When the topic of Linux distros comes up, most people think of Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse or some other popular and well-known product. Each of these distros has a flashy GUI installer, a well known brand name in the Linux world and large distribution in stores like Best Buy, Circuit City and others. Earlier this week, we’ve looked at each of these, focusing on the new features and capabilities in the latest release. Read the rest of the review at ExtremeTech.
Review: Libranet 2.7 – The Stealth Distro
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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…or is this distro not potentially the ideal Desktop Debian that everyone has been looking for lately? With the exception of Xandros, Libranet is the only Debian-based Desktop distro left; heck, add a GUI installer and you’re set to go
Lindows is also Debian-based.
I’m not going to spend $50 to try a new distribution. I would try Debian except I like have the latest stuff (GNOME 2, KDE 3, ect).
Is there a Debian version with current features (GNOME 2, KDE 3, XFree 4.2, ect). I guess I need someone to explain the differences between Debian 3, Unstable, and Testing.
1) PGI 1.0 has been releasesed and they now have a net install ISO for Woody and uses PGI (so there ya go for gui installer with hardware detection)
2)get the name of the Xandros package server or the Libranet server, I think Progeny still maintains a server for new packages…or you can run unstable, testing or Sid.
I, too, balked at the price, but finally bit the bullet after reading so many positive reviews. I can honestly say I got my money’s worth. This distro fills a certain niche; the ones that know more than a newbie, but are not experts either. This was the first time I was exposed to IceWM and I found it to be the perfect balance between pleasing apperance and performance. The adminmenu and apt are very handy things to have.
Debian is always split into three branches. The first one and the one everybody tests is stable. The latest stable release was 3.0 or “Woody”. Stable is as it sounds, stable. Thats why you’ll see such old packages. They have been thoroughly tested. Stable is meant for long uptimes, minimal updates, and good security. Next is testing, currently named “Sarge” which will become the next stable. Testing is packages that have been through the unstable branch, and have whithered at least a few weeks, if not a few months of testing. These have been proven to not cause your cpu to explode or your harddrive to catch on fire. Then theres unstable. Unstable (Sid) is where all the newest packages are. Not quite the newest, but the newest to debian. Unstable is a very good desktop for me and has not blown up on me yet. There are bugs (perl5.8 transition, still some dependancies on gcc 2.95) but for the most part, a good working system. When people test debian, they are comparing it wrong. An upto date desktop would probably be trying testing. Yes, it’s still on gcc 2.95 with X4.1.0, Kde 2.2, and Gnome 1.4, but it wont blow up on you. For reference, X is on 4.2.1 in unstable (takes a while to test on 11 architectures) Gnome2 is going to unstable on sunday I believe, and Kde3 is going in when the full gcc 3.2 transition happens (in the process). Maybe it’s not always the fastest to be updated, but it is updated and you dont have to worry about it. You can still track current packages with upgrading everyday through apt, and if you really need these new features, theres almost always debian packages. Perhaps not a good first distro (it was to me) but if you know your way around linux, it’s very easy to snuggle up with debian and just let things work.
I myself am a Libranet user and am quite satisfied with it but for the average user, there is no way that it is better than SuSE (7) Mandrake (7.5). Both of these distros have many more GUI system tools than Libranet does.
Not that I use them often, but sometimes they’re nice to have and they definitely are important for the newbie.
As I said on the previous SuSE thread, the author seems to unexplainably favor Red Hat for RPM distros. The only thing he could really say was wrong w/the distro was that its support of an _optional_ component (GNOME) wasn’t as nice as he would have liked it.
Since things are still not fully configured in GNOME2 (i.e. menu editing, having to resort to GConf), it is clearly not as ready for the beginning user as KDE is. This explains why all of the distros-for-newbies use KDE. This minor fault (from the beginner’s pov) certainly is not worth demoting it to a 7.
Is there a Debian version with current features (GNOME 2, KDE 3, XFree 4.2, ect). I guess I need someone to explain the differences between Debian 3, Unstable, and Testing.
