free. Caldera isn't as choosy, but they're getting better. Second, and much more important and practical, is the sheer number of packages available for it. Debian dwarfs all other distros that I've seen just for the number of packages that it comes with, not to mention those available around the 'net. Third, Linux is community supported, whether Caldera, Debian, or any other distro. And Debian won't get you laughed or sneered at on a mailing list, an IRC channel, or a newsgroup, where Caldera isn't usually received as well.
My most recent experience with Debian was soured by very bad experiences with dselect and dpkg. I hear it has a new installer either in place or on the way, so maybe I'll give it another try. But Caldera is a serious contender even so, at least in my book.
xvidtune is your friend. It should have
been part of the configuration process,
i.e. XF86Setup. I don't recommend the
red hat X configuration tool; it hasn't worked
very well for me in the past.
COL 2.x supports a fully custom installation--you just can't use the neato-spiffy "Lizard" GUI installer to do it. But the "old-style" LISA installer does just as good a job as it always has, and allows fine-grained selection of the installed packages. Is that a flaw? You betcha. Will they fix it? Maybe, someday.
Actually, COL comes with GNOME, it's just in the "contrib" directory. I was able to get the latest-n-greatest GNOME out of CVS and install it on my COL system over the course of a lazy afternoon, and it works great. Well, as great as GNOME works these days. I use Gtk+ and WindowMaker on all my COL systems, and had no trouble installing E. So they don't remove choice. Yeah, you gotta work a little at it, but any CD-ROM Linux distro is going to be out of date the day it's pressed, so you picks your packages as you likes them.
Very good point about the installation, though. I think far too much is made of Linux installation, both how "hard" it is (by the mainstream press) and how "easy" it is (by Nick and others, especially about COL 2.x). Sure, COL is now easier to install than Windows. So what? You do that once in the life of your system if you're lucky, only a few times if you're not. Contrast that with the thousands of hours of computing that you'll do after the install, and it gets to be quite funny.
But if you don't like Caldera, by all means choose another distro. It's more important that you are using Linux or *BSD or even Hurd than it is which distro you choose. Go with what you like and let the rest go hang. Two words of advice, though: Don't believe everything people say on the 'net. Misconceptions abound, as this very discussion ably demonstrates. Try for yourself. Use vmware to manage multiple installs if you have to. And second, times change. The Caldera of today is quite different from the Caldera of two or three years ago. Same for Deb and RedHat and Slack. So every so often, give the others a try, just to keep current. You'll be glad you did.
I recently installed Caldera 2.3, and I found the installation was very smooth apart from a nasty little bug that breaks the installation process if you press 'help' when the tetris game comes up when you're waiting for the install to finish.
Apart from that small problem, the installation process was much smoother than most windows installs I've done, and I liked the way it only had to reboot once rather than the three times.
One thing I would say is that they probably need to put a little more thought into some of the things that they've got in their program startup menus, and how they're presented. I happened to know that I would have to run kppp to dialup with my modem, but a new user wouldn't have the slightest idea.
Mounting drives: This is a good and logical thing.
Yes, some things can be improved, but mounting
drives happens in all UNIX versions and there are good reasons for it.
Just because something happens different than Windows, doesn't mean that it is more difficult and should be changed. UNIX/Linux is not a Windows clone, but an OS with it's own history and it's own rules. While it can sometimes learn some userfriendlyness from other environments, we should not compromise all good things just to make it look more like Windows.
Quick! Name a Caldera employee!
Hmmm. Ransome Love. Erik Ratcliffe. Jeff Christensen. That's three off the top of my head. No, they are probably not known by as many people as, say, Bob Young or Donnie Barnes. But Caldera isn't used by as many people, either. For those of us on the Caldera user's mailing list, Erik and Jeff are household names. And most folks here have probably heard Ransome's name, even if they didn't recognize him as the CEO of Caldera Systems.
I can't argue that Caldera has a penetration problem in the end-user community. But they're actually pretty well known it the corporate world as Linux distros go, which is what they were aiming at, methinks.
Modeline calculations scare me...
Oh, God.. TELL me about it!
Setting up Sound: As far as I can tell, this requires a kernel recompile.
More like SEVERAL recompiles. If you're a newbie, you'll mess up. And then you'll have to do it again. And then it won't work. So you'll have to do it again. I spent an ENTIRE day trying to get my sound to work under RH6.0. Everytime I play something other than CD-AUDIO, the system HANGS. It really pisses me off.
The Linux Community as a whole needs to remember us newbies. The "Do it yourself" or "RTFM" (or oftentimes "RTF HOWTO") attitude PUTS OFF NEWBIES. We need things easier, dammit! But I digress..
Oh, and definately get rid of MOUNT thing. That seems totally unecessary to me.
I can't figure out who Caldera is targetting to be OpenLinux users. They have not exactly been very open to the Linux community. They offered early on to donate development to the WINE project and then got rights to distribute WABI and decided to pull out on assisting WINE. They have ignored requests from authors of projects which make up the packages in their OpenLinux distribution to include the source code or written offer of source code with thier binary only distribution of OpenLinux Demo CDs. And they have never given any indication that they will port OpenLinux to other platforms for the Linux power-user.
When Caldera was asked head on who they are targetting, they indicated that their target is the "enterprise enviroment." So, to put this to the test, I recommended them to a shop that was largely NT workstation/Novell server. They purchased three copies of OpenLinux v1.3 and an annual software maintance agreement in October of 1998. Despite the claims of being a better Novell client of the Linux distributions, OpenLinux v1.3 started up the IPX stack as frame type 802.3 on a network defined to be frame type etherII. As a result, the console started scrolling continually with error messages and fixing it required a non-trival hack of the rc script which run ipx_configure. RedHat 5.2, on the other hand, turn out to be a much preferable Novell client for the Novell with a trival selection in "linuxconf" for the frame type. But we decided to continue to evaluate OpenLinux. The annual maintaince January 1st update CD was late by a couple months and updated the packages to a very broken OpenLinux 1.3.1. One of the major "selling points" for the maintaince CDs (saving the time of FTP'ing the patches) was lost due to the fact that to make OpenLinux 1.3.1 useable again required downloading the latest patches from the Caldera ftp site. Then we recieved OpenLinux 2.2, which used a graphical LILO banner and graphical boot messages. This was cute but covered up several error messages that occured during boot. Had the error messages been displayed (as they would have under any other distribution) then troubleshooting some problems would have become much easier. But what killed OpenLinux for them was when Caldera decided to violate the terms of the annual software maintaince agreement. When Caldera was asked when OpenLinux 2.3 would be shipped under the maintance agreement, Caldera explained that they considered all maintance agreements to be completted with the shipment of OpenLinux 2.2. However, the agreement didn't actually expire until October 1999 (not September 1999) and stated that *ALL* updates and upgrades where included. While Caldera stated that changed their minds and would choose to honor the full period of the maintance agreement, it was already clear that Caldera is not a company that provides to the "Enterprise." When the situation was rehashed during a monthly review meeting, it was determined that no one could think of any "enterprise" which would put up with a flat out violation of a support contract which Caldera had done.
feedback, thanks for your reply to my post... You raised some great points and in my opinion, posted the most intelligent response so far... perhaps caldera has it's place among linux users after all? :)
best regards,
Justin
I like debian the best, because of its easy upgrades, doesn't block using stuff from source or messing around with its internals, and it defaults to a nice, relatively secure setup, unlike some other distros.
--LeBleu
If you're reading this you're part of the mass hallucination that is Kevin the Blue.
By far, the easiest unix install I have ever encountered is FreeBSD.. just point it to the ftp and walk away.
After that, I would have to say slackware. I just installed the slack7pre1 and it was amazing and beautiful. There was no fancy gui, but all the information I needed to get the system up was right on the screen. Not to mention I got the choice of gnome, kde, wm, and e (even though those aren't all in the same category).
-- DrZaius - Minister of Sciences and Protector of the Faith
In general, I don't see much point of using ext2 formatted disk for floppies at all, since FAT floppies are readable by all PC's, and floppies are so slow anyway that a faster filesystem does not bring much benefit. Besides, I am usually only transporting a couple of zip files in the root directory anyway.
Raw disk might be useful if you are transporting a tar file between Linux and some other Unix OS (like a Sun) where mtools-like utilities are not available, but then you don't get the compression. Otherwise, it is only useful for very specialized purposes, like creating boot floppies.
--
An esoteric scratched itch:
Homeworld Map Maker Tool
I've been a Windows user my whole life. I just tried this linux thing for the first time using Caldera, and I've gotta tell ya. It's refreshing for an install to be stable enough to not crash at 95%. I'm definately impressed, and honored to be part of the Open Source community.
While we're on the subject of distros, I'm a first-time Linux user, and am wondering what distro would be best, overall. I've heard a lot of good things about Mandrake, but all this talk on Caldera makes me wonder which is better.
I'd like to start off with a distro that's fairly easy, then once I learn my way around Linux, move to some of the others.
Suggestions, anyone?
..gotta go with Mandrake on this one. Sure, it turns most things on by default, but you can't beat it for ease of install. This is definately an area in which Linux should strive to improve itself, if it has any hopes whatsoever of gaining a significant desktop market share.
It's a good thing for the unwashed newbies to have only one WM available for installation. And although it's nice to say that knowledgable users can download other stuff off the net, downloading and installing Gnome, as an example, is hardly trivial.
Caldera (and the forthcoming Corel) should include alternate Window Managers and other non-default applications on a separate CD. That way a newbie can do an initial install, get comfortable with Linux, then start exploring "Disk 2".
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I also like the fact that all of their software (not some other software sold with the distro) is GPLed.
--fatboy
You don't need to use it. There is a nice little script in /etc/rc.d that will do that for you.
