Linux distro news

purrkur · Post by **purrkur** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 8:30 am

Hmmm. It has been quiet around here. Time for some news so go get yourself some coffee, shut that door, lean back and enjoy!

Slackware: I saw today that Slackware will not distribute the GNOME desktop environment anymore and become a KDE-centric distro instead. Slack users wanting GNOME will have to rely on third party actors to provide it. There is apparently no shortage of such actors on the market and all of them have been more complete than what Slackware has provided in terms of GNOME support in the past. Hopefully these different projects will unite their efforts and provide s single, solid support for Slackers wanting GNOME.

SimplyMepis: This is a Debian based Live CD distribution similar to Knoppix. It boots KDE and gives you a well behaved Linux distro on your computer. There is one major difference between Mepis and Knoppix and that is a little icon on the desktop called "install me" on Mepis. This is a program designed to install Mepis on your computer if you so desire. It is pretty easy and relatively quick way to install a fully functional KDE desktop on your computer. I tried version 3.3 in a VMWare host and I was impressed. I intend to do a bit more checking but chances are that I will use this distro to make a "Linux and BP6 desktop howto" for newbies and regulars at BP6.com. From my quick glance at the distro, it is heavily tied into the Debian Unstable track (unlike Knoppix) so it might be the quickest way of getting a functioning version of Debian up and running.

Debian: Things have been moving along and everybody is still waiting for the new stable release with the new installer that will provide hardware recognition and setup. One of the things that is holding up the release is the fact that Debian supports 11 hardware platforms and if you develop something for one then it should work on all. Imagine the headaches of building an installer that is hardware indipendent! This has lead to a discussion and a recommendation that the amount of hardware platforms supported should be reduced, which is a touchy subject. No date has been set for the next stable release.

Mandrake: This is old news but what the heck. Mandrake has acquired Conectiva. Conectiva isn't really known around here in Europe but it is the biggest Linux distro found in south America. It is a Brazilian distibution. There are a few famous individuals working for Conectiva, like Marcelo Tosatti who is the maintainer for the 2.4 kernel. According to Distrowatch, Mandrake has registered the domainname "Mandriva" (ugh).

Gentoo: Has announced a new release, version 2005.0 which introduces among the regular things, a complete security rebuild.

And finally, SuSE: Will be shipping version 9.3 of its distro sometime in April. this version will include 2.6.11 kernel, OpenOffice 2.0, Firefox 1.0 and more.

hugoc · Post by **hugoc** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 1:08 pm

Firstly, Slackware Gnome users can use dropline-Gnome. It's easier than trying to make Gnome work yourself and it's designed for Slack and compatible distros (e.g. Vector).

Second, you forgot Ubuntu, who will be bringing out 5.04 (Hedgehog) in April.

purrkur · Post by **purrkur** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 2:01 pm

hugoc wrote:Firstly, Slackware Gnome users can use dropline-Gnome. It's easier than trying to make Gnome work yourself and it's designed for Slack and compatible distros (e.g. Vector).

Did you read what I wrote??

[/quote]Slack users wanting GNOME will have to rely on third party actors to provide it. There is apparently no shortage of such actors on the market and all of them have been more complete than what Slackware has provided in terms of GNOME support in the past. Hopefully these different projects will unite their efforts and provide s single, solid support for Slackers wanting GNOME.

So Slack users can use Dropline-Gnome like you mentioned. They can also use GNOME.Slackbuild or GWARE that provides pretty much the same thing. So my point is that there are many out there doing the same thing (not just Dropline-Gnome). Why not put all eggs in one basket now that there is a definite need? I mean, three different large packaging efforts packaging the same thing is just like re-inventing the wheel three times over.

hugoc wrote:Second, you forgot Ubuntu, who will be bringing out 5.04 (Hedgehog) in April.

Hmm. Not really. I just skipped it because I ran out of time (had to leave) so I decided not to mention Ubuntu this time around. In fact, there is a whole sea of Linux distro information that I specifically didn't mention so Ubuntu isn't the only thing I skipped. So thanks for bringing it up. There are some other very interesting things happening with Ubuntu as well, such as the fact that UserLinux might get incorporated into Ubuntu. There is a word or two that need to be said about Kubuntu (a KDE based Ubuntu), Fedora Core 4 coming up pretty soon and RedHat news on how their main distro is being copied left and right by various distributions.

If I only had more time....

hugoc · Post by **hugoc** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 2:09 pm

Did you read what I wrote??

Yes, that was an example. It's also one that I've personally tried and can vouch for. I thought it might be of interest.

purrkur · Post by **purrkur** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 2:14 pm

Good stuff! How are you liking Ubuntu so far?

hugoc · Post by **hugoc** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 1:33 pm

So far, so good. I wish they'd get off the 2.6.8 kernel though, it's slow. Apparently it's 23% slower than Red Hat Enterprise, which runs off 2.4. This is what Kenneth Chen and Linus Torvalds have said anyway. 2.6.9 isn't so bad.

I will say, though, that Ubuntu is every bit as RAM-greedy as WinXP. It's basically the same pattern: 128MB is slow as molasses and can't do any multitasking at a decent speed, 256MB should be a bare minimum but still bogs down if you try and run more than a few apps at once, 512MB is comfortable. I haven't tried a full GB yet. I'm waiting for my new Athlon 64 to get here to try that. Waiting on money, and Venice cores to appear in retail stores. I can also give 64-bit Linux a try. I hear that in certain apps it can be a lot faster.