Even worse than last year.
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| caitlyn Oct 13, 2009 1:30 AM EDT |
I wanted to see if Ken's list was as arbitrary and ridiculous as last year's. Nope. Mr. Hess has develed even deeper into silliness. Lets' start with Damn Small Linux: no releases in 10+ months, the key developer has moved on to Tiny Core. Heck, who cares if the distro is all but dead. Ken likes it. Never mind that there are several distros in active development in the 50MB and under category like Slitaz and Tiny Core. Nope, the dead distro makes the top 10 for Ken. GNewSense: His whole argument is that it's completely free, which is also true of a number of other distros (i.e.: Ututo) and RMS uses it. He forgot to mention RMS favors MIPS machines which don't run a lot of other popular distros. Hey, lets just worship RMS and do what he does. If the hardware in my machine isn't supported, well.. who cares? If RMS uses it then it's the best on the planet and gets Ken's top spot. Anyone noticed he didn't have one word about how the distro works? He ranks Debian #3 but blasts it's lack of commercial support. Of course, a number of distros in his list (as in most of them) lack commercial support as well. If commercial support is important (and I agree that it is for business) then why isn't SUSE on his list? After Red Hat the biggest Linux support company is Novell. Best hardware detection? Really? Funny, Pardus did better on my laptop hardware. Debian is good but best implies nobody else does better. You can't make a blanket statement like that unless you've tried a ton of distros and a ton of hardware. CentOS makes the list because Ken runs it on his server. Fair enough, but how is it better than other RHEL recompiles like Scientific Linux and Oracle Linux? The Oracle version is now available for free download and it has the commercial support Ken loves available, unlike CentOS. Considering the problems CentOS had earlier this year I think the jury is still out on them. Let's see how they do on patches over a year or so. :I use it" and "I talked to the developer" aren't compelling arguments. He calls Gentoo a "royal pain" but adds it to his list? What? Oh, and if you like tofidget and tinker how is Gentoo better for that than Arch or Slackware or CRUX? If the article was "My favorite 10" it's be hard to argue. Mr. Hess says these are "the best". I think that is highly disputable. At least give good reasons why some make the list and some don't. Oh, and the Bing popups on DaniWeb (which sould be blocked but aren't on FF 3.5.3) are annoying as hell. |
| hkwint Oct 13, 2009 4:14 AM EDT |
Thanks for your reaction Caitlyn, you just saved me some time because I realized I didn't need to read the article. About Gentoo being a PITA: I discovered that yesterday and the day before, because some 40 packages were "fighting" each other, and after upgrading xorg, my screen went blank and the kernel became unresponsive when starting X (even ctrl-alt-del didn't work anymore!). Of course, in the true Gentoo-way, all this problems + fixes were documented 'somewhere on the web', but the messages telling you how to prevent a broken system were clearly not prominent enough. However, it's better than a few years ago. Gentoo nowadays sends the administrator 'messages', much in the same way OpenBSD does (the latter uses sendmail while the first uses its own homebrewn system). And if I had read that message, I could have saved some time and tons of headache. So now my system was happily compiling the 200+ packages of KDE4.3.2, but then /usr was out of storage. 10G of stuff in /usr - _without_ downloaded packages, do you believe that? This isn't frickin' Vista is it? Thank God I have LVM so fixing this is a no-brainer. But still, 10G... You might wonder why I'm still using Gentoo. That's easy: It's about the only thing that works. My CD-ROM and DVD station are 'offline' (the only 2 IDE-ports of the mobo are taken by HD's which are member of my RAID-array) and I haven't been able to make Kubuntu boot from SD-card over USB. That's a bit sad, because I tried different versions of Kubuntu in different ways of preparing the USB-disk. Why is it so hard for (K)Ubuntu to just provide an image I can dd to my USB-disk? And believe it or not, but until now DSL (!) was the only distro of which I could easily make a bootable USB-disk. Of course, when booted it wasn't able to connect my network, because of the 2.4 kernel probably. So even with 10+ months of being unmaintained and without core-developer, DSL fared better than Ubuntu. What a shame! Of course, you don't have this problem when you're on Windows or are already using Ubuntu. Ubuntu has nice - even integrated - tools for making USB disks from Windows / Ubuntu. But