Our friends over at DistroWatch report: “A new Lycoris build has quietly appeared on some of the FTP sites that mirror the main Lycoris server. You can get build 69 (beta) here: cd1_en_binary.iso (541MB). Don’t be misled by the timestamp on the ISO image (14 February 2003); users who have installed it report that this is indeed a new build.”
Lycoris Desktop/LX Build 69 Released
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Eugenia Loli
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I would be great, but the ethernet card is not recognized. Back to Red Hat
Have you tried the latest beta? Also, it would be much more helpful if you could state your ethernet device model.
Yep its beta 69. It’s a build in Intel 100 ethernet on the motherboard, worked with Red Hat and Suse for about a year now. No luck.
Anyone know what happened to http://www.lycoris.org ?
thanks,
If you just would click the link over to DistroWatch, you could read it there..
oh look, another beta……
I installed Lycoris on a regular Athlon, IDE CD-ROM drive long time ago and everything went smoothly. This time I decided to try it on a Yamaha SCSI CD-RW (Tekram card using sym53c8xx family) and a Riva TNT2 video card. With the “very easy distro” attitude, I was surprised that I coudn’t start the installation from the SCSI drive. No big deal. Created the 2 floppies. Everything booted nicely then Lizard failed
I don’t mean to start a distro war here but for christ sake, I do not have any problems w/ supposed to be harder to use distributions such as Debian, Gentoo and Lycoris failed to install. Sigh.
/me reboots to Gentoo.
“I would be great, but the ethernet card is not recognized. Back to Red Hat
”
hmmm, is the newbie perception of Linux, or Unix in general, really this bleak?
it’s very easy to find a network card or other hardware that would not be recognised by Windows 95/98/ME or 2000/NT/XP, but it seems to me that a lot of Windows users would at least have tried to find the solution.
the odds are that it would be less hassle to correct the misconfiguration than to actually look for and install drivers under windows. why do new users tend to feel intimidated by text files? no offense to anyone, but I’m just a bit curious.
Most people buy their computers with the OS installed and the hardware set up. Not so with most alternate OSes, where the hardware is expected to work as well as a pre-configured system.
I will be the first to admit that there is no easy way to install Linux drivers in general – but, most of the hardware I have seen ‘just works’ under linux.
So when will Lycoris actually build linux from scratch like i heard they were going to. As far i can see they are still building it on top of caldera. Nothing wrong with caldera linux but some of the software is kind of outdated. Especailly KDE.
“oh look, another beta……”
It’s called the _devolopment_ process for a reason.
I have seen many a project where people can only dream
for a steady flow of betas to test.
When it is ready to be served on tap, they will let you know.
lycoris.org is down due to power inturuption, which seems to have caused some other issues….as noted on tux-apps.com
different linux’s support different hw out of the box. lycoris has been the only one that has worked for me 100%…..all hardware (except the winmodem…but i haven’t tried because i have cable). my system is a HP Pavillion 734N, athlon XP based, nvidia gf4 mx420, via ac 97 integrated sound, cdrw and dvd. no problems with anything. i have to install alsa on red hat to make my sound work, and that sucks. my mouse needs tweaking in every distro but lycoris too….go figure…it’s the mouse that was included with my system, and it’s a MS intellimouse optical clone ps/2 (HP branded).
i don’t care how many betas it takes to get it right. i like their direction, product, and community (when it’s up!)
but like the dude said above….if something works in one distro,it can be made to work in any distro. some just take more effort. thankfully, lycoris takes ZERO effort for me to set up. it installs easier than win 98 ever did too.
anyway…i just like it…and that’s my opinion. not that it matters much to anyone but me.
“I will be the first to admit that there is no easy way to install Linux drivers in general.”
yes, you’re right here.. but I can’t imagine a distro not sending out a full set of kernel modules, so for the most part Linux will work or it won’t in any distro. it all comes down to configuration, no installing drivers…
this really should be easier in Linux than Windows, but it seems like the configuration aspect intimidates users. ok, so how do we make this part easier? does Linux needs a ‘control panel’ style interface, would that solve the problem? a device manager applet? I’ve seen users with absolutely no experience installing hardware in Windows, so the problem has to be that Linux hardware configuration tools are either spread out, hard to understand or nonexistant.
