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Conectiva Linux 7.0 is Out 116

Posted by michael from the penguins-in-the-rain-forest dept.
rsd writes: "Conectiva Linux 7.0 is out. Here is the original announcement. And here is the babelfish translation. They are already shipping Portuguese box and will start the english soon. However the CDs (iso for what matter) are available in english already. Their main ftp server is overcrowded. Hoever, Rik VanRiel provided us with a really fast server. I will not describe every feature on it but the main change is the Synaptic tool, which in my opinion is the best APT frontend ever written."
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Conectiva Linux 7.0 is Out More

Conectiva Linux 7.0 is Out

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  • Synaptic vs. GnoRPM - a nice touch in this distro. (Score:3, Informative)

    by hillct ( 230132 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @03:18AM (#2110225) Homepage Journal
    Well, it's always nice to see an alternative to over-used under-developed tools. Synaptic seems stable and reliable, although I've only used it for about 10 minutes, but it looks vary solid. Well done gentlemen! (developers)

    This distro is new to me. Does anyone have usage/popularity numbers for it?

  • Why does everything get up to 7.0 this fast? What are we? Microsoft?

  • Money (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Anybody ever heard the Gnome guy (forgot his name) talk about how much more expensive MS is for Mexicans (schools, small business...) and therefore how much more important it is for them to have a real alternative? I guess the same goes for Brazil. This make this distro somewhat more important to me than "just another" English one.

  • Translation (by human) (Score:4, Informative)

    by pdcull ( 469825 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @08:48AM (#2124637) Homepage
    Wednesday, 25 July 2001 - 14:48 Conectiva launches version 7.0 in Portuguese.

    The product substitutes version 6.0 launched at the end of 2000, and will be presented in two editions: Conectiva Linux 7.0 and Conectiva Linux 7.0 Professional Server.

    São Paulo, July 2001 - The new version of the open source operation system that is most used in all of the world, will be available starting at the next Fernsaoft (São Paulo computer show), which will be from the 30th of July to the 4th of August. The product substitutes version 6.0, launched at the end of 2000, and will be presented in two editions: Conectiva Linux 7.0 and Conectiva Linux 7.0 Professional Server.

    The biggest new features of this version are the tools to facilitate the use of the RPM automatic upgrade utility, called APT. Thanks to resources which are exclusive to Conectiva, it is possible for each user to install only the packages which are suitable for them.

    Another modification which Conectiva prepared for CL 7.0 was the extinction of the boot (startup) disks, seeings that practically all modern machines are able to accomplish this process directly from the CD-ROM. But, if necessary, the user can create their own boot disk with the utilities and images on the five CDs which are part of the product. They also bring a program to help in the creation of the diskette and facilitate the installation in machines with the Windows operating system.

    According to the company's new strategy, which intends to show that Linux is now profession and has won a large part of the market, the design of the boxes has also changed. CL version 7.0 has a more simple appearance than the earlier versions, and maintains the predominance of the colour blue, whereas the Professional Server version also follows this 'clean' look, with an emphasis on the colour white.

    Among the advantages of the new version, it is worth also mentioning the support and documentation, which is even more complete, and directed towards the user. Conectiva Linux version 7.0 documentation is composed of the "User's Guide" and "Quick Installation Guide", whereas the Professional Server version has the "Quick Installation Guide", the "Conectiva Linux Server Guide" and the new book "Understanding Conectiva Linux", which presents information about the operating system through pratical examples. In addition to the manuals, the package is composed of five CDs, one for installation (operating system and applications), one of extra applications, two with the source code of the first two CDs and one containing StarOffice for Linux in various languages.

    To provide support, the user will have coupons in the packet which give the right to two hours of telephone support and three months via email. If the validity of the supports expires, Conectiva also offers extended support, in both versions, so that the user can adquire more time to resolve their questions.

    Technical Characteristics

    In this version, the automatic upgrade tool for RPM packages, the APT, has a system which is much more stable and better integrated with tools such as Synaptic. This, in turn, is a graphical interface created to simplify the remote installation and upgrading of programs through APT, without needing to resort to the command line. "To meet these objectives, various packages were rebuilt, being subdivided into smaller packages, for the purpose of economizing disk space and making them more flexible", explains Alfredo Kojima, creator of Synaptic and the WindowMaker graphical interface, and a member of the Conective development team.