I have mixed feelings on caldera 2.3. On one hand it is the easiest whiz-bangiest niftiest looking install I've seen. On the other hand, no other OS install wiped my partition table clean. I even made sure to use a separate HD to be extra safe so I wouldn't have to muck with my primary drives partitions.
Now before everyone calls me a loser and a moron. I've been installing Linux since v1.0, I've installed SuSE, Slackware, Debian, Caldera. I've installed dos 2.0-6.0, win3.1, win95, winNT (3.51 & 4.0). And I've never managed to wipe out the partition table before.
As near as I can figure it, it happened when I went into the expert/custom drive partitioning part. I don't remember (and neither does my friend) touching ANYTHING other than my table for my second HD, and yet when I rebooted my first HD's table was gone. Blah, oh well, thanks to gpart (thank you michael briztva!) I managed to recover my partition table. I haven't heard anyone else mention this, so maybe I'm just especially special.
I like RH a lot, but I'd heard over the last six months or so that other distributions had much better out-of-box experiences for new users...
I saw someone installing Caldera 2.2 (and Petreley doesn't ever make it clear that its improved for 2.3) and they were having a hell of a time. The GUI looked nice, but he wasn't making progress.
But I can't make an in-depth criticism of COL 2.2 because I didn't take time out to walk them through it, maybe they would've had just as much trouble with Win98
SuSE OTOH I really must warn people about. If you've installed SuSE 6.2 and you think you got a "Smooth" install process, you need to take a better look at the competition.
Twelve months ago, I installed SuSE and it had a pretty awful install process, the rediculous Yast tool making every task a tangle of fingers and thumbs. What a mess!
I installed RH5.x soon after, and it was hardly better, although at least it didn't have Yast.
Since then though, Red Hat's RH6.1 makes it all better with a sweet GUI installer -- but when I helped install SuSE for a friend last week, it was STILL JUST AS BAD AS IN 1998.
SuSE can't afford to sit on their asses like this. Throw away Yast and use one of the BETTER, FREE installation tools from another vendor.
first off ... does it install as well as rhat 6.1 second where do i get an iso?
you can't beat it for desktop machines when you're bandwidth impaired.
When its time to be lean and mean though Debian's the ticket.
Hmm... Wonder how much an OC3 costs a month
At this point it probably doesn't really matter -that- much since both systems are good, but, debian has a package-based dependency system, not a file based dependency system, so problems like 'the libraries were there, the rpm just could find them' as mentioned in the review won't happen. If libc++2.8 is in the list of installed packages, it doesn't matter where it was installed.
:) It's also true that the theoretically 'better' package system hasn't had the hard test of being used by derivative distributions the way RPM's have, so there may be flaws that are hidden by that.
Basically, the debian package system is more powerful, flexible, and reliable. It also, it must be admitted, has had some of the most godawful interfaces ever, but that's changing. The 'apt'
system is pretty good, and works on the current 'stable' release and will be the standard installer on the next release.
With apt, basically... you type 'apt-get install ghostview' and it will download and install the ghostview, ghostscript, and whatever libraries they require. Or, 'apt-get install lyx' and it installs lyx, latex, tex, and the libraries they depend on. (Yes, it does ask you, with a tally of the total number of megs that you're installing, before doing this.)
Anyway. Debian has lots of technical and reliability advantages, as well as being the largest distribution, but, I'll freely admit it's not even -close- to being user friendly.
Anyway, I hope that one day we'll have a common package format that includes all the info of rpm and deb and any other package format out there, at which point the whole issue will become irrelevant, at least, as a matter of comparison between distributions.
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
While I don't think there's much difference between Linux and FreeBSD w.r.t. large drives (both work if installed properly) I don't see much of a difference as a desktop OS either. I use both and most people that try my computer cannot tell the difference and only find out what I'm currently running with uname -a.
FreeBSD comes with less add-ons such as bash (it's default shell is more primitive) all kinds of window managers etc etc but you can/have to add these through the ports system. The advantage is a less cluttered system. Also, all add-ons are installed seperate from the main system, in /usr/local and below.
I can't argue that Caldera has a penetration problem in the end-user community. But they're actually pretty well known it the corporate world as Linux
distros go, which is what they were aiming at, methinks.
Yes, but the question is - were they successful? My understanding, from what I've seen of the Caldera effort, is that they are positioning themselves as "different from the freebies". This might work if they had a strong penetration in the corporate market, which is historically opposed to the free software movement.
But they've been dismally bad in this sector. See, if you target corporate business, you need to make a case as to how you're good at it. Has Caldera made a good case about it? I don't think so.
Frankly, it's VERY, VERY difficult to take an open source product and position yourself as a "corporate-therefore-I'm-different-from-them" company.
It seems to me Caldera has tried to be a semi-open-source, semi-corporate distro, and failed spectacularly at both.
As an aside, media is everything. Nobody covers caldera today. So they are dead. Unless they suddenly get a clue. Are they even reading this? I doubt it.
L.
Mounting drives before using them, and unmounting after use is very logical and there are good reasons for it.
Buffering data and collecing writes together increases performance, and that wouldn't be possible is you could just eject the damn thing anytime you pleased!
It may seem unnecessary with read-only media such as CD-ROMs but what would you rather? That the OS tries to automatically mount any CD that you put in the drive? What if it's a music CD? Surely YOU should be able to tell the computer what you want rather than having it try to second-guess you all the time like a certain other OS that shall remain nameless!
Is it just me who starts to see signs of the "Holy OS wars" between the different Linux distributions?
-- Nothing is as subjective as reality --
If a newbie has floppy and cd icons on their kde/gnome panel or desktop that allows them to mount and unmount with a click, then they're in pretty good shape. If you configure an automounter for them, they're in even better shape.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
See, if you target corporate business, you need to make a case as to how you're good at it. Has Caldera made a good case about it? I don't think so.
Caldera was a pretty easy sell in our engineering department. I would have hated to try to explain Debian to my boss, but cutting a purchase order to Caldera was right up her alley. I wouldn't dream of suggesting it as a replacement for our 500+ engineering workstations or our 1000+ business desktops, at least not yet, but Caldera's corporate orientation made them easier to get in the door.
As an aside, media is everything. Nobody covers caldera today. So they are dead.
Um, begging your pardon, sir, if I may speak freely--bullshit. What are we discussing right now? An article by a very respected voice in the Linux community about, um, Caldera. They aren't the largest distro by a long shot, but they know how to get the word out. Count the number of articles about Debian that have appeared on CNN, and then count the Caldera articles there. No contest.
Are they even reading this? I doubt it.
Wrong again. Caldera has several employees who are regular Slashdot readers, and Freshmeat, and even User Friendly. Yes, they have aimed more at the big corporate markets than the other distros--are those the circles in which you travel? If not, maybe that's why you have this perception that they're weak. But believe me, they have a rep there.
You are correct that they have not courted the "general" community very well, and that has hurt them. But they're not the total fools you seem to think they are, either.
So what if it tries to mount an audio cd? Surely it should be smart enough to figure that it has no data track, and leave the contents empty?
Or do what jo-schmo expects (from experience with Win9x & MacOS) and fake a directory of track names. Maybe even fake them as raw audio files. It would make ripping a lot easier...;)
Autorun however, you can leave right out.
Caldera has several employees who are regular Slashdot readers, and Freshmeat, and even User Friendly. Yes, they have aimed more
/. or FSF community, I have yet to see them. If they are reading this, maybe they can reply, but I doubt they will, and it simply proves my point - they are out of touch.
at the big corporate markets than the other distros
But they haven't been successful at it. That was my point.
But believe me, they have a rep there.
They have a rep where? Really.......I've been following the tech media for months now, and I've yet to read a single news article extolling the virtues of Caldera. If they have a PR agency, it's doing a horribly crappy job. If they have people who are members of the
There are two objections to this argument. One good, one bad.
Firstly, Installation is the first point at which your software product affects it's eventual user. Regardless of how easy it actually is, or how powerfull, First Impressions Last. In my opinion, this is the lesson Microsoft learned early - go on admit it, Windows installations *look* great. For counter-examples, see the OS/2 installer up to version 3 (Warp). Disfunctional, part-graphic, part-text, split into phases almost arbitarily, and requiring continuous care & attention from the user. And then, almost impossible to get to once installed to make tweaks.
Second counter-argument is that this isn't a perfect world. Any Windows user knows that sooner or later they're going to have to re-install at least part of their OS. Do you want them to fear that experience, or feel confident they can negotiate that minefield?
It's perfectly reasonable to point out in response to this that that RPM, Lizard et al tackle the first point adequately, and that Linux / *BSD aren't as fragile / desirous of a reboot as their Windows counterparts.
Both examples I think re-inforce the point that yes, in theory installation should be a one-off fire & forget experience, but the practice is that these are living, changing systems that are evolving to meet the needs of the real world. And more power to them!
henley
--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
Can you say Debian? Dpkg and apt-* are wonderful. You just say "apt-get update" and it updates it list of software on the sites you've told it, then, to install one, you either a) use dselect and interactively find the one you want, autodetecting and negotiating dependancies/conflicts/suggestions/etc interactively, or b) type apt-get install ??? to automatically get the software with little to no interaction except configuring newly installed software. I *really* wish RedHat would see the value of .deb over .rpm, because .rpm just doesn't cut it... IMHO.
I tried using an ext2 formatted floppy earlier today and was *amazed* at how much better performance I got compared to vfat...
Sure the installer and is whiz-bangy... and I'm sure it's easy if you have a standard system. However the lack of choices can make it very difficult. I tried installing it on my laptop (Toshiba Satellite) and the default install didn't set up my display properly.. and didn't let me dink with it so I could get it to work... (which involved simply setting the default resolution to the same as the installer used) and of course it boots in X by default, so I'd boot up into a nice black screen. The silly thing is that it would've worked if it had just installed the other resolutions... Sure, I could've probably figured a work around eventually... but that sure ain't no easy install...
