This is the second in my series of reviews for debian-based commercial distros that might be appropriate for SOHO use. The first article covered my exploration of Lindows, and this one is focused on Libranet. Before I get started with Libranet I want to clarify a couple of points.
Some of the feedback from my first article took me to task for being biased and subjective. Well, this true. I am both biased and subjective. I am NOT exploring these distros in order to make a recommendation to my boss. I am not grading them on any industrial rating scale. I simply decided that I am going to settle on a debian-based commercial distro for my own SOHO use, and these articles document my misadventures along that quest.
Sometimes an expert opinion is not worth much. Remember that experts are: a) human, therefore fallible, and b) each equipped with their own personal set of blinders. So except in cases involving medical or legal advice I tend to follow my gut. I have had better results that way. But that is just my opinion, and I am not an expert.
Read these for entertainment value if you can find any. Or perhaps read them for the insight that they might provide into the mindset of a mid-range consumer. I am trying to dig past the hype and come to a supportable conclusion on the best commercial product for my personal use. I don’t mean to present any distro as being better or worse. I am only looking for the one particular distro that fits me, my hardware, work style and personal preferences the best. So yes, these articles are entirely biased and unfair, if you judge them by the standards of your typical software review. But to me, the subjective points are the ones that really matter. I am not just looking for something that I can make do with. I am hoping to find something that I can actively enjoy using for the forseeable future.
I am not trying to be fair to the companies. I am trying to be fair to myself. I want to avoid knocking myself out of a possible benefit because I failed to check something out thoroughly enough. So I am digging and poking, and then reporting what I find, warts and all. These companies are each openly competing in the marketplace where fairness doesn’t enter into it. Ruthless, backstabbing treachery is more likely to be the order of the day. If anyone’s feelings get hurt from simply reading my honest opinion, then their competition will find them easy meat. I don’t mean to be harsh, but I am not worried about being nice. Honest, yes. Careful, yes. Nice, no.
Next Victim…Libranet
(Hardware note: Main system = P3 1 gig, 384 meg RAM, 56K USR internal faxmodem, onboard i810 video disabled in BIOS, 32 meg Radeon 7200 PCI video card, noisy cooling fan and assorted dust bunnies. Secondary system = P3 450, 128 meg RAM, 4 meg ATI Rage agp, Lucent winmodem.)
Those Canadians are making us look bad again. I don’t know if they do it on purpose or not, but they surely do it. Wasn’t it embarrassing enough that we had to go north of the border just to get a robot arm for our own space shuttle? Now there’s Libranet. At least we still have the edge on fried chicken. Maybe it all evens out.
I sent an email to Libranet explaining what I was doing and asking them for an evaluation copy. Within two days they responded with an invitation to download their current release, which is 2.8.1. I made haste to locate someone with a broadband connection and, after some truly shameless groveling, I got my two CDs.
When I get a new distro my first objective is to find something wrong with it. For is it not written that, “If nothing’s wrong, you obviously missed something”? I nailed Libranet off the bat because it suffered the same difficulty that Lindows had with my main desktop. Namely, failure to recognize my video card. Unlike Lindows however, Libranet offered me the option of installing the vesa driver instead, which let me complete the installation. Once installed, I was able to cut and paste my standard one-size-fits-all version of the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file.
Let me inject an explanation about this, because this is the kind of workaround that we non-programmer types have to come up with when our techie cohorts get tired of messing with us. I have a standard configuration file (originally auto-generated by Knoppix) that fits my hardware perfectly. So rather than mess around with tinkering on each new distro I keep a copy of my stock file at hand. Whenever any distro has trouble with my video, wheelmouse, monitor or whatever I drag out old faithful and everything falls into place. Please note that Knoppix, a free distro, had no difficulty finding and setting up my hardware automatically on first booting. If Knoppix can do it, then I am not going to let the commercial distros off the hook.
This is how it works in the open market folks. As soon as your competition offers something, you better be prepared to offer it too, if you want to keep your market share; even if you are competing with free. Just ask Microsoft if you don’t believe me.
So Libranet gets a -1 for failure to recognize my main desktop’s video. (I am not trying to weight these points, I merely use them as markers. Maybe I should have used “pro” and “con” instead, but I am already started off with this approach.)
On my secondary system, Libranet refused to install at all. This was disconcerting. I had previously installed Libranet’s free download edition (2.7) on this system with no problems of any kind. So I did what any reasonable, non-programmer, end user/consumer would do. I screamed bloody murder. More specifically, I emailed Libranet’s technical support. This was on a Saturday evening. After sending the email I went looking on the Libranet web site for answers. I ran a brief search of the forums and found a description of my specific problem, tried it out and got the thing working. So I give Libranet a +1 for maintaining a useful database of solutions that actually fixed my problem. They get another +1 for having an excellent user forum. Just as I said about Lindows, I also say about Libranet. Any company that can inspire this kind of loyal following deserves credit for doing something right. However, the fact remains that this was a known issue that was still in place on their latest release. Give them -1 for that.
Score so far is -1 -1 +1 +1 = 0. And then the following Monday, the first business day after my Saturday email, I received a reply from a Libranet tech describing the very solution I had already found. Their reply also encouraged me to let them know if it did not work so they could come up with something else. That is about as responsive as technical support can get. Big +1 for that speedy turnaround.