    In Conectiva Linux 7.0 it is worth mentioning as well the inclusion of the Kernel 2.4, which signficiantly improves the performance of the version, principally on servers which run large applications and multiprocessing systems. This performance also helps a lot in the utilitization of Linux in the corporate environment. In addition to the Kernel 2.4, you can also choose the 2.2.19 Kernel.

    XFree86, a Linux graphical interface server, is now in edition 4.03, which has new drivers for SiS and S3 cards, both very popular in Brazil. This upgrade resolves stability and performance problems which previously existed. In addition, it has 3D image support and anti-aliasing, a resource which smooths-out fonts on the screen for easier reading.

    The standard graphical interface for Conectiva Linux 7.0 is KDE 2.12, which now has various upgrades and improvements in terms of security. KDE has integrated a series of applications, such as the e-mail reader KMail, the dialer KPPP, the browser and file manager Konqueror and the office suite KOffice, as well as other small tools.

    As always, another advantage of the Linux operating system, which is repeated in this new version, is the better utilization of the hardware, make available constant investments in upgrades. In Conectiva Linux 7.0 there are four installation profiles available: minimum, standard, complete and personalised, each with a package of pre-determined applications. The standard installation occupies an average of only 510 MB, which is little when compared to other Open Source distributions. Also it is worth saying that the whole installation process has interactive help available.

    Conectiva Linux 7.0 will be available for sale at the Fenasoft (computer show), at suggested prices of R$ 88,00 (around US $36) (Conectiva Linux 7.0) and R$ 225,00 (around US $105) (Conectiva Linux 7.0 - Professional Server).

  • I was present at the World Social Forum [forumsocia...ial.org.br] in Brazil at the beginning of this year. There I noticed something interesting being done by the worker-party (PT) controlled state of Rio Grande do Sul with linux.

    They basically have a whole pro-linux initiative, which mostly came from geeks at the govt's IT department. They are creating a press, to make linux docs available in portuguese, and are shifting as much as possible away from proprietary software to open-source software. Their rhetoric is very public service oriented, making claims of spending money upgrading proprietary licenses from previous adminstrations, money which could have been used to deliver public services. Furthermore, they see open source as a way of achieving development without "northern" control. Their state development bank has begun curtailing loans used for purchasing proprietary software when open source alternatives are available, and give pointers to such alternatives. Its a shame that it takes a dynamic left-wing government to take reasonable steps such as this and i hope more start doing the same.

  • I see THAT as a major plus, it doesn't only help you get into the linux world BUT it solves one of the biggest poblems with selling corporates a full-linux answer --> CERTIFIED PEOPLE.

    Might not mean much in real life, but companies do feel more confident.

    I mean, u get a regular linux dude: "I'm gonna b using this and that dists plus those packs plus a little sumthin' I got done last weekend" ... linux works like a dream, company saves money, dude leaves company.

    Where do they get a guy that knows, and can prove it, all those bits?

    Joe - MCSE+I, MCDBA, MCT, Profissional Certificado Conectiva

  • here [teletranslator.com]- I got this through the one built in to Mozilla.
  • OK

    I am relatively new to APT-GET as the only Debian box I have ever setup is a small P166 server sitting here by me at work. (A little off topic but Debian is quite an efficient distro!)

    My main question is that Connectiva appears to use Apt-get as well, and from what I saw Synaptic presents a nice logical UI for all this functionality, but to where is it connecting?

    On debian I connect to the main debian servers for updates, back home on my Mandrake machine I connect to the Mandrake mirrors with Mandrake Update, but is Synaptic generic enough that I could replace Mandrake Update with it? Could I install Connectiva, and then try to get packages from Debian?

    Obviously you could get packages from any distro manually, but the important thing is whether or not they would be able to satisfy dependencies and run, and I was wondering how much Synaptic could help in that area.

    Thanks in advance for anyone who has experience here and can clarify!

