Onebase is still a very new distribution – the first version appeared only in July 2003, and Onebase 2004 released in early January 2004 is a major rewrite and enhancement of the original concept. It started out as a source-based system, but with this release it embraced binary packages as well, becoming a hybrid. It is not based on any other major distro or package management system, instead it prides itself on doing things its own way. These are still the early days, but this is also what makes it an interesting distro, and the one to watch.
Introducing Olm
Before we proceed to installation, I would like to briefly describe Olm – Onebase Linux Management. Olm and the assorted ol-commands are the heart of Onebase. Together they aim to provide an integrated system for managing many aspects of system administration, initial setup and dealing with packages. These are console tools and there are a number of options and one-letter switches, fortunately the only command one really has to remember is olm, as invoked by itself it will provide a listing of all available options.
Olm can be used to install software either from source or binary packages, depending on switches used. So, ‘olm -s packagename’ will install source for that package and any dependencies while olm -b will do the same but using binary packages instead. There are corresponding options to just download (-d for sources and -f for binaries), to compile or install already downloaded packages (-d for sources and -i for binaries), or to just list packages that would be installed (-g and -p respectively). Olm -o sets the options used to compile software: processor types, optimization levels and any other compiler flags. What about executing a script that was downloaded through a browser, or just written? Olm -a will do that. It’s a fairly complete and rich system, but apart from remembering various switches it is still easy to use.
Resources permitting any number of Olm processes can run concurrently, and according to developers any dependency problems that might arise will be automatically resolved.
Gentoo has portage, Source Mage has grimoire – Onebase uses Application Gallery. It’s a collection of information required to install packages, in the format packagename.olm. I will call them .olms, not to be confused with the command olm itself. So, each .olm is an equivalent of a spell in Source Mage, or I believe ebuild in Gentoo. These .olms are then grouped into categories and sub-categories. Unlike other source-based systems, Onebase’s Application Gallery resides on their server, not in the local cache. This means using Application Gallery requires no updates or synchronization, since the system always uses the current version. However starting with Onebase 2004 it is also possible to create and use a local gallery, using ol-off command. One of the options in ol-off synchronizes local gallery with the main one, and Onebase running in this way is quite similar to those other source-based distros. It is very simple to switch back and forth between main and local galleries with ol-off command.
Main gallery can be accessed not only by olm commands, but also with a web browser. Once the desired application is located, click on its name to download its .olm script, which can then be executed with ‘olm -a’ . I think this was in fact the original way of installing software in the first version of Onebase. Console browser Links is included in core tools, so web-based representation of gallery is still available even when not running XFree.
When I cast a spell on Source Mage, if there are any optional dependencies it will ask me whether I want to use them. There are no such options in Onebase – dependencies described in .olm will be installed, unless one edits the .olm directly. While extra flexibility is nice, I think this is fine – most users should be happy with the defaults, and experts can do a bit of editing themselves.
The way I think about this, olm itself deals with management of software, while ol-commands handle configuration, though that division is a bit blurry: ol-sys handles updating of all installed packages, and ol-ui removes installed packages. But then there are configuration scripts such as ol-init for managing init services, ol-audio which switches between Alsa and standard drivers, ol-connect for internet connections, and ol-ki for kernel reconfiguration. Ol-help displays help files, simply by opening text files in vi editor. Ol-commands also include several ‘enterprise tools’. Unfortunately I was not not able to try them out as I only had one Onebase system available at any given time, but I want to mention them since the developers seem to think they are important, and set Onebase apart: these are ol-link, ol-share, ol-net and ol-manage. As I understand they are meant to simplify managing a number of machines, with tasks such as updating all machines with one command, producing common kernel configurations, or listing packages used on all systems.
Installation
My test machine was an Athlon XP1800, Gigabyte 7VRX motherboard with on-board network and audio. 512MB RAM, 80GB disk, and CDROM/burner. Video is provided by a cheap nvidia GeForce4-MX440 card and sound by Soundblaster Live, since I like to play music on my computer and I could never get acceptable quality with on-board sound.
