Linux Archive

"The recent emphasis of the Linux community has been on desktop distros that make it easy to install and configure the system without venturing beyond the GUI. Despite the success of these beginner-friendly systems, a significant segment of the Linux population prefers a simpler approach. These back-to-basics users want clarity, stability, and speed, and they do not care about the proliferation of redundant tools and glossy configuration helpers that populate the GUI-based systems. In the past, no-frills Linux users gravitated to systems such as Slackware, Gentoo, or Debian, but another back-to-basics distro is gaining favor among the Linux faithful: Arch Linux."

Cutlets reviews PCLinuxOS and concludes: "PCLinuxOS is an extremely easy to use, user friendly distribution that is perfect for Joe and Jane users from the Windows world. The developers have taken the utmost care to ensure that the distribution functions perfectly and that it meets the needs of a large section of Linux users. The out of the box support for non-free formats is a huge plus for this distribution."

"Of the challenges that GNU/Linux users face when choosing hardware components for any system is the sound card compatibility. ALSA, or officially known as Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, provides much of the audio and MIDI functionality to Linux users and is largely replacing OSS. Today we are examining Linux audio performance in the gaming environment with a slew of various sound cards by examining their effect on frame-rate performance. The contenders are Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Z3, Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2, Chaintech AV-710, Aureal Vortex (AU8820), and AC'97 integrated audio."

Yellow Dog Linux version 4.1, which has been available directly from Terrasoft Solutions since early January, is now available for free download from their various mirrors. This is essentially a recompile of Fedora Core 4 specifically for PowerPC's, with extra polished support for Apple's Macs.

The results of the LinuxQuestions member's choice awards are in. The results: Ubuntu is the best distribution, OpenOffice.org the best office suite, GAIM the best instant messenger, KDE the best desktop environment (Run! Run! Duck! Duck!), Konqueror the best filemanager, etc. Do with the results as you please.

"As a Linux user, there are times when you have to play nicely with users of Windows or Mac OS - such as when they send you Microsoft Word files. When you receive a Word file, you can either follow Richard Stallman's advice and refuse it, or bite the bullet and work with it. Modern Linux word processors - such as OpenOffice.org Writer, AbiWord, KWord, and TextMaker - can deal with most Word files. But if you don't want to fire up a word processor in order to read or print the document, you can turn to the command line. A handful of small but powerful Linux command line utilities make viewing, printing, and even converting Word files to another format, a breeze."

"Microsoft lately has been challenging Linux's suitability for older hardware, so it seems like a good time to look at Linux distributions that can run on older machines. I took six distributions for a test run on an old machine, and also tried software that turns old hardware into a thin client. The bottom line: Linux is still quite suitable for older hardware. It might not turn your aging PC into a powerhouse, but it will extend its lifespan considerably."

"Is Dell is on its way to becoming the first tier-one PC vendor to offer a mainstream business Linux desktop to US customers? It's starting to look that way. Dell has started advertising a trio of affordable workstations with RHEL WS 4 preinstalled."

The Linux kernel has booted on top of the sun4v hypervisor on Sun's new Niagara CPU (just the kernel, there was no root filesystem). Sun has been very active in trying to get Linux support for their Niagara.

The Linux kernel is now up and running on an Intel iMac, and as such the Linux guys have beaten the windows guys. "Using elilo and a modified Linux kernel, we can boot from a USB hard disk on the 17" iMac Core Duo. We are using the hacked vesafb driver to inherit the bootloader's framebuffer, keyboard and a USB network card work. Gentoo runs and can compile the Linux kernel." Note that you can't really do much more than stare at the shell prompt, as no graphical environment boots yet.

"VectorLinux SOHO 5.1.1 Deluxe is a superb Linux distribution in my book. While I don't think it's geared toward the masses in a way that SUSE Linux, Mandriva, or Linspire might be, I do feel it has something to offer Linux users everywhere. It's easy enough to install for someone who at least has a basic understanding of Linux, has a robust compliment of applications, performs very well, and is as stable as it's parent distribution, Slackware, from what I've seen during the review."

"In various older studies, Microsoft and some analysts claimed Linux has a higher total cost of ownership than Windows. They attributed the difference mainly to higher system management costs, and concluded that the higher TCO outweighed the much lower license and acquisition costs for Linux. However, in a new study of over 200 Linux enterprises, Enterprise Management Associates found that this perception is no longer accurate. Sophisticated management tools now allow Linux management to be fast, effective, and inexpensive. With far lower acquisition costs, Linux is now a cost-effective alternative to Windows. EMA analyzed the cost factors cited in previous studies and found the following results." Please note that this study was sponsered by OSDL, so take out your salt while reading this.

The Elive project has released what will probably become Elive 0.4. "Elive 0.4 will be officially released next week, but you can download and try the PRE release if you want, this PRE release will be just the same as 0.4 Release if there's no problems with it." Elive is the live CD which aims to bring the latest and greatest of E16/E17 to your desktop with minimum hassle. The default window manager is Enlightenment 16.8, but of course Enlightenment 17 is also included, as well as the EFL libraries and most of the applications made on top of these libraries.

"The eWeek headline read 'Linux Desktop Needs Major Vendor Support.' A hopeful Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols opinion piece that someday, somewhere, some company will have the guts to face down Microsoft and make it possible for anyone and everyone to easily buy a GNU/Linux desktop. The 'some company' he was referring to was obviously the tier one vendors: IBM, HP, and Dell. While we're waiting for these tier ones to become so inclined, perhaps the GNU/Linux community's appropriate course of action should be to do what we should have done long ago. That is, to create a Linux-specific hardware vendor (or vendors) of our own."