    • Re:Synaptic Uses? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Walles ( 99143 )
      I'm certainly no expert on Connectiva (as I've never used it), and my experience with Debian is limited to using apt-get and dselect a lot, but I think the answers to your questions are as follows:

      is Synaptic generic enough that I could replace Mandrake Update with it?

      In case the Mandrake mirrors provide the correct directory structure for apt-get to work with, yes. Otherwise no. As Mandrake distribute apt-get in contrib [sunet.se] (at least that's what I guess the apt RPM contains), I guess the answer is "yes".

      Could I install Connectiva, and then try to get packages from Debian?

      No. Connectiva uses RPMs. Debian uses DEBs. They have different dependency databases, so AFAICT that shouldn't be possible.

      Cheers //Johan

  • Can someone tell me if it is possible to use synaptic on a Progeny-based box?
    • I know synaptic has been built to work with .debs also (it doesn't matter, it's just the apt database). I just don't know the gory details on how to configure it for that. Maybe it's a compile-time define or something like that.

  • Heh...babelfish is funny (Score:3, Funny)

    by Linux Freak ( 18608 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @04:32AM (#2151243) Homepage
    I wonder why people bother posting babelfish translations. They are practically useless. :^) Interestingly enough, this one consistently misspells "launch" (as "launchn"). Somebody should send e-mail to Altavisa (pre-1999) er I mean to Digital, er, I mean Compaq, er I mean Altavista about this. :-)
    • Have you ever tried translating back and forth in Babelfish? I took the liberty of translating this story back and forth into different languages a few times. Somebody set us up the bomb:

      Conectiva Linux 7,0 is outside. It pulls announcement here. And here babelfish translation. Those already the frame and England give very quick * start to Portugal. However (perhaps you obtain, it was) already, there is a OIN material with ds English. Common document transmission word of the agreement server due to stacking too much. The Hoever and the Rik VanRiel offer the fast server one not to lie to us. I above-mentioned predicate do not do the side of each unit, but, as for general correction following to the adaptation of conclusion of the eastfront whose point of view of the foundation of the mine is rather good. Help of the nerve, you write, is.

      Indeed.

    • Er, I meant, "Altavista" (pre-1999). I may as well explain my joke :p Altavista.com used to be some lame portal which you'd always end up at when you really wanted the search engine. It offered you a link to the REAL altavista search engine. Fortunately, Digital/Compaq snapped them up. ;-)
    • To set in motion the bed, the user will count on added coupons to the package, that give to right the two hours of telephonic attendance and three months saw email. If the validity of the bed to die, the Connective also offers the extendido bed, in the two versions, so that the user can acquire more time to take off its doubts.

  • 10 Days Late (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Conectiva 7.0 was released to ftp servers on 30 July 2001 - this is a bit of an old news, really. Anyway, check out the features at distrowatch [distrowatch.com].

  • Yet another one (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Splezunk ( 250168 )
    What makes this one different from other Linux distributions. Until Somebody produces a Linus that is easy to install, and doesn't need a massive learning curve to actually use, Linux is still very useless to me.

    I really think Linux should take a look at the ease of which BeOS installs and configures itself. That is what the average user wants - transparancy.

    • Zen and the lack of knowledge (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      A wealth of information to learn on the net. But our proverbial horses don't want to drink the waters. This is an emotional issue for the learned and unlearned both but I eventually came to the conclusion that this is just the way things are and perhaps this mass lethargy should just run it's course.

      The end result will be less than satisfactory for some of course but you can't force people to learn valuable skills. Their fates are already sealed.

    • And BeOS doesn't have vast well organized set of Spanish and Portuguese documentation.

      At the present time comparing the usefulness of Conectiva Linux and BeOS to Latin American consumers is like comparing the usefulness of a desktop/server computer with a rock that someone has thrown into a lake and that has sunk to the bottom and disappeared under a thick layer of mud.

    • Re:Yet another one (Score:2, Interesting)

      by pjbass ( 144318 )
      I remember the first time I installed Linux. It ate me over and over again. This was back in the days of Red Hat 4.1. But I had to install Linux on the server it was going on, so I had no choice. I had to learn it, and had to make it work correctly.

