http://www.osnews.com/story/5499/Introducing_Lorma_Linux_4_0 Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:14:44 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? But what does it really offer over Fedora? Repackaging? I have heard a lot of excuses not to use Linux, like "My applications don't run on Linux" or "Linux is hard!" or "I don't want to learn a new OS!". However none of them is "There's just too much CDs!"

It won't sell... thankfully, you're non-profit. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 02:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Interesting read. Looks like Fedora is starting to spawn children.

It looks like an EXCELLENT distro for people who don't want to screw with figuring out which apps are the best.

-Erwos Wed, 24 Dec 2003 02:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Less bloat and it's optimized for i686 PC's or faster. I am going to give it try and see if I like it. Hopefully they'll have plenty of packages setup in their mirrors.


P.S. They seem to based out of the Philippines. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 02:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? It's like everyone is scared of the 2.6 kernel. Nobody wants to be the first distribution using 2.6. They don't want to sell their products. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 02:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? That's what I've sometimes used Knoppix for - to get a list of the best of apps out there. But sometimes I've also wished that Knoppix would be a little more daring and include on the edge twilight apps - such as a full blown Xine w/ DeCSS. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 02:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Or maybe they were putting this release together when 2.6 was released and decided to included 2.6 in version 5 instead because it would delay their version 4 release ? Wed, 24 Dec 2003 03:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'm downloading it now. It would be nice to have a one-CD distro that has what I want. Plus, Fedora's up2date always hangs on me and becomes unresponsive. I thought I read that they were using something different.

The i686 optimization is nice too. Plus, they've gotten rid of any server packages. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 03:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Why do most (all?) distros seem to favor Mozilla over Firebird ... is it because Firebird does not have its own email client? Personally, I think a Firebird/Evolution combo would work great.

And what is up with this senario chooser thing? For God's sake, just give me a list of apps and let me pick which ones I want to install. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 03:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? What do you mean no one is using 2.6. SUSE has it in their retail box set (9.1 I think). Of course they dont support it but it is their. I havent looked at other distro's for the 2.6 kernel, however; slackware is ready from previous readings. I also think gentoo is too (not sure though).

So. Look and ye shall find. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 03:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? If Fedora is massing functional mp3 and video applications rather than packing it on an entirely different OS why not build a cumlitave package for fedora?

Linux does not need more distros that do some things better and some things worse. Maybe closed source is not the answer but there needs to be more unification than this. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 03:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? No kiddin! When is someone finally going to release a distro with Firebird (+XFT) as the default browser!? Wed, 24 Dec 2003 03:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Uh, Arch, Crux... Firebird's the default browser... Wed, 24 Dec 2003 03:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Uh, Arch, Crux... Firebird's the default browser...

Of course, these are both distros made for people who don't really need to depend all that much on defaults either. My original question was more along the lines of "Why don't more distros use Firebird as the default browser instead of Mozilla?" It boggles my mind why anyone would choose to use the stock version of Mozilla instaed of Firebird, as I have not seen any benefits from it, except that it has a built-in mail client, which itself is not very stellar, IMHO. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 04:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I've used Mozilla and Firebird, and Firebird has a whole extra slew of bugs that Mozilla doesn't. Even just weirdness with the rendering engine. Mucked up fonts, lack of options. Firebird isn't ready for prime time people. I don't care HOW fast it is.

The Moz [currently] is still a better browser, despite all the hype IMHO. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 04:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The Linux process is Microsoft style SLOW! Wed, 24 Dec 2003 04:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? it feels good to be a filipino when you hear news like this! way to go Lorma!! hmmmmm.... by the way where is Bayanihan linux now? Well with Lorma Linux, who needs it anyway.. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 04:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? definitely not ms style slow. even though the 'forces' of community is devided by kde, gnome. other orgs, teams still eager to do the utmost integration they can for the whole system.

in some way i think kde,gnome desktop community has spend too much time on the underlying technology rather than productivity apps(most notably multimedia software)

later
a 'os pending' guy Wed, 24 Dec 2003 04:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? On Linux being slow. . .

There is overhead to everything. Linux has the overhead of people needing time to agree on things and people needing to get on the same page and such. Commercial software has a lot of the same problems, but also suffers from marketing and the like.