not for Gentoo users. Appearently (sorry, using IE6 here, so probably spelled that wrong) Gentoo users without a CD-ROM station are not welcome at Ubuntu, I don't know. So I'll just expand /usr to 12G and compile again. And if I find a new job after christmas, I might buy 2 new SATA-HD's so that I can disconnect the old IDE-HD's and connect the CDROM player again. Appearenthly Ubuntu is not that focused at the future that they allow "their potential new users" to use it without CD-ROM. Off course when speaking about distro's I should mention Fedora 11, with honour, for the biggest screw-up on my system last year. Not being able to succesfully boot because they were not using the vesa-driver by default (one tiny word in Xorg.conf was all that was needed!). Why bother if it's the first thing a new Fedora-user might need to succesfully boot the LiveCD? Better put Nouveau on it, even when it screws up in ways beyond imagination - it almost damaged my TFT-screen by shutting the power down / bringing it back about twice a second. Considering that, Gentoo is rather stable. At least if you read what you're supposed to read. But maybe I should try Pardus - or Arch or Zenwalk. Or eat the bullet and go to (K)Ubuntu forums and ask for help about my USB-issues. |
| jdixon Oct 13, 2009 6:19 AM EDT |
> ...you just saved me some time because I realized I didn't need to read the article. Ken Hess = I didn't need to read the article. :) |
| krisum Oct 13, 2009 6:54 AM EDT |
@hwkint > That's a bit sad, because I tried different versions of Kubuntu in different ways of preparing the USB-disk. I am sure you must have tried it but unetbootin has worked for me every time. If there is some specific problem with kubuntu, you could try stock ubuntu and install kubuntu-desktop package (also remove ubuntu-desktop) later. |
| jdixon Oct 13, 2009 9:38 AM EDT |
> I am sure you must have tried it but unetbootin has worked for me every time. I've had good luck with it also. |
| hkwint Oct 13, 2009 12:41 PM EDT |
Indeed, unetbootin has worked for me in the past - it's a great program! - but sadly not for Kubuntu. But thanks for the kubuntu-desktop package suggestion, might try that. However, it seems Kubuntu was looking for sdf, sdg and sdh (sda-sdd are harddisks in my setup), so I think it's related to the multi-card reader and not finding the right 'media'. Maybe I'd have to try a more common flash-drive / memory stick instead of the SD-drive in the multi-card reader. Thinking of it, that will be my next step. |
| chalbersma Oct 13, 2009 1:37 PM EDT |
I do miss DSL. But tiny core is soo much cooler. |
| Steven_Rosenber Oct 13, 2009 2:50 PM EDT |
Quoting:Off course when speaking about distro's I should mention Fedora 11, with honour, for the biggest screw-up on my system last year. Not being able to succesfully boot because they were not using the vesa-driver by default (one tiny word in Xorg.conf was all that was needed!). Why bother if it's the first thing a new Fedora-user might need to succesfully boot the LiveCD? Better put Nouveau on it, even when it screws up in ways beyond imagination - it almost damaged my TFT-screen by shutting the power down / bringing it back about twice a second. I was indeed surprised when Fedora (probably v.10) didn't automatically configure X on a Macintosh G4. Debian did (it's PowerPC port is superb). If your installer can't get X right on what is probably one of the most popular platforms for PowerPC Linux, a whole lot of developer soul-searching is required. |
| vainrveenr Oct 13, 2009 2:53 PM EDT |
Quoting:Lets' start with Damn Small Linux: no releases in 10+ months, the key developer has moved on to Tiny Core. Heck, who cares if the distro is all but dead. Ken likes it. Never mind that there are several distros in active development in the 50MB and under category like Slitaz and Tiny Core. Nope, the dead distro makes the top 10 for Ken.Actually, DistroWatch.com clarifies much of this. For example (from http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=04933), the latest DSL distribution release was v4.4 on 2008-06-09. On the DistroWatch.com Page Hit Ranking for the last six months, DSL ranks at #19 sandwiched between the VERY fine Zenwalk Linux at #18 and Vector Linux at #20. No mention of the latter two Slackware-based distros in the Hess piece. No mention of Wolvix Linux either (ranked at #52 three below Slitaz and eleven above gNewSense) Quoting:He ranks Debian #3 but blasts it's lack of commercial support. Of course, a number of distros in his list (as in most of them) lack commercial support as well. If commercial support is important (and I agree that it is for business) then why isn't SUSE on his list? After Red Hat the biggest Linux support company is Novell.Indeed. Not