The default installation I used was very simple. Booting from Onbase CD, first come the options to use the disk for installation, or rescue. Choosing installation brings us to cfdisk for partitions (I used only root and swap), then selection of mountpoints and filesystems – available are ext3, reiserfs and XFS. Lilo is installed, either in MBR or /. Next come the settings that will be used for compiling, such as processor type, optimization levels and any additional compiler flags. And then the fun begins: because Onebase is based on sources, the whole base system is now compiled. There is no way to configure kernel at this stage – the default kernel is compiled with default set of options. The whole process took two and half hours on my machine. When it is over, all that is left to do is set up the root password, and reboot into the new system.
Configuration
Upon reboot, I found Onebase follows the trend of hiding boot messages behind a splash screen. Personally I prefer to see what is happening, so as advised I hit F2 for standard display. What I saw was an auto-configuration routine, possibly based on Knoppix, going through its paces. It seemed to detect my hardware correctly but when it was done I found what could be best described as a first approximation rather than a working system. This would be acceptable – after all this is the case with many installations… except for one small problem: this auto-configuration runs on every reboot, and in some cases it is necessary to make the same adjustments all over again. For example, it makes entries in /etc/fstab that I didn’t want – I removed them, but when I reboot, they come back! XF86Config-4 it created was good enough to start XFree without crashing, but not really useable, so I quickly replaced it with my own.
While auto-configuration can be turned off with ol-init, one then has to load all modules and services by hand after each reboot, because Onebase doesn’t seem to use standard tools and locations like /etc/modules for example – it would not be an issue if auto-configuration worked perfectly, on all hardware, every time. But we all know this is not going to happen, so not providing for standard ways of setting up the system seems like an odd design choice. Perhaps I am missing something here… I am also having problems with sound I simply do not understand. I tried to get it going with Alsa and without – the modules load, user belongs to group audio, I fiddled with permissions on devices until I could fiddle no more, yet when starting KDE (both in user and root) I am still greeted by the dreaded message, “/dev/dsp could not be found”! This is disappointing, as I never had this problem with other distros I installed on this machine. Supporting my point about auto-configuration is the fact that I could get sound working when I turned auto-configuration off and loaded everything manually. I am still looking for a solution to this one.
Ol-connect has options for cable internet with Static-IP or Dynamic-IP, for Dial-up connection, for ADSL connection (for pppoe users), and for ISDN connection. Notably lacking is the option of using LAN, with DHCP. Until I find a better solution, I just enter ‘dhcpcd eth0’ after every reboot. It works, and since I don’t reboot that often it is not a major issue, but surely it could be handled better, and there should be some way of making this setting permanent. Reading the forum, I saw a solution involving hacking /etc/ifup and /etc/sysconfig/network-devices/ifconfig.eth0 … well, this is not what I had in mind!
In my opinion, the whole approach to configuration could use rethinking. I am all for auto-configuring as much as possible during installation, but I believe it would be best to stick to standard ways after that.
In use
Olm is the definite highlight. I think it was where most development effort was concentrated, and it works very well. It was no problem at all to compile, for example, Mozilla in one terminal and k3b in another while happily surfing the web in Konqueror at the same time. On the other hand there are some strange bugs affecting other aspects of the system: for example, I found users could not open terminals or use su – could this have something to do with devpts, and lack of its entry in fstab? I sure don’t know, I’ll have to wait for the experts to figure this one out. In the meantime, adding users to group root and modifying permissions on /dev/* fixed this issue.
When installing KDE from source I found a couple of packages would not download, due to the usual glitches: changed locations, versions etc… keeping all details of thousands of packages up to date is a difficult task and occasional discrepancies are inevitable. Nevertheless, I believe installing software should be a routine and dependable process, not a game of russian roulette. One step towards this goal would be to ensure downloads do not fail, by providing alternative locations with a fallback position of distribution’s own archive, and this is one extension of olm architecture I would like to see. In the meantime, current system does have a fallback position of sorts: it was possible to continue installation of KDE by using binary versions of failing packages instead – since binary packages are stored on Onebase’s own servers, they were available. And to their credit, once developers were aware of the problems, they fixed them very quickly.