      To me it sounds like you don't "need" Linux running on your mahcine. I may be wrong, so I apologize if I am. However, the learning curve is steep, yes, but it is steep because the OS is not designed for being "user-friendly," rather, something designed for reliability and performance.

      I assure you, the day you NEED a Linux box, it will come to you... :-)
    • Well, there is something pretty common here in Brazil... brazilian software developers and system administrators tend to see national software as being of low/bad quality and to rely more on international products and distributions than to give credit to local products. I have heard someone made incredibly good comments on the Window Maker, and going wide eyed by being told Window Maker is a Brazilian Software. And never again doing any comment about it, but replacing it by Enlightenment on their desktops. And also, more than once I have heard comments from many admins saying they wouldn't use Conectiva simply because it was a Brazilian distribution, preferring Slackware or RedHat instead. But Conectiva is managing to break that down. I am working with one guy related to the Conectiva project, and they are really doing much development locally, instead of just picking the best software around and bundling it in "yet one more distribution". And also, Conectiva is a commercial distribution, with a great deal of worry from Conectiva ( the company ) on supporting and training their users. So, I think it's time to give Conectiva a try, at least, before putting Debian back on my notebook. I can keep You all updated on what goes on, but I believe Conectiva grained a self identity, no longer being simply a RedHat 5.2 with some patches over it, like Conectiva 4.0 was. kisses, Jessica

      • I can't think of a good reasons to avoid Conectiva Linux, but OTOH I see not a single one to use it. Among the arguments one generally hears in Brazil about why to use CL:

        • Translation - Their translations to Portuguese are light-years away from professional grade (as unfortunately seems to be the norm with Linux material in Portuguese over the net.) As long as one can functionally read English (which I believe to be the case of people who are into UNIX administration), what one gets from an original English text makes more sense than most translations. If you are a vanilla user who can't read English, well, I do not know how well-translated other distros are, but beating CL in that field isn't hard at all.

          90-day support - Now *that* is a joke! I phoned them 3 times with the following questions when I first installed Linux:

          • How do I display more than 25 lines in a terminal screen? The answer was to add a line like "vga=788" (?) in lilo.conf, but the answer I got was: "This is not covered by basic support, sir. You need to upgrade."

            How do I get things compiled after I install gcc and GNU tools?? Answer: install the "development" libraries too, you insignificant beginer! The answer I got: "This is not covered by basic support, sir. You need to upgrade."

            How do I access my DOS partition from Linux? Answer: You either edit fstab or use linuxconf to create a mounting point for the filesystem and configure it to mount automatically upon startup. But I got the same standard answer.

          Well, to be 100% honest, this was back in 1999, but from my point of view these were all legitimate installation questions to which I had to dig for the answers myself, without Internet access at home at the time.

          Hardware support - Conectiva claims to support lots of cheap hardware commonly found in old PC's. I don't think this is not true for some other distros too. And this is becoming less important by the day.

          Security - OK, they make patches available over their website really quick, but the default installation of CL 4.0, as I later concluded, left a lot of unnecessary services open. I don't know about CL 6.0 wich I'm using now in my DT machine, for I chose the packages myself.

          Easy installation - CL 6.0 defaults to a graphic install, which failed to recognise the video card in my notebook, making it impossible to use. I installed SuSE 6.0, a breeze, but I was too much used to CL's (RH's) way of doing things. Then I installed Mandrake, even easier and recognised everything except, obviously, the WinModem.

        There are other things about Conectiva that I don't like, but in this post I'll stick to mention why the arguments they use are not important for many people. If one can't read English at all, I'd say "go CL", despite the rough translation. Otherwise, yes, CL is pretty much just another distro, maybe among the best as a server distro, probably not as a desktop.

    • Re:Yet another one (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      eh, have you never looked at Linux Mandrake [mandrake.org]. It's probably easier to install than anything from M$, and has anything any Joe Average would want to use (Apache, MySQL...). No massive learning curve there ...

    • Re:Yet another one (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      How about the fact that you can apt-get RPMs for a start? Well there is actually a lot of other nice things in there too, but that's something definetly worth looking at.

