Libranet is a bit different than the other GNU/Linux distributions we are considering this time around. In an era when distributions are often judged by the glitz that their installer and customized desktop provides, Libranet has neither glitz nor much of a customized desktop. Read more at OfB.biz.
Libranet: TCO-friendly GNU/Linux
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I have to say that Libranet is the choice for me when it comes to linux Distros. I love Debian, and when you have a nice basis and an installer that is much better than the Standard debian, but without all the extra, needless crap, you have a damn fine distribution. My one and only complaint is that by default it seems to install just about everything, so you kind of have to widdle away the WM/DE’s that you don’t use/need/want. And then of course remove the apps that you don’t use/need/want. But with the thought that I had today…. wouldn’t you rather have a nice, full Operating System with apps to do just about everything right off, then remove the clutter and have a nice OS that does exactly what you want? Or would you rather have an operating system that doesn’t do much after it’s first installed, and you have to specifically buy/download all the programs that you’ll use/need/want? (As I’ve learned the the years, Windows and now Lindows is both of this variety, though granted with Lindows it’s all in the CNR stuff.)
I installed Libranet 2.8 a couple of days ago, for the second time in 4 weeks or so. Both times I had to use Knoppix to go in and fix the XF86Config-4 file. During the install, both times, X installed fine, testing X was no prob, but booting into it crashed, both times. Libranet boots to runlevel 2, but it brings you to a gui login. I switched /etc/inittab to default to runlevel 3, but it kept booting to the gui. SSH isn’t started at boot time either. You have to enable it first. When X crashed, I figured I’d just SSH in and fix it, that’s when I found out it isn’t enabled right away. The hardware I’m using is — AthlonXP 2000+, Gigabyte GA-7VAX mobo, ASUS Ti4200 8x AGP 128MB DDR video card and it was going on to an old 8 gig hard drive.
A friend of mine has installed this OS on a number of different machines, and he’s had nothing but raving success. Maybe I did something wrong during the install, I don’t know. The NVidia drivers installed without a problem, the OS install was painless, both times. Might be I did something wrong, or it was a hardware conflict. Either way, I’m loathe to blame Libranet. I don’t want this to sound bad, but once I got it up, it worked great. It’s still on that 8gig drive (I’m using my main hdd running Mandrake 9.1 right now), and I’ll keep playing with it.
If it uses LILO, you type something like:
Linux init 1
and it will boot into runlevel 1, where a GUI wont start, You can then fix whatever file you want.
The biggest problem I have with Libranet is that it uses GRUB rather than LILO. This causes all kinds of havoc with the apt-get system since kernel installs, etc. expect to update LILO instead of GRUB. After messing up my system several times and having it as bloated as RedHat, I moved to Bonzai Linux. Bonzai Linux doesn’t install anything but the bare minimum, X, and KDE. Everything else I just have been apt-getting and it has proven to be entirely compatible with Debian packages.
I spent part of today installing Libranet 2.7 on to my
daughter’s machine. One option is to do a minimal install.
It went in easily, and then I used apt to grab Synaptic,
changed the apt sources file, and upgraded to Sid.
She now is running Gnome, and has her favorite games to
play. Unfortunately, sound doesn’t work that well (sounds
play, but the games have trouble) with the Intel laptop
chipset, so her games lack this.
Libranet also replaced a Red Hat installation. No only was
installation easier, but package management is far better
thought out, even with Apt for RPM.
I have tried Linux over the years, and always ended up back
with Windows. This is the first time Linux has stayed.
Why use Libranet when you can get Gentoo and the Portage system? It’s so much better than apt-get in every way.
http://www.gentoo.org
;o)
I am a big fan of Libranet. However I have just switched distros to Lindows 4. After years of Red Hat, debian based systems are the way to go for me. Who knows however now that the Red Hat Linux project is a little more open I might go back to that. Regardless Lindows offers speed and just plain desktop friendliness that no one can come close to (I have tried them all over the past 7 years) without kernel hacking.
Forget it….. This was the worst installation experience of my life. I have done CD and Net installs of all the BSDs. I have installed all distros of Linux. I have installed Debian on just about anything with a memory and a CPU. But the Gentoo PPC install was the glitch-filled, frustrating, torturous, masochistic, experience of my geekified life. Heck, the other day I got what there is of DragonFlyBSD up on a PC with less problems, and DragonFly is pre-alpha-pre-experimental.
WHAT WAS THE GENTOO INSTALL LIKE
WELL I’M GONNA TELL YOU WHETHER YOU WANT TO HEAR IT OR NOT!!!
(why do I get the feeling I am talking to myself again?)
The Gentoo install was like finding a forest, cutting down the trees, breaking a leg, getting out of the hospital, coming back, taking out the stumps and clearing the land of rocks, planting wheat, building a mill, making flower, making dough, then building an oven in which to burn it to a crisp, stealing a cow, milking it, churning the butter, picking berries, making jam. YUMMY! Breakfast is ready, but you don’t have time to eat because it’s time to update everything, including GCC, which also means a complete recompilation of everything.
That said…, I did finally install Gentoo…. It launches fast. That’s it. My FreeBSD ports system is just as good as Portage, and My Debian install, although not optimized like Gentoo, is faster in operation than Gentoo on exactly the same type of machine.
Gentoo is great! But all the installation methods suck.
I use Gentoo On My Main Rigg AthlonXP 1800, and use Gentoo on My (File Server) P2-400, but Use Libranet on My P3-750 Laptop (Just for for Somthin Different) They all work great, but in my opinnion I like Portage better than Apt-Get.
I downloaded and installed morphix kde a few days ago and it’s brilliant! It booted up and dumped me into the normal desktop and i just clicked and the ‘install to hard drive’ button on the desktop and it installed in about 10 minutes! I admit that the partitioning should have been graphical instead of opening up cfdisk but other that that everything’s sweet. I don’t see the point in paying for a distro when there’s one that’s easy enough to install, based on debain and is free!
I have always been a SuSE fan, I have worked with SuSE Linux for years (since version 6.4) and I have never strayed, sure I have Red Hat on some machines but SuSE has always been my main Linux distro, I got Libranet a few days ago and I must say I like this release, its very solid very simple to setup and hardware support is great. It doesnt compell me to leave SuSE but it is nice to see that other Linux distros have matured alot and are startig to focus more on ease – of -use.
I started using Libranet when 2.8 came out (tried 2.7, but wasn’t terribly impressed). So far, Libranet seems 100% Debian compatible (no problems yet). The importance of that is difficult to overstate. Having dealt with rpm hell (when I test-drove RedHat 8), Synaptic/apt just makes things so easy. Getting new applications is a snap. You can even get bleeding edge applications by adding unstable to your repositories list (recommend disabling unstable after loading the app unless you want a full sid system). The install, though not pretty, is truly a breeze.
I wouldn’t recommend Libranet for the average computer user. I’m certainly proficient with computers, but I’m also not a Linux/Unix guru. I imagine a lot of OSNews readers fall into the same category.
I have always preferred Gnome to KDE for its cleanliness and simplicity. The Morphix Heavy install of a Gnome desktop on Debian is childs play. The Knoppix-based hardware detection is uncanny. The defaults are visually pleasing and well thought out. Lots of fun things (check out the screen savers!) are included in the same install.
It seems to me that all the grousing about the lack of a good installer for Debian is increasingly unnecessary.
I just tested Libranet 2.7 and I really like the Xadminmenu.
However, I also noticed that something similar is planned for Morphix under the name of Configuration Panel:
http://am.xs4all.nl/phpwiki/index.php/MorphixRoadMap
http://am.xs4all.nl/phpwiki/index.php/SubProjects
If the RoadMap holds true, I see no real reason to invest money on Libranet in future since Morphix is free. Besides, the possibility to build your ideal system from ready-made modules makes Morphix more flexible than Libranet. That said, I think that at the moment Libranet is possibly one of the best desktop oriented GNU/Linux distros around (thanks to the great work that is made in Debian community).
I think Morphix and Knoppix are really great ways of install Debian. The only problem I have with them is they come with too many programs. It annoys me when I have 5 applications which all do the same job!
I wish someone would make a CD like Knoppix or Morphix with just XFree86 4.3 and Gnome or KDE installed. Then you could use the CD to install Debian and then install any programs you wanted from the Debian repositories.
Just Cause you cant Install Gentoo from Scratch Correctly does not mean its crap. It’s more of an challange cause you have to do it from scratch an not have Installers to do the work for you, but My Gentoo distro is easly faster than my Libranet distro, On Boot up and Execution of Apps
Anonymous wrote:
“My one and only complaint is that by default it seems to install just about everything, so you kind of have to widdle away the WM/DE’s that you don’t use/need/want. And then of course remove the apps that you don’t use/need/want.”
Click on Clear All, highlight the section you are interested
(i.e. File Managers), on the right pane click on Details and a screen will show you the different managers available to install, select the one/ones you like, Accept/Install. You can make your installation as specific and light as you want. I know it, I use a PII 200 with a 10 gig HDD and 128 megs of RAM.
Slash wrote:
“This causes all kinds of havoc with the apt-get system since kernel installs, etc. expect to update LILO instead of GRUB.”
Huh?
“After messing up my system several times and having it as bloated as RedHat, I moved to Bonzai Linux. Bonzai Linux doesn’t install anything but the bare minimum, X, and KDE.”
In Libranet, in the packages installation screen, all you have to do is:
click on ‘Clear All’, select KDE and click on the Install button.
Do you want less weight still? Click on ‘Minimal Installation’ and by default it will show with IceWM, after that, you can apt-get packages or go thru the XAdminmenu, using the two installation CDs go back and install whatever packages you want or miss the first time.
Do you want to recompile the kernel but are too much of a newbie for that? Go to the XAdminmenu/Kernel/Recompile (click, click) (coose your processor, modules) Save/Enter and voila. Same with the TTF, and so many other little details that make life easier! PLEASE, do yourself a favor and read the OPTIONS in the screen!
…didn’t say it was crap. I installed on both a PPC and a PC. There wewe no noticed performence differences with my Debian install on another twin PC. Gentoo is good and the emerge command is great. I still prefer Debian and my FreeBSD install to Gentoo. I said that the installation experience was torture. I didn’t say I couldn’t install it. Read carefully before spinning of to protect your geek territory. I say, without any reserve at all, that Gentoo is no big thing, compared to Debian and/or the BSDs. In fact, I don’t like it. Just a matter of personal taste. It’s too glitchy…, requires too much fundamental tweaking to maintain correctly, it breaks often with updated, more often that the most experimental Debian system. That’s all. But you are welcomed to it. At first I liked Gentoo, but with time, I realized the advantages of Debian were far greater. So after about 8 months or so, I dumped my first and updated install. The installs I did recently were for others. Most people have better things to do than babysit a compiler for 36 hours…. or play with unuseable CDs.
Anonymous wrote:
“My one and only complaint is that by default it seems to install just about everything, so you kind of have to widdle away the WM/DE’s that you don’t use/need/want. And then of course remove the apps that you don’t use/need/want.”
Mario wrote:
“Click on Clear All, highlight the section you are interested
(i.e. File Managers), on the right pane click on Details and a screen will show you the different managers available to install, select the one/ones you like, Accept/Install. You can make your installation as specific and light as you want. I know it, I use a PII 200 with a 10 gig HDD and 128 megs of RAM.”
Sorry Anonymous, I misread your posting. Apologies!
> The only problem I have with them is they come with too many programs.
> It annoys me when I have 5 applications which all do the same job!
Anon, for your interest: Morphix has different ISO’s
Morphix LightGUI with Xfce4 (lean and cool).
Morphix HeavyGUI with Gnome (full bloated with kitchen sink).
Morphix KDE with KDE of course (full bloated with kitchen sink).
Morphix Game with a lot of games (full bloated for gamers)..
I suppose you didn’t try Morphix LightGUI otherwise you would know that this 200MB ISO has exactly what you are looking for… one program for one task.
I tried it out sometime ago when it was first making the scene. I successfully installed it once on one machine, but after trying to run an upgraded install I couldn’t.
I never tried it again!