Tux Reports continues their look at RPM based distributions with Ark Linux 1.0 alpha8. This community project stands with a growing number of distributions attempting to build an environment for the desktop. The project’s goals are to create a distribution which is easy for new Linux users to install, maintain, and update. Read More at TuxReports.
Ark Linux, Taking Penguins on a Ride to the Future
About The Author
Adam Scheinberg
Technology Executive • Web Developer • Father • Foodie • Music Snob • OS enthusiast
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If your going to copy an os gui then go for mac osx.
Who doesn’t love the control bar at the bottom of the screen.
Windows start menu needs to be outsourced to India. What a lovely country.
Who doesn’t love the control bar at the bottom of the screen.
i dont
in the basement. can’t make everyone happy.
or is that stolen from DOS?
Yeah, UNIX, made decades earlier stole from DOS.
Go troll somewhere else.
Please just stay with M$. You are a perfect customer/consumer for them. There perect target audience. Wary to accept something even if it is better for you. Keep paying for Windows and its office software if you wish.
Define “copying windows”, please so that all developers might learn from your wisdom.
oh btw, I hate the Mac UI more than the Windows UI. Regards of your likes, Windows does very much have usability down pat. A white mouse cursor, a start (or kicker) menu and a “control centre” type arangement doesnt not equal copying windows.
Its easy to slam anything when you’re ignorant and/or a complete and utter moron.
ignorance is bliss….
Anyone who does not agree with me is a troll. Hence I listen to no one.
Well a troll is someone who comes on a site where there are many fans of aparticular OS or application, throws in some deliberately arrogant, uninformed – and yes usually ignorant comment about that OS or application – and then expects everyone to applaud him for it. Sorry pal, but that aint gonna happen. Not here is isn’t.
If you want people to agree with you, I suggest you use Microsoft’s bbs rather than come here. We are all OS fans here; and many are even weirder and difficult to understand than Linux. So this really isn’t the place for MS fanboy types. I’m sorry if you somehow felt it was.
Q
Q
Oh well his post was so dumb it got deleted. Now there is a rare honour from OS news.
Q
<b foo>Best distro!
</b foo>
I did not see any comment that was deleted. Can someone repost it so I can view the comment for myself?
Anonymous (IP: —.kbnet.net)
I find that folks are over too quick with the “troll” label. Often perfectly valid viewpoints are dismissed because they run contrary to public opinion. No one is expecting a pat on the back for their opinions, but civil discourse would be nice.
I think he is number 3
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci213222,00.html
Can we all agree upon a treaty here: Don’t use the ‘$’ when speaking about Microsoft. It is so lame, and kind of childish.
I think it should be ‘U$’. Makes more sense, doesn’t it
?
No, I’m just kidding here. Just try to stop using that silly ‘$’. It doesn’t make you cool or anything.
And no, I’m not a Windows fan boy.
Okay, kind of off-topic, but I’ma take every opportunity to lobby against the ‘$’.
Thanks
Am I the only one here to think that anti-aliasing is extremely crappy? Surely they could do better, a few alphas ago it was much better.
If your going to copy an os gui then go for mac osx.
Why? It is hardly the most perfect UI, especially under Mac standards (never before had the Macintosh platfrom being so inconsistent). It’s predecessors, NeXT ande Platinum, are much much much much better.
And then again, there are far less Mac OS X users than Windows. And Linux is much better off competing with Windows than OS X (Linux is more suited for the enterprise currently). I disagree with copying the look of Windows, like Lycoris, but I agree with copying where possible Windows’ UI, and changing it only for the better.
Who doesn’t love the control bar at the bottom of the screen.
I’m not sure what you mean by control bar, so I assume it is menubar. Nope, I prefer it the place I like best – on the right click. Which I why I like NeXT so much.
Windows start menu needs to be outsourced to India. What a lovely country.
What is that suppose to mean? Indian programmers the last I check aren’t all that creative but very mathematical. Its the way they were brought up as.
Well, I don’t mind Micro$oft, as long as I can us $un, Ora¢l€ and I฿M and ¢omputer A$$o¢iat€$ and $on¥ and the likes….
And of course, £inux (stuff like $u$e is too easy…)
BTW, $ for dollar, € for euro, ฿ for Thai bath, and ¥ for yen, £ for pound.
Weird, the font doesn’t support the baht sign, which of course is based on the B.