      This isn't in my opinion *the* most cutting edge distro available, but it is very good distro and is best what it aims to be: the distro for people who they target at, that is Latin American bussinesses and users.

      The users at LA too need some sort of official tech support and special localization support. Trust me if they didn't do their job, no one else would. You really don't think that RedHat, SuSe or Mandrake are going to switch focus from their current mainstream makets to fill in the gaps in other not as rich markets, are you? People at LA are interested in having localization work done, in having competent tech support people who can speak their native language and having development targeted at people that might have different needs than the rest of the geeks in the rest of the world. How would you feel if you needed to call Germany and speak in german for every single tech support anyone in your country would ever need? Trust me i can do just fine without any tech support, as most geeks can, but bussinesses really can't be operated on this assumption.

      They have also been very evangelists for Linux in LA. With their support many counties have passed laws in which the local governments are to use exclusively free/open software, unless that for the required function the software only exists in a non-free type of license. Not only that but they have been working [wired.com] also on a more stripped down distro to give more people access to computing and the internet. Personally I wouldn't really mind seeing another few million users being introduced into computing directly to linux. And anyone trying to get technology to those who need deserve some kudos!

      --

      Nothing like Free home-brewed Beer and Freedom and happiness to all that pursue it!

    • Re:Yet another one (Score:5, Insightful)

      by GreyPoopon ( 411036 ) <[gpoopon] [at] [gmail.com]> on Thursday August 09, 2001 @04:31AM (#2151174)
      Until Somebody produces a Linus that is easy to install, and doesn't need a massive learning curve to actually use, Linux is still very useless to me.

      Linux doesn't necessarily need the learning curve that many people attribute to it. Sure, back in the Slackware-only days, installing, configure and using Linux required some knowledge and effort. But today, it really depends on what you want to do. If you just want to run a few office apps like most people do with windows, you never need to touch source code, or bother with the tricky stuff. Just buy a good distribution (like Mandrake or Redhat or [insert favorite here]), and install it.

      Now, what makes Linux difficult? First, there is partitioning your hard drive and installing file systems in preparation for the install. This makes many users really nervous. But here's the reality. If you started with a blank hard drive and installed Windows from scratch, you'd still have to set up the file system on the hard drive during the install. You might not have to *partition* the drive, but you don't have to do that with some of the Linux distributions if you are running them without a dual-boot situation. Don't want to go through the trouble of installing it yourself? Do what most people do with Windows -- buy a machine with the OS preinstalled. While rare, you can find machines with Linux preinstalled.

      The second difficult thing about installing Linux is the reported problems with recognizing hardware. Note that this is getting better and better, but you'll find that there are problems with devices designed specifically for Windows (WinModems and Windows Printers), and there are also problems with proprietary hardware in which the manufacturer has not opened the specs to Open Source developers. Want to avoid this problem? Make sure your hardware is fully supported by the Linux distribution BEFORE you install. Think consumers wouldn't go for this? Surprise! They did a few years ago when Microsoft released Windows NT 4.0. It was funny how all of those machines my former employer bought from Compaq weren't certified to run Windows NT, and when we had installation and reliability problems, we were outta luck. And these were high-end machines at the time.

      While I'm rambling on, let me tell you where I see *real* problems with Linux. The problem is with user interface consistency. You see, one of the great Linux strengths is also a weakness. There are lots of choices for your desktop, and each has a set of applications tailored to it. Great! Nobody is going to tell me what desktop environment I have to use. But if my favorite applications require various environments, I have a slight problem. Yes, I can run all of them under my favorite desktop environment, but they look, feel and interact differently. In many cases, you almost have to know which libraries the application was written with to fully understand how to use it. This can be very confusing for the average user -- it's bad enough that they have to learn something different from Windows, but try explaining that they have to learn two or three different styles of user interface. It can be frustrating. I hope to see this improve. Perhaps authors of good applications tailored for one environment will port them to another. For example, if your favorite web browser is Konqueror under KDE, but your favorite desktop is GNOME with Enlightenment, wouldn't it be nifty to see a port that interfaces really well with GNOME? Maybe we'll see these kinds of things in the future.