That’s too bad about the card not being recognized. Lycoris is usually really good when it comes to hardware configuration. And, the community site being down doesn’t help either, as it’s an excellent and friendly place to get help.
Everything booted nicely then Lizard failed
Did you try their safe mode install?
So when will Lycoris actually build linux from scratch like i heard they were going to..
Next major release after Update 3, I think.
ok, so how do we make this part easier? does Linux needs a ‘control panel’ style interface, would that solve the problem? a device manager applet? I’ve seen users with absolutely no experience installing hardware in Windows, so the problem has to be that Linux hardware configuration tools are either spread out, hard to understand or nonexistant.
Lycoris has an add hardware utility that’s similar to the ‘manual addition’ portion of the Windows Add Hardware Utility. It’s not quite up there with Windows yet, but it is getting there. That said, there’s still no way to add third-party device drivers easily, and this is where Linux in general falls down. Remember NT4? Adoption of the OS was slow due to bad vendor device support. Only the WDM and Windows 2000 really solved the problem of drivers under NT, and this is where Linux is stuck at present IMO.
“I would be great, but the ethernet card is not recognized. Back to Red Hat
”
hmmm, is the newbie perception of Linux, or Unix in general, really this bleak?
it’s very easy to find a network card or other hardware that would not be recognised by Windows 95/98/ME or 2000/NT/XP, but it seems to me that a lot of Windows users would at least have tried to find the solution.
the odds are that it would be less hassle to correct the misconfiguration than to actually look for and install drivers under windows. why do new users tend to feel intimidated by text files? no offense to anyone, but I’m just a bit curious.
I have the same problem with Xandros. I found the source for the drivers, but then couldn’t compile them because I didn’t install kernel source… I wish I could just get modules already compiled and install them just as easy as I do in XP. I don’t care what all the other ubergeeks say, and end user shouldn’t ever have to compile drivers or their kernel (what’s that the end user asks?) just to install the drivers for their 10/100 card. WHY CAN”T LINUX BE EASY? It seems to me that the whole GNU/Linux project is clusterf*cked because of stuf like this.
I wish I could just get modules already compiled and install them just as easy as I do in XP. I don’t care what all the other ubergeeks say, and end user shouldn’t ever have to compile drivers or their kernel (what’s that the end user asks?) just to install the drivers for their 10/100 card.
I agree 100%. Someone more knowledgable than me might be able to say whether LSB or another standards project will have an impact on this problem.
I’m compiling a sort of solution as I read this.
My solution is to keep a kernel for longer periods of time, more like BeOS or even Windows. This compile a kernel every two weeks thing is unique to Linux and BSD.
The distro comes with a good kernel, as up to date as the release of the OS, and every module I can gather. That includes nvidia and matrox drivers. I am uncertain as to the legality of ATI at the moment.
If others want to add binary drivers, it is possible since the packaging and kernel are standard. They should work on any X version of the distro, with kernel updates few and far between like consumer OS’s.
If a driver is not found, the system can (suggestions here please) ask if you have a driver CD or want to download one from a central server. I will attempt to keep up with drivers as they are available and package them for use. The system could give you the choice of sending the PCI info for the card to the server if it is not found so that the card could be added to a list of drivers to be packaged. If you like, you could even get an email when the hardware is supported.
A limited amount of hardware, like in Mac or Be could make things much easier however. I’m fighting not to support ISA and really old, or server only hardware. This will be a consumer/graphic workstation OS.
There are no hard coded module configuration files. At every boot, it finds the hardware and configures it, much like BeOS.
This sounds painful, but at the moment, the system boots in under 10 seconds from the grub selection for repair or normal boot, through the boot logo with progress bar and is ready to login to X. This is on a 2.4Ghz P4 with a 5400RPM IDE drive, a fairly basic but modern system.