Emphasis on sounds like. /. have given me: Slackware. If you want to learn Linux, Slackware is the way to go (except for the libc stuff and I still have no sound or internet connection). I've had more fun messing with Slackware than I did staring at the Caldera log on prompt in KDE (which was loads of fun, let me tell you : )
When I first heard about Caldera, it sounded like a wet dream. I went out and bought 2.2 and realized it wasn't anywhere near a wet dream, not even an erotic fantasy.
The installation and video detection were the only pluses. That, and the bundled RPMs (which were all corrupted to some extent).
CALDERA'S SUPPORT IS A WASTE OF TIME. Pardon my shouting, but it's true. If you have a problem, so do they; they don't know how to help. My modem was detected during the installation but didn't work worth a damn. My sound card was ignored completely. The COAS was also a big plus but I'm not sure if the modules even loaded in right.
Now, I'm relatively new to Linux, and I'll give all the beginners here the advice nice people on
I'd love to try OpenLinux 2.3, but I'm just too happy having CONTROL over my operating system with Slackware.
Oh yeah, and Mandrake sounds promissing, but again...
miyax
What apps exactly doesn't Linux have?
The only thing I miss from not booting into Windows is Blizzard Games! (The other thing is sound editing utilities, but I don't do that)
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
You can run windowmaker normally, just set up another session type "WindowMaker" that executes "wmaker" instead of "gnome-session" --- read the documentation for GDM, and look around in your /etc/X11/xdm and /etc/X11/gdm directories.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
... That I've used. I've used all the Windows crap, I've installed/upgraded MacOS, I've used a TON of different Linux Distro's. OpenLinux 2.3 is the easiest and most capable Install of an OS, ever.
The only thing it couldn't do was have two device drivers of the same type running. I had two NE2K ethernet cards, and it didn't like that very much. It installed one, recognized the other, but told me that it couldn't install the other card. I swapped one out for a 3c509 and voila! Found and configured both of them perfectly. MS sucks ass in comparison to this install.
If I had a friend who wanted to try Linux, who knew a little about computers, this is the Distro I'd reccomend.
Caveat: I haven't tried Redhat 6.1 yet.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Lizard's GPL'd, make it do what you want it to do.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
OpenLinux 2.3 addresses every single problem you just listed.
1)Setting up Xserver is cake. It does all the work for you. The hardest part is choosing your monitor out of the list. Once it has the info, it gives you a slew of configuration options. All you do is point and click.
2)Setting up sound on COL 2.3 was a snap. I didn't do anything, it just worked all by itself. Hella easier than NT.
3)You don't have to mount a CD in KDE unless you want to access it via the command line. If you use the graphical interface, it automounts for you, just like MS.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
It's the distro I use. Everything Petreley said about it is true. I don't know why RedHat gets so many kudos for "ease of use", but Caldera deserves them.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
The laptop, a Sony Vaio 304, came with Windows 98 pre-installed. Stick the Caldera 2.3 CD in under windows and you get treated to the usual multimedia presentation -- with a rather business- oriented spin; it's quite obvious that Caldera are going for the newbie business market rather than the experienced or technical market.
(It's noteworthy, howver, that their pitch seems to be moving away from the corporate end of things and towards the guerilla networking idea; "how can I infiltrate linux into my corporation?" was the main theme, far as I could tell.)
Anyway. Partition Magic did its job, and very well; my main quibble is that it offers some fixed partition size options, none of which exactly corresponded to what I wanted: a "custom" option (specify Mb of disk space to provide for linux) would have been handy.
Following the inevitable reboot into Caldera's installer, things ran smoothly. It didn't detect my NeoMagic audio chipset, but then, that particular chipset isn't supported by anyone -- OSS claim they'll have a driver in a month or so. Nor did it detect the new power management system the Vaio uses (not APM, far as I can tell). And of course there's no support for FireWire yet (one of the Vaio's features). On the other hand, it got the NeoMagic video drivers right first time, and left me at the end of the installation with a minimally usable GUI-based linux installation.
Some things did go wrong. First and most noticable was LILO; it didn't set me up to dual-boot automatically. This took me ten seconds to fix, but was most irritating and would be a hurdle for a real beginner to cope with -- one that might induce panic when they realised that they couldn't get at Windows at all. A second problem was with swap space; /etc/fstab didn't get an entry for the swap partition it had created. (This problem also cropped up in an earlier insteall of COL 2.2 on my desktop machine.)
Installation of the commercial packages is fairly easy, aided by a web-based installer page; they've obviously been paying attention.
The upshot of all this is that I would normally have spent a day doing this job: repartition, install Linux distro, install X server, add StarOffice and Netscape, get it smoothly dual-booting. The Caldera install to that point took only about two hours (including subsequent fixing of minor niggles); a vast improvement. If I can get the APM and sound issues solved, then get my ethernet/modem PCMCIA combo-card working (haven't tried that yet -- it's in another laptop at present), I'll be completely happy with this distro. It's not as annoyingly non-standard and managerially intrusive as SuSE ("ve haff ways of administering your system wether you like it or not!!"), and a bit smoother than Red Hat (I'm having real, er, fun with a 6.0 install right now).
If I have one issue with COL, it's that it leaves things out in the interests of providing a consistent experience. Consistency is important for new users; the toolbox mindset that can cope with, say, bits of different MTAs on the same distribution, is not widespread among the people Caldera are trying to sell this product to. On the other hand, things like Pine not being part of the default packages that are installed is annoying. I'd like to see a custom install option, that is at least as flexible as Red Hat's outline-based pick-an-rpm system. Just out of selfishness, you understand.
Petreley is mostly right; Caldera OpenLinux is very slick, and with something like WINE or a commercial Windows app-emulator added in, it is a genuine killer for corporate types who want to use a Linux system without losing access to Windows or having to teach themselves lots of new stuff. For the rest of us? I want a solid, reliable workhorse of a laptop, which is why I put Caldera on it. (For bleeding- edge stuff I have a test machine.) It's really a distro for people who have a job to do: and whether you love it or hate it depends on your reasons for running it.
SuSE is now my favorite Linux install from CD-ROM. Yast (the SuSE installer) has come a long way. Though few purists would keep using it to do routine sysadmins tasks (adding users, ifconfig, etc...) it is quick and effective.
Other than one bad problem with the install code, I'm quite happy with Caldera 2.3 and am going to be trying Mandrake 6.1 soon.
The problem I found was at the end of the installation where you can play Tetris. If you leave the computer idle long enough for the screen to go blank, the installation process crashes and the monitor will never wake up.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Do you really think that *every* single monitor is listed in that list???
No. But no OS is going to have every monitor in existence available. Monitor specs vary, even when the model number is the same. Your monitor has no chipset that is significant to the OS.
With Linux, you have the opportunity to input your own monitor stats, straight out of your montiors manual (which is what I had to do also). I konw of no other GUI system that allows you to do this.
Right now, it leaves you in nobody's land should you fail to install your monitor.
if you just hit return through the whole process without stipulating any spoecific Info, OpenLinuc 2.3 would give you a 640x480x256 screen, which is not "Nobody's Land" are you sure you were using this Distribution?
Why is it so hard???
I don't think it's very hard at all with OpenLinux 2.3(which is what we're talking about on this thread). It seems hard because it asks you more than other OSes ask because it is so flexible. With the X-servers, you can create your own screen sizes and modes. You can do tons of things that are beyond the capabilites of new users, like yourself. Take the time to learn how to use the OS and either you'll go back to Mac OS, or you'll be in hog heaven.
From your descriptions I don't think you're using OpenLinux 2.3, that's what my previous post was about. That distro and that distro alone.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
one more soul saved...
There's no reason for a sig here.
I'm a bit confused about why everybody's talking about this one. Did I download a crapped up copy? My RH6.1 install is the same as the RH6 install... text based, easy, etc, but not new... what's going on? This has been there since before 5.2
There's no reason for a sig here.
Certain Lotus 1-2-3 users hit the 640K barrier pretty hard early on. (A early expanded memory spec was called "LIM", for Lotus, Intel, and Microsoft. Note that IBM was MIA.)
Although, to Gates' credit, you have to remember he was shilling a product that ran on hardware limited to 640K. Slashdot folks like to forget that Gates functions more of a marketeer and promoter than the all knowing leader of all computing.
Anyways, seeing ye olde Bill-and-640K story about once a week on Slashdot, I have to snicker - after all, 2 GB ought to be a the largest file anyone would need on a 32-bit system!
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
It seems to me that Laptop users have more specialized hardware that is not supported by the larger distro's straight out of the box. I have a suggestion:
It would place emphasis on autodetecting power-management schemes, various LCD screens, weird video chipsets, PCMCIA cards(a perennial pain in the ass), &cet.
I don't know enough to start a project like this, but would be interested in contributing what I can.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
A fresh installation of Linux doesn't install my Zyxel ISDN adapter as an example, and what about my Palm III?
I can't say as far as your Zyxel ISDN adapter, but I don know that OpenLinux 2.3 installed Palm support software straight out of the box.
I use my Palm 3 with it all the time.I think they're trying to make Linux more attractive to the Business crowd, which means it must include Palm support.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
I suspect that NextStep had the better idea. One could have a package install on either the cube or an x86.
