The Good: Ubuntu certainly has alot going for it. It's backed by a zealous billionaire, it's got a strong community backing with that great tag line "Linux for Human Beings". It's even got Michael Dell in a buzz declaring how great it is. It's got apt-get/Synaptic, Debian at it's core & it's brown. What chance does anyone else have against that?
The Bad: If you examine & really start to use Ubuntu proper. You will start to find alot of gaps in the product itself. Many things that should be easy to do, well.. just isn't. (Read: Alot of googling required) I guess they go for the Gnome ideology which is: If it can't be done simply & intuitively, it shouldn't be done at all.
The Ugly: The worse thing Ubuntu did was to segregate the community by which desktop environment you prefered. The stupidity of separating, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu & Edubuntu into distinct & often incompatible distros is really beyond retarded. Why shouldn't I have KDE, Gnome & Xfce all installed easily in the same box while looking & working consistently across all desktops I use?
Enough ranting now. Will Ubuntu continue to dominate? It probably will. Will PCLinuxOS really upstage Ubuntu? Not by long shot.
If you want Gnome & an intuitive but not too flexible OS, go Ubuntu. If you want KDE with pretty themes and hassle free multimedia, go PCLinuxOS. If like me, you like having the choice of KDE, Gnome, Xfce, a whole lot of flexibility, don't mind a little hassle, Mandriva is still the best choice.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
PCLinuxOS #1
PCLinuxOS shot up to #1 in Distrowatch in the past 3 months. This certainly must have Mark Shuttleworth a little worried. (Mark is the Ubuntu's Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life, in case you didn't know)
Will dreams come true? Will an RPM distro finally be at the top of Distrowatch again? It seems like only yesterday when Mandrake was leading the pact. Now it's only fitting that a derivative of Mandrake should regain the throne. I can only dream.
But look closely & you will see that Ubuntu is fighting back. It's inched in way up again in the last 7 days & continues to climb while PCLinuxOS has begun it's descend.
Will dreams come true? Will an RPM distro finally be at the top of Distrowatch again? It seems like only yesterday when Mandrake was leading the pact. Now it's only fitting that a derivative of Mandrake should regain the throne. I can only dream.
But look closely & you will see that Ubuntu is fighting back. It's inched in way up again in the last 7 days & continues to climb while PCLinuxOS has begun it's descend.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
PCLinuxOS vs Mandriva? Or more like =
There's been some heated discussions going on in the PCLOS forums recently about the topic of PCLinuxOS being a glorified clone of Mandriva. This was sparked off by a sudden rise of PCLinuxOS to the #2 spot on Distrowatch. I read through it all & found the entire thread rather amusing. I was thinking: "What are these fracking sotongs talking about?"
Personally, you all know I prefer Mandriva. But I think PCLinuxOS is very good as well, just not all that different. Having used both before & comparing them side by side, Mandriva 2007 and PCLinuxOS 2007 is really very much the same. There is only 1 clear defining difference, PCLinuxOS uses apt-rpm which makes the software grabbing part more similar to Ubuntu than Mandriva. There's also the pre-configuration of Multimedia codecs and the prettier theme set, but these aren't all the special. With the right packages installed from contrib & plf, you can essentially get the same results with Mandriva.
I think of PCLinuxOS as a newbie friendlier Mandriva. One of the points brought up is that a large number of packages for PCLinuxOS 2007 are direct copies from Mandriva 2007's cooker (development tree). The author was pointing out that Texstar (Creator of PCLinuxOS) boldly states in their website that PCLinuxOS forked from Mandrake 9.x and is now a complete distinct distro. This is a very bold statement; If Mandrake was to say this back around version 7.x when they were based largely on Redhat it would have been a very big joke. They just didn't have the resources to do it. (Texstar making this claim is quite a fair bit premature)
PCLinuxOS supporters do have to face the reality that their favorite distro is still quite heavily dependent on the development of Mandriva. Just like Mandrake was dependent on Redhat many years ago. It will take time & a lot of momentum to pull PCLinuxOS away from this dependence.