I’ve changed the drive to other systems and added and removed cards and it still boots and runs as intended. Hardly anything is compiled in, so this is really cool to me. 😉
I still have the desktop (ROX right now, but that will likely change to a combo of ideas from ROX and KDE), configuration utilities and a package manager to go.
Any suggestions are welcome.
Mutiny
What you describe sounds pretty similar to Knoppix.
The LSB will not affect the driver situation, it is an application ABI spec.
I believe the long term solution is fencing off what binary-only drivers can do, ie restricting access to the ksyms in 2.5.x is a part of this. That makes the interfaces for binary-only drivers more stable, so they don’t have to be recompiled so often. Combined with some linker tricks to avoid imports of unneeded symbols, and you have a binary that can be installed into different versions of the kernel.
Ideally of course, the drivers would be open source, then this wouldn’t be an issue (they’d simply be included as modules with the distro). Unfortunately many companies seem to bring over the “drivers must be closed” philosophy from windows
I moved from Lycoris to Red Hat 8 and it was like moving two years into the future. Absolutely everything included in Desktop/LX is two versions old!
so? they’re not out there trying to be a bleeding edge distro. they’re trying to put together a distro that just plain works, is reliable, and very stable.
in my experieince with lycoris, they’ve got that nailed down.
update three will update alot of stuff. don’t forget that the current stable release is from last summer, and the comments I made above applied then as well as now.
plus, try to remember that Lycoris isn’t trying to compete with REd Hat, Mandrake, SuSe, et al. They’re simply trying to give windows users another option…..which they’re doing just fine.
“I would be great, but the ethernet card is not recognized. Back to Red Hat
“
[i]hmmm, is the newbie perception of Linux, or Unix in general, really this bleak? [i]
You cannot seriously believe that Joe User (whom I would imagine constitutes 80% of the computing public, and that’s a safe estimate) is willing to purchase a new NIC/Vid Card/Applicable Device Here for the sole purpose of running Linux. If, and when employees at respective distributions start believing this, they’ve already signed their own death warrant. I’ve been Linux exclusive for at least 18 months, and if I have to replace perfectly viable hardware to run the next release of “insert-distro-here”, I’d buy a copy of Windows on principle alone. Any operating that advertises itself as 1) a server operating system, 2) easy, or 3) a viable alternative to Windows had better be able to back up its claims. I’m sorry, you say that Linux is already user-friendly, and ready for Prime Time(tm)? Why don’t you ask your girlfriend/mother/boss if they’re ready to switch. The world does not revolve around the geek perspective.
“this really should be easier in Linux than Windows, but it seems like the configuration aspect intimidates users. ok, so how do we make this part easier? does Linux needs a ‘control panel’ style interface, would that solve the problem? a device manager applet?”
Linux needs something real similar to the Windows Device Manager (one of MS best ideas, IMHO). An area where you can see all detected hardware, manually adjust IO and IRQ where possible and the ability to update or rollback drivers, as well as a detect hardware wizard, all in one window. Mandrake hits it close with its HardDrake, but still is not quite on the mark.
I tried Lycoris on Virtual PC for a bit of fun. Tried on VMWare but the installer would not run very well. Even on VPC the lizard would give dodgy colours.
Liked the collection of software, nice menu layout, fonts etc. Fast menu, apps speed. Didn’t pick up the network card on VPC (pretend Realtek). Tried to change resolution from VGA to XGA and it went very wroooong… Best I got was on the desktop change screen, it asks to restart X but actaully reboots. Then next time I got a horrid 3000 pixel wide box with very strange colours. I could not even find the login box easily. Looks like the res change is for all users, so I can’t delete the user and try again. I’m a windows power user – I don’t know (or dont want to know) jack about how linux hardware configs work!
Oh well, lycoris is in the bin before a real play. Back to suse 8 (nasty fonts) + mdk9 (sadly not beautiful).
See ya
I tried Lycoris on Virtual PC for a bit of fun. Tried on VMWare but the installer would not run very well. Even on VPC the lizard would give dodgy colours.