First, my qualifications: I am the world's least intuitive computer user. My iMac regularly crashes. It took me three days to install Win98, and a lot of household disharmony besides. I shout at my computers a lot. I've flubbed (though eventually installed) several flavors of Linux on various machines, as well as WinNT, Win95 and the aforementioned '98. Basically, I am no one you want near a computer unless you are a genius at fixing arcane problems that I don't know how I caused. After a few years of messing with Linux, I must admit that my level of knowledge is perhaps closer to Newbie than, say, your average 8-year-old with a month of Linux experience. I wish I were exaggerating, but I am the one all those Dummies books were written for, and I often wish they had one for even dumber people.
...), but I would definitely suggest Mandrake as easier than Red Hat and a good option for a first-time installer interested in getting a working Linux system quickly. (A lot of Slashdotters are big fans of Slackware, and if you're willing to face a steeper learning curve, it might be more *educational* to put that on instead. It took me a *long* time to figure out the installation, but that was a few years ago and it's matured a lot since then!)
... one nice thing about not using Windows at all is the ease with which you can face reformatting at install time.:)
... Matt Walsh's Running Linux is excellent, and now in it's 3rd edition ... and perhaps you've bought a book / distro combination -- some of those are very good too, like RedHat Linux Unleashed.
Now, ehough of the self-deprecation: I run Mandrake 6.1 on my machine (K6 233, 160(not a typo) MB of RAM), and for the past few months have had 6.0. I have not tried SuSE, and haven't tried the new Caldera (I had no luck with the 2.2, though -- I never got it on, despite the slick interface).
I consider Mandrake a flat-out miracle of engineering and design, with hats (ha ha) off also to Red Hat for providing the basis.
Mandrake auto-detected both fairly-recent (ATi XPERT@Play 98) and oldish (some random 2-meg card) video cards, cheap internal modem, all drives, etc.
The default is KDE, but there's Gnome as well. kppp allowed me to set up an Internet connection relatively painlessly. (Read the first paragraph, and then realize that it still took me a while to figure out, but hey -- it was easier than Windows by an order of magnitude.)
Again, I have not tried several other of the current distros to make a comparison (they might be as good, dso on't take this as knocking the new Caldera, or recent Slackware, or
And, if you are installing Linux for the first time, take a few hours and create as complete a picture (on paper) of your system's vital stats as you can -- remember, you'll need things like your monitor's V- and H-frequencies or frequency ranges, current information about how your hard drive is partitioned (this is important if you plan to dual-boot
Also, I'd suggest at least skimming some books before you commit yourself to restarting with a boot floppy in the drive
Good luck! Save existing files you want to have later somewhere safe! Hang up a punching bag to aim your energy at in the event of frustration! Dissolve! Dissolve! Okay!
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The fact that a single individual has been able to keep the SLS distribution going for this long and maintain a following of dedicated bone-headed users says alot for the easy of install/upgrade/maintainablity of *nix packages in general. Slackware probably does the least "touching up" of the packages of any Linux distribution and in that sense follows the "Keep It Short and Simple" philosophy the most. While I disagree with maintainer of Slackware on some issues, I continued to be impressed by how dedicated the followers of the church of Slackware tend to be (something about it having to be pulled from their cold dead hands with a crowbar). Caldera on the other hand has taken the complette other extreme to going as far as touching up the boot process to be graphical. In practice, this touch up of the boot process tends to cover up some warning and hardware detection (or lack of detection) messages which are helpful in troubleshooting. And, also, I have yet to hear a "church of Caldera" forming of OpenLinux advocates. Maybe OpenLinux 3.x (where was v2.0 and v2.1 of OpenLinux anyways?) will have a KISS design as part of it's feature list?
Don't you see a contradiction in the following two statements taken from your post:
Lots of people i've talked to don't like SuSE because it's a bloated distribution full of 5CDs worth of stuff you'll never use....
People need choices and options... Take those away and you're bound to fail and be left behind by those distributions that recognize the freedom of choice as an important deciding factor in the purchase of a Linux distribution.
P.S. SuSE doesn't force you to install everything on the CDs. Choose custom installation and install what YOU want. D.S.
--
Fredrik Henbjork
http://o112.ryd.student.liu.se
I personally use SuSe and I love it. I think the installation was fairly easy but left enuf room for customization. I used to use RH, and I have tried Mandrake and Caldera. Yes, the Caldera is simple to install, but I had odd problems with it (like it wanted to tell me that LPT1 was on IRQ -1) and I thought it was slow. Same with RH and Mandrake, they both seemed slow on my machine. THen when I put SuSE on (first 6.1 now 6.2) everything went great. It flies and works great. I think that SuSE is a GREAT company and I would definatly back them if and when they go live...
-Lynch Man
Is this the same Caldera Linux i have a slightly older distro of that didn't have "finger" or "pine", and refused to find any sort of network card? I've gotten much further in RH 6.0. I only had to isntall that twice, since it hung on starting the sendmail daemon for infinity.
I don't agree the "mount thing" is useless. I really like being able to mount a Win98 VFAT partition, or mount it read-only, or not mount it all. It's a slight hassle with floppies and CDs I'll grant you. But the system really needs to know when, where, and how a removable device is available. Several good options for more transparency are available and being developed it seems. I don't want to lose the detailed control over mounting file systems Linux provides though.
If Caldera automounts floppies and CD's from the desktop that suits me about perfectly.
I initially started out on RH 5.0. Was great. Worked nice, and was really stable.
I upgraded to 6.0 right after it came out. BIG MISTAKE. It had major problems with my cablemodem service. And, even after upgrading the Pump package and trying to just use straight DHCP, I STILL couldn't get it to come up online.
Then came the round-robin Linux installs. Wasn't really impressed by Mandrake (which also wasn't working). Shelled out for a copy of SuSE. SuSE was kinda BEASTLY to install (YAST has a long way to go before it's as easy as the OLD RH installer was). That and I found that the Intellimouse drivers in SuSE 6.2 didn't work with my OEM Intellimouse.
So I snagged one of these Teach Yourself Linux books that had a copy of COL 2.2 with it.
Let's just say I was MIGHTILY impressed with Lizard. It's the easiest OS install I've ever had. Just sucks the doors off RH and blows out Windows so thoroughly that it's not even funny.
Was still having the problems with my OEM Intellimouse though. So I snagged a retail copy of COL 2.3. Wonder of wonders, EVERYTHING WORKED!
Now before I sound like I'm completely a COL-dog, I DID have some problems with COL 2.3. Compared to other distros like RH, it's "full install" is sparse. Compared to SuSE's "if it runs on Linux, it's installed!" full setup, it seems like a kernel-only install.
Upon looking to a mailing list for help with KSIRC, I found that it was damn near idle and a goodly number of people responded that they'd switched to X-Chat.
Also, I was having MAJOR problems with error messages in COL. Sometimes I'd open something up and get a endless string of EM's that's proceed to grind the machine to a reboot-forcing halt. Also, trying to get the updated RPM's from Caldera's site, or one of there mirrors was a joke and a half.
Finally, disgusted with the problems I'd been having, I snagged a copy of RH 6.1 (Cartman) and installed that. Few problems.
For some reason, the ISO I have only installs a specific setup. Wether I select Gnome Workstation, KDE Workstation, Webserver, or Custom install, I would get an identical setup with a small selection of packages (was able to install other packages later). That sorta cheesed me off. Am also cheesed that the new update manager required a ID number (which you can only get by buying the RH retail package).
On the whole, Linux is improving rapidly. Unfortunately, several ugly little conventions are creeping in (like the update ID thing).
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Linux can see them. Red Hat 5.2 can see them. Lizard and Lisa can't. Caldera support, instead of saying, "Yeah, that's broken," just stopped responding to my email.
I realize that whatever Bob Young says is gospel -- he is God, after all (yeah, right) -- but the fact remains that he is not a good representative of good-neighbor practices any more than any of the other distros are. Just look at the crap that RH has inflicted on us with libraries (first their hack of 2.0.7 -- a DEVELOPER release, considered to be unstable -- then with the renaming of libstdc++) and you'll see what I mean.
Not that anyone cares, of course. Like I said, Bob Young is God and whatever he says is gospel...
Agreed.
/usr/ports
I've installed FreeBSD a few weeks ago. The setup is similar to the different Linux Distros. And the package management (/usr/ports) isn't really that much different than moving from rpm to deb. In fact I'd say the ports are easier to use than both. Instead of fiddling with a new program (dselect) or fiddling w/ syntax (apt) or hunting RPMs it is based on things you are already familiar with - directories and Make.
wmaker dropped in without problems and if I didn't use different themes in deb partition I wouldn't have a clue about which I was running.
Of course it seems really easy to set-up etc.. However, I think Linux experience helped out tremendously.
I think the FreeBSD community would be well serviced by a quickstart guide for Linux users.
ie:
In Linux In FreeBSD
ls ls
cp cp
pwd pwd
vi vi
netscape netscape
startx startx
dselect cd
Naturally the popularity of Linux is creating a lot of apps for all the free nixes out there.
Hey agreed! I've tried Caldera, Debian and Slackware. And I still prefer Slackware due to it minimalist design. It doesn't pretend to be user friendly and do stupid things you don't want it to do. Debian's dselect package installation was a little pain but otherwise, the vast programs available rules.
Worst of all Redhat and Caldera like distributions are gradually stripping away those items hardcore users have grown so fond to, and leave us with just the GUI install and maintainence.
No I'm not against Caldera and any other GUI user friendly distributions, just that they should keep the "hardcore user" option available and not try to hide things from the user.
1) It's definitely easier than it was under Slackware 2.0 :-) However, if you don't have the listed hardware, or you're trying to do something a little unusual (like use the VGA out port on a Dell Latitude CPi), it can get challenging quickly.
:-)
2) Looks like you bought a SoundBlaster(TM). My first few installs were with an Aztech Nova16. When I decided to switch over to Linux fulltime, my first action was to go buy a real SoundBlaster. If you have a funky clone card, sound is a major PITA.