Score now 0 +1 = +1.
Regarding my infamous modems, Libranet was the mirror image of Lindows. Whereas Lindows missed my USR modem but setup my Lucent winmodem, Libranet spotted my USR modem but missed my winmodem. It was enough to make me sigh. Libranet does provide a convenient link on their website for downloading the Lucent drivers and step by step instruction for installing them, which worked flawlessly. But still…..all right. They did make it a no brainer to fix, and I did let Lindows slide on the modem issue. I guess I just have atypical and difficult modems.
After all, how many people out there on the net are using such weird hardware as a USR internal faxmodem and a Lucent winmodem? Rare and peculiar items no doubt, given the trouble I have had with finding a distro that can recognize both of them. Give Libranet a +1 for recognizing one of my modems, just the same as I gave Lindows. Score is now +1 +1 = +2.
Lets talk about using this thing now. In practical terms Libranet = debian + adminmenu. That’s about it. Except…first of all the software that comes with Libranet actually works as soon as you install it. I also love the way they integrated Xscreensaver into the KDE screensaver utility. Little touches like that make the difference between sloppy and professional. Give them a +1 for thorough integration of the bundled packages.
Score now at +2 +1 = +3.
The adminmenu is a problem for me. How do I rate this thing? Do I give them a single plus point for having it? Or should I break it out into the individual utilities that are included with it? Decisions, decisions.
I am not a geek. Let this be known to all. But to give a clear picture of just how much joy this adminmenu can bring, let me tell you something. One of the first things I (the non-geek technical writer) did after installing Libranet was to jump onto the adminmenu and recompile my kernel. Not because I needed to. Because it was fun. Libranet has taken one of the most hair ripping experiences that an end user can possibly endure and turned it into a playful pass-time. I would have needed to recompile the kernel on my secondary system anyway in order to install the Lucent drivers. But I did it just for the fun of it. On both systems. Because I enjoyed it.
No doubt because of licensing issues, Libranet does not come equipped with RealPlayer, Flash, True-Type fonts, etc. The adminmenu takes care of that. One click, go get some coffee, and they are installed. No pain.
Networking wizard? Flawless. Internet dialer? Flawless. Mozilla? Office software? Games? All flawless. I could not get wine to work right, but I never have been able to get wine to work right anyway.
I will split the difference. Give them a +1 for the kernel utility, a -1 for not including some standard plugins and packages, but then a +1 for making it easy for me to do that part myself.
Confused? Don’t worry, I got used to it, so can you. Current score now is +3 +1 -1 +1 = +4. Not half bad so far.
Speaking of games, I noticed something else. Although Libranet did not initially recognize my video on the main system, once I got it configured using my stock configuration file I was blown away. Glxgears reported an approximate 20% increase in fps over any other distro I have tried on that system. This includes non-debian systems I have tried in the past. I have no idea why Libranet is 20% faster. I really don’t care why, to tell the truth. I just smile, give them another +1, and go on with my life. Score now +4 +1 = +5.
If I don’t find something else wrong pretty soon, people are going to accuse me of being a stealth employee of Libranet. And I really ain’t. But I have to mention the window managers. Libranet, as all know, defaults to IceWM. I had never tried this one before and was pleasantly surprised. Since the GDM login presents you with a selection to choose from, I started going down the list and trying them all, one at a time. I eventually defaulted back to KDE as my favorite, but I feel compelled to give Libranet a +1 for expanding my horizons. If they had not made the default something other than KDE or Gnome, I probably would never have bothered to check them out.
Fact is, from my point of view as an end user it looks to me like each new incarnation of KDE or Gnome results in a 0.05% increase in usability at the price of a 50% increase in RAM requirements. That’s an exageration, but not a huge one. I have encountered many Linux advocates who sneer at the legendary Microsoft “upgrade treadmill” but the truth is that Linux is not far behind. In terms of practical benefit I could get my real work done on my 7 year old’s PII-266. But then I couldn’t play Tuxracer, or Q3. I like the way Libranet defaults to a less RAM hungy desktop. I use KDE, but I know that I *could* use Libranet with IceWM on that PII-266 if I had to.
Score now +5 +1 = +6. Obviously, I am missing something. This is too high.
Fortunately my secondary system was kind enough to rescue me from potential accusations of favoritism. Somehow, for no particular reason, I stopped being able to boot up. I used it as normal for several days, and then catastrophe and mayhem struck. Everything began booting as normal until it started to load Grub. At this point it just sat there grinding my hard drive with no further progess. Not good at all. It had never done this before and I feared for my hard drive. I shut down and tried again, and again. Same thing every time. So why didn’t I yell for Libranet Technical Support this time? Because I am an idiot. Because it did not occur to me at first. The installation issues on the secondary box were no big deal, so that did not upset me. However THIS problem with my secondary system got me rattled, and I acted by reflex. For so many years I have gotten used to fixing things myself that I am conditioned not to ask for help until all other options are exhausted. By the time it came to me that Libranet might have a solution, I had already taken direct action. Besides, my ignorance of the nuts and bolts of boot managers is profound. Even if someone had tried to walk me through a cure, odds are that I would have done more damage than good.
