Re: [SLUG] Possible Project, Xandros, and Mepis

From: david tomlinson (lnxbrzr1@linuxmail.org)
Date: Thu Dec 25 2003 - 14:17:56 EST


 
----- Original Message -----
From: Paul M Foster <paulf@quillandmouse.com>
Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 18:45:45 -0500
To: slug@nks.net
Subject: Re: [SLUG] Possible Project, Xandros, and Mepis
 
> On Wed, Dec 24, 2003 at 06:58:48AM -0500, Robin 'Roblimo' Miller wrote:
>
> > There's no real need for SLUG people to make a Live CD setup for
> > Xandros. Don't forget, this is a *commercial* software company that is
> > *not* releasing most of their work under GPL. Besides, Warren Woodford
> > has already done everything they want with Mepis.
>
> Interesting point. Beware of commercial entities who want to use you for
> their work force. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes you get screwed.
>
> <snip>
>
> > Forget Lindows. Xandros is what Lindows promised to be but never became
> > except in Michael's dreams (and hype).
>
> Lindows seems to have been MIA for a while; haven't heard much about it.
> Xandros is very nice, but I question if they can stay in business just
> selling a Linux distro. It doesn't seem to be a profitable way to go.
> Mandrake's in financial trouble. Red Hat stopped selling its user level
> distro and is concentrating on the expensive server market. And their
> Fedora project management has already pissed off at least one major Red
> Hat booster who instead started up the cAos project. SuSE belongs to
> Novell, and we don't know how that's going to go. But I believe they
> made a lot of money doing consulting in addition to their desktop
> distro. Of course, how much money you need depends on your overhead. One
> guy = less overhead.
>
> I love Debian. BUT... I'm cranky about the fact that they move like
> molasses getting releases out. KDE is MIA from both testing and unstable
> at the moment. This can't be that hard, folks. The Release Manager
> recently put out a rant to the packaging folks that they needed to get
> their butts in gear. I'm running stable right now, but I'm having to
> compile X from scratch in order to resolve a killer X problem that won't
> allow me to run the stable version of X. But if I wanted to run Gentoo
> or Linux From Scratch, I'd do so. I'd love to have an alternative with
> more up-to-date packages. I couldn't care less if it runs on every
> obscure platform on the planet. One of the benefits of Debian _is_ the
> breadth of choice, but then I'm a geek. I'd also like to see less
> nit-picky argument about the purity of Debian. I believe they've
> actually removed the RFCs from the main distro because their "license"
> doesn't conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Sheesh.
>
> I haven't heard much about Mepis. But I'll definitely look into it.
> Thirty dollars a year might not be too much to handle.
>
> If I were Mepis, I'd stay away from Xandros. There's no need to pollute
> Open Source software with proprietary installers and such. Besides, I
> prefer the one-chief-many-indians approach (as opposed to the Debian
> all-are-indians approach). In fact, I think collaberation in general is
> highly overrated.
>
> I'll have to take your word for the spiff/eye candy evaluation. Your
> comments about cars and such are probably correct. Unfortunately, I'm a
> guy who owned a string of VW bugs just because of their engineering. I
> couldn't care less what they looked like.
>
> Paul
> -
   Paul :
    
   Robin 'Roblimo" Miller 'nailed it right on the head' about contributing to "commercial" software company although
   Libranet has given much back to the community with the release of 2.0 and 2.7 downloads.
 
   When Warren Woodford released the latest MEPIS beta I was fortunate to be on TEAM MEPIS. It was amazing how
   few bugs this beta had, could this be the power of open source?
 
   And last and not least two more 'sleeper' distributions-Libranet and DSL. Until you appreciate that Jon and Tal Danzig
   have been around since 1984 (yes, that's correct) and have created a stable distribution(have used it since version 1.91
   and it is now 2.8.1) Libranet has some of the best config tools (adminmenu and xadminmenu)and even has docs on
   how to update to 2.4.23 from the present kernel with a script to do it.
                                  
 
   DSL (DamnSmallLinux) has some neat features including running on marginal hardware, HD install, Firebird install
   and ability to install dpkg/apt (sudo dpkg-restore) Credit for this of course goes to John@damnsmalllinux.
    
   Concerning Debian Version: unstable is usually close if not 'cutting edge' and mostly not unstable even if it
   is named sid. Sometimes Woody (stable) and Sarge (testing) have more problems than Sid (unstable).
 
   'nuff said,
 
   David Tomlinson
   the 'lnxbrzr'
     
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