And at least this time I was able to continue the process without backtracking. Onebase does not archive downloaded sources – once installation finishes, the entire working directory is wiped clean. This was my major complaint about the first version of Onebase: any interruption to the process would result in loss of everything downloaded up to that point. Onebase 2004 addresses this issue, if operation is interrupted for any reason it is declared pending and its working directory is preserved until the process completes or is deleted with olm -w command. This is a huge improvement over the previous versions, but I would like additional option to automatically archive the sources. My bandwidth is limited, and it would be nice to be able to easily preserve downloaded sources as backups, or perhaps for updates of other machines. In fact it is possible: for example working with sources, instead of installing directly with olm -s I can first download with olm -d, then copy downloaded files to a safe location, then continue installation with olm -c. But this is a bit of a kludge – I think it would be nicer to handle this with either a switch, for example olm -s –archive, or through a global setting.
This release shipped with some key components somewhat behind their current versions: kernel 2.4.21, gcc 3.2.3 and Mozilla 1.4. I imagine developers were more concerned about working out the foundations of the system than keeping all components up to date. This is understandable, and probably a wise choice – Onebase is produced by very small team, they had to set their priorities and we should cut them some slack. They did get the foundations right, and now the updates follow: every day there are some additions and updates to the gallery. Olm itself has gone through a couple of revisions already, but keeping it up to date is as simple as command ‘olm -s olm’, and it only takes a couple of seconds. Likewise, the number of available applications was initially quite small, but it is growing and most applications I wanted are now available. There is KDE 3.1.4, Gnome 2.4.1, Fluxbox, Evolution… since I installed my system additions to the gallery included Xfce4, Open Office, Mplayer, Java and Flash. Mozilla is now updated to 1.5. But if the gallery is to grow anywhere near the size of Gentoo’s portage or even Source Mage’s grimoire, it needs more people involved in development and writing .olms for their favourite applications. It is pretty easy, and there is some documentation on that topic available on the website.
While we’re on the subject of the website, browsing through gallery means wading through large number of categories nested two levels deep and I find this more of hindrance than help. I wish there was also a simple alphabetical listing and/or a search function available! But I have to add here the site looks very nice, clean and fast to load. While this is not a feature of the distro as such, it does add to the overall impression, and contributes to user’s experience. As does support available on the forum, and communication between users and developers. On that score I have no complaints – when I asked in the forum about Bitstream Vera fonts, they were added to the gallery just a couple of hours later.
Default kernel is huge, so I used ol-ki command to recompile and trim it down. Ol-ki handles all tasks involved in recompiling existing kernel other than running menuconfig so it simplifies the process somewhat. However be aware it does not create kernel with a new name and its own entry in lilo.conf – it simply overwrites the old one. And compiling another kernel with ol-ki will still require a little bit of work: making a link to the new source first, and making appropriate entry in lilo.conf.
Finally, I also installed Onebase on an old PII/400 with only 128 MB of RAM. I was curious whether base system would compile on a machine with such low specs, and how long it would take: yes it did, and it took over 12 hours. But once the base was in place, I installed binary versions of XFree and KDE and I was rewarded with a system noticeably snappier than Mepis running on identical box. By the way, Onebase binary packages are compiled for i686 architecture.
Conclusions
Most concepts used in Onebase can be found in other distros as well. Sorcerer will compile any number of programs in parallel, Rock Linux will work with either sources or binary packages in similar way, and inevitably someone will drop in to announce Gentoo is best anyway. However systems like Sorcerer and Rock can be somewhat intimidating for those of us who are not professional System Administrators. On the other hand, Onebase truly has the potential of putting the power of source based distro (with additional convenience of using binaries if desired) into the hands of mere mortals, without compromising on features. This release is already eminently useable, but thanks to some bugs and difficulties in configuration it still has some way to go before it is truly ready ‘for the masses’. But I believe the framework is sound, and with a bit of support Onebase will go from strength to strength.
About the author
I am an amateur, but I enjoy dabbling with computers, and after playing with Linux for about 3 years I consider myself an intermediate user. I change my distros quite often, but at the moment beside Onebase I also run Source Mage, College Linux and Arch Linux. I got interested in Open Source when I realized Information Technology is entirely too important to be entrusted solely to corporations and governments.
What 2 distros do something in the same way? I have SuSE now, & if I got Mandrake, I would have to look in another folder for a app. (the same one) cause in SuSE it got installed in this folder & in Mandrake it got installed in that folder. This is geting to be to much there are 130+ distros.
YAY another distro!! Just what the linux community needs.
yet another example of Linux’s worst enemy…good ideas limited to one distro=fragmentation. Linux is screaming for a standards base.in regard to configuration management..whatever happened to Linuxconf? i though that worked pretty good and was something found on more than one distro if i remember right. Good review never the less despite the Gentoo is the best way opinion.
hehe. i was just thinking the same thing. I guess some people feel its a prestige thing to roll another distro. Once again, more wasted man hours.
It is of no value, no one will use it.
i disagree with all of you so far.
that can be all true for some distros, but did you actually RTFA?
go check Onebase linux, i jsut finished browsing the website and taking the product tour, i am really thinking of trying this, it will probably beat mdk, redhat, suse or anything else in a many things..
Choice is a good thing. Sure standardization is fine, but once you choose a distro, why bother even caring what other distros do? Pick a distro that fits your idea of how things should be done, and stick with it. The one thing I see a problem with is all these people coming over to linux, downloading tons of different versions, and not using any one of them long enough to learn the strengths and weaknesses. They worry about the cosmetic things and the installation routine – I haven’t “installed” Linux since my first Debian install over a year ago. Sure, I tried Mandrake and SuSe and Red Hat, but I realized at the time that once they are up and running, there is not much difference. Most people will choose KDE or GNOME – they aren’t -that- different on the various distros.
That what <insert linux distro of choice here> fanatics say about their own distro. True interesting OS inovation is being done by the likes of the SkyOS,MorphOS and the like. So what if 5 or even 50,000 people say its better. In my opinion this doesn’t further the interestes of linux rather it hinders it.
I should hurry up to promote my twobase distro before a thirdbase distro points out…
The more I am reading about Linux, the less I am
attempted to try it.
In all this Linux story, the final loser is me, just a
desktop end user.
However, I should thank the “Linux community”. All the good
applications arrive on my win98 platform (Mozilla, OOo, Thunderbird, …)
I couldn’t have said it better myself. It often takes a *new* distro, with a completely new way of doing things to get established distros to re-evaluate how their systems work.
In my opinion, apt-get is the best package management system to date. I haven’t used gentoo, but I’ve heard great things about portage, but I have no experience with it so can’t say.
However there are limitations to apt-get. Dependency hell ISN’T completely solved using apt. Also, it is next to impossible to maintain a “mixed” system (some packages from sid, some from stable etc.), and apt-get dist-upgrade is not foolproof.
Their package management system seems interesting, so I’m apt (no pun intended) to give it a try to see. Being able to run concurrent source compiles is interesting.
This is why I love the Linux idea. If you don’t like how something works, roll your own. This is a natural part of the evolution of this OS. The ideas that work proliferate, and the rest fall by the way side. The end result is the movement towards a stronger system overall.