      • What I'd really like to see is people try to abstract the functionality from the UI. Take Mozilla. If you want a good Gnome interface, use Galeon. Presumably, someone could also make a KDE interface to keep consistency there. I hope we see a lot more toolkit-specific front ends with toolkit-independent back ends in the future.

        • Konqueror has an option in which you can utilize the mozilla engine instead of KHTML (the Konqueror default) using a widget called "kmozilla" (I think this is similar to the GtkMozilla widget in that you can embed it in any KDE app).

          Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to communicate well with Konqueror (as far as I have been able to tell, though this may be due to the fact that I am using a more recent mozilla). Anyway, i am using galeon at the moment because I don't particulerly like the speed of KHTML, and I like the tabs and "smart search toolbar" or whatever in galeon. I just wish that the GNOME interface looked good with my KDE desktop (though the fonts and colours match, due to KDE's nice "apply fonts and colours to non-KDE apps" option).

      • Just my experience with CL 7.0:

        Now, what makes Linux difficult? First, there is partitioning your hard drive and installing file systems in preparation for the install.
        Conectiva had work with Andrew Clausen, parted [gnu.org] Author to make repartitioning and automatic repartitioning in the Installation really clean for the new user.

        While I'm rambling on, let me tell you where I see *real* problems with Linux. The problem is with user interface consistency.
        Some distributions try to force the user into one or too GUI (usually kde and gnome).
        Conectiva has created the xscripts interface. A really simple interface that let any window manager (I did it for staroffice without a wm too) to be shown in the KDM login screen or be called from the console. So the user has a choice from KDE, gnome, enlightenment, windowmaker, blackbox, xfce, sawmill, qvwm, ...
        But that as it was commented above, this might make the user feel lost. quite right. But Debian [slashdot.org] has developed a MENU system. This let all aplications in one interface see the same applications over the wms menu system across them all.
        I have noted that the window user likes to start with qvwm before going to KDE, gnome, ... This let he finds all applications he needs in any place. Also qvwm is one of the fastest wm around, so a user who has a poor hardware configuration would enjoy it too ( I would prefer myself blackbox ;).

        Another great thing Conectiva is doing is in Linuxconf development. Conectiva has a full team of developers developing Linuxconf, creating modules, finding bugs and helping improving it. So, you can do almost anything from it.
    • ... and choose KDE as your default desktop during the install. I had a 10 year old install it on one of my notebooks with no problems. He was doing his homework on it about half an hour after booting it for the first time. If you can't figure it out, maybe you should seek help from a local 3rd grader.
      • Thank you! I was going to mention that... I just installed 7.1 on a vaio notebook dual-booting with ME it took less time to install and update RH than it did to run the windows updates (not to mention 10 reboots for windows, 0 for RH). I haven't worked with BeOS [theregister.co.uk] so I can't comment on it...

    • Re:Yet another one (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Until Somebody produces a Linus that is easy to install"

      I agree. Last time I tried to install Linus, he kicked me in the nuts.

    • A standard packaging system and a great front end. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Nailer ( 69468 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @02:51AM (#2153025)
      What makes this one different from other Linux distributions?

      It combines the Linux Standard Base packaging system, RPM 3.05, with the most well known automatic software installation frontend, APT, a tight set of packaging guidelines, and a nice GUI for APT called Synaptic.

      Also, most people don't live in North America or speak English, and internationalization for most general purpose distributions is quite poor.



  • A|\|c| THe w0r|_d ya|/\|/vS

  • At last... (Score:3, Funny)

    by colonial_taxman ( 395901 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @02:34AM (#2152408)
    A GUI that uses a flat file rather than digging through layers of arbitrarily grouped
    "functionality"

    //taxman
  • In spring, I went through the installation of all the major Linux distributions. They all sucked, because of various reasons.

    Unfortunately, I didn't write the problems up. Of the RPM distributions, I liked Mandrake best, except that I had to install it about 5 times because some programs simply wouldn't work. After a few hours I found out that the system didn't work properly because of the Finnish language setting given in the first screen of the installation. Well, got that fixed, but after failing to install newest version of KDE properly, I kicked Mandrake out. I think it had some other critical problems too, but can't remember what anymore.

