OSNews

I think this is the third distro I've heard to be first to ship with the 2.6 kernel. I know the last one I heard about was an embeded product, though, so that might not count. Maybe I'm wrong.

Shipping with test5 isn't really a good idea, since that particular version is still extremely unstable on some systems (e.g. my CPQ Presario 900 series laptop), and that was fixed in test6.

A Linux distro with a good Japanese support OOTB would be nice, though. Tweaking Slackware for proper Japanese input is not too nice... (And yes, I have tried Red Hat & co. Their Japanese support isn't really too bad, but I like Slackware too much.)

Slackware 9.1 is 2.6 ready =]
Slack rulez[IMO]
Slack is the distro 4 me

i will wait till the 2.6 series kernel gets past 2.6.1X before trying it out, i want to see how it does in real work situations, i just hate to lose long documents & graphics after a beta kernel decides to go belly up...

I believe this is the first one to ship with 2.6 as the default kernel. I know SuSE Pro 9 has an option to use 2.6, but 2.4 is the default.

You really don't hear much of them anymore, maybe this will put them back in the game.

maybe this will put them back in the game.

Not at $143 it won't!

I'm not against paying for software by any means, but come on... Yoper tried to play this "pay us now and you'll reap the benefits forever" game and look where that is these days...

Yoper's now free, and last I heard, the primary developer's taken a real job, so now Yoper's support and rapid development are in serious jeopardy. Not an unusual turn of events, but I'm glad I'm not one of the guys who forked over $100 less than a year ago based on their hollow promises.

Quality Linux distributions should be paid for. Should it be as much, or in some cases more than Windows? Hell no! As much as I love Linux and it's many incarnations and looks, you shouldn't have to pay more for a freely available OS than a closed source one with tons of pre-compiled applications available for it.

There are several interesting aspects to Turbo Linux (newest kernel, buku Japanese support, newest KDE & Gnome, in addition to some commercial apps), but that still doesn't justify such a high price. Unless you're a rich Japanese person, I'd guess. 8)=

The fact that they're including Acronis as part of their commercial package is enough to keep me away. After paying for Acronis's product, I've had it completely trash two drives worth of data while doing simple partitioning with it. Their support sucks you-know-what, and even updated versions never gave me the security of, nor the professional presentation of Partition Magic, which is I'd imagine their biggest competitor.

Acronis does offer a neat idea (Boot manager and Partition Manager combined), but unless there's been major re-writes in the last 10 months or so, I wouldn't trust it to partition a simple two partition drive. It's buggy as ****!

My opinion(s)...

duifhi;d;nqeodo; weduihui wfuhwofhwoh....
could anyone understand that? me neither...
nope, that would not put them back on.
what features has turbo linux that others don't?

why I asked if anyone could understand that? I can't read the review, that is why. Maybe someone can post a translation...

It does include Staroffice 7 and I've never had a problem with any of Acronis' products and I use them all.

There are bound to be problems and it will make Linux as a whole look bad. I love distros that aren't afraid to be bleeding-edge but this is really risky.

Well, if they are shipping 2.6, I hope that it's well tuned.

I'm running the 2.6.0-test6 kernel on debian, it's free and if your a student you get all kinds of discounts (crossover is cheap, staroffice is free), hell even if your not a student most linux software is well priced, i wouldn't buy a distro unless it offers:

a) technical support
b) easy install, hardware detection, AND advanced configuration
c) no non-free software (i want to buy my own apps)

I hate it when they skip version numbers. Sorry but the software engineer side of me repulses this name game software companies play with the version numbers. If your product is really a version 9 then dont print that its version 10 just to be equal to your competitor. This is simply an example of the marketing department overuling the soft engineering division.

"maybe this will put them back in the game. "

Not at $143 it won't!

I would more likely say, "the bundled software cannot justify a price tag of $143".

I'm not against paying for software by any means, but come on... Yoper tried to play this "pay us now and you'll reap the benefits forever" game and look where that is these days...

Yoper was worse, they charged over $100 for *ONLY* free software. It would be like selling GNU EMacs for $500 and wondering why people won't buy it.

