In order to celebrate the release of Pardus 2011, here’s a review of it by LinuxUser, which quickly shows the small touches and attention to details which make this Turkish distribution so special and explains what’s new in this release.
In order to celebrate the release of Pardus 2011, here’s a review of it by LinuxUser, which quickly shows the small touches and attention to details which make this Turkish distribution so special and explains what’s new in this release.
The review dates back to November
Yeah… I think I read this review of Pardus 2011 a while back. Not quite November, but several weeks ago.
I’m actually in the process of moving all my files from /home so I can try out the latest version, since VirtualBox refuses to boot the ISO without crashing. I’m interested in seeing how the distro has progressed since 2009.2. Not sure if I’ll keep using it for long since KDE4 tends to be less-than-optimal in terms of performance for my usage and machine, but I might get a couple weeks of playing around before switching to something with a lighter desktop environment or desktop environment. [Might see how Pardus feels with alternative WMs/DEs as well before switching.]
Oh well… goodbye (for now), Debian Squeeze/Testing…
Hate to bring bad news, but…
I am running Pardus 2011 right now. The installer, while having a well-designed GUI for the most part and giving a good first impression, crashed a couple times–every time after getting past the partitioning stage, after it asks you if you’re sure to format. [Of course, the first time was enough to nuke the drive.] It left me looking at a terminal each time.
The first time was *right* after formatting and basically as soon as it begun to copy files over. The second time the partitions were already made, but I chose to reformat just to make sure the filesystems were OK and clean, overall did far fewer modifications. Where this failed was right over halfway through the installation process, right around 50% though; after copying all files and starting to configure the packages. I suspect the “screensaver” is to blame here, because the screen went black, I moved the mouse/pressed a key to wake it up, and next thing I know I’m looking at the terminal. Third (or fourth? Can’t remember) time was the charm.
Once installed, though, the OS is quite nice and polished… for the most part. My only annoyances are that I do not like the included Firefox 4 beta, and–as I expected–KDE4 has the system swapping more (and faster) than is comfortable. Oh, and the distro automatically assumes that the system clock is set to local time, which mine is not, causing the time to be 5 hours into the future, and searching Google and KDE’s settings returned no useful results to fix this. The potentially-useful result from Google I found involved going to a place in KDE’s settings which seems to no longer exist. Also, I recall Kaptan used to change each setting after hitting “Next”, allowing you to try it out and hit “Back” to change if you don’t like it. It seems that no settings are changed now until the very end, which complicates this process and makes it more difficult to decide on selections.
So… moral of the story: Try not to do anything too crazy with the installer if you want to try this distro (ie. maybe have your partitions already set up so very little needs to be done aside from selecting and formatting them) and move the mouse every once in a while to avoid the screen from blanking. Then again, you never know–you might have better luck with your hardware.
Between the trouble with the VM and the trouble getting the installer to work, as well as the unnecessarily early switch to FF4 and the system clock problems, I can unfortunately say that I am overall pretty disappointed with this release.
Edited 2011-01-24 00:02 UTC
You can fix timezone issues on the command line using a combination of hwclock and tzselect. I don’t know if there has ever been a good GUI for this.
I think some distros might provide a distro-specific GUI tool, but I couldn’t find one in Pardus. Even if they don’t, the installers of many distros allow you to set it upon installation (even Debian’s does this). I know changing it on an installed system typically involves editing a text file or two somewhere in /etc–but which ones and what lines within them tends to be different depending on distribution.
At this point, I’ve come to the conclusion that I might give it another try once the 2011 version matures a little–maybe 2011.1 or 2011.2. By then the choice of Firefox 4.0.x won’t matter as much, since probably every major distro will have switched to it. I think once all the bugs (especially the installer crashes) are fixed, Pardus 2011 will be an excellent choice for people with the extra RAM to spare.
I’m actually looking into switching to a different browser, because Firefox keeps doing things, making changes that I don’t like. I just need a proper AdBlock and NoScript, and Chromium/Chrome’s is not quite there yet. Maybe SeaMonkey/IceApe…
Wow, I must’ve been drunk before I even started drinking–I didn’t catch your tip about using tzselect. That looks like it would work, if it works the way I think it would. Every time I do a Google search, I find instructions for modifying certain files based on the distribution (most instructions being for one or two specific variants of Linux distros).
Thanks for the tip, next time I find such a distro (or install Pardus again) I’ll try that.
I know
But it’s the best I’ve found. Things have not changed much since B1 anyway, looking at more recent reviews.
Edited 2011-01-23 20:23 UTC
There is a new one here:
http://www.webupd8.org/2011/01/pardus-2011-kde-sc-455-with-pinch-of…
The review is about the beta version of Pardus.
They are still offering different iso files for install and live desktop.
I’ve just tested it in Vmware Fusion and I think it’s one of the best looking and polished Linux distro I’ve seen to date. I can’t wait to try it on real hardware.
– posted from Pardus