I think that Linux moves pretty quickly. Realistically, you can have open-source stuff as fast as it is developed since it is there for you. It just takes time to get polished to the point where people feel like making it the default. I mean, RedHat isn't trying to be slow about adopting new things by keeping with Moz, but they are trying to appease users that don't want the rough edges of certain software or bleeding edge versions. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 05:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I like the idea of putting the "best of breed" software on 1 CD and all, but how about some *optional* supplemental CD's? You could put the "almost best of breed" stuff on CD2, and the "not so great/popular packages (but we like them)" on CD3.

Or create topical CD's like Games Supplemental, Office Supplemental, and so on.

Seems like a win-win situation to me. People who want the 1 CD install have it, and people who want to get most of their packages from CD (so they don't have to hunt them down online - espcially newbies or dial-up users) can download the additional, optional CD's.

Just an idea. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 06:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? That idea does not require creating a seperate distrobution.

Just think how much time could be saved if the cd's were created for an _existing_ distro.

I hate fsck'ing with RPM's built for other version of other distros. If there was one distro that I knew I could find working packages for it would be my default distro. I don't care how many points it misses in other areas.

I did a study once a little over a year ago and about 70% or the non-packaged RPM's I tried to install failed to install "out of the box". This is even with a mild effort to fix dependencies.

70%! that statistic is horible. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 06:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I haven't heard anyone talk about MPEG-21, and it is supposed to solve a lot of the incompatibility problems with video formats and compatibilities with video players. It's a multimedia framework.

Building from source works well because you can run the ./configure script and it will check for dependencies and in a way it will tell you what environment variables need to be set. It's probably a superior way to install software, but since you have to run a Makefile and it's too hard to type 'make' and 'make install', that system will never work!
lol. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 07:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I installed gtkmm recently. I had to sym-link the gtkmm package config file to my package config directory /usr/lib/pkgconfig. I had to set a LD_LIBRARY_PATH so that the gtkmm shared libraries (.so files) could be found, and I also had to set the PK_CONFIG_PATH for /usr/lib/pkgconfig and /usr/local/pkgconfig. It would have been easier if gtkmm came preinstalled or in an .rpm, but if you mess around on Linux as a developer for a year or two, the same library directories -I/usr/include/ or -I/usr/X11R6/include as well as the corresponding /libs/ get used over and over again. It's not as difficult to figure stuff out but the newbie is totally screwed. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 07:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? If there was one distro that I knew I could find working packages for it would be my default distro. I don't care how many points it misses in other areas.

Hmmm... not sure what you mean. I've been dual booting back and forth between Fedora Core and Mandrake for the past few weeks basically comparing to see which I liked better (it's Mandrake for me) ... and the packages I've downloaded that were specific to the distro have worked for me.

I prefer distro-specific packages when they are available because they usually include the proper information for setting up links for the "start" menu (gnome menu, k menu, launch menu, whatever...) and conform to other conventions that are specific to that distro.

Though what I really prefer is to not have to download packages at all. I really like Mandrake's package management control center. Most everything I look for is found in there. As far as I know Fedora doesn't have anything like it "out of the box". up2date is only for security updates and such. Add/Remove is only for the stuff that's on the distro CD's themselves. You can add Synaptic after you setup your system but in my opinion, Synaptic isn't as good. But it's better than hunting down packages individually and trying to meet the requirements "by hand" with (rpm -i). Use to take me a half hour or more to install 1 program because the RPM would require some other RPM, which would in turn require 6 or 8 other RPM's, each of which might have their own requirements. "rpm hell" they call it. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 07:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? K12Linux is the first. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 07:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Previously it was RHL-based, from now on it's based on Fedora. As far is I know, it has all the stuff like MP3, DVD playing etc. (well, there's no reason not to have it because it's perfectly legal here). Nice distro. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 08:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I use Firebird (0.7) almost exclusively on SuSE v9 and its fonts are the best. But I gave up using it on Mandrake (9.2) because of bad fonts (like one line running into the line above, etc.). In fact, I gave up using Mandrake itself partly for this reason. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 09:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? they could use a better website Wed, 24 Dec 2003 12:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I use both. However, Firebird can not sort bookmarks at the moment, Mozilla does since 1.4 I believe. Also, I can create multiple profile with Mozilla, each with different settings. On the other hand, Firebird has this nice feature: one click clear all cache, cookies, etc.