I am not biased against Libranet. Quite the contrary, up until this point I was absolutely delighted. To make my disappointment even worse, I had previously used the free download edition of Libranet (2.7) on this system with no problems of any kind. For Libranet 2.8.1 to do this made me feel betrayed, however illogical that sounds. I felt rather like a puppy whose favorite chew toy had been snatched away. I was woefully chagrined. The only changes I had made to the stock installation was using adminmenu to recompile my kernel optimized for a P3, and then installing the Lucent winmodem drivers in strict accordance with instructions. I had been a good little user and did what they told me to do. Everything had appeared to be working fine for several days. Then WHAM!
I checked out the system using Knoppix as a rescue disk, then checked it out again using LindowsCD as a rescue disk. I was nervous about digging too deeply into the guts of the Master Boot Record, and too ignorant to really adjust Grub manually anyway. I could find nothing else wrong. My files were still intact and no data was lost. Plainly Grub had somehow become corrupted, but I had never seen it happen before on any of the other distros I had installed on this machine. I could have tried booting with a floppy, but I no longer trusted that installation and I wiped it off. Sorry folks, but I am an ignorant non-geek. What else could I do?
I shrugged and reinstalled Lindows 4.0 on my secondary system, where it is now happily chugging along like a brand new computer. I have no idea what happened. It has never occurred before with any distro. Clueless. Give Libranet a -1 for trying to eat my hard drive. IF I were weighting these points, which I am not, this would be one heavy duty demerit. I DON’T LIKE it when operating systems try to eat my hard drive. It upsets me. It threatens to disturb my usually saintly disposition.
But I am not weighting the points, so the score is +6 -1 = +5.
Meanwhile, back at the main box, I was engaged in an ongoing struggle to find something else to complain about. Wasn’t having much luck either. Once I had gotten it installed, and the video setup straightened out, nothing else had caused any problem of any kind on my main system. So I thought I would try something dangerous. Libranet claims that it is 100%, no holds barred, smack dab on target compatible with debian. I decided to test that, so I opened a console and did the apt-get update, apt-get install, apt-get upgrade thing. Left it on all night and went to bed.
Next morning I rebooted into my up to date Sarge system. Adminmenu still worked. Everything still worked. No dependency conflicts of any kind. (sigh) Another +1 for doing what they claimed to do. I gave Lindows credit for keeping their word, I have to give Libranet credit for it. If software companies get into the habit of following through on their advertising claims, there is no telling what might happen. We consumers might even start expecting such things, which could be catastrophic for the industry.
Score now +5 +1 = +6 again. And I am going to take off another point for forcing me to install a different operating system on my secondary computer. The first negative point was for trying to eat my hard drive, and this one is for making me go to the trouble of wiping and starting over. I am still unhappy about that one. Score +6 -1 = +5. Maybe a geek would have been able to salvage it. I could not. And I reiterate, the feisty horde of commercial Linux advocates are swearing a blue streak that commercial Linux is ready for the non-geek. So if it takes a geek to fix it…..well. Libranet gave this copy to me for evaluation and I deeply appreciate it. But if I had paid for it and this happened, the result would not have been pretty. Or polite either.
Music CDs played as expected, but Libranet did not read the playlist on my ancient oddball test CD. That means a -1, because Lindows DID read it. Remember, if one distro can do it then all distros are required to do it to maintain market share. This is the reality of capitalism. Like it or lump it. To compete, you have to be better than the competition. And the little details matter very much folks. In fact, the little details can make or break you. They are important. Just as good is not good enough. Score is now +5 -1 = +4.
Libranet recognized that cheap little IBM webcam instantly. Within a few minutes I was snapping still photos and burning my own little film production. That was all I wanted to know. No points either way for doing what they were supposed to do. Or rather, this is covered under the point that I already gave them earlier. It also recognized my 4 port usb hub without difficulty.
I have never tried a debian box yet that wasn’t smooth, powerful and fast. Libranet is no exception. Everything worked as far as usability, but with a slight increase in speed. I am sure this is not a fluke or my imagination, Libranet is faster than Lindows on the same box. Programs load a hair faster, the mouse is a touch more responsive. Probably due to the fact that Libranet 2.8.1 uses XFree86 4.3. So now what do I do? I took a point away from Lindows for still using 4.2. Should I give one to Libranet? No, because 4.3 is the current version and therefore the de facto standard that every other distro must meet. Sorry folks. Remember what I said earlier about ruthless competition? No score.
I have been asked by readers to go into more depth about applications, but there really isn’t much to say. OpenOffice performs the same on Libranet as it did on Lindows. Same for Mozilla. I am using essentially the very same applications from one distro to another, and all of them are ultimately based on debian. So far, I am not detecting any noticeable differences in application performance, other than the speed increase I mentioned. If I see any down the road, I will certainly mention it.
At this point, I am trying to nail down the best overall OS. Applications come later. By using debian I always can be sure that my standard apps will work, so I am not overly worried about it right now. Once I get settled into a single OS, I will probably start ranting about individual apps. Truth is, a technical writer/illustrator doesn’t need much in the way of apps. OpenOffice, QCad, Mozilla, Gaim, a few games, any of several different music/video programs, and that is about it. I am still learning how to use Scribus and GIMP, but so far so good. Text, illustrations, figures, even charts and graphs, don’t put a lot of strain on a modern computer no matter what OS you run. Lately when I am doing straight text work, where I don’t need to worry about page layout or graphics, I have gotten attached to Gedit. Dunno why, I just like it.