Ignorance may be bliss for the ignorant, but its agony for everyone else
Reads like a great bumper sticker
When realistically, once you use it you’ll find so much more to hate.
I tried one of their earlier releases -It was so bad as to make me not want to try any other releases from them!
Off the top of my head…
No SU vs. Regular user. Ark Linux treats everyone as SU, with the idea being “this will make it easy to use, like windows”.
Obviously Windows security leaves a lot lacking, and so does Ark’s now as a result of this decision.
Similarly, anyone who starts w/Ark will be in for a rude awakening once and if they decide to try out a more mature, well thought out Linux package, as suddenly they will have to deal with Super Users and regular ones. For this reason alone, Ark isn’t a good choice for the 1st time Linux user.
Ark package installment is terrible. Poorly written instructions, and a second CD of gzipped packages does not make up for either a good apt-get, or RPM package manager. I’d hope that this, at least, is fixed sooner than later for Ark Linux. Their package selection will be quite small if it isn’t. One would be able to install from source presumably, but since they’re dumbing down all other Unix-like aspects of the OS, I can’t picture them being to eager to teach potential newbies how to install from source.
Of course if they did, they could skip the usual step of “su root” before actually installing the packages due to the aforementioned lack of a SU account.
Seriously… If you’re new to Linux, save yourself a lot of headache & go with one of the following, depending upon your needs:
1. Jamd Linux (i686 optimized version of Redhat 9, with loads of perks, a fixed KDE install, AND apt-get all setup w/a GUI manager). http://www.boycottmicrosoft.net/jamd/
2. Gentoo 1.4 (source based install. 1,4 comes with a lot of pre-built stuff to get you up and running faster, and they have a huge userbase. Easily the biggest of any of the source-based distro’s, I’d argue). http://www.gentoo.org/
3. Mandrake 9.x (9.2’s in beta currently I believe. Mandrake is arguably next to Redhat and Suse as far as being one of the best know Linux distro’s around! It’s User-friendly, easy to get started with, and they throw in everything but the kitchen sink!) http://www.linux-mandrake.com/
4. Vector Linux (based on Slackware, Vector Linux makes THE alternative Linux, as far as I’m concerned. It’s lightweight, meaning it runs on a lot of older hardware just fine, and it simply flies on modern boxes. It’s way easy to use, and after a quick 15 minute install, you’ve got a fully loaded box, ready to go!). http://www.vectorlinux.com/
Whatever you do… Avoid Ark though. Obviously this is all my personal opinion, but this was one of the worst Linux experiences I’ve yet had. It just came across as being a Linux made by someone who doesn’t understand Unix OS’s, and who is trying to make a Unix-based version of Windows (complete with security holes, a propriatery arrangement of files, and dumbed down beyond belief!).
Is it me, or is KDE + Keramik so last century? I personally find it hideous, and any new comer to linux would surely want something a little less hard on the eyes? If the aim of Ark Linux is to provide an OS for “desktop use, primarily for people without prior Linux experience”, surely they should provide a default that is a little more user friendly?
Also, why is everyone suddenly doing KDE based redhat? I’m all for diversification of distros to provide ‘choice’, but come on people…
I’m looking forward to Novell’s linux NOS-desktops standardising on Ximian Gnome, and hopefully then other mainstream distros following suit with Gnome standardisation, as long as there’s no Geramik to be seen
The default installation of GNOME or KDE may very well copy Windows, but that’s irrelevent. KDE (and to a lesser extent, GNOME) is what you make it. My KDE setup looks almost nothing at all like Windows.
– It boots up to a completely empty desktop.
– Most applications are accessed via hotkeys, with a backup set of quick-launch icons and a KMenu in an autohide bar on the left.
– Task bar is at bottom, but again, autohide and rarely used thanks to fully configurable task-switching key bindings.
– Only a few icons per window. Most icons are entirely extraneous. This is very different from Windows’s “an icon to duplicate everything in the menubar” philosophy.
– No icon text. The whole point of icons is that people respond more strongly to a well-chosen set of symbols than to text. Text in icons (like in IE) are a crutch used to fix the problem that icons are entirely overused in Windows.
– A global menubar (little used in the face of hotkeys) is in an autohide panel at the top (kinda like MacOS, except auto-hidden).
Is it revolutionary? Not really. But its hardly a copy of Windows.