It seems that many smaller (disk size)distro use Firebird as the default. Vector Linux for example. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 13:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? If there was one distro that I knew I could find working packages for it would be my default distro. I don't care how many points it misses in other areas.

So what you're looking for is Debian.

Victor. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 13:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? One CD is perfect, as long as all the packages are what you want. After that, you can just use apt-get and get whatever packages you need. One CD makes the whole process easier. I have downloaded, and if this comes out good, I may use this in all my installs. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 15:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "So what you're looking for is Debian."

Wrong. I hardly ever see Debian packages offered by anyone except Debian project members or friends. Almost every 3rd party program I use has an RPM up on their web site, but not .deb packages.

Besides, the debian package format doesn't conform with the LSB. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 16:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I havent heard Lorma until it was posted here, I got first heard of filipino distro named Buhawi Linux but theny haven't have free download for that ( Dont know what's wrong, it's based on RH, and later the Bayanihan Linux and now Lorma.

Since Fedora is currently new (not that really new of course!), Well It's good to hear that they're the first to release a distro based on Fedora, hope they haved fixed some bugs from fedora into their distro.

keep it up! Wed, 24 Dec 2003 17:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I use both. However, Firebird can not sort bookmarks at the moment, Mozilla does since 1.4 I believe.

Personally, I don't care for the bookmark manager in either browser ... that is one thing (IMHO) IE does better.

Also, I can create multiple profile with Mozilla, each with different settings.

I thought you could do this with Firebird via a command line switch (-profile or something) ?

BTW: Using Firebird in Windows, and the fonts are great Wed, 24 Dec 2003 18:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The distro is VERY rough around the edges and sacrafices almost all of the polish of Fedora. As difficult as it must be to create a Linux distro, this one looks really thrown together.

It's a good idea in concept, but the execution is terrible. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 19:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? That must be why they're starting the release numbering at 4.0. They really ARE learning from Red Hat! Wed, 24 Dec 2003 19:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Morphix Light edition has Firebird as the default browser.

My .02. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 21:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Wrong. I hardly ever see Debian packages offered by anyone except Debian project members or friends. Almost every 3rd party program I use has an RPM up on their web site, but not .deb packages.

That's because Debian's packages usually aren't offered "by anyone"; they're offered by Debian. Just take a look at the Debian unstable repositories, and you'll see all the software you want.

Victor. Wed, 24 Dec 2003 23:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? who cares about conformation to the lsb if the distro is better. as far as .deb packages not being available like they are for other linux distros, you're crazy. i don't have a problem finding them at all. i'm running bleeding edge libranet (100% debian compatible) and my os is hard as a rock.

you can have conformity, i'll take choice. you can have dependency hell, i'll take apt-get.

rope! Wed, 24 Dec 2003 23:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Linux is a big terd.

It is so crappy (like this website) they can't even give it away. Thu, 25 Dec 2003 04:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Nice idea and well thought out.Too bad their webmaster insists on "Flashing" in my face. I'll pass. Thu, 25 Dec 2003 08:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I thought Lorma was some type of worm, like a hook worm? Fri, 26 Dec 2003 03:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? As much i love firebird, you have to realise that it's not even at version 1.0 yet, and as such still has a lot of bugs + issues + mising features.

I dont think anybody should have a beta browser as default (shoudl still be included though), even though firebird kicks ass! Fri, 26 Dec 2003 11:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Firebird is okay. It is really the best browser out there, however the default theme is bad and theme bugy cannot be reported.

Mozilla will be split into
Mozilla Mail (Thunderbird)
Mozilla Browser (Firebird)
Mozilla Composer (NVU, sponsored by Lindows)

I would like to see specialized distributions, for instance preconfigured for internet cafés. There is still no real kiosk mode but KDe makes huge progress on this issue. I think KDE 3.2 will have a huge impact on the market. Sat, 27 Dec 2003 16:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments