Granular Linux Distro Preview is Worth a Look

Linux.com has an interesting look at Granular Linux, a desktop-oriented distribution that's primary goal is to be easy to use. "With a single CD's worth of included programs, Granular Linux manages to cover a significant portion of normal end user needs, and those applications not already installed can be easily added through Synaptic. The slight problem with video and more serious problem with sound of my machine suggest that Granular is not without its issues, especially when most other distributions work properly on this hardware, but as this is a preview release of version 1.0 I think it can be more or less forgiven. I'd definitely recommend Granular to anyone with an interest in trying out a new distribution. "

I hate the phrase "easy to use".

[serviscope_minor (664417)]

Because I don't find any of these "easy to use" attempts easy to use. Because I know unix already, and these distros do it differently in order to make it "easy". But I'm not most people.

But my point still stands. Easy to use is not the same as "windows like" or even "shallow learning curve". It can mean "expert friendly".

That's not to say they're mutually exclusive, but this term is abused more than most.

How long will this distro be around?

[symbolset (646467)]

Longer than Vista [news.com] I hope.

Click the link

[symbolset (646467)]

It's about how Vista's not long for this world. It quotes a fairly reliable source.

TFA is about Yet Another Fine Distro. It seems like there are ten thousand of them now. Choice is good.

So yeah I hope this one's got more than a year left in it.

It seems like just yesterday we were discussung the death of Vista's predecessor XP. How time flies...

Yet another fine distro

[symbolset (646467)]

Distrowatch [distrowatch.com] is tracking 566 distributions now, 353 of them active.

Linux.org [linux.org] shows 455.

There's a rather long list on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

None of these lists is anywhere near complete or definitive. One of the challenges these days is picking a good distro. Usually people develop a fondness to one family of distributions and stick with it for a single purpose. The thing is that each distribution has its merits and fans. Each one has support forums and repositories and developers. It's a whole ecosystem of opera

Re:I hate the phrase "easy to use".

[wizardforce (1005805)]

I agree with you, "easy to use" is relative. Grandma's idea of "easy to use" isn't necessarily the same as any of ours. she may only need to browse the internet or play simple games, we O.T.O.H may require Bash to be handy for shell scripts to automate different tasks, to refine things etc. Then if you're reasonably familar with *nix commands it's much simpler to communicate fixes for problems, installing software etc. a single command rather than click* click* click** click more....

Re:

[bersl2 (689221)]

I think that a distinction should be made between being easy to use and being easy to administrate. They are often completely different skills, and the phrasing should reflect this.

Re:I hate the phrase "easy to use".

[uvajed_ekil (914487)]

I've found LinuxMint to be fairly easy to use so far, at least as easy as any other distro I've tried (which is all the biggies, 15-20+ over the years). I've tinkered with Linux off an on since 1994 or 1995, but the current iteration of Mint (Daryna, based on Ubuntu and Gnome) is the first distro I've been able to use for everything I do, given my limited linux/UNIX knowledge.

My desktop still dual boots XP pro and Ubuntu, but my laptop, which I use probably 90% of the time, only runs LinuxMint now. Mint does some things well "out of the box" that other distros don't, like play DVDs and work with my wifi card, which are a must if Windows users are to be converted. Yes, it uses some closed-source drivers and stuff, but it is still free and works damn well for some of us. I've even toyed with Virtual Box and installed XP with just to see if it would work. That install went fine, and XP seems to work, even though I was previously unable to install it without the VM because there are no XP drivers for my hardware.

I may be more persistent than the typical user who feels abused by MS, but I honestly believe the current crop of desktop linux distros are getting VERY close to truly becoming Windows replacements. They still aren't "set it and forget it" easy, but they are close, and less fiddling is needed once you have everything set up. I'd love to see a bit of consolidation in the linux community, rather than the ridiculous number of distros we see now, and a focus on hardware compatibility and drivers that install without any hassle. If we get that, anyone will be able to install and use linux.

Re:

[BountyX (1227176)]

I concur, a similar instance would be the word "authentic" in the food industry. Most people use the word "authentic' to indicate that a meal is prepared similarly to where it would be prepared where the recipe originated. I just don't see how food in a box can be labeled authentic. Any alternate interpretations of the words seem to be redundant in describing the item...

Just like the phrase "easy to use", "authentic" seems to be so ambiguous in actual application that it only endures use for sensati

Nothing to see here

[geek (5680)]

Another "easy to use" distro. We have enough of those. Focus your resources on stuff that matters.