Right now, I personally found only a few barriers that prevents me from using PCLinuxOS: (Like everyone, I do prefer Synaptics over RPMDrake)
1. Packages updates are taking some time to come downstream. (Mandriva gets the patches first.)
2. Available packages in the repos are still not nearly as comprehensive. (A lot of stuff is missing, it definitely doesn't cover all the bases)
3. The name 'PCLinuxOS' is a real turn off, it's soooo un-sexy. (Come on ppl, is that the best name you can come up with? Which genius picked that name? I'm ashamed to show it to my friends.)
I'll be a convert and switch over if these things above are fixed. That means, get that momentum and shake that dependence on Mandriva development. Find em bugs & fix em as fast or faster than Mandriva. Build a comprehensive repository with everything everyone will ever need. Finally, do something about that awful name.
Will I be a convert? Look like only time will tell...
Personally, you all know I prefer Mandriva. But I think PCLinuxOS is very good as well, just not all that different. Having used both before & comparing them side by side, Mandriva 2007 and PCLinuxOS 2007 is really very much the same. There is only 1 clear defining difference, PCLinuxOS uses apt-rpm which makes the software grabbing part more similar to Ubuntu than Mandriva. There's also the pre-configuration of Multimedia codecs and the prettier theme set, but these aren't all the special. With the right packages installed from contrib & plf, you can essentially get the same results with Mandriva.
I think of PCLinuxOS as a newbie friendlier Mandriva. One of the points brought up is that a large number of packages for PCLinuxOS 2007 are direct copies from Mandriva 2007's cooker (development tree). The author was pointing out that Texstar (Creator of PCLinuxOS) boldly states in their website that PCLinuxOS forked from Mandrake 9.x and is now a complete distinct distro. This is a very bold statement; If Mandrake was to say this back around version 7.x when they were based largely on Redhat it would have been a very big joke. They just didn't have the resources to do it. (Texstar making this claim is quite a fair bit premature)
PCLinuxOS supporters do have to face the reality that their favorite distro is still quite heavily dependent on the development of Mandriva. Just like Mandrake was dependent on Redhat many years ago. It will take time & a lot of momentum to pull PCLinuxOS away from this dependence.
Right now, I personally found only a few barriers that prevents me from using PCLinuxOS: (Like everyone, I do prefer Synaptics over RPMDrake)
1. Packages updates are taking some time to come downstream. (Mandriva gets the patches first.)
2. Available packages in the repos are still not nearly as comprehensive. (A lot of stuff is missing, it definitely doesn't cover all the bases)
3. The name 'PCLinuxOS' is a real turn off, it's soooo un-sexy. (Come on ppl, is that the best name you can come up with? Which genius picked that name? I'm ashamed to show it to my friends.)
I'll be a convert and switch over if these things above are fixed. That means, get that momentum and shake that dependence on Mandriva development. Find em bugs & fix em as fast or faster than Mandriva. Build a comprehensive repository with everything everyone will ever need. Finally, do something about that awful name.
Will I be a convert? Look like only time will tell...
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Ubuntu. Really for Human Beings?
I've never been much of a fan of Ubuntu, my several encounters with it's various incarnations have shown it to be inconsistant, unweildy and much over hyped. It seems to be lacking the most basic of tools for easy graphical configuration and administration of a Linux box. Tools that I've come to expect, having used Mandriva (formally known as Mandrake) for many years. Even Suse with it's Yast monstrosity still manages to provide a decent graphical system administration tool.
Recently I realised that my understanding of Ubuntu barely scratched the surface of what really using it will be like on a day to day basis. So I decided to commit a partition to it on me lappy & actually try using it for daily activities. It's been about a week now, here are some of my findings:
- It 's quite alien to me. Its inerds work completely differently from the typical Redhat based systems that I'm used to.
- Synaptics is shitloads faster than urpmi. (At least 30% faster)
- Boot speed is just a tad slower than Mandriva.
- GNOME has got a stupidly huge RAM footprint compared to KDE.
- I had to visit the Ubuntu Help wiki ALOT. The documentation is very nice, acurate & accessible.
- I had to visit the Ubuntu Help wiki ALOT MORE. For things I can easily do with a few clicks in Mandriva & Suse.