Final score for Libranet = +4. Don’t fret, I will tabulate the results at the end of this series for folks that like charts, including a listing of how many +/- for each distro as well as the final total. I just don’t feel like dealing with it right now.
Ultimately Libranet either worked superlatively well, or it did not work at all. Last time I mentioned that Lindows was solid but boring. Actually, there is something to be said for boring, when your data depends on it. I am well aware that are any competent geek could probably have taken care of my Grub problems on the secondary computer without needing to reinstall. However, I could not. In addition to everything else, I am also my own IT department. I need to use tools and systems that I can cope with unassisted if need be. So just because someone else could probably have fixed doesn’t help me. I need to use things that *I* know how to fix.
Libranet is a superb system in many ways. I am just wondering if I am smart enough to handle it.
Next Victim…..Either Xandros or Mepis, whichever gets delivered first. Stay tuned.
He should have asked for help on his secondary system. It’s highly probable that his GRUB error is hardware-related and not Libranet’s fault. I have never had GRUB crap out on me like LILO has.
Any plans to review Xandros? Their new version is scheduled to be available on December 9th. They even plan on having a 30 free-trial version.
Xandros 2 is supposed to be even better than this. I hope Eugenia can get an early copy.
The subjective ratings and the subsequent justification – “it’s my computer, so my rating system,” make this article thoroughly ungeneralizable. This isn’t a “review” – it’s a journal of one person’s very specific experience. While that doesn’t make it a bad article, or even a bad read, it does make it pretty irrelevant for me, because his problems are so system-specific that it doesn’t tell me anything about the distro that I care to know.
Honestly, the only people that might find this interesting are those who have done their own shootouts or those who have the exact same hardware. Otherwise, little here may apply to you.
If a group of people were all testing out the same stuff on the same hardware, then the subjective ratings would be interesting. In fact, I’d LOVE to see *that* piece.
If one does not make any software changes and all of a sudden the software does not work, it is more than likely NOT the fault of the software! Normally I wouldn’t defend GRUB (as I’ve had problems myself), but when it comes to Libranet, I have no choice. While I don’t use it now, I have to admit that it’s one of the most pleasant and usable distros in existence. But that’s irrelevant… the rest of the review after this folly is filled with feelings of distrust and distaste for a company that did everything RIGHT!
-Mark
Its interesting that most linux reviews and even linux books, right back to the old days, start and end with the installation and installation problems. Most linux “power users” I know change distro’s more often than they change their underwear, which I guess makes the “installation review” worthwhile.
at least in the Fedora setup.
Mark Brophy Wrote:
“If one does not make any software changes and all of a sudden the software does not work, it is more than likely NOT the fault of the software! Normally I wouldn’t defend GRUB (as I’ve had problems myself), but when it comes to Libranet, I have no choice. While I don’t use it now, I have to admit that it’s one of the most pleasant and usable distros in existence. But that’s irrelevant… the rest of the review after this folly is filled with feelings of distrust and distaste for a company that did everything RIGHT!
-Mark”
Mark,
Apparently I touched a nerve. Do you dispute the accuracy of my report? DO you think I am lying? Or is it simple resentment because I dared to say something less than complimentary about Libranet? You stated that you have had problems with Grub yourself, did you not?
BTW, if you believe that LIbranet did everything right, why are you no longer using it?
I like many things about Libranet. I never said, nor did I imply, that I disliked or distrusted Libranet. I said that I distrusted that particular installation and therefore removed it. I also said that I might have received help from Libranet, had I asked. This assumes that I would have been capable of understanding the solution had they offered one.
All I know is that I had previously installed Libranet 2.7, RedHat 7.3, 8.0 & 9.0, Mandrake 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 9.0 & 9.1, Knoppix 3.2 HD install, Lycoris Rel. 2 & 3, Morphix (various) on that same system with the same hardware and never had any problems at all. I also know that I replaced Libranet 2.8.1 on that system with Lindows 4.0 and I had no additional trouble. I am currently using Mepis on that system, and there has been no sign of any problems.
So if it was a hardware issue, it must have been a hardware issue that apeared out of nowhere without warning, and then fixed itself when I wasn’t looking, because there is no evidence of any trouble now.
I also stated, repeatedly, that it is quite possible one of you knowledgeable types could have fixed it, but I couldn’t fix it.
When you are in a high mountain forest, sitting under a tree with a broken leg, it doesn’t offer much comfort to reflect that a doctor could fix things easily. If you are on your own, then you need to be able to cope with it yourself. When I am on my own with my systems, I need to be able to fix them myself.
And I do not have the luxury of deep cash reserves or a dozen backup systems to draw upon, unlike large enterprises.
B. Smith
It’s quite possible that the issue hasn’t gone away. It may resurface in a few weeks’ time with Lindows since it didn’t show up immediately w/Libranet.
Or it might be possible that you messed it up by doing blind apt-get updates.