A quick search through apt and packages.debian.org told me that currently Debian does not have GNOME 2, and as for KDE, packages.debian.org stopped working on me (malformed query it says), but i suspect the same. XFree 4.2 is available in Unstable, but not testing and stable. Now packages.debian.org works, and KDE3 is not yet available as i suspected.
If you really want XF4.2, you can install the unstable deb into a stable or testing install, it’ll work fine. You might hit a bit of dependency hell, but i’ve done it fine. Or you could do whats called “apt pinning” which does what i said, but all for you. I’ve personally never done the latter.
But why do you want XFree4.2 so badly? I can understand GNOME2 and KDE3, which are both easily compiled in debian, but XFree4.1 is still considered quite a bit more stable than 4.2.
As for the explanations of stable/testing/unstable…
The current “stable” version, as you pointed out is 3.0. It has like over 8000 packages (8535 according to “apt-cache search a | wc”). Debian stable is STABLE. Software doesnt go in there until it has proven itself worthy. It has stuff like XF4.1, Mozilla 1.0, Gnome 1.4, and KDE2.2.
Debian Unstable, is the “bleeding edge” version of Debian. Thats where packages first land when they enter debian. Software doesnt just get dropped in there though. From what i understand the packages are “debianized”, possibly some slight changes in the source (example: so that window managers all share a common menu system).
Once a packages has proven itself to be good enough, it can move from Unstable, to Testing. Thats the end of the line for the package though. Until they freeze the testing distro, and eventually shift testing to stable, and start up a new testing (like they did, woody became stable, and sarge became testing).
The adminmenu and apt are very handy things to have.
Have you used the “compile kernel” button yet? I’d be curious to know what happens. A little progress bar? lol
In Libranet 2.0 an xterm popped up and then you see the output of the compilation 🙂
does it compile and install it, just compile it, or does it take you through a configuration then compiles it and then installs it?
The whole process… I believe it just launches the Debian script for kernel compiling/installation.
I think somebody else can answer this question better. I’ve only had to do it once. IIRC, it does take you through the configuration process, I remember that I had to enable support for SCSI or something.
It decompresses the current used kernel, presents you with a menuconfig like shell (with current options set), then u can tweak and click compile. It then compiles, installs, and adds a boot option for you in Grub. voila !!
yeah, it takes you to a screen where you can configure everything, just like the make menuconf, and when your done it asks you if you want to save, and if you do, it asks you to restart. Then in GRUB there is a *new* boot option for it, i.e. your old kernel is still available as another boot option if you want to boot with it.
should be standard on all Linux distros.
well I guess I will download Librenet 2.0, I attempted to use PGI 1.0 since they have and install ISO now, but it needs lots of work.
I do not know if it the release version of the X-server though I do not think that is the problem as I have installed woody with out problems, it needs work basicly becasue it does not:
a) set up my X-server correctly
b) does not include my Windows partition in Grub.
c) is not as extensive as the old progeny installer
I know it is just a 1.0, but I was surprised at how much was non-functional. Iguess I will try it on my desktop PC and see how that works out.
The button works as said on this forum, however, if you have other Linux distros in your menu.lst, it will delete them so make sure you back up your grub menu beforehand.
While 4.1 is more stable, you will run into some instability with Qt when running under the older version w/anti-aliased fonts.
If you don’t, then this isn’t a problem, I guess.
They choosed IceWM because it is the most Windows-like, plus the fact that it is quite fast and easy to use. I don’t mind a product defaulting to IceWM – there’s nothing wrong with it. But geeezzz, this guy gets worked up over anything not defaulted to KDE or GNOME. ANd gets even more worked up when GNOME is not nicely done even if it is an optional thing.
most of the distro reviews you read these days are just so biased it’s crazy, when a distro does something different in order to get the attention of the ex-M$ user they get criticised for it, or if they make things too hardcore for the newbies to grasp, we need some fair reviewers, besides Euginia of course