3) Quite nice
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
Caldera is not just taking money from whoever holds it out to them. They are picky about who they do business with. I consider this to be a good thing, not a bad thing.
Besides, they have gotten rather large (8 figures) investments already, one in particular from MTI (I'm sure there are postings archived even here on anti-Caldera Slashdot.org that speak about this).
And to the person who insists that Caldera is not innovative (not to the person who wrote the top-level post), I'll give you this: 100% of the press for Red Hat that made them popular was for their installation. To say that innovations in Linux installation are not important is bunk. They did it, now Caldera's doing it (they were the first with a SUCCESSFUL graphic installation, now all the Red Hats, Mandrakes, etc. are chasing their tails). Try to restrain yourself from re-writing Linux history, okay?
You must be aware you're looking for Debian, with its .deb format and particularly, apt utilities...
In particular, this link explains the differences fairly well. Being able to set up a list of sites with unstable and stable distributions and contrb / main / binary / non-free / non-US subdirectories, combine a list of package versions from them all, and then whenever you want to install something, 'apt-get install package' will do the job - INCLUDING dependencies.
At least RPM 3 has the ability to cope with HTTP URLs on the commandline - even if you do have to paste them in by hand....
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Kind of like the old doom menu (sorry - not up on the games)
/etc; mkdir /etc/rc.d
Install options:
[ ] I'm just a child
[ ] Hurt me a little
[ ] Hurt me plenty
[ ] Knee deep in the tgz
[ ] mkdir
hey, where can I d/l an iso file of caldera 2.3?
Then I doubt seriously that you've been following the tech media for more than two months.
/. have either never tried Caldera, or they tried it quite some time ago. Give it a fair try now, and I think you'll see it's the only distro at the moment that can even attempt to seriously challenge Microsoft.
I've been following Caldera's progress for several years now (since it was a rogue project in Novell, even), and if you'd been paying any attention, you might even have found several of the posts I made right here about the surprising quality, stability, and incredible ease of installation of the 2.2 release. It's not perfect, and Caldera (as do other Linuxes) has a long way to go, but it's really quite good, and a very solid product.
Although it's anathema to those here who take their distro choices religiously rather than seriously, a very good case can be made that Caldera is the best Linux distro for corporate deployment on either the server or desktop side.
Caldera seems to rub some folks here the wrong way because it's a well-integrated distro rather than the Linux Construction Kits favored by some of the developer community. Caldera is not for everyone (that's why we have multiple distros!), but they have an excellent chance of becoming one of (if not the) predominant mainstream distros.
Finally, I find that most of the Caldera-haters here on
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Christ, you're truly an idiot...
First, go to the Caldera Systems web site. Don't just sit there and stare at the pretty colors; CLICK on something. Here's one to try: PRESS & NEWS. That will give you a list of press releases.
Next, go to web sites like CNN, ZD, InfoWorld, etc. Again, don't just stare at the pretty colors; CLICK on something. Here's a suggestion for those sites: SEARCH. Enter "Caldera" and hit the ENTER key.
Holy shit, there's actually PRESS on Caldera?!
(I assume you get 100% of your Linux coverage from Slashdot. That's pathetic. But here's something else you can do: click on the Caldera logo at the top of the front Slashdot page. Holy shit AGAIN, MORE press for Caldera. Good grief, we're on a ROLL!!)
Pico is included in pine, which is included in the /col/contrib directory on the installation CD.
Do your homework next time.
This is true for anyone who competes with Microsoft, but it's not true for the intra-Linux competition (i.e. RedHat vs Caldera vs SUSE, etc).
The only thing that distinguishes one distro from another is happy users. It's just too easy to download a different distro if the one you have doesn't suit you.
Not too long ago I was shopping for another distro. I had been a slackware user, but I was getting tired of .tgz packaging. I started with Caldera because they were the easiest to download off the net and install off the net. I created the boot floppies, and then did an NFS install over the net.
But I soon discovered that the number of packages available for Caldera were few in comparison to the number available for Red Hat. So, I downloaded a new set of boot floppies, and rebuilt. I used Red Hat 5.2 for a few months until I tried to install gnome and enlightenment. I was able to do this, but keeping it up to date was an incredible pain!
I have settled on Debian. Not because I think that Debian has great PR. And not because I think that Debian's image in the community is immaculate, but because it is by far the easiest distro to use and keep up to date.
My point is this: product quality is the only thing that matters when price is not a factor. I respect your ideas, but I think you're really stuck in the microsoft model for getting users, and I don't think it applies to Linux.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Thanks! I'll take a closer look at this. It's really the only reason why I don't have OpenLinux 2.3 on my current workstation at home. The Mandrake 6 let me install over two drives while the OpenLinux 2.3 would only let me do one drive or the other but not both.
"Bah!" - Dogbert
P.S. I didn't see this option the first time but I will look again - Thanks!
"Bah!" - Dogbert
I'd been holding off on Linux for a while; COL 2.2 looked tempting (easy install from Windows!), but the version of Partition Magic that came with it couldn't cope with large hard drives. When I saw new, improved COL 2.3, I couldn't resist any longer, and grabbed it as soon as it appeared in the UK.
OK, call me naive, I should have checked around a bit more first, but I believed the blurb; just bear in mind I'm a complete Linux newbie (the main reason I'd gone for COL 2.3). So, first things first, ran Partition Magic, set up a 1.6Gb partition. Popped in the install CD, pointed it at the new partition... no. Partition went past the 1024th cylinder of the HD. Install wouldn't go any further. Poked around a bit in a bunch of docs, went to the 'expert' option, managed to get a partition entirely under 1024 cylinders just big enough for a minimal install.
Still, at least it'll autodetect the graphics and sound card... won't it? I'd had a quick peek at the compatibility list for XFree 3.3.4, seen a huge list of ATI cards, figured mine (ATI Rage Magnum), or something compatible, was in there. Stupid mistake, should've made sure, I know, but the Rage Magnum isn't supported at all, so I get KDE in 640 x 480. My soundcard's a Soundblaster Live Value, fairly common, that should be OK (couldn't find a "Sound" section on the Caldera hardware compatibility list to check)... no. Bit more poking round reveals Creative aren't playing ball, you'll have to use beta drivers from their site if you want sound.
So there I am with KDE in 640 x 480 (almost completely unusable) on a tiny partition with hardly anything but the kernel installed. Wooo! To cut a long story short, I grabbed every doc I could get my hands on, and managed to set up a small boot partition under the 1024th cylinder, a 256Mb swap partition, and 3Gb for everything else, letting me do a decent install from scratch. I got the ATI Rage Magnum drivers for XFree from the SuSE site, and got KDE up in 1024x768 at a decent colour depth. Still haven't got the Soundblaster Live going, but hey, got to leave something exciting for the future (and Creative say they're working on a lovely full-featured easy to install driver...) I'll leave the modem and KPPP for a particularly dull weekend...
I probably got unlucky, with a nightmare hardware combo. If I had a smaller, dedicated Linux HD and a different video and sound card, I probably would have been up and running in 15 minutes. On the plus side, had everything gone smoothly, I wouldn't have learned a fraction of what I have about partitioning, mounting, linking etc etc (clouds and silver linings, I guess).
My point (if indeed there is one) is that it might be a tad early to start trumpeting COL 2.3 as "a winner, no matter where your needle rests on the Linux experience-o-meter." Maybe COL 2.3 supports 90% of PC hardware, but until it gets to 99% (or, in a utopian dreamworld, 100%) I wouldn't recommend it for Average Joe to install on his home desktop (whether this is a good or a bad thing, I leave to a lengthy Katzian thesis from someone else...)
-- Unix is the answer, but only if you phrase the question very carefully.
> no pico, a good console editor for
> newbies and html editing
I think the newbies should go with kedit or gxedit.
My guess is caldera is going for corporate users who don't know what the console is or if they do would just use vi.
They are just to fragment the market by funding all of these different projects!
Keep your damn money - we don't want it...
errr
nevermind I'd like some too.
I like caldera but it never detects my sound and will not unload the wrong sound driver....I would have to say red hat or mandrake are currently the way to go...both of which detects a turtle beach malibu...
That's not what I'd call doing its job well. If you're comparing Linux distributions, do not award points for the inclusion of this POS crippleware.
>Buffering data and collecing writes together
>increases performance, and that wouldn't be
>possible is you could just eject the damn thing
>anytime you pleased!
This was one of the bestthings about the long-lost mac floppies. Physical ejection was under program control, giving a chance to unmount (which to varying degrees at different times, macos did).
Somewhere along the way I saw a pc with similar drives, but it seems to have been lost along the way . . .
Plain and simple, i can do a corporate rollout and everyone will have the same applications, same desktop, same system and same solution.
when java jre/jdk 1.2 tools come out, i can remotely upgrade evryones machine without anyone noticing. And i won't break anything since i can test it on my box, and know it will work on the rest since not everyone is running different window managers and such.
KDE is a great solution, and works great. Why do you need to include 50 window managers? Including a single window manager, and a single system design is a single point of failure and a single solution.
great for business, like i said, the easiest to rollout, easiest distro to support. Commercial backing, less hassle, more friendly. Not bleading edge, but new enough that its stable and works.
What more could you want from the *best* distro?
I've seen it happen twice, once on my K6, and once on my thinkpad. For no apparent reason, its fdisk shifts the labels of all of the partitions up by one. Fortunately, I didn't have a partition 4 either time . . .
I've been using and supporting PCs and networks for almost 10 years now. I started working with DOS 3 and Lantastic when it came out. (I even got close to an OS/2 install once - still sends shivers down my spine.)
After all of that I find that OpenLinux is by far THE easiest operating system to install. It just starts and goes. Period.