I think these reviews have been very good. Who cares about the ratings or “subjective” nature of them. I know I don’t. I looked at the comments on the last story and saw so many dumb remarks about the +1 and -1 that I could not read them. I hope no one takes the same stace with this article as it is obviously not meant to do anything other than what it does! What that means is your subjective opinion about the review is just as valid as the review itself. On a side note, I really love libranet and run it on all my systems. The minimal install is really great for getting a debian system up with out the hassle of messing with X (I know rtfm). Good job with the review and good job to the Libranet team.
I’d have to disagree with you on that, I do system tweaks often (write my own scripts for things) and modify an existing distro then switching. When I first started using linux I did switch distro’s often.
I’d have to disagree with you on that, I do system tweaks often (write my own scripts for things) and modify an existing distro then switching. When I first started using linux I did switch distro’s often.
Bob wrote:
“It’s quite possible that the issue hasn’t gone away. It may resurface in a few weeks’ time with Lindows since it didn’t show up immediately w/Libranet.
Or it might be possible that you messed it up by doing blind apt-get updates.”
Either one is possible. I am not qualified to guess. I am as clueless now as when it happened. BTW, I did not apt-get update this system, I updated the main desktop system, which worked without any problems. In fact, Libranet is still installed on that one and working fine. That was what got me, I had not done anything to the secondary system except recompile my kernel with adminmenu, and install the Lucent drivers in accord with step by step instructions.
B. Smith
I’ve had odd GRUB problems myself, and much prefer LILO since it has never failed for me. I doubt Lindows will have a major boot problem since there is no easy way to mess with its kernel and it uses LILO. I’m just stating my experience. However, I’ve even had WindowsXP stop booting for no reason, one of the reasons I stopped using it actually.
sounds like a hardware problem.
grub once installed and working (and several reboots later it’s still working) should keep working.
no magical reason for it to corrupt or get screwed up.
has to be hardware.
or at least the probability is very high
funny read…scientific method (or lack of it) gets a -1
entertainment value gets a +1
creative verbage gets +1
-1+1+1=1
😉
I like the review style. It reads much like Steidler’s reviews for lockergnome used to, though his (not picking!) used a more scientific/weighted evaluation. However, since I’ve agreed with most of what you said it doesn’t bother me. I’m not going into these reviews expecting you to show me the distro I should use…I’ve already tried most of the major ones. Still can’t pick one over the myrid of problems I’ve encountered.
Anybody who thinks that KDE and GNOME are taking up too much ressources but likes to have a pretty and useable DE should check out XFce 4.0.1 (xfce.org)
It rules, it rules and it rules.
I am not sure about the style of writing. It gets the job done, I guess.
However, this kind of review is exactly what I want to read about Linux. I have played with Linux several times, and use it regularly as part of my work. But not a single distro quite made it as my permanent OS. I want an OS that just works. This kind of review is good because I really don’t care which kernel I am running or whether it is KDE or Gnome or the like – I just want something that works out of the box, and allows me to add and remove stuff like I see fit.
From what I’ve been reading, Libranet and SUSE 9 are close to what I want. Mepis is one distro I am keeping an eye on, and can’t wait for this series to review it
Anyone who thinks XFCE4 is too much should check out ROX-Filer and their favorite lite window manager. It runs circles around XFCE and looks even nicer.
It sounds to me that his kernel recompile overwrote his /boot/grub/menu.lst file with some bogus information.
I mentioned this on the other review of Libranet, but I’ll mention it again. Libranet does not just = Debian + adminmenu. Libranet’s most important features are its install program (which may become irrelevant with the development of d-i for sarge and/or Progeny’s anaconda for Debian, but still works MUCH better than boot-floppies); its custom-compilation of major packages (for example, Galeon, Evolution, XFree86 4.3, which, although it may be the “de facto standard” for the non-geek reviewer, is _not_ the “de facto standard” for Debian (neither stable, nor testing, nor unstable) which is still hovering around 4.2.1); its good selection of software on two CDs (or one for 2.7) which is important considering the entire Debian archive is requiring DVDs lately, what with more than 8000 packages (that might be a low estimate, but bla); it’s _true_ compatability with the Debian archive (I upgraded to sid without a problem, and pinning works relatively flawlessly for most Libra users who know how to set it up); its maintainence of a repository with more custom packages available in between Libra releases; its support database, web forum, mailing list, and direct e-mail support; and finally, adminmenu 😉
Plus, I want to mention that Jon and Tal announced recently on the Libra newsletter that 3.0, which is in development now, will include an ever-improved repository with more custom-compiled packages and better compatability to “official” sarge and sid…
Good review anyway
I think these reviews are good. I like the way he reviews the distros from a non-geek perspective.
I think it’s funny how people often select the distro that works best with the hardware they are using. What is better is how people just kind of accept this. The majority of the distros I install fail to install the correct soundcard drivers for both my primary and secondary box. It seems like about every other mandrake realease has my sound card working by the end of the install and that distro seems to have the least problems with my hardware. I am not using non-standard hardware either, it is just the way it is.
That was another awsome review
Im enjoying this series very much… Also, about you’r grup problem… Why do computers suddenly decided tos top working?