    I installed SuSe Linux on my employer's two notebooks. It was hell, because SuSe didn't have a rescue CD. I was frustrated like hell and just couldn't believe this. Yeah, it had 3,5" rescue disk, but the notebooks didn't have such drives. Finally I managed to get it installed by using the Mandrake installation CD's rescue mode... Why did I need a rescue disk? I had accidentally written the LILO to wrong partition (not MBR), and I didn't want to go through the package selection again. Also setting up the network was hell, and fought with it for hours. I was unable to setup my audio card (SB AWE32) on my home machine, even with hours of fighting. The "YAST2" setup tool is sh*t, and slow as hell (and has annoyingly stupid name - why not just call it "System Installation Tool" or something???). In the second installation I didn't select ALL packages during the initial installation. Thus, I was forced to select 600 packages one-by-one using a notebook nanny because the package manager didn't support keyboard properly. It took about half an hour to select them all. On the plus side, SuSe has the prettiest boot screen I've ever seen. ;-)

    Corel Linux (based on Debian) had definitely the easiest installation! Everything went smooth, as it detected my AWE32 sound card and got even my exotic i740 video card and rare Viewpoint monitor working straight properly! Unfortunately, the support from Corel was non-existant, and there weren't any updates. I wanted to install new KDE 2.x, so I added some regular Debian sites to the update program. It went hell, as the Debian packages broke the system entirely.

    I installed Debian on my home server/router/firewall. It was also hell, because I don't have a 3,5" disk drive, just CD, and Debian didn't have a bootable installation CD. It also didn't have a way to install it from RedHat. It took about two days to install it from RedHat, using chroot tweaks to run the installation scripts, etc. But that's nothing, then I had to fight with the package installations. I have to say that dselect has the most horrible user interface that I've ever seen in any program. Come on guys! Why can't you use "Esc" key for returning, but "Shift-Q"????? Aaaarghhh. Anyhow, using dselect and configuring the apt-get sources.list was horribly difficult, and I've been using Linux (RH) for 6 years and computers for 18 years. I can't even imagine how difficult it would be for a beginner. Choosing between the "stable" and "unstable" packages is also a hell to configure, and I still don't know how to do that in the source.list file, after using Debian for a few months. For some time the "unstable" worked, but then I started getting weird errors such as:

    Sorry, but the following packages have unmet dependencies:
    apache: Depends: libdb2 (>= 2:2.7.7-4) but 2:2.7.7-8 is to be installed
    E: Sorry, broken packages

    Then I switched back to the stable - which means having outdated packages all the time. Configuring the APT system is really confusing and non-intuitive for even an experienced Linux (RH) user (and I'm not really a computer beginner after 18 years). Everything requires reading huge amounts of documentation and help files. That's just NOT the way modern software should be done. All programs should be tested on beginners. But Debian developers clearly have some tendency to make the system so complex that they can feel superior. That's just idiotic.

    Finally, I installed RedHat 7.1 to my personal workstation. Can't remember all the problems anymore, but they were plenty, as always with RedHat installations. Why on earth RH still doesn't have ReiserFS??? They say "it's not stable enough", but I switched from ext2 exactly because of non-fixable filesystem corruption. And I don't want to wait 30 minutes for the chkfs for the 60GB drive. The new "up2date" updater is a joke. On the first update, it tried to update the up2date itself, but ran into depency problems with Python (it's written with Python I guess). Yeah, this was the out-of-the-box installation. No, the updater didn't inform which package conflicted with which, but just that there was "a conflict" with SOME of the 20 packages it tried to install. Of course it didn't tell which package conflicted and how. I had to trace and update them manually with rpm, after a lot of trouble. After resolving that problem, I was able to make up2dates for a month, and now there's again a conflict. No, I'm not going to use up2date again before the GUI is fixed PROPERLY.

    Linux definitely is not ready for desktop, or for beginners. I believe the main obstacle is the attitude of the developers, who require that users use huge amount of time studying the documentations.

    Even as a heavy user, and as a software developer, I don't want to spend months of my time on studying useless things. Most people don't, and if Linux developers require them to do that, everybody loses.