- Laptop power management support was poor. Suspend & Hibernate will lockup on resume. (both Mandriva & Suse could at least hibernate & resume properly)
Once up & running, thing are peachy for a while. But after a week & after installing > 30 apps (My usual suspects) from Synaptics, things don't look so pretty anymore. The menus are overcrowded and excessively long. Reminds me of the Windows Start Menu. (Takes a bloody long time for the menu icons to load up too)
The repositories are not as comprehensive as I was led to believe. After turning on all the repos, (including the commercial & 3rd-party ones) I still couldn't find some key pieces of software. (Freevo my prefered media center was nowhere to be found)
& finally GNOME.. Oh GNOME GNOME, what can I say about it.. well.. I still don't like it. GNOME is like soup from the soup nazi. It's good really, but can you deal with not having any real say in what u get with the soup? I can't, so I guess it's no soup for me & I recommend 'No soup for You!!' too. Viva la KDE!!
Recently I realised that my understanding of Ubuntu barely scratched the surface of what really using it will be like on a day to day basis. So I decided to commit a partition to it on me lappy & actually try using it for daily activities. It's been about a week now, here are some of my findings:
- It 's quite alien to me. Its inerds work completely differently from the typical Redhat based systems that I'm used to.
- Synaptics is shitloads faster than urpmi. (At least 30% faster)
- Boot speed is just a tad slower than Mandriva.
- GNOME has got a stupidly huge RAM footprint compared to KDE.
- I had to visit the Ubuntu Help wiki ALOT. The documentation is very nice, acurate & accessible.
- I had to visit the Ubuntu Help wiki ALOT MORE. For things I can easily do with a few clicks in Mandriva & Suse.
- Laptop power management support was poor. Suspend & Hibernate will lockup on resume. (both Mandriva & Suse could at least hibernate & resume properly)
Once up & running, thing are peachy for a while. But after a week & after installing > 30 apps (My usual suspects) from Synaptics, things don't look so pretty anymore. The menus are overcrowded and excessively long. Reminds me of the Windows Start Menu. (Takes a bloody long time for the menu icons to load up too)
The repositories are not as comprehensive as I was led to believe. After turning on all the repos, (including the commercial & 3rd-party ones) I still couldn't find some key pieces of software. (Freevo my prefered media center was nowhere to be found)
& finally GNOME.. Oh GNOME GNOME, what can I say about it.. well.. I still don't like it. GNOME is like soup from the soup nazi. It's good really, but can you deal with not having any real say in what u get with the soup? I can't, so I guess it's no soup for me & I recommend 'No soup for You!!' too. Viva la KDE!!
Friday, May 18, 2007
Porn is safer with Linux
Here's a tip for all you Porn lovers out there (that's practically everyone)
Surf porn in complete comfort and safety with Linux.
Linux will help you to surf your Porn in the absolute safest way possible. Here's why: Porn site out there littered with all the worst forms of malware that you can imagine. Vulnerability hacks, arbitrary code execution, malicious scripts, Pop up Ads, Phishing attacks, it's not safe to surf for porn these days. Practically all these malware are written for Windows.
These days just using firefox or opera instead of IE is not enough. All these apps are already under attack from malware writers. There is now malware to attack practically any browser you can use in Windows. The only way left to avoid them all is to NOT use Windows.
So, use Linux. It will make surfing the net carefree and enjoyable again like that good old days. The other alternative, if you have the cash but lack the braincells, is to buy an Apple.
Surf porn in complete comfort and safety with Linux.
Linux will help you to surf your Porn in the absolute safest way possible. Here's why: Porn site out there littered with all the worst forms of malware that you can imagine. Vulnerability hacks, arbitrary code execution, malicious scripts, Pop up Ads, Phishing attacks, it's not safe to surf for porn these days. Practically all these malware are written for Windows.
These days just using firefox or opera instead of IE is not enough. All these apps are already under attack from malware writers. There is now malware to attack practically any browser you can use in Windows. The only way left to avoid them all is to NOT use Windows.
So, use Linux. It will make surfing the net carefree and enjoyable again like that good old days. The other alternative, if you have the cash but lack the braincells, is to buy an Apple.
Linux like Porn?