I tried to boot up my debian woody system today, and lilo complained about a descriptor checksum error. Why? I wasnt hard to fix, “fdisk /mbr” in msdos and “lilo -b /dev/hda” in liux and i was ready to go… But its weird when you dont do anything to you’r machine that could currupt anything, i didnt update anything, everything should have been fine, and i shutdown in the normal manner :} Weird!
This review was somewhat better than the Lindows one, but it suffers from many of the same problems, I will list the top 3 most annoying ones.
1. Irrelevant rating system, the ratings are very specific and do not judge the overall dissapointment or pleasure of a feature. As Barry said they are either +1 or -1 for a specific feature it can’t be +3 for something really great or -5 for something horrendus. For example, he only took of 1 point for the video card problem, this is quite significant and no newbie should be expected to fix this on their own, this should be -3 at least. Also a really cool feature should get more points too.
And furthermore it is still very much just “lala one point here and one point there tralalala”
For example
” And I am going to take off another point for forcing me to install a different operating system on my secondary computer. The first negative point was for trying to eat my hard drive, and this one is for making me go to the trouble of wiping and starting over. I am still unhappy about that one.”
Okay, this really makes no sense, he has taken a point off already for this issue and installing another OS because of his problem IS THE SAME ISSUE, so if he goes by what he said and provides equal weight to everything, it should remain -1 for that problem.
“Libranet, as all know, defaults to IceWM. I had never tried this one before and was pleasantly surprised. Since the GDM login presents you with a selection to choose from, I started going down the list and trying them all, one at a time. I eventually defaulted back to KDE as my favorite, but I feel compelled to give Libranet a +1 for expanding my horizons. If they had not made the default something other than KDE or Gnome, I probably would never have bothered to check them out.”
In all respect DEFAULTING to ICEWM should have been a -1 rather than a plus. What newbie wants to get stuck in an odd environment like that when there is GNOME and KDE? In fact I think that distributions should go for best of breed and integration ,not quantity. Only one desktop should be included with a DEFAULT install, but that desktop should be very well integrated. Normal computer users want to get their work done not play around with different desktops, that is just a waste of time and frankly I’ve lost a few Linux users that way. Too many choices, they just want an integrated system with the best of the breed.
2. No screenshots!!!
3. Not very well organized. It would be great if the article was split into sections like “Installation” “Administrative Utilities”, “Applications”, “Integration”, “Support” “Company” etc. Also it would help if even in the current format he wouldn’t pretend he is done with an issue than revive it later in an unrelated context for example the GRUB issue.
For all the “It’s not the software’s fault for the harddrive issue, YOUR WRONG.
If Lindows works fine on that system, than guess who’s fault it is. Not evena power failure should cause this in a modern system.
“Next Victim…..Either Xandros or Mepis, whichever gets delivered first. Stay tuned.”
What do you mean, whichever gets delivered first? MEMPIS’s latest version HASN’T EVEN BEEN OUT FOR A FULL WEEK! What exactly are you waiting for when it comes to MEMPIS?
Are you waiting for the next version which will probably be in 3-6 months? Or are you waiting for the MINOR update to MEMPIS, that is going to be released on December 3rd.
If your waiting for 2003.10.01 than it will definitely get released ahead of Xandros. Xandros Desktop 2.0 should be released on the 9th of this month and MEMPIS 2003.10.01 should be out on the 3rd of this month.
Can you please clarify?
Interesting review, good grist for the mill. Libranet is, IMHO, one of a number of very good distros out there. I also feel that the subjective viewpoint of the reviewer is perfectly valid.
That said, I have problems with this review, which I shall put as if speaking to its author:
When GRUB filed on one of your computers, a very serious problem surfaced. You say you were in the position of someone who is off the other side of the black stump with a broken leg, and you had to take care of yourself without medical help. That is simply not true, now is it?
In fact you were able to contact Libranet on your other box, get a response of some sort from them, and do some searches of posts on the ‘net to see whether your problem had already been reported. Heaven knows, I would have gotten to another box somewhere and done all that — because a GRUB failure is a serious concern that I want to prevent if possible!!
As your review makes clear, you encountered another problem before the GRUB mess came up, and you immediately contacted Libranet for help AND then looked for and found a specific cure already posted. You investigated. That’s the way to do it; that’s the way a real user does things when he has a problem with a new distro.
And what did you get for your trouble? Plenty of help. Information.
How come you did this with the first problem, but not with the second?
It is clear that you did not deal with Libranet’s new version as if you planned to use it; folks who look at a new distro that way fix it and try to make the fix permanent. Your intent, obviously, was to fix things without bothering to try to prevent more trouble down the road, and then toss the distro out. That’s very abnormal behavior, nothing like what I do when I put a new distro to work for me.
As things stand, we are left with nothing to explain the GRUB failure. We can’t even say, “Well, we don’t know, even though we tried to find out.”
If I’m hit once with a GRUB failure, I darn sure won’t just reinstall and forget about it. Sure, there are some gremlins that hit the apps that must run in a GUI from time to time, but they are not serious, so I just cuss them and fix as needed. I expect the very occasional quirk there; these are just minor irritations, and highly infrequent. But a GRUB failure?? Cripes, NO!!
Yet you dismiss it as uninteresting, not fundamental, not anything to look into, not something that must be prevented. Sheeeesh…..
We are left wondering what happened and whether it might happen to us, if we try Libranet. So we can only speculate. Question raised, question not delved into. Big hole.
