Linked by Tarun Agnani on Thu 5th Aug 2004 18:45 UTC
Yoper Linux V2 was released a few weeks ago (July 13, 2004). After reading the release announcement on Yoper's website, I decided I had to try it. Yoper claims that version V2 "is the fastest Out-of-the-Box Linux system in the World".
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I just spent a couple of hours grabbing the ISO and installing Yoper, again. Contrary to my experience cited in an earlier post, it did boot successfully this time.
However, it will not stay on my machine.
To emphasize the original review's criticism of the installation routine, it is both too simplistic for a knowledgable user and too cryptic for a novice. In particular, Yoper frequently eliminates install options, yet compels the user to run through less-than-obvious dialogues to select the only available option. If there is only one option, there is no reason to ask the user to make a choice.
First, the first screen that appears after booting the CD is a Yoper logo and a "boot:" prompt. This screen should tell the user -- novice or expert -- what to do next. It does not. If only one action can be taken, then this screen should not appear and the action should be taken automatically.
This also applies to the screen that appears if you enter "Return" at the previous screen. You are told to enter "yoper" to start the install. No other options are mentioned. This is bad design. If other options are available, this screen should say so, otherwise it should never appear.
Dumping the user into cfdisk to partion a drive is clearly inappropriate for a novice, and not ideal for an expert who is frustrated by cfdisk's limitations. Since Yoper limits itself to a large root partition and a swap partition, this partitioning step should be handled automatically.
If the default reiserfs file system is selected, the raw filesystem construction dialogue is displayed and waits for the user to enter "yes". This kind of cryptic request should never be displayed to a novice. It is also unnecessary to show it to an expert, since the filesystem type has already been selected.
The package selection menu offer two choices, one is numbered as "0001" and the other as "0003". This kind of sloppiness does not build confidence in that distribution's attention to detail.
I use an Nvidia-based card and a basic 3-button ps/2 mouse which are succcessfully configured via Sax2 in SUSE 9.1. Yoper's install detected the Nvidia, but not the mouse. In fact, it detected no mouse. It did not boot to X. When I ran Sax2 manually, no mouse was detected, the mouse cursor did not move, and I had to use the cumbersome tab key to attempt to configure a mouse. This was unsuccessful.
I resorted to using xf86config to build a working, vesa-based, xf86config file. Both X and Sax2 would run after that, but it failed to detect the nvidia (I had to look up the card's PCI device ID to install it correctly), did not detect my LCD monitor, and never correctly configured the mouse wheel.
And, finally, the timezone dialogue during the install did not give me an option to tell it my machine uses GMT time, and, as a result, insisted upon misconfiguring itself.
Once launched, my intial impression is that the display quality is acceptable, but not outstanding. Windows do not move smoothly on the screen. Initial attempts to run Mozilla (which is not listed in the menu system) are confounded by an unnecessary profile dialogue that indicates a default profile is available and then claims it cannot find it.
In comparison to the distribution it replaced -- MunjoyLinux -- Yoper's install is broken; it's display is second rate, and it's speed is noticeably slower. Other folks have apparently had different experiences, but I have to conclude that this particular pie needs to go back into the oven.