Re:Nothing to see here

[tor528 (896250)]

Focus your resources on stuff that matters.

That's how I got fired from my last job.

I'm forced to agree.

[Zombie Ryushu (803103)]

Easy to use has nothing to do with it. Focus on Application and Hardware support. Easy to use doesn't help you if your applications won't install or some chipset goes unsupported. These people need to work on building the needed applications for the Linux that exists now.

Re:I'm forced to agree.

[Captain DaFt (755254)]

"Easy to use has nothing to do with it. Focus on Application and Hardware support. Easy to use doesn't help you if your applications won't install or some chipset goes unsupported. These people need to work on building the needed applications for the Linux that exists now."

Applications and hardware support that "just work" are exactly how I define "ease of use".

The OS is just the part that makes the applications work on the hardware. Ideally, an OS that "just works" means I shouldn't even notice it.

Re:

[Psychotria (953670)]

In reality though, that never works. Unless we have a great HAL and can somehow foresee future hardware it's impossible. The current situation is that many libraries sit between the application and the OS, and (IMO) this is a good thing.

Re:

[Zombie Ryushu (803103)]

It depends on how well supported your hardware is, I plan my hardware purchases around Linux support. That really is a case that hardware makers won't either provide working drivers OR give up hardware specs.

Based on

[dvice_null (981029)]

It is based on PCLinuxOS ("free, easy-to-use Linux-based operating system for the home"), which is based on Mandriva.

Re:

[Spy der Mann (805235)]

Let's see...

RedHat -> Mandrake (Mandriva) -> PCLinuxOS -> Granular

Is this how Linux evolution is supposed to work? I don't know, but as long as forks keep improving the OS quality instead of degrading it, I'm all for it.

Re:

[absurdist (758409)]

I agree wholeheartedly. So tell me, in detail, how this particular fork improves the OS quality.

Re:

[Spy der Mann (805235)]

Perhaps it does ONE thing that PCLinuxOS doesn't. Let Charles Darwin decide :)

It attempts to be easy to use?

[arrenlex (994824)]

As opposed to all the other Linux distros which try to be hard to use?

Re:

[eldepeche (854916)]

Oh, I never heard the last four syllables; that makes a little more sense.

KDE

[Psychotria (953670)]

Its a KDE-oriented distro. I am not sure that releasing a new distro based on KDE in the current climate is a good idea. Don't get me wrong, KDE-4 is shaping up to be great (and backports and development on KDE-3 are still occurring), but what separates this distribution from any other KDE-3*-based distro?

USB-based Live OS's: FaunOS and PuppyLinux

[1 a bee (817783)]

I haven't tried this distro, but will give it a shot. Talking new distros, especially live ones, I've been playing with FaunOS [faunos.com], a Linux-based live system for USBs. It's based on Arch, and its pretty damn fast. The other USB based distro that I've tried Puppy Linux [puppylinux.org] is better if you want to run old hardware, or don't have enough RAM; but I find FaunOS just more complete. Anyone else out there booting from USB?

Re:

[Koiu Lpoi (632570)]

I boot Slax from my USB drive to log in on my school's router. It works relatively fast and looks neat. And it's based on Slackware, which is my favorite. Then again, I don't have any older PCs to test it out - I run it on my brand-new laptop.

Re:

[absurdist (758409)]

Nobody likes pretentious electronica. Particularly us drunks.

Re:

[wellingj (1030460)]

I agree... Slax FTW! or at least when it comes to USB drives. It's the little distro that could.
But really, I'd rather have Debian on a USB.

Re:

[couchslug (175151)]

FaunOS looks interesting, especially because Puppy and Damn Small Linux (handy as they are) are rather limited.
Thanks for the useful post, I'll give it a shot.

Granular isn't worth my time to download, despite the Slashvertisement.

News for nerds?

[iamacat (583406)]

Maybe an announcement of the first version of Slackware was. Perhaps radically different distributions like Gentoo. But for the life of me I can't understand why another ordinary desktop disto is on the front page.

Re:

[jw3 (99683)]

Hey, that is such an exceptional story -- a distribution that aims at user friendliness and fails to achieve it. I have never seen anything like that before! ;-)

January

Ridiculous

[jw3 (99683)]

"Its primary goals are to be easy to use and user-friendly (...) Upon booting the Granular live CD ISO with the default settings my test PC, which uses an old ATI Rage 128 video card, the system froze at the loading screen. A quick reboot and selection of safe VESA settings solved this problem with no fuss."