I do agree though that there do need to be better standards across distros.
it is the different linux distrobutions that give us variety. someone said there wasnt much difference between mandy, suse, and redhat. thats because those are three distros trying to do the same thing. would you say the same between mandy, gentoo, and debian? or redhat enterprise linux, slackware, and knoppix?
i agree that there are a ton of distros, but there are only about 15 or 16 that really matter, because they are the best at what they are going for. how can you have the best in a category without new attempts?
the reason that there are so many distros is the same reason there is windows xp home, xp pro, and 2k3 advanced server. there is no reason that one os can suit everyones needs. linux just gives more choices then windows, which leads to more good (and bad) choices becomming available.
now the real thing we need is some standard that all the different packageing managers can plug into. we need a standard way of doing common things like drag and drop, copy/paste, system tray icons, etc that all the desktops can plug into. what we need is ways for all the options to interface well with each other, not a reduction in options
I would imagine that the number of real-world users of distros other than the top few is negligible, so that the multitude of minor distros is not a fragmentation issue. (Standardization among the large distros is likely more important than the number of distros.) Also, small distros are a testing ground for concepts that may later become popular (think of Knoppix and Gentoo), or address localization or similar concerns. I also do not think that distro development is stealing developer resouces that would actually have been applied to another major distro. Also, it must be a tremendous learning experience from a systems administration perspective (like I found my LFS attempt very educational). Also, if one is not interested in hearing about YALD on OSNews, it is very easy to skip over the article, like I do for MS and most Apple articles.
i agree that there are a ton of distros, but there are only about 15 or 16 that really matter.
Well, I think that’s about 12 too many. I think you could break the distros down into the following categories:
1. LFS (for rolling your own)
2. Source-based distros (needs a category of its own since they don’t normally use binaries)
3. Distros for geeks
4. Distros for newbies
So, that makes what should be … what, 4 distros?
in regard to configuration management..whatever happened to Linuxconf? i though that worked pretty good and was something found on more than one distro if i remember right.
You should give Webmin ( http://www.webmin.com/ ) if you want a good, cross-distro, configuration tool. Smart design and expandable. You can even lock it down so that only the computer that its running on can access it. Very smart tool.
And for all of you who hate the idea of YALD, I’ve got a suggestion for you: Don’t use them!
That is all…
No disrespect. Almost every post so far sound like compaints of people that are new to Linux and are confused by choice. If you dont want choice, don’t use Linux. People make different distributions because they have different views on how the system should be. Lots of people do it as a hobby. Lots have disagreements with other distos, and decide to make one for their personal use, and make it available to the rest of us. Quit complaining.
-adapt
“Also, small distros are a testing ground for concepts that may later become popular (think of Knoppix and Gentoo), or address localization or similar concerns.”
Bingo! I couldn’t agree with you more. This is one aspect of open source software that many people will always fail to comprehend. It’s the smaller distros where the bulk of the true innovation happens. The big distros might add some innovating features, but they’re mostly about refining existing tools.
This is a new approach to package management, and it sems like it could develop into something pretty solid. I’ve read all the docs on their site, and the more you read, the more interesting it becomes. I will likely try their next release, when hopefully they will have the autodetection stuff figured out.
Damn this Distro sounds like a good compromise (after those “features” the article writer mentioned, are fixed:). I used RedHat from 3.x to 7.3 and then it went to wrong direction. I tested Mandrake too, but it was too cutting edge (don’t remember what mandrake, but almost every package had -EXPERIMENTAL text or something like that and it was too user friendly with all weird config-software:). Then came Debian Woody and I immediately switched to it. (had an old box running on Potato). And after I upgraded Potato to Woody, I fell in love with it. It’s apt-get rules, but binaries compiled just for my hardware sounds too good. Okay I tested Gentoo, but it was too much for my nerves. I think that the only way to use it, is starting all the way from Stage1, but it it takes sooo long to have useful desktop machine with KDE and friends. So nowadays i use Debian Sarge, but i’m still waiting for The Ultimate Distro with a cli power of Debian and the Sweetness of Mandrake and the Knoppix AutoDetection Stuff and the compile power of Gentoo (with a support for distgcc:). Nowadays i’m too lazy to tweak and fix and suck all the problems with package management, filesystems, kernels etc. I just want to use my machine for something real, not configuring and tweaking my OS to get it to usable stage. (oh I remember those times, when the installation of Win98 every week, was fun(geez:)). But then, there is MacOS X, but then my time will probably go with configuring and setting all the sweet unix stuff up ;D
or should i consider switching to FreeBSD?-) It’s a pity that BeOS died. It was _the superior GUI OS_ (oh the booting time of ten seconds with 300 MHz cpu :>
but well. maybe this is enough. I eagerly wait the next release of Onebase (good, solid name with a sound of stable work horse
That’s how Windows killed the hope of a main stream Unix desktop
Well, after reading through the tour it seams like a neat concept, but looking at their gallery it cannot compare at all to gentoo’s portage..at least not yet.
I ran a Debian-testing(based on a morphix install) box for a while and it was really nice, i loved being able to compile when i wanted and install binary if I needed teh app fast…btu I ran into a few dependency problems, as apt still has those, and I went back to Gentoo…best Linux distro out there IMHO if you have time to compile!
I might give Onebase a try if tehy expand their gallery… or I find an extra pc to install it on!
I often use redhat 7.3 8 and 9 rpms on my Fedora box when i can’t find Fedoras. i also can often (not always)can use suse and mandrake and (the late) pld rpms too. So i don’t really see it as fragmentation. true they may have different bundled tools but so does every version of windows.
I agree about the point of smaller distros being needed a innovators since they can take risks the bigger ones can’t.
Lastly, whats the problem with Mandrake? I’d never use it on a server but as a desktop it was great. After all, stability is not that important on a desktop as on a workstation or a desktop. If something crashes every now and again I think they benefit of having newer software outweighs the glitches. IMHO
That’s how Windows killed the hope of a main stream Unix desktop
Why should we? In case you missed the post above yours.
Lots of people do it as a hobby. Lots have disagreements with other distos, and decide to make one for their personal use, and make it available to the rest of us. Quit complaining.
Perhaps with it in italics, you’ll understand that you should read it. Its a hobby for most people. People write this stuff to scratch an itch. And if that doesn’t fall in line with some artifical standards body, then, oh well. We do things how we like. You don’t like that, don’t use Linux.
Go back to rebooting your Windows box, buddy.
I’d like to add a couple more to your list….
Ultra small bootable ‘business card’ distros.
Small security hardened distros for dedicated/embedded firewalls.
Media distros for ‘set top box’ use.
All have their place where they work well, and most have similar Microsoft Windows distro of the same kind (Windows CE, Windows Media Center Edition, Windows XP tablet PC edition, Windows XP Embedded)
I think a lot of people get confused as they are not directed towards the big 3 (Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake) when they look for a desktop distro. Microsoft are careful to push a single one of their distros (XP Home at the moment) here, and so avoid creating confusion.
Lots of people do it as a hobby. Lots have disagreements with other distos ….
This doesn’t contradict with “*nix heads will never agree on one thing”, or does it ?
It is just an observation and unrelated to if I use or not use linux, or rebooting windows.
I suppose it depends on why someone would go through the trouble of making another linux distribution but wasting time they are not. They are especially not wasting other people’s time. No one is forcing people to use all these distributions.
I suppose the person who builds model boats is wasting his and everyone’s time because some other person already built model boats in the next county.
I suppose everyone that has attempted to climb Mount Everest after the first person did is wasting everyone’s time.
I suppose anyone that attempts to do something that they find interesting is wasting everyone’s time because some one has done it first.
If some one wants to create a distribution of Linux, I am not going to complain and say they are wasting time and effort. It is their time not mine.
For those complaining about wasting time, are you helping out with your favorite distribution? Or are you spending your spare time complaining about others wasting their time?
The best will survive, the others will fade away. Competition means that no one can be complacent, that everyone must strive to be the best or perish.
Decades ago, there were dozens of companies making cars and now there are only big threes in the US. When GM wanted to promote cars, they took control of public mass transportation companies and then set trolleies and buses on fire, in addition to lobbying the US Congress to build the US highway systems. So competition along is not enough.
Another example is the digital celluar network. In Europe, there is only the GSM and in US, there are TDMA, GSM, CDMA and iDent. European companies win by market shares.