My ONLY complaint with OpenLinux is that as far as I can tell there is no way to spread the installation of the distro over several drives. (If anybody knows how to do that let me know.)
Other than that it is by FAR the easiest of the Linux distros to install as well as any other operating system. (My pick for people that want to install and learn Linux.) It may not be the most initially configurable installation but it is by far the fastest and easiest to understand. The LIZARD will support all but the most unintelligent users - and it will even give those a chance to guess what they might need to do. It's that good.
I think in the long run it has a good chance of taking the ball away from RedHat as the Linux distro for the masses. This doesn't mean that I will stop buying RedHat from CheapBytes ( http://www.cheapbytes.com ) or that I will load EVERYTHING with OpenLinux, but in the long run most workstations could be loaded with OpenLinux instead of RedHat and be up and running in X within minutes (newer systems) and be totally user-friendly within a day or so. (If the administrator is of any worth.)
Said my peace. Any comments?
"Bah!" - Dogbert
However, if you don't have the listed hardware, or you're trying to do something a little unusual (like use the VGA out port on a Dell Latitude CPi), it can get challenging quickly.
Not really. If you've got video working at all, then it makes no difference whether you're going to the screen or the VGA port. Once the X server is on good terms with the NeoMagic controller in the CPi, then you're set. Just use the BIOS hot key (Fn-F7 I think - anyway, it's the one with the little picture of the CRT on it) to toggle display output from screen to CRT to both. The only thing that might be tricky is finding a way to switch from LCD to CRT under software control, but this is problematic even under Windows and still requires custom software for each particular machine, since there's no standard API for making the call to change that. The BIOS hot-key is handier anyway.
Oh, and I speak with some authority on this as I was Dell's Program Manager for Software for Latitude and Inspiron when the CPi was released. So far as I know, I was the first person to ever install Linux on a CPi (a few months before it went on sale), and as a matter of fact, it was Caldera!
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
If you have a video card that is not supported by xfree then the install may go ok, but when all is said and done and the machine restarts for it's first session of linux watch out. I get a 320 X 280 screen with no virtual scrolling so it is impossible to do anything. Where under Redhat the VGA16 atleast works properly. Once you get the proper drivers and everything installed for a none Xfree video card then its great, easy to update modules and everything else, but without a supported video card it is a big headache.
Andy
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" -- Albert Einstein
Modeline calculations scare me
XF86Setup is your friend. I've set up X on all sorts of machines and haven't touched a modeline in years (though it is nice to have such low-level access if you want to really squeeze every last bit of performance out of your hardware). I'm assuming everybody knows about xvidtune as well.
I'm a big FreeBSD'er, but for me the Mandrake install and desktop work pretty well (and I'm a Caldera licensee for 2.2 and 2.3).
FreeBSD's the easiest and most solid desktop Unix I've worked with (including SCO, Solaris, UnixWare)... but Mandrake dropped in and had the best standard desktop setup I've seen.
On the cases where Mandrake failed to install out of the box, I was able to repartition and remake the file systems and device nodes on the fly and continue the install.
I'm looking to see if I can graft some of the Mandrake KDE configs on FreeBSD.
From what I see here I've got to take a new look at Slackware, (my old favorite after SLS in the 0.99 days), again.
Bill
Isn't this what the volume management on SunOS does?
Or do what jo-schmo expects (from experience with Win9x & MacOS) and fake a directory of track names. Maybe even fake them as raw audio files. It would make ripping a lot easier...;)
Fine. All I'm arguing is that things shouldn't be automounted unless that's what the users want. (SunOS - man automountd)
Autorun however, you can leave right out.
Damn straight.
Just a few days ago we had a /. item on the code fork potential in Linux, in which Caldera was pointed out by Bob Young of Red Hat as possibly causing a problem due to their extensive use of third-party proprietary tools.
Will in Seattle
It looks like their trying to provide a reasonably secure configuration for home users as a default. Other distributions I've seen have been pretty bad about this. The first time I installed Redhat I think I could have taken the place of any server in existence. Distinctions like "ftp client" and "ftp daemon" are confusing the first time around.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
My long-winded point is that if one of the distro's hasn't already fixed this problem then they might alienate would be Linux users. As I said I don't really blame the distros because Partition Magic even suffered, but I just think it is something that needs to be addressed if it hasn't already. There has already been one Windows guy posting here complaining about having to type 'startx' to get X11 started. Certainly people like him aren't going to want to play with drive geometries.
I know RH, TurboLinux and Debian have gotten injections of funds from the big corporates, but what about Caldera, SuSE and the other distrbutions?
Prolly happens, just I (or the public) never hear much about it... (or people don't make as much fuss about it, which is the same thing really).
So, I suppose the question is.. who is investing in Linux Distributions, and where? Does anyone keep track of all this?
Spose this is a little off topic, but I'd like to see Caldera and SuSE get some backing like RH and the like. They all do very useful stuff for the Linux community in general, and it's nice to see them getting a helping hand occasionly. (It also tends to put off those who believe RH is taking over Linux! But that's another story.)
What's with all these sissy "menus" and "GUI's" and such?
Nerdly nerds don't need such things! Where's the thrill of the struggle? The triumph of mind over machine? The urge to bang your head on the desk until there's a dent in it? (The desk or your head, whichever seems appropriate)? Why, when *I* was your age....
Sorry, got carried away there. But seriously, I've grown fond of a nice, minimal distribution. I can compile up, with whatever optimizations I want, whatever I need from there. 'course, I'll probably get tired of doing it all the time after a few months, but until then, I like the comparatively "uncluttered" feel a mostly-manual distribution has. Maybe I'm just a sicko.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
IMHO this is the best thing they could have done. When I first started using Linux I would play with the different options that appeared when I right clicked on the root window. I don't know how many times during this initial exploration of my new Linux environment did I manage to completely change how everything looked and worked. More often than not there was no obvious way to change it back.
By bundling only KDE Caldera have acknowledged that one UI is better than lots. They have realised that the geeks who want the flexibility will probably be willing to either:
- download a different WM
- get one off another CD
- create their own themes
- any or all of the above
Congratulations Caldera for having the sack to pick something and stick to it.--------------------------------------------
my blog: good times, man, good times
I have been using Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 for almost a month now. It is super easy to set up (provided you pay attention and notice that sometimes it does not start the swap - it is very annoying when your machine thrashes worse than a 4 MB machine running WinNT).
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The install is very smooth. You plop the disk in, click a few things, and it starts installing. Then you get to play a nice game of tetris.
One thing I did find annoying, however, was the X setup. It shows you a screen and you are supposed to pick your video resolution and then hit the test button to make sure that it works. Well, your screen flashes - and it will either show you a X window session or it won't. But, in my case, it took me a while to ever get a display properly picked. The problem is not that when it fails it just does a *blip!* to the screen, it is that it does not tell you it failed. I can see how this would confuse the hell out of a newbie. It would be nice to see something say "Sorry, but that mode does not work" or something to that effect.
I can do a full install in about 20 minutes, and have COL up and running totally to my liking in about 40 (after I install Star Office, BRU, and WP8). As far as I can tell, COL is getting really close to being the proverbial "so easy my mom can use it" distro.
Heck, I bet she could use it with no problem. Maybe I should take a machine over and let her try to install it?
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8012456989047663620151201231566801865112556408748
It may seem unnecessary with read-only media such as CD-ROMs but what would you rather? That the OS tries to automatically mount any CD that you put in the drive? What if it's a music CD? Surely YOU should be able to tell the computer what you want rather than having it try to second-guess you all the time like a certain other OS that shall remain nameless!
Yeah, I see your point. Thanks! (And, yes, I DID mean "It seems unecessary to mount CD-ROMs/floppies," not "The mount command is useless. Period.")
From a laptop user's point-of-view, I had big problems with Caldera's install. I couldn't get the thing to load the PCMCIA driver. If it wasn't for that, I would have been impressed - it is a slick install. (And I've been using Linux since one of the 0.99 kernels...)
RedHat's new X-based install didn't work on any of my laptops at all (all IBM Thinkpads, BTW). I had to use the text-based install. On the other hand, the thing did properly set up my PCMCIA (and with a small tweak of the config.opts, handle the token ring cards as well).
I think that the slick installs are important because this is the first thing that the average user is going to see. If you want to convert the Windows users of the world to Linux, this has to be simple and painless, otherwise they'll chuck it (Of course, if it's pre-installed, then this is not a worry). Window's install is just better enough (it also sucks) but it works good enough.
(Actually, what's needed is a seemless upgrade install from Windows to Linux. Really ideal would be to help them upgrade their applications, like MS Office to StarOffice or Applix, or a Quicken upgrade, or even to include VMWare or Wine, so that they have an environment that gives them a more reliable OS. This is a pretty tall order.)
Have just been through the cycle of distro's..
RedHat 6.1, Mandrake 6.1, Caldera, Turbo Linux, and finally thank god Slackware 7 pre 2. I believe that out of them all redhat was the easiest for me to do the initial install. But for configuration, adding additional software, (or removing it!) I would have to say that Slackware seems to be the best overall. Plus Slack does'nt sem to be as picky no dependency problems usually, like the redhat based distro's that use rpm. It is'nt the prettiest thing in the world, but Linux is'nt supposed to be windows!!
I just went through trying to install Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 on a system, but had to break apart into multiple partitions (/, /usr, /home, /opt) because of some info on the hard drive I needed. When it came to the formatting part, I could not format 2 of the 4 partitions, thus I ran out of space and the install failed. I tried a couple of times a couple of different ways and finally just put Mandrake on since it was easy enough to install and was able to handle the multiple partions. Also, it seems Caldera's install is slower than Mandrake or Redhat. Beyond that, I did have Caldera running at one time on another machine and I think it looks slick and clean, but for now its Mandrake because of the install.