As a reviewer, don’t you have a responsibility to shed light, if possible, on whatever murky, seriously troublesome situations arise? “No?” Well, OK…. Your call.
So: Interesting, +1. Failure to follow through as a real user would, -1. Failure to provide as much required information as realistically possible, -1. Score: -1.
Maybe now you would like to “weight” those points <g>.
>… Mepis is one distro I am keeping an eye on, and can’t wait for this series to review it
————————————————–
I’ve been running the last release of Mepis (2003.8 ??) for a couple of months now, on an Athlon XP 2400+ system with an ECS motherboard,512 MB DDR, an AGP GeForce Vanta video card, and the usual IDE hard drives and optical drives.
My impressions of Mepis are mixed. On the plus side, the install was easy, and resulted quickly in a working system. I found no broken programs, which is quite a testament considering that this is a brand new distro. Adding Debian apt-get sources and updating various programs to debian unstable also went smoothly. I was able to add programs like flac (lossless alternative to things like mp3 and ogg), quicktime decoders for Mplayer, etc, without any fuss.
On the minus side, Mepis seems awfully slow on my system – it feels rather a lot like Knoppix running from the CD, which is rather surprising since it’s running from an ATA 133 IDE hard drive. Also I recently added a big (200 GB) WD hard drive with its Promise PCI controller card to my system, and while Mepis finds the Promise controller and big drive, it seems to be unable to create or read a partition table on it. I was able to mount and partition the drive (two Reiserfs partitions) using Knoppix 3.3, but on reboot Mepis is still unhappy with the big drive and won’t read or write to it. This is true even if I make both partitions smaller than the 137 GB limit I’m told some BIOS’es have. (Note: I’m a long, long way from Linux guru status, so I have no idea why Mepis has more trouble with the big drive than Knoppix 3.3).
I would say Mepis is definitely off to a great start for a new distro, and I may try the newest release when I get the chance.
Meantime, frustrated by the slowness of my old Mepis install, I just wiped it today and started to install Gentoo instead. I guess I’ll know in a couple of weeks whether I like Gentoo, assuming I get through the entire install/compile process. I’m building from a stage-1 tarball, so there will be many days worth of compilation ahead of me…
I really liked this review. I’ve also been trying Linux distros lately to find one that fits my needs. I recently bought and installed Libranet and installed it next to Fedora Core on one of my computers (2 GHz Celeron, 256 MB, NVidia GeForce 4MX). I liked Libranet — everything seemed to work well. However, programs launched much, much slower under Libranet than under Fedora Core. Does anyone know if recompiling the kernel for my CPU will bring Libranet on par speedwise with Fedora Core? Fedora is beautiful and fast, but has so many bugs that it isn’t really usable yet. Also, Libranet didn’t seem to want to work with the demo of Crossover Plugin that I downloaded. Anyone got this to work?
As for me, I’ve got my hopes up for Xandros 2. But if I could speed up Libranet and get it to work with Crossover Plugin, it would be a sweet system.
ROX-Filer works really well on Xfce4 and just as well on ICEWM. I just installed that combo on a P2-350 laptop and it was nice and snappy.
I just received it about 1/2 hour ago. I’m in Europe… seems they deliver quickly.
How interesting. I have also borrowed the Knoppix XF86Config file as the golden file and pull it into any distro that just cant quite do the same job. What is it about what knoppix is doing that nobody else can do?
This was a fun review to read. Being subjective is *fine* as long as the author states it in the article so it’s all up front, just like Barry did. It was an easy read, and not the same old stuff (that’s not an insult at all, *MY* review listed here on this same distribution was exactly that – the standard review stuff!). I really enjoyed reading this and think the author did a good job. He wrote in his own style, warned the reader exactly what he was doing, and did exactly that. Even if I disagree with some of his assessments, I am coming from a different viewpoint, so my opinions will be different. No surprise there. I think that this author’s article was a good read, gave his point of view well, and wasn’t the normal stuff.
Grub:
I’ve been booting off of grub for about 18 months now, and have never had a single problem. I’m on my second distribution on my main machine, and have tested probably 4 or 5 distributions over the past 2 years, and have never had a problem with grub. Just my experience, of course, but I thought I would mention it here.
Libranet:
I’ve used Libranet 2.8.1 before, and it’s a FINE distribution. It *absolutely* lives up to all the marketing and hype. The latest Libranet newsletter stated that 3.0 is on it’s way soon, and I’m excited to see what it has to offer. If you are looking for a distribution that is fast, stable and debian based, Libranet is the way to go, I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Thanks for the review, it was a good read.
Take care,
-Frank Merenda
Co-author uptime, a Linux web site – http://uptime.steidler.net
Lawrence wrote:
“As a reviewer, don’t you have a responsibility to shed light, if possible, on whatever murky, seriously troublesome situations arise? “No?” Well, OK…. Your call.
So: Interesting, +1. Failure to follow through as a real user would, -1. Failure to provide as much required information as realistically possible, -1. Score: -1.
Maybe now you would like to “weight” those points <g>.”
******************************************************
Excellent review on the reviewer.!