Well, you cant really test it on either VPC or VMware, as these does not emulate/behave exactly like a pc. They are developed to behave as close to a pc as possible, but in both cases you need to apply virtual pc “addons”. Testing, in these cases, will not tell you anything about how well Lycoris Desktop/LX works on an actual pc, with regards to speed and hardware.
I’ve seen all your issues on both my VMWare and VPC installs of newer and older builds of DLX, but solved them easily. However, none of them reflects a proper DLX installation.
So when will Lycoris actually build linux from scratch like i heard they were going to. As far i can see they are still building it on top of caldera. Nothing wrong with caldera linux but some of the software is kind of outdated. Especailly KDE.
Uuumm, about 90% of the current packages in Lycoris are no longer Caldera packages. People do gossip alot about the next major release being built from ground up, but no tech detail on that has been given.
word on the street is that development of the next major release (not update 3) called beryl will be built from the ground up. development of this is supposed to start shortly after the release of update 3.
Failed when choosing the mouse in Lizard (3rd page?). It crashed at the same place 4 times in VMWare 4.0 and VMWare 3.2
http://www.lycoris.org is finally back online! yippee!
(holy crap……i need a life)
“I’m sorry, you say that Linux is already user-friendly, and ready for Prime Time(tm)? Why don’t you ask your girlfriend/mother/boss if they’re ready to switch.”
I never said it was user friendly or easy, but generally hardware detection is easy, because there are already a fairly good device support in the standard set of kernel modules shipped by most distros. if a distro doesn’t set up the modules properly, that’s another thing… but configuring them yourself is generally less bothersome than in windows, where if not detected properly, you may, for example, have to first find and load chipset/AGP bus drivers before you can use any driver other than the standard VGA.
“Any operating that advertises itself as 1) a server operating system, 2) easy, or 3) a viable alternative to Windows had better be able to back up its claims.”
oddly, I have never met the OS smart enough to advetise itself as anything, although with the current Klez(tm) technology in windows, I’m sure I could whip something up for Microsoft.
#1 has been covered, unless you’re doing AD stuff or Exchange, any *nix offers options that Windows couldn’t hope to.
#2 heh, I never said easy, nor have I heard anyone but Lindows make this claim, but maybe someone has. easier than last year, yes.
#3 depends on what you need. as an alternative to a PC, maybe not. I admit I still use Windows and Macintosh quite a bit, no shame in using the best tool for the job.
“The world does not revolve around the geek perspective.”
tell this to the hardware manufacturors that put up a source bundle right next to the pretty Windows setup.exe on their download site. they could make at least try to make it pretty, it wouldn’t be that hard.
“You cannot seriously believe that Joe User (whom I would imagine constitutes 80% of the computing public, and that’s a safe estimate) is willing to purchase a new NIC/Vid Card/Applicable Device Here for the sole purpose of running Linux.”
who said anything about buying new hardware for Linux? hardware doesn’t become obselete that easily. if people are buying new hardware at every release, maybe it’s because they’re clueless? this goes back to my response that users don’t have a good interface for working with the hardware.
Build 69 ISO images are now available.
Changelog:
* added hp PPA printer drivers
* removed umask in mount command
* re-added drm drivers for i810 installs
* kernel-addon, kdelibs, pcmcia-cs, rllibs, OpenLinux rebuild
* upgraded samba to 2.2.7a
* foomatic replaces cupsomatic now
* upgraded vnc to 3.3.6
* fixed the i180 install issue
Are you trying to tell me that you are a RH + SuSE user for more than one year but uncapable of installing the driver for the NIC manually..? Knock it off…
To the people trying to install D/LX in VMWare, the Lycoris people have a tutorial about this:
http://www.lycoris.org/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=56
i updated to Build 69 and all seems well. One thing I’m not clear about is what exactly is lycoris shooting for in Update 3? Are these latest builds attempts to stablize or haven’t they got to that point yet?
They’ve also added 30 new applications to IRIS.