> The more I am reading about Linux, the less I am
> attempted to try it.
Put up or shut up: everyone can try it for free from a liveCD, there is just no trade-off in trying that; no money, no messing with existing system. So, if you still need to be ‘convinced’ to try, I’ll pass, and so I think everyone.
In case you didn’t know you had that option, my apologies.
> However, I should thank the “Linux community”. All the
> good applications arrive on my win98 platform (Mozilla,
> OOo, Thunderbird, …)
What ‘Linux community’? Why is anything related to free software automagically mingled with ‘Linux’?
OOo comes from Solaris, Mozilla comes from Windows.
It’s refreshing to now that at least someone knows about (true) history… A toast for that…
I’ve been playing with several distros in the past couple of weeks trying to “find one that thinks my way”. Well here is the problem: I don’t have that much time, and not everyone can go through the motions like I did.
What I settled on was not perfect either. Every distro had really strong points, and really weak points. All of them are broken somehow.
This is my question to the distro-making community: Why doesn’t someone just sift through all of the available distros and find the best of each, and put everything in ONE DISTRO? The GPL allows it, and it will actually help Linux because it would actually work most of the time… you know, like Windows.
And some might say that this is just cheating and not giving back to the community that this builds on. Well actually it does give back by creating something useable out of the present disorder.
Also, it is one heck of a way to compete against the commercial efforts. This is how the GPL should be implemented IMHO.
But what do I know? I am just a user….
This is my question to the distro-making community: Why doesn’t someone just sift through all of the available distros and find the best of each, and put everything in ONE DISTRO?
Yeah, I could dig that. Give us the installation (NTFS resize, kthnx), file manager, and windows file/printer sharing from Xandros, Knoppix’s auto hardware configuration (and maybe the Yast thing from Suse), Libranet’s ability to easily install truetype fonts and browser plugins, Lindows click ‘n run (but make it much bigger, and organize it better than the stock apt repositories), modular like Morphix, give it the speed and stability of Slackware, and you’ve got yourself one kick-ass distro
The problem is that different distro’s exist because people would not agree with each other as to what is the “best”.
OSS could build a emac editor or a nice browser, but the process could hardly build a fighter jet which requires that mutliple teams work in one direction.
Well, long talk is going outthere…
I’ve installed this distro for some weeks now (2 or 3, i don’t remember) and it look promissing.
I think it’s way to limited to install only .rpm or .deb packages… And if you have one distro that easy your work and verify dependencies of binary or source i don’t think that bad. And, if there is only 1 distro, it will append like Windows from MS, low innovation, low synergy. Maybe linux has way to much distro’s, but it’t linux way to evolve.
About OneBase. The install is all CLI based, but easy, and the cd uses a knoppix base for bootup e for doing as a rescue cd. During the installation there is always hints for what to do, for the partioning, the optimazation and after that, you are prompted to relax during 2-3 hours, time for all the base system compile.
After all that, you are prompted to choose your password and are disponibilized scripts for setting up connection, to allow the download and install of the others package you may need, like Xfree86, kde or gnome, etc…
Still, the choice of package is thin since it’s a youg and little distro.
But things always need to grow
the best gift for linux is freedom,
the wirst gift for linux is freedom.
Just to let you know, since I wrote my review Mozilla was updated to 1.6, and kernel 2.6.1 just became available as well.
I dont think that the problem is that there are to many takes on how an operating system shoule be composed.
I think the problem is too many operating system selling it self as Linux. Then they forget the ability to MODIFY the source code their system is composed of.
There seems to be some kind of taboo on actually using open source code (people call it forking and say its a bad thing).
I would love if a distribution forked all code they offerd and actually maintained that code.