Mounting drives: This is a good and logical thing
/cdrom and also mount the vfat partition if one exists.
No disagreement from me.
Just because something happens different than Windows, doesn't mean that it is more difficult and should be changed. UNIX/Linux is not a Windows clone, but an OS with it's own history and it's own rules.
Just because it has a long history doesn't automatically make it the best. When you take this attitude you confuse many people who were raised on Windows. I would have liked Lizard to ask me the mounting questions during installation. It would be pretty easy to mount the cd to
-- Freedom means letting other people do things you don't like.
Not when you have to manually install your soundcard and modem, requiring you to read a bunch of HOWTO/FAQs, learn a few new pci-sensing Linux tools, go back and look at your Windows IRQ/IO/DMA settings. And don't forget, until you get your modem working, if you want to get troubleshooting info off the net, you have to boot into Windows to access the web. Other than that, I'd agree its definitely better than the Windows install. It's pretty, quick, easy-to-use, and starts installing in the background while you are answering other configuration questions. --A former UNIX programmer who wants to start coding on Linux but is annoyed at the hassle of learning all this crap first
This is the first install I've seen which actually has a GUI interface for boot messages and LILO. Fear.. I suppose this is a plus for Windows gimps.
Warning: this isn't totally related to Caldera; but Caldera and Nick's experiences with it illuminate the issues herein.
From the article (emphasis mine):
Obviously anyone can come up with quite a large number of reasons why this particular situation exists. My personal favorite is the oft-cited "reckless abandon" with which incompatible versions of libraries are created. Honestly, though, it really doesn't matter. The package management system should make this transparent.
RPM seems to have become the crown prince of package management because it (a) has most of its sh*t together and (b) by virtue of being in what is widely regarded as the single most popular Linux-based distro out there. Many have even argued that it's cross-platform -- i.e. given RPM packages compiled for any system other than Linux, it will work on said system. (And to a degree, it does.)
Unfortunately, even with all the standards in the universe, there just plain are too many things that differ between system A and system B. Red Hat and Mandrake have not had to deal with this on too large of a scale because Mandrake is a direct derivative (and I am operating from hearsay here -- I have not yet had the opportunity to use Mandrake) of Red Hat. But as more and more distributions out there use RPM, we will start to discover more and more inconsistencies that perhaps RPM just isn't up to.
Ah, but this is the world of open source. :-) We can change these things, either by modifying RPM, another system, or by creating a new one altogether with bits and pieces.
An ideal package system would be able to read some sort of platform spec file (or perhaps query an interactive spec program?) and determine just where libraries are supposed to be, for starters. It would ask the same spec where to get those libraries if they weren't around. (You could always do the Microsoft thing and include the libs you needed with your package, but I thought we were trying to get *away* from waste) :-) Along those lines, library packages -- or any others pulled in automatically as dependencies -- could also be marked as "dependency-only" and removed or possibly archived when no longer depended on.
One thing RPM does well, though, and I wish more open source projects did -- it maintains the ability to run on the command line, in batch mode. Graphical programs run on top of it. We must never lose that delineation.
3.Mounting Drives: I need to mount my cdrom in order to use it? This I found confusing
...etc. You don't need to mount the removable media to use these commands.
Obviously, Linux needs to have more smarts in terms of automounting. I believe KDE includes support for automounting, though I haven't really used it - I'm somewhat patient on this and I'm willing to wait for good automounting support in the kernel, or jump in and help build it if it doesn't arrive. In the meantime, mtools can save a lot of time if all you want to do is list a directory, or copy a file to/from a floppy disk, CDR, etc. For example:
mdir a:
(list a directory on floppy. d: does the same for cdrom)
mcopy foo a:
(copy file foo to floppy)
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
...took my entire system down when I tried to install it.
One word for RedHat: rdist. Remember this from an earlierAsk Slashdot discussion? It appears the latest distro of RedHat had included some third-party tools that were NOT free for commercial use, and they also appear to be disinterested in such standardization as LSB (Linux Standards Base). Frankly, if you're looking for purely free open-source linux, you'd be better off with Debian.
RedHat is just as likely as Caldera to include proprietary third party tools. I believe that, in this case, either Bob Young was grasping at straws on that point or he was slinging a little old-fashioned mud. I personally prefer Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 for desktop machines.. It builds simply, and there are only a few packages that I need to add afterwards, including ripping out the usual dozen of services I don't like running on a client workstation.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
Do you really think that *every* single monitor is listed in that list??? I personally have a PowerComputing 17" monitor, and it is *not* listed anywhere in that list. Nor do I know the chipset. When I first installed, I did not know the timing specifications either. The way I found out was to run a program in the MacOS that gave me the timings. I then converted them to the backward specifications the various configuration tools use (each is different) and I finally had the modeline I wanted. That was a lot of trouble.
What should be done is to have a recommended menu of screen sizes -- like the MacOS or Windows or BeOS or any other decent gui OS. If it cannot detect the correct timings, then it should tell you and interactively work with you to get it working. Right now, it leaves you in nobody's land should you fail to install your monitor. Why is it so hard???
-B
As with any Linux distro you don't have to install everything SuSE comes with. For a lot less than the price of Red Hat's official box SuSE gives you a lot more _choices_. To me that's more value for money and a good thing.
I've installed various releases of Caldera, Red Hat, Mandrake, Slackware, and SuSE. I still install whatever distro works for my clients but my home machine runs with SuSE. They're a good company with a good product. Of course they're strongest in their native/original/traditional market so SuSE's big in Europe but still playing catch up in the US.
Also, even though some complain about YaST it works great for me. On the Mandrake/Red Hat machines I try to avoid linuxconf which _looks_ better but isn't as fine a tool to suit me.
TedC
Suse is not bloated : it comes with a large selection of software, which you have an option to install or not install. The advantage for the non technical user is that all the software on their cds has been checked to work with the distribution. It also make installing and deinstalling software that you only use occasionnally easier and faster. The install system takes care of reconfiguring the system accordingly, including adding and removing entries in the appropriate menus. This, in my opinion, helps at avoiding an overbloated system, something that is much more of a problem than a "bloated" distro... Suse supports KDE as well as a variety of other GUIs, reconfiguring menus according to software install for _all_ of them --not just the one currently running. As far as I can tell, Suse is the only distro to do that. As for quality of product, I have experience with RH and Suse, and I find Suse to be a _much_ more solid distro than RH. In fact, I started with RH and finally gave Suse a try after too many headaches with RH. On the other hand, I guess Caldera and Mandrake are easier to install than Suse. I'm always surprised by such comments about Suse being bloated. Some people are giving you more for the same amount of money, and you complain ?
Quick! Name a Caldera employee! OK....now, name a redhat employee. See what I mean?
In open source software, momentum to harness enthusiasm is everything. This includes media momentum, developer momentum, slashdot momentum, USENET momentum. Try this thought experiment - how many posts about Redhat can you remember reading in the past week? Now...how many posts about Caldera can you remember? My guess is, not many.
Redhat has a close relationship with the community. It knows how to play the media, even if it stumbles over IPO embarrassments. OTOH, Caldera seems to put on the cloak of Yet Another Corporation. At least, that's the impression I get.
I bought a book with a caldera CD a couple of yrs ago. For some reason, I got the impression that Caldera was trying to differentiate itself from the linux community by portraying itself as "Commercial" and not just a freebie company. Maybe this is an unfair characterization, but that's the impression I got.
This strategy is not new. Every other month, a company tries to portray itself as superior because it doesn't depend on the services of freebie programmers; it has its own skilled workforce. If anybody from such companies is reading this, let me repeat - this will not only screw your image in the open source community, it will not make any headlines in the commercial world.
So what is the magic that endears a company to the open source world? Why do linux users flock to redhat or SUSE but ignore caldera? I'd say it's being in touch with the community.
It doesn't make any sense to take a community product and hawk it with detachment. If Caldera has a clue, they need to change their attitude. Simply making a better product won't win the war, as so many dead software companies have proven.
L.
I like the fact that Mandrake give the options of KDE, E, etc.
At least it defaults to KDE for newbies.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
I was quite impressed with the Caldera install, especially the way it ran from windows, and sorted KDE out properly. The one thing that did irritate me about it, though, was the unavailability of a customised install. (Only sizes of 500 mb (minimal???) 700mb, and 1 gig were available...and I don't like rpm -e that much =)
I'd be interested to see how much better 2.3 is.
Jeremy
I did my first Linux installation in over two years a couple of weeks ago, and I must admit things have improved to a point where I was able to get most stuff working fairly well. It was faster than a WinNT 4.0 install, too. There are still a couple of things that I found a wee bit arcane, though:
Overall, I'm impressed with how far Linux has come in the past two years, but after a weekend of fiddling there are still some faults apparent. I'm sure I'll find more as I keep fiddling with Linux in my spare time (the various package mechanisms worry me), but it is getting better. I just don't agree it's as easy as Windows (overall).
I've used SuSE 6.0 and Debian 2.1 sporadically for a few months now, learning the basics of Linux (although I'm quite familiar with Unix from working at my school). But the time finally came to go full bore into Linux when my ADSL line was installed, and I needed a masquerading machine.
I tried Debian first, as I have some odd attraction to it. I read every Howto I could find, newsgroups, everything, and all I could get working was my internal network. No DSL, so masq'ing.
So I installed my copy of SuSE. Wonder of wonders, DSL worked right of the bat. But I had to ifconfig the internal network every time I rebooted. Due to SuSE's unconventional file system, I was unable to run ifconfig (properly) at boot up.