Come on. Am I the only one to think that the above is funny?

January

Re:

[26199 (577806)]

The concept of any computer being "easy to use" was thrown out of the window (no pun intended) a long, long time ago.

Now I think the aim is "possible to use given enough sweat and blood".

Unfortunately even this is unattainable in many cases...

Maybe as OSes get smarter and hardware gets more standardised the problems will ease, but if the focus stays on "cool features"/"fast games"/"cheap+fast hardware" ... it may take a while.

Easy to use

[I_am_the_cheese (1264298)]

Doesn't support hardware=hard to use.

Easy to use is nothing new

[Lavene (1025400)]

I can't remember the last time I saw a mainstream distro that was actually hard to *use*. Some have been hard to set up, or hard to get working properly... but hard to *use*?

Click on some menu button, find your program, run your program. Where the menu button is located, how it's shaped and what it looks like does not matter.

As a self proclaimed nerd I would like to see a linux distro that actually did something revolutionary. Anyone can take a base distro, dress it up and make it into a LiveCD. It'

Re:

[thefekete (1080115)]

Second that.

I can't say I tried this distro (or read TFA for that matter), but I've been on ubuntu for the last 3 years and I don't see any reason to switch. The main reason is the documentation. At this point I could probably be compiling custom kernels and installing all my software from source with every configuration tweaked out, but I need to get some work done. Ubuntu is my choice because of it's large user base, period.

With that comes a lot of people trying to do a lot of things. And chances are

Classic

[JamesRose (1062530)]

I read the article and gave up when he couldn't install his audio hardware and was switching between OSS and ALSA (neither acronym did he explain). Normal basic user guy would never get passed that point, never. Easy to use? Maybe, but as shown in the article only for the people who always used to think a few tens of lines into the command line were easy.

But does Wifi work out of the box?

[192939495969798999 (58312)]

If you have to manually setup Wifi with all that driver mapping crap, then it's still not friendly enough.

I no longer know what "easy to use" means

[srobert (4099)]

In 1996, I picked up as Slackware distro and started playing around with it. Since then, I've installed or used Red Hat, Suse, Debian, Ubuntu, etc., and built Linux from Scratch systems several times. Now I'd have to work closely with a novice to get any insight into what "easy to use" means. If I worked with novices accustomed to Macs, PC's, or who were completely unfamiliar with computers, I'd bet they'd all have different ideas about what it means.

we have reached the point...

[Sfing_ter (99478)]

We have now reached a point where "Easy to Use" is no longer an issue and specialization (i was looking forward to Undead Linux but they went away). There are more and more distros/sub-distros that are providing more and more specific customizations out of the box. These distros are not for people who have using linux for years, they are for people who just want to use their computer without having to work at it. This can be easily done with linux and on their OLD computers. I have converted a few people starting with just FOSS, then when they too easily get their windows systems compromised I show them Mint, Mepis, Linspire, Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubunt/Edubuntu, and yes I have checked out Granular, it is nice. Most people just want to go on web, get their email, watch videos, play games, type a document. And any of the distros out there allow this with little or no fuss.

Re:It's just PClinuxOS

[ozmanjusri (601766)]

just PCLinuxOS with a different name and a different wallpaper.

Yep. The only interesting thing about this is how it was made.

The LiveCD project is dedicated to providing you with tools to create your own LiveCD from a currently installed Linux distribution. It can be used to create your own distribution, specialised CD, or to put together a demo disk to show off the power of our favourite OS.
http://livecd.berlios.de/

It dramatically lowers the barrier to producing and distributing your own Linux distro.

I suspect we'll be seeing a flood of special-interest Linux distros very shortly. It could be a breeding ground for some interesting innovations.

Re:It's just PClinuxOS

[Pc_Madness (984705)]

Because thats what linux needs, MORE distros. *sigh*

Re:

[ozmanjusri (601766)]

thats what linux needs, MORE distros.

It could be a breeding ground for some interesting innovations.

Competition is a fine thing. I like innovation.

Re:

[ozmanjusri (601766)]

Great. Let's have multiple forks of glibc then! And the kernel! and coreutils!

If that's what you want to do, go for it. The beauty of free software is that you're entitled to do what you want with it. Even better, if you make the effort, and produce something of value, that effort will be available to other maintainers to backport to their forks.