Yoper's now free, and last I heard, the primary developer's taken a real job, so now Yoper's support and rapid development are in serious jeopardy. Not an unusual turn of events, but I'm glad I'm not one of the guys who forked over $100 less than a year ago based on their hollow promises.

Had yoper bundled StarOffice, Codeweavers, and a whole bag of TheKompany software, *THEN* they could say, "pay >$100 for this distro".

Quality Linux distributions should be paid for. Should it be as much, or in some cases more than Windows? Hell no! As much as I love Linux and it's many incarnations and looks, you shouldn't have to pay more for a freely available OS than a closed source one with tons of pre-compiled applications available for it.

Well, there you have the problem. Not only are the distros competing with each other (which is good), they're also competing with Windows. If the $143 included a heap of commercial applications, SURE, it would be great value for money.

If it were me and I had a disrto, firstly, I *WOULD* charge US$150 BUT, I would; replace XFree86 with X-Accelerate and Summit 3d drivers, majorly tweak KDE, license a boot load of fonts from Bitstream and ITC, bundle StarOffice 7, Codeweavers Crossover Office and a few applications from TheKompany.

*THAT* would be *GREAT* value for money. $150, top of the line X server and drivers, awsome productivity applications, Windows application support and a heap of quality fonts. That is what I would call $150 worth.

<snip>

"Sorry but the software engineer side of me repulses this name game software companies play with the version numbers"

Sif software engineers are real engineers.

I like the way you think CooCooCaChoo.

I've always wondered, I wonder whether there are enough people who are willing to team up and produce a distro as outlined by my previous post? Maybe if a number of like minded people got together, we as a group could produce a premium Linux distribution?

I don't have the skill set needed to work on a distro yet, but I do know what I would like to see in a distro.

It is like why charge customers for something that has no competitive advantage. You try distro to distro, they are all practically the same thing. Yawn.

I think $143 dollars is a reasonable price, considering the bundled software. Acronis Partition Expert may not be reliable (personally, I use it and like it), but it's not free; ATOK X is significantly better than Canna, but runs a cool ichi man en ($80 give or take) when purchased separately; Star office is also not cheap. The Desktop version also comes with better support, printed manuals, and two additional source CDs. The basic version has none of this and is a much more reasonable 3,980 yen (~$35). 15,800 Yen is not too different from what Red Hat 9.0 Professional costs over here as well; I've seen it in stores from Y13,000-16,000.

I don't have the skill set needed to work on a distro yet, but I do know what I would like to see in a distro.

It is like why charge customers for something that has no competitive advantage. You try distro to distro, they are all practically the same thing. Yawn.

By using X-Accelerate/Summit, when people use their desktops they (end user) will find the responsiveness and 3d games perform alot better. I think also that by using a commercial X server the comments that "X11 is slow" can finally be put to rest.

By using X-Accelerate/Summit, when people use their desktops they (end user) will find the responsiveness and 3d games perform alot better. I think also that by using a commercial X server the comments that "X11 is slow" can finally be put to rest.

But can't a person purchase such an X server to run on Linux.

Also where are some benchmarks of what your saying. I always thought it had to do with the kernel scheduler that caused the problems we are currently encountering.

But can't a person purchase such an X server to run on Linux.

A distro that includes it as the default X server will mean that the end user will get it at a discount. When you have the whole distro for $150 and the various parts, when bought seperately adding up to over $250-$300, it would be a great incentive to the customer to buy your distro.

Also where are some benchmarks of what your saying. I always thought it had to do with the kernel scheduler that caused the problems we are currently encountering.

That is only a very small part of the problem, the other part is the crap driver/HW support.

Regarding the benchmarks query. This is a little crusty, however, it is a good example of the difference in speed:

http://www.xig.com/Pages/Benchmarks/CardBENCHMARKS-ATI.html

This is a more recent benchmark result, which gives a fair indication of the difference when a quality driver is used:

http://www.xig.com/Pages/Atop/SummitBenchmarks-CARDS.html

As you can see, even using XFree86 4.3.0 + Summit 2.2 drivers produce stunning results, with Accelerated-X, the performance is even better.