    • Corel Linux (based on Debian) had definitely the easiest installation! [...but] I wanted to install new KDE 2.x, so I added some regular Debian sites to the update program. It went hell, as the Debian packages broke the system entirely.

      Indeed it does. Since the Conectiva people are probably reading this Slashdot item, I figure it's an excellent place for me to apologise to one of the coders of the Synaptic utility, who argued this point with me on IDG's sadly discontinued forum.linuxworld.com newsgroups: He had cited Corel Linux as an example of a supposedly Debian-compatible distribution that did not smoothly upgrade to Debian-stable, because of Corel's severely broken, incompatible KDE 1.1 packages. I had replied, quite honestly based on my recollection, that I'd upgraded Corel Linux to Debian-stable (2.2/potato, KDE2) without major problems.

      He'd then called me a liar, and things went downhill from there. He was correct: I just didn't remember that it's necessary to yank Corel's mutant KDE 1.1 packages (the "kde-corel" one, and anything tied to it) before one could successfully proceed. And then Debian's KDE2 "task-kde" goes in beautifully.

      I hope this helps you (or someone) out.

      Meanwhile, I happen to be installing Conectiva 7.0 (in English) on a spare machine, and must say it is quite slick.

      Rick Moen
      rick@linuxmafia.com

  • Target the Brazilian OS market... smart! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 ) <DancinSanta@gmail.com> on Thursday August 09, 2001 @02:36AM (#2152513) Journal
    Considering that Brazil is the largest market in the southern hemisphere (okay, Australia is there too...), making a Portugese port of Linux makes a lot of sense.

    Of course, porting and selling Linux hasn't yet proved to be a sustainable business plan.

    Dancin Santa
  • Slashdot: Free advertising space for Linux distros. Stuff that no one should care about.
  • "The Connective Linux 7.0"

    I guess the translator doesn't realize Connectiva as a brand name, or maybe if you speak english, it is called "Connective" ;)
  • It's called Aptitude. It's only included in Sid AFAIK, but it's nevertheless neat. First, that's a ncurses app: No stupid GUI bloat. Second, it's as simple as Mutt (which I happen to like, too ;-)) And third, the author is cool and listen to the users (which is a very good point). I use it daily to manage my overbloated distro and it does a great job. If you've got a Sid, you should definitely have a look at it...

  • Interface Consistency (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ulwarth ( 458420 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @05:23AM (#2153647) Homepage
    Agreed on all points, especially the last one. Interface consistency is something that has frustrated even *me*, and I'm a died-in-the-wool UNIX old-timer. (Hell, I actually _like_ the way that Motif looks.)

    That's why I find KDE so exciting. They are actually acheiving a level of consistency and quality in the interface that meets (or, in my opinion, exceeds) that of Microsoft, Apple, or really any other desktop I can think of.

    What I'd really like to see is KLinux. A distro centered entirely around KDE, with no non-KDE apps available. At this point that might make the app selection just a little slim, particularly since KOffice is still not on-par with the functionality of something like StarOffice. But I think there are many users that would really appreciate the level of consistency that would be achieved by such a distribution, and the distro maintainers could focus on a 100% KDE-based system, hopefully producing a more integrated final OS.

  • Spanish version? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kiwi ( 5214 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @03:19AM (#2153671) Homepage Journal
    Can anyone tell me if the 7.0 release has Spanish language support?

    I know that RedHat 7.1 has Spanish support, though RH7.1 assumes you are in Spain when installing in Spanish--a strange assumption to make, considering how big Latin America is. Note: RH7.1 doesn't support Portugese.

    I would assume that Conectiva has Spanish support, but it would be nice to know this for a fact.

    - Sam

    • Re:Spanish version? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Patola ( 106158 )
      Well, yes, it does. I use it for a while (been upgrading with apt) and it's great. In the installation process you choose which language to use (english, portuguese or spanish).
  • new version of the operational system of used open code more in the whole world

    Hey.. I don't want used code.. I want minty-fresh new code...! Otherwise what am I paying them for?

  • If you're looking for Conectiva Linux 7.0 ISO images you can also find them in AU at

    http://planetmirror.com/pub/conectiva/iso/

    -jason

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