The failure to contact Libranet’s tech support, denotes a certain lackadaisical attitude on the reviewer’s part, while at the same time penalizing the distro in question. When reviewing Lindows, he penalized it, and correctly I may add, for being slow in answering or for the quality of the help, I can’t remember exactly, but it was fair. Here, he doesn’t even try to contact the Libranet’s tech support department.
I think the problem lies in the fact, that eventhough, he clarifies at the beginning of this review that he doesn’t care about all the zealots and narrow-minded users, that he will review it according to his needs as a technical writer,
this is not the case. As you read the review, you find a certain tendency to appease most of the crowd, the notion prevails that if he doesn’t find something definitely wrong with the distro, it would become a boring review. I speculate that, unbeknown to him, he is betraying his own ideals, he is being affected by the crowd.
I perceived he was under some kind of pressure to “find something wrong with Libranet” so as not to appear partial to Libranet, which is evidently a sword of two edges, because it defeats his purpose of being biased and worried about his own needs (which is fine with me and valid, because it makes the article interesting).
Part of the problem is that he didn’t have to pay for the distro. When a person pays $60 for a distro, and something like that happens, and you only have one box, you will call the tech support department in a jiffy, you will be pissed or worried as hell, I know most of us do.
Or would that have been too easy, and was this the way of “making it more interesting” by not finding the answer to this GRUB “bug”?
If the reviewer is a technical dummy as he states he is, who you gonna call? Ghostbusters??? No, the guys who sold you the software, that’s who!
So, stick to what your principles in reviewing are, and don’t worry about us, but be CONSISTENT.
thanks.
fb
LOL. Touche!
OK, I love getting feedback like this, because no one can improve without effective criticism. Since you were both polite, I will try to respond in kind.
Lawrence wrote:
“As a reviewer, don’t you have a responsibility to shed light, if possible, on whatever murky, seriously troublesome situations arise? “No?” Well, OK…. Your call.
So: Interesting, +1. Failure to follow through as a real user would, -1. Failure to provide as much required information as realistically possible, -1. Score: -1.
Maybe now you would like to “weight” those points <g>.”
Well, actually I did try to shed lightas much as I could. Failure to follow through as a real user would? I got the thing working again didn’t I?
Here’s where I am coming from. I spent twenty years using MS products, starting with DOS 2.somethingorother. Three years ago I got fed up, and I mean totally fed up, with MS and decided to try Linux.
I had NO previous experience with any non-MS system. I had NO training of any kind. Everything I know about Linux is self-taught. There was no one to help me, and what I got off mailing lists and forums basically amounted to “Go to this site, download this document, leave me alone” or if I was really lucky I got the equivalent of “Go the the library, or buy a book and RTFM you worthless newbie scum”.
As I look at my bookshelf I see 7 books about Linux, starting with Linux for dummies and ending with the RedHat Bible for Rel. 8.0.
In all fairness, I think tech dummy is a bit harsh. I kind of thought I was doing fairly well, considering that I started from ground zero three years ago, that I taught myself everything I know about Linux without any third party training of any kind. It is HARD to teach yourself the basics of a *nix operating system when you have only known MS all your adult life. It is not easy AT ALL.
When I had the trouble with my Grub installation, I panicked and reacted in the manner that 20 years of MS had conditioned me to react. I reformatted and reinstalled. It simply did not occur to me that I had an honest to goodness tech suport lifeline to call upon, because I had never had one before.
Such is life for a worthless, ignorant, annoying, dummy newbie. But I did get the sucker working again, even if I had to switch OS to do it.
Barry
Um, no, they are not necessarily wrong. This could be the result of a sector on the hard drive just starting to go bad. It could be a problem with the software. It could be a random occurence due to outside electromagnetic interference (including the possibility of plain vanilla static).
I have seen installs of just about every Microsoft OS and Linux maybe once or twice (I have dealt with a lower volume of Linux boxes) have a file become corrupted for no apparent reason whatsoever (admittedly with Win9x, it sometimes seems to very much be the fault of the OS, especially if the install is more than a year old), and then have a reinstall of the same OS work fine again for months until an explainable problem showed up, or have it work for a few days or a few weeks and then have the hard drive fail.
The fact is there is no way to be sure why this happened. It could be any of these causes, but without further testing and the passing of time, we have no way to say.
Now, I think Xandros2 is gonna rock your socks off my friend.
Anyone say “drag n drop cd burning from the file manager”?
How about “CrossoverOffice bundled with the Distro”?
Muahahah.
December 16th.
I have 6 linux partitions on 2 drives, I install a new distribution of linux every week or so to test it out. GRUB or LILO constantly get zapped. Here is what fixes it for me.
1. Boot from a live CD like Knoppix, Morphix, Mepis, or my current favorite PCLinuxOS 2K4 ( http://www.pclinuxonline.com )
2. Go to a root command prompt, by CTRL+ALT+F2, or selecting a root terminal session.
3. Mount or remount as read write the partition that is your linux systems root partition:
mount -o rw /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1
4. Go to chrooted enviroment, i.e. make your linux system use the drive we just mounted as our current “live” version of Linux:
chroot /mnt/hda1
5. Now we use GRUB to reinstall the bootloader back into the MBR of the hard drive:
grub-install /dev/hda
6. Reboot the system
Upon reboot (with the CD removed from the drive) grub should do it’s thing again