… duh, I didn’t express myself very clearly. I meant, versions of these applications available in the gallery were updated! In fact running olm -s linux-2.6 not only installed the new kernel without any intervention on my part, but I just discovered this in turn fixed that sound issue I wrote about in my review! I’m running 2.6.1 now, and I’ve got sound – things are looking up
… the guy that runs this thing would be an eighteen hole golf course. From it’s inception if anything has characterized Onebase more than anything else it’s the utter unreliability of the public representations of it’s creator. Time and time again false expectations have been raised about the distro particularlyregarding the timing of its releases. I’d had enough of the blarney by October of last year. It seems to me at least minimally important that if you’re going to take the time to assist a developer by installing and working with his unproven creation that you be able to trust the statements he makes about it. Onebase Linux can do with a little less hype and a lot more honesty.
jlowell
So in which category would you put Suse, Libranet or Mandrake?
I suppose in category 4: distros for newbies.
And yet while they are reasonably easy to use, there is nothing the power user can’t do with each of them.
They say that Linus uses Suse as his desktop OS.
As to Mandrake or Libranet, they are used by plenty of developers.
Dare I ask how you feel about Enlightenment 0.17 then? Plenty of projects work on ‘it will be released when it is ready’ schedule – and why not? As a rule, it is their time – it’s not like you are paying them by the hour. At least Onebase tried to aim for a specific release date. Yeah it’s true it slipped by a month… big deal.
Looks like good distro. New features are added. Ofcourse updates and new packages need to be managed for its success. I will give it a try.
I wish that distro’s will reach a compromise regarding packaging.Right now I’m using Slack since I was for 4 years a RedHat fanboy. But they took it pretty mucch into the wrong direction and I didn’t bothered to try Fedora. I hated rpm’s in RedHat , yet was easy (when no dependecy crapp aborted my install). Now I find tgz’s really cool , not like I couldn’t do it on RH. And since I’m the eternal noob , I can always impress myself with how many stuffs I’ve learned.
Me too I would be really happy if there were something like a standard in Linux (I don’t care how many distros are since they respect a standard,is a matter of choice),but I believe it will not happen too soon.
OK, OK, Andrew, you win. We’ll withdraw our offer to make you Chairman of the Ethics Department. 🙂
jlowell
Hello jlowell,
There are a lot of reasons for a slip in the schedule like last-minute feature addons, development stalls, bugs etc.. But in the end we do provide the promised product with more polish and features than its original plan and the best of all for free.
Project Creator
Onebase Linux
all4all4one,
The matter in question here has nothing whatsoever to do with reasons or excuses. Rather it pertains to the essential reliability of one’s public statements; it’s hardly enough after the fact to depend upon ends-justify-means arguments, you make George Bush look like Mother Theresa. If you can’t meet a release date, don’t set one. And as to the polish, I really hadn’t noticed.
jlowell
I’ve been using onebase since the 2.0 version (tried 1.0…but gave up after some installation difficulties), and I’d have to say that this distro brings some beautiful things together, honestly. It was simple, but seemed pretty powerful, and I cannot commend the authors enough. My biggest issue is the lack of software available in .olm (enlightenment is my window manager of choice and what I use on my gentoo box) — but I think it’s probably unreasonable for me to expect for too many packages in the olm repository when it is so much younger and smaller in user/developer base than gentoo is now. Anyways, it works swell for me.
> We’ll withdraw our offer to make you Chairman of the Ethics Department. 🙂
That’s OK – in any case, I was more interested in heading your Department for Preservation of Sanity by Keeping Things In Perspective… let me know when you’re ready to advertise for that one
Now, now, Andrew, you know very well that holding the Chairmanship of the Department for Preservation of Sanity by Keeping Things In Perspective is entirely dependent upon acceptance of the same standards as those expected of the Chairman of the Ethics Department and you’ve rejected those on their face. I suppose that, in the circumstances, we’re not entirely surprised by this rather crass attempt to crash the gate, but we really can’t have that, now, can we.
jlowell
This distro sucks. It will boot, it will configure, it will build in VMWare, but take it a step further and reboot when it thinks it’s finished, and it’s fuckin hosed.
Nothing happens. I guess not everything is compatible with VMWare but they’re hard to find.