only this, but other noted distros lacking commercial support were also completely ignored, such as for example Mandriva Linux, Puppy Linux, PCLinuxOS and MEPIS (DistroWatch ranked at #5, #8, #9, #15 respectively). Note that the commercial Presto Linux is not even listed in DistroWatch's Top 100 list (??) The non-commercial Puppy Linux is certainly under very "active development", having five DIstribution Releases in the last year alone! Quoting:If the article was "My favorite 10" it's be hard to argue. Mr. Hess says these are "the best". I think that is highly disputable. At least give good reasons why some make the list and some don't.Agreed, and one can hope that Hess will get around to actually READING the comments here, and take these into account instead of simply ignoring them. |
| hkwint Oct 13, 2009 3:03 PM EDT |
Quoting:But tiny core is soo much cooler. That's also what I thought when I read it used uclibc. A have been trying to make a bootable 'distro' by means of cross-compiling for x86_64-unknown-linux-uclibc for several days and failed, and then I found all that was already available! But I understand the newer versions use glibc. Not that uclibc is better, but it sounds soo much cooler. Quoting:If your installer can't get X right That's no problem - at least not to me nowadays. OpenBSD didn't get it right back in the 3.2 days (mouse failure). NetBSD and FreeBSD didn't. Both Slackware / Gentoo didn't (I assume I used XFree86 --configure for both). Ubuntu didn't. OpenSuse didn't. But for all of them, I was able to be dropped to the CLI and fix the configuration file (only OpenSuse insisted on starting X again and again when pressing Ctrl+Alt+Backspace, but the init-level trick should help there). Not so much for F11. Ctrl+Alt+Backspace didn't work, IIRC Ctrl+Alt+Delete and Ctrl+Alt+F1 etc. didn't work, just a screen powering on / off and blanking. How am I supposed to know whats wrong if there's no command line? Yeah, bypass the whole thing using a Gentoo LiveDVD, mounting Fedora's partitions, and then from Gentoo fix the xorg.conf. That's not the way a user friendly distro ought to work. |
| jdixon Oct 13, 2009 4:27 PM EDT |
> That's not the way a user friendly distro ought to work. Who said Fedora was user friendly? :) |
| hkwint Oct 13, 2009 5:13 PM EDT |
Hmm, wrong assumption. Why did nobody question that assumption before? Or am I the only one not up to date with Fedora? (Hint: Probably the latter). How about this: Quoting:The Fedora Distribution's target audience is: That's _actual_ text from the Fedora site. Quoting:The Fedora Project's mission is to lead the advancement of free and open source software and content as a collaborative community. Well, I should have read that. Phew, I'm glad, that hindrance is out of the way now. Fedora was never intended to be the best distro of 2009, and therefore didn't make it on Ken's top10 or my top3 (I don't use that many distro's actually). But Fedora is sure leading the way, and I'm glad for that. Thinking of it, I shouldn't be too negative about it. Once I got Fedora 10 working it was kinda cool. Sure, I'd like to say the same thing about F11, but it was sooo leading that my hardware may have been too old or something. |
| moopst Oct 13, 2009 6:55 PM EDT |
Quoting:However, it seems Kubuntu was looking for sdf, sdg and sdh (sda-sdd are harddisks in my setup), so I think it's related to the multi-card reader and not finding the right 'media'. @hk I wonder is a boot parameter would help you get the drive right? Quoting: INSTALL_MEDIA_DEV |
| caitlyn Oct 13, 2009 7:51 PM EDT |
@vainveenr: DistroWatch doesn't list all releases and tends to deliberately skip minor releases of distros that release frequently. The last Damn Small Linux release was 4.4.10 which dates from November, 2008. DistroWatch page hit rankings are nearly meaningless. They only measure DW visitors. If you believe that DSL or Puppy Linux is more popular the Red Hat, well... It's mainly a desktop-oriented, hobbyist crowd on that website, which is hardly reflective of the Linux community as a whole. |
| hkwint Oct 14, 2009 6:34 PM EDT |
moopst: Thanks for the trick. Obviously there's something with the HD's and the numbering:
Trying sde1 booted the Kubuntu kernel, and then the Kubuntu kernel booted Gentoo from my HD, and Kubuntu-2.6.31 tried to load my Gentoo-2.6.28 modules, of course to no avail... I also tried disconnecting the USB-multi-cardreader, attaching my memory-stick, and running unetbootin again. Now Kubuntu almost boots, it even loads cupsd, but after configuring APM on sda and sdb it says "done" and hangs. Let's try to see if I can start the install from a formatted HD-partition, maybe that works. |
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