I recently read an article on osnews where someone mentioned that in his country anyone running Linux was considered a criminal automatically. They are labeled as 'hackers' and must have something to hide in their PCs, otherwise they'd be running Windows. It's akin to a guy having porn on his PC instantly considered a rapist / pedophile / child molester.
I have been giving this some thought, are there people out there who think this way? Does such total ignorance exist in this day & age? Well, unfortunately it's quite true that most people are still completely ignorant about Linux.
I fool around with all forms of Linux & OSS software everywhere I go, more so at work since I have access to more hardware to test them on. I couldn't even count how many times some Sotong came up to me & said:
Sotong: Wow, what is that software you using, it looks cool.. is it some free/shareware?
Me: Look closer, this is NOT running Windows.
Sotong: Ya hor!! What is it then?
Me: It's Linux.
Sotong: Ohh yah.. What version is it? I did try version 8 before.. very hard to use leh.
Me: This is a distribution called Knoppix. The version 8 you tried, was it Red Hat 8?
Sotong: Ohh I can't remember lar, long time ago. Can I install Office 2007 into this?
Me: No. It's NOT Windows.
Sotong: Like that I dowan to use la, not user friendly at all. Cannot run any software.
Me: Well, that's ok. I find it very suitable for me. It's not for everybody.
Sotong: Why you use arr? You must be a hacker right? Do you write virus arr?
Me: (Giving up) Yah.. but only on weekends...
I have been giving this some thought, are there people out there who think this way? Does such total ignorance exist in this day & age? Well, unfortunately it's quite true that most people are still completely ignorant about Linux.
I fool around with all forms of Linux & OSS software everywhere I go, more so at work since I have access to more hardware to test them on. I couldn't even count how many times some Sotong came up to me & said:
Sotong: Wow, what is that software you using, it looks cool.. is it some free/shareware?
Me: Look closer, this is NOT running Windows.
Sotong: Ya hor!! What is it then?
Me: It's Linux.
Sotong: Ohh yah.. What version is it? I did try version 8 before.. very hard to use leh.
Me: This is a distribution called Knoppix. The version 8 you tried, was it Red Hat 8?
Sotong: Ohh I can't remember lar, long time ago. Can I install Office 2007 into this?
Me: No. It's NOT Windows.
Sotong: Like that I dowan to use la, not user friendly at all. Cannot run any software.
Me: Well, that's ok. I find it very suitable for me. It's not for everybody.
Sotong: Why you use arr? You must be a hacker right? Do you write virus arr?
Me: (Giving up) Yah.. but only on weekends...
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Some grips about Mandriva
There are some things about Mandriva that has bothered me for a long time & I just had to vent about them.
1. Logout Options
Whenever you logout of KDE, you will get the standard 3 options, end session, turn off & restart. For some reason, this simple screen does not always appear as u expect it to. There are several situations that will cause the 2nd & 3rd options to simply disappear, leaving only the 'end session' option. I have not been able to find a solution to this problem & I'm generally pissed that they haven't fixed this yet. (This has been there since Mandrake 10.1 possibly earlier) These are the scenarios that will produce this behavior:
A: Enabling 'Automatic Login' upon bootup.
B: Enabling 'Metisse' 3D Desktop.
C: Enabling 'Compiz/Beryl' using 'XGL' NOT with 'AIGLX/Native'
With any of the 3 items above enable, you will see this behavior in KDE when you logout. Wish somebody would fix this up. It's just damn annoying.
2. Repository hdlist.cz download
Adding a repository means downloading the hdlist.cz header file for that source. This file is often HUGE & takes ages to download. Mandriva typically takes over 30 minutes (Including official & plf). In comparison, Ubuntu's synaptics takes about 5 minutes to grab repository headers. (Including for universe & multiverse) Granted that Mandriva's repo headers contain a little more data & info about the packages, this may seem to be an unfair comparison. But even when using the so called 'compressed' index, which contains absolutely no package information, this process still takes a good 15 - 20 minutes. This has not really improved much in Mandriva Spring, however what has improved is the time taken to process and integrate added repos into the urpmi database. This shaves a few second off the post processing, but doesn't help the download speed/size. Rpmdrake still has a long way to go & many usability issues to address before it's even in the same league as Synaptics.