So I'd heard this new Caldera release came out a while ago. Since I had the DSL working on SuSE, I downloaded the image during Hurricane Irene, burned it, and installed.
Wow! was all I could say! It was the most amazing thing I had seen. I had everything working in an hour and a half (really slow CD-ROM drive). The only problem I've encountered so far is the missing pico (which now I know where to find). All the software I could never figure out how to run on Debian and SuSE installs and runs effortlessly, and I feel like I have more power, because I can either easily reconfigure with COAS, or I can be hardcore and edit text files (which for some things is still the only way, like ipchains, as far as I could tell).
As a highly experienced computer user, and moderate user of Linux, I would highly recommend Caldera 2.3 to someone.
*Life is too serious to be taken too seriously.*
Nevertheless, I had a few problems and so uninstalled it and went back to Red Hat:
Neither one is really satisfactory to me in the GUI department. I like Window Maker, and RH's gnome-ified one is unsatisfactory -- and I don't think it was an option with OL2.2 at all.
No, Caldera is *much* more likely to include proprietary tools in their distributions. I don't know how much you know about them, but they follow the old convention of calling a product 'Open' when it isn't.
:)
RedHat handled the rdist thing well. If you read the Caldera review, note the proprietary tools... the OSS sound system (not lite), KDE (based on non-free Qt), Star Office 5.1 (free for non-commercial use, but generally annoying and bloated, I'd consider the registration at least nagware...)... now compare to another recent slashdot item: RMS Linux. Comparable to Debian in freeness. Hmm.
Bob Young was pointing out a truth that should be acknowledged, and I will go one step further with this. Caldera has always wanted to be the next Microsoft. Hence the old DOS lawsuit, 'OpenDOS' (which really isn't yet), and now 'OpenLinux'.
I'm glad they're making an easy to use distribution, and it's gotten better and more free (probably because of the community at large, not them) but I have yet to see that they're doing it for the right reasons. And since I haven't seen them do that much of anything for the right reasons yet, I don't trust them.
RedHat, however, has earned my trust by figuring out that their users don't want or need proprietary software, and eliminating much or all of it from their distributions. (remember MetroX? Back when I had that, I tried it out. It sucked. Therefore, I use XFree86. It rocked. I never looked back.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I used to run Slackware 96 some time ago, and nowadays I use Debian Potato, and I'm very happy with it (specially it's administration tools - apt is awesome!).
Anyway, I decided to try Caldera 2.3. Got the ISO and burned my CD, on to the installation.
From the three installation tries that were made (two by me), two of them failed, one went flawlessly. The first failed because the Lizard, although the module is present in the distribution, does not probe for older sbpcd-based Creative Labs CD-ROM drives. I was able to fool the install program (loading the module and mounting the CD while the Lizard performed its detections), but the installation still failed, this time because the CD had some problem reading the media (old drive, you know :-) ). The second failure I believe was due to the video card (a SiS that still was not supported in the 3.3.4 Xfree that comes in the CD), but as it was a friend who tried, I don't know for sure.
Now the successful install. The installation phase went very well: detected everything, I chose the "Workstation" install (there should be an easy way to choose your packages at install time). Later after the system was running, I got into some problems.
The network configuration, besides asking for my Gateway, did not put it in the kernel routing table. As a result, I could not see the local DNS, and only navigate with IP addresses. After I discovered what was happening, all was fine.
The sound config detected the sound card as a Sound Blaster 16, although it is an AWE32. It would be nice if it configured the wavetable capabilities of the card (its kind of a boring process, although well documented in the kernel source). While running, I had to manually load the "sb" module, as it would not be loaded by default, and trying to load it via COAS failed (although all options as IRQ and port were correct - and the same used to load the module manually).
I had to manually install some daemons, like Samba, for sharing files in our internal network. COL lacks a configuration tool for samba, as the only way to do it is editing the smb.conf file (no "sambaconfig" as in Debian or Linuxconf as in RedHat).
COAS is a nice tool, and very well organized. It only there were more modules for it (like a samba configuration tool - Swat is great, but I don't think it was installed), then it would really be a winner. For now, it fits perfectly for basic system administration.
There were some other issues, but I did not play much with the dist to really see all its pros and its rough edges.
It's a nice distribution, but I think it lacks some command line programs (it comes with vi, and I prefer joe for simple editing, and there aren't RPMs for joe on the CD). As an workstation, it's really good, but I don't see it as a reasonable option for the "power user" who wants to walk his way through the system, neither to work as a server. I think Debian fills that spot better.
Ah, of course: this is my experience. :-) I may have done something wrong at some point, but I believe these are the "low" points of COL that need to be worked a little.
Marcelo.Oh yes, companies like OZ that have been turning out a loss for ower 10 years, making intel's huge investment in them worth about $2.39
And 640K of RAM should be enough for anybody, too. At least that is what The Shining Knight of Computerdom, Sir William of Gates, said 18 years ago.
ach
The 6-CD distro may be huge, but it can be considered "Linuxberg in a Box" and has everything but the kitchen sink and WordPerfect 8.
I'm not a big fan of YaST or SaX, but otherwise, my vote goes to SuSE by a long shot. And that's no knock on the others, it's just that SuSE is better because of the software selection. For US$30 it can't be beat unless you have a fast internet connection and can download the whole thing in a reasonable time for free.
The reason for there being only one desktop environment in Caldera's distribution is not because of lack of choice, it is because of stability. When Caldera first decided to include KDE in their distribution, Gnome was still not matured enough to be a viable solution. Caldera also caters more to business, hence the novell client, where a single interface would be preferred from an administrative standpoint.
I have been running Caldera for quite some time, along with other ditributions (Slack, RH, debian, suse) and prefer to use Caldera on a work machine. It has proven itself to be very stable, since it does not include the "bleeding edge" tools and utilities and tends to stick with older, more mature packages.
It doesn't include the latest and greatest of everything, but that's why I use other distros, so I can play. Caldera is, and probably will be, my distro of choice for any business machines I have/administer.
FeeDBaCK
feedback@whatthefuck.com
There's one thing about Caldera that I like:
it's installer
Which leaves a lot about Caldera that I don't like:
no choice of GUI, you're stuck with KDE,
like it or not...
no pico, a good console editor for
newbies and html editing
targeting of windows users instead of
catering to the open source
linux-loving community
poor selection of included packages
obsolete GUI design philosophy
pushes for standards and stasis, instead
of freedom of choice and true
innovation (GTK, GNOME, Bonobo)
Like I said, the installer is great... but once the other distributions have pretty GUI installers, there will be no more reason to use Caldera, unless of course, you are so indecisive that the concept of choice and trying new things scares you.
Justin
I think the installation of Linux has been pretty easy for some time now - that's not big news. The first distribution I installed was Redhat 5.1, and I didn't have much trouble with that (granted I know much more about computers than most "ordinary users" does, but anyway...).
The problem is getting Linux configured for your needs.
A fresh installation of Linux doesn't install my Zyxel ISDN adapter as an example, and what about my Palm III?
Another example is the lack of an easy way to printing in Linux- the fact that Corel's new distribution will come with it's own drivers for a lot of printers should give all a hint on what is needed to make Linux mainstream...
If novices are going to be using Linux, it has to be easy to configure too.
Intel knows how to pick winners, that's why they chose Red Hat and Turbolinux... They seem to have the Midas touch with companies, and since Turbolinux seems to own the Chinese and Japanese Linux markets as well as being the distribution of choice for cluster management servers, Intel and Turbolinux stand to make a lot of money on Linux... Red Hat too... being the dominant (and they're dominant for a reason... they're damn good at what they do) in the United STates is a green light to Intel.
Fortunately, Caldera and SuSE don't have much going for them, both in terms of innovation, popularity, and quality of product... Between the two distributions I can only think of one good thing... i.e. Caldera's GUI installer... Lots of people i've talked to don't like SuSE because it's a bloated distribution full of 5CDs worth of stuff you'll never use.... Sure you could get a new hard disk and put it all on, but who does that kind of thing?
Red Hat 6.0/6.1 and Turbolinux are elegant distributions... They include enough software to give their customers choice, yet keep it within a tolerable range to eliminate bloat (maybe SUSE can learn a lesson here)...
Distribution on Disc 1
Source Code on Disc 2
Applications on Disc 3
This is the way to make a distribution people will love and use.. and Red Hat and Turbolinux have accomplished that... That is why they are both serious contenders and spark the interest of bigtime investors.
Another reason why Red Hat and Turbolinux are better than, say, Caldera, is that they don't force KDE down their users' throats... Users of Red Hat and Turbolinux can install a variety of window managers, and switching between them is like a walk in the park... This gives the customer a chance to "test drive" different GUIs before making a decision on what to use.
Personally when I go shopping for stuff that costs money... I like to compare and contrast between different products before I take out my wallet...
Caldera just plops down a Quickmart in you neighborhood and bulldozes the other supermarkers and costco/priceclubs so you only have one well to drink from... This is not the way to be a successful Linux distribution.. A GUI installer is not enough... People need choices and options... Take those away and you're bound to fail and be left behind by those distributions that recognize the freedom of choice as an important deciding factor in the purchase of a Linux distribution.
Way to go Red Hat... Kudos to Turbolinux! You deserve the investments and strong partnerships because your products speak for themselves.
Justin
I don't know anything about OpenLinux other than what I've read in a few articles. And I don't care to. Distributions are all variations on the same thing in my mind.
And realisticly, installation doesn't need to be easier than Windows. Windows installation is not always a trivial matter, and there are probably at least 40 million copies installed (very rough figure). I believe that the ease of installation has nothing to do with acceptance. Sure, it might make it a little easier, but what we really need are the apps. That's what drives everybody to Windows. That's why I'm running Windows right now, even though all of my servers use either Linux or FreeBSD.
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