The converse of that is that you don't have the right to stop me, Joe Bloggs or Abdul Muhaimin from making our own distros if we so choose. In many cases, our w

Re:It's just PClinuxOS

[hcmtnbiker (925661)]

just PCLinuxOS with a different name and a different wallpaper. Yep. The only interesting thing about this is how it was made.

The LiveCD project is dedicated to providing you with tools to create your own LiveCD from a currently installed Linux distribution. It can be used to create your own distribution, specialised CD, or to put together a demo disk to show off the power of our favourite OS. http://livecd.berlios.de/ [berlios.de]

It dramatically lowers the barrier to producing and distributing your own Linux distro. I suspect we'll be seeing a flood of special-interest Linux distros very shortly. It could be a breeding ground for some interesting innovations.

Fedora, Ubuntu, and most other distributions, and one of my personal favorites ZenWalk, have their own set of tools for easily creating your own liveCD. This is nothing new.

From my experience "easy to use" means: features that get in your way when you try to do real work. Most distributions go down this road and it drives me fucking nuts. If you really want a distro to be easy, focus your attention on getting all the hardware you can to work out of box. Put ndiswrapper on it(I cannot believe how many distros leave this out be default), maybe(ndisGTK too), and just make sure the manual explains how to use it for the people not familiar.

MOD PARENT UP!!!

[absurdist (758409)]

If I hadn't already commented on this thread, I'd mod you up twice.

Re:

[pD-brane (302604)]

Put ndiswrapper on it(I cannot believe how many distros leave this out be default), maybe(ndisGTK too), and just make sure the manual explains how to use it for the people not familiar.

Even though I must say that ndiswrapper is a nice tool, I tell people where I install GNU/Linux that their hardware is not supported and they should buy this or that to replace the hardware. On the other hand, why would you want to dispose any hardware? This is two-fold for me.

First, it is proprietary software (i.e. the drivers).

Secondly, is are the drivers maintainable? How good does ndiswrapper work and how do you know that when it works it keeps on working?

Re:It's just PClinuxOS

[Spy der Mann (805235)]

I suspect we'll be seeing a flood of special-interest Linux distros very shortly.

Sometimes I've fantasized about making my own mini-distro based on anonymity, hacking and privacy tools . Maybe I'll load it with I2P, Freenet and all that.

This tool to remaster your distribution is a very nice thing to have. It's like having a RAD but for distros.

Also, having read Stallman's book, I consider this tool to be effectively supporting the spirit of software freedom. It's no use if you're *allowed* to make changes to a software and distribute it to others, if the technological barriers are impossible to cross.

Re:

[Spy der Mann (805235)]

So you didn't like the review, or the distro? Because thanks to the review you found out that the distro is not for you. Well, that's what reviews are for, DOH! Besides, the review was clear into saying that it's a preview install. Like beta. The title didn't say "install it, it's the best!". It says it's "worth a look".

If the distro's makers ignore the bug reports, well, then it will die. But all distros start with a fork and a small community (and a small repository). Only time will tell if it improves or

Re:

[Spy der Mann (805235)]

From Granular's wiki:

Ideology behind the project

The main idea behind the birth of the project, was to redefine the application set included in PCLinuxOS to some extent and to introduce the idea of having more than one major desktop environment on a single LiveCD. The latter idea was implemented in the second version release of Granular, version 0.25.

Now that's an idea worth considering. Many distributions are married to their desktop environment: We have ubuntu with Gnome, and Kubuntu with KDE. PCLinuxOS

Re:

[absurdist (758409)]

So are you saying that if you're running Ubuntu you can't d/l the Gnome packages and boot from either environment" Or vice-versa from Kubuntu? Or similar with PCLinuxOS? Not to mention Xubuntu, Fluxubuntu, etc...? Other than having the packages available on the CD (or DVD... if you really try to be desktop agnostic you're going to be D/Ling one hell of a lot of packages just to burn the disk), once again, what is the advantage to this particular distro?

Re:

[absurdist (758409)]

Bravo, sir. :)

Re:

[absurdist (758409)]

Sorry, but I don't defend any distro. I use them. For real work. Currently I use Desktop BSD, Mint, Kubuntu, and Puppy - lots of Puppy. So once again, I ask you, what makes this particular distro so special that i should waste my time on it? Oh, wait, I have. Didn't recognize my video, sound, or wireless out of the box. And it's superior why again?