3. Mandriva Control Center
Integration is the problem. There are alot of icons in MCC that are just stupidly redundant with stupidly long & patronising names. There is absolutely NO reason why they can't just be 1 option or 1 application. Here are some examples:
Software Management: Icons for 'Install', 'Remove', 'Update' and 'Sources'. They are all the same application. Why can't we have just 1 icon that says "Software Management"?
Hardware: 'Monitor', 'Graphical Server' and 'Resolution". They all have to do with the display & the monitor. Why do we need 3 icons & 3 separate applications? Why not just have 1 that says "Configure your display"?
Networking: 'Setup', 'Reconfigure', 'Delete', 'Share', 'Misc Settings' & 'Monitor'. They are all about setting up your network. Again why so many separate applications? Can't we have 1 that says 'Configure Network'?
The list goes on unfortunately, over time I've learned to live with it & have grown quite used to it by now. I've always attributed these oddities to the fact that those guys are French, they probably have their brains wired quite differently from mine. I deduced this after trying Suse's Yast & found it to have similar oddities.
That's all for my rants about Mandriva, please don't feel discouraged by my rants, Mandriva is still one of the best distros available today. If I had talked about Ubuntu today, this list would be at least 3 times longer, so don't get me started.
1. Logout Options
Whenever you logout of KDE, you will get the standard 3 options, end session, turn off & restart. For some reason, this simple screen does not always appear as u expect it to. There are several situations that will cause the 2nd & 3rd options to simply disappear, leaving only the 'end session' option. I have not been able to find a solution to this problem & I'm generally pissed that they haven't fixed this yet. (This has been there since Mandrake 10.1 possibly earlier) These are the scenarios that will produce this behavior:
A: Enabling 'Automatic Login' upon bootup.
B: Enabling 'Metisse' 3D Desktop.
C: Enabling 'Compiz/Beryl' using 'XGL' NOT with 'AIGLX/Native'
With any of the 3 items above enable, you will see this behavior in KDE when you logout. Wish somebody would fix this up. It's just damn annoying.
2. Repository hdlist.cz download
Adding a repository means downloading the hdlist.cz header file for that source. This file is often HUGE & takes ages to download. Mandriva typically takes over 30 minutes (Including official & plf). In comparison, Ubuntu's synaptics takes about 5 minutes to grab repository headers. (Including for universe & multiverse) Granted that Mandriva's repo headers contain a little more data & info about the packages, this may seem to be an unfair comparison. But even when using the so called 'compressed' index, which contains absolutely no package information, this process still takes a good 15 - 20 minutes. This has not really improved much in Mandriva Spring, however what has improved is the time taken to process and integrate added repos into the urpmi database. This shaves a few second off the post processing, but doesn't help the download speed/size. Rpmdrake still has a long way to go & many usability issues to address before it's even in the same league as Synaptics.
3. Mandriva Control Center
Integration is the problem. There are alot of icons in MCC that are just stupidly redundant with stupidly long & patronising names. There is absolutely NO reason why they can't just be 1 option or 1 application. Here are some examples:
Software Management: Icons for 'Install', 'Remove', 'Update' and 'Sources'. They are all the same application. Why can't we have just 1 icon that says "Software Management"?
Hardware: 'Monitor', 'Graphical Server' and 'Resolution". They all have to do with the display & the monitor. Why do we need 3 icons & 3 separate applications? Why not just have 1 that says "Configure your display"?
Networking: 'Setup', 'Reconfigure', 'Delete', 'Share', 'Misc Settings' & 'Monitor'. They are all about setting up your network. Again why so many separate applications? Can't we have 1 that says 'Configure Network'?
The list goes on unfortunately, over time I've learned to live with it & have grown quite used to it by now. I've always attributed these oddities to the fact that those guys are French, they probably have their brains wired quite differently from mine. I deduced this after trying Suse's Yast & found it to have similar oddities.
That's all for my rants about Mandriva, please don't feel discouraged by my rants, Mandriva is still one of the best distros available today. If I had talked about Ubuntu today, this list would be at least 3 times longer, so don't get me started.
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