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Lunar Linux 1.0 Released 254

Posted by timothy from the fabled-moon-penguins dept.
Ivan writes "Lunar Linux 1.0 was released today. It's a source based distribution, with gcc 3.2 and the latest versions of packages such as Mozilla 1.1, OpenOffice.org 1.0.1 and GNOME 2 and KDE 3. From the about page on their website: 'In the beginning Lunar was a fork of Sorcerer GNU Linux (SGL). The fork occurred in late January to early February of 2002 and was originally made up of a small group of people who wanted to collaboratively develop and extend the Sorcerer technology.' Download the ISOs here."
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Lunar Linux 1.0 Released More

Lunar Linux 1.0 Released

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  • They're evolving! Now they can survive in extremely low pressure environments without oxygen! Argh! Sorry, that picture on their webpage cracks me up.

  • Wow!!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by FreeLinux ( 555387 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @04:19PM (#4376172)
    These guys are even better than Red Hat. Their mirrors are kickin and their announcement isn't even Slashdotted, yet. ;^)
  • 'In the beginning Lunar was a fork of Sorcerer GNU Linux (SGL). The fork occurred in late January to early February of 2002 and was originally made up of a small group of people who wanted to collaboratively develop and extend the Sorcerer technology.'

    It appears to be almost totally different now judging from the other info given on the site..

  • So would that be nicknamed "Lunix"? (Score:4, Funny)

    by TheAwfulTruth ( 325623 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @04:21PM (#4376191) Homepage
    (Apologies to Jeff K.)

  • Download ISOs here! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @04:21PM (#4376192)
    For those that didn't catch the link before it became slashdotted, here it is:

    Name Last modified Size Description

    Parent Directory 01-Oct-2002 09:19 -
    ChangeLog.lunar 02-Oct-2002 20:01 1k
    ChangeLog.moonbase 30-Sep-2002 22:50 13k
    ChangeLog.theedge 02-Oct-2002 20:02 8k
    ISO.Changelog 01-Oct-2002 09:37 8k
    art/ 18-Aug-2002 20:05 -
    distrowatch.txt 02-Oct-2002 19:32 2k
    init/ 31-Mar-2002 19:14 -
    lunar-20021001.iso.bz2 01-Oct-2002 09:30 89.3M
    lunar-20021001.iso.md5 01-Oct-2002 09:19 1k
    lunar.lsm 01-Sep-2002 20:57 1k
    lunar.tar.bz2 02-Oct-2002 20:01 104k
    lunar.tar.bz2.1 02-Oct-2002 19:01 104k
    mirrors/ 26-Aug-2002 13:57 -
    moonbase.tar.bz2 02-Oct-2002 20:02 552k
    moonbase.tar.bz2.1 02-Oct-2002 19:02 552k
    old/ 01-Oct-2002 06:52 -
    testing/ 01-Oct-2002 09:30 -
    theedge.tar.bz2 02-Oct-2002 20:02 106k
    theedge.tar.bz2.1 02-Oct-2002 19:02 106k

  • Ah but the question is (Score:4, Funny)

    by Salsaman ( 141471 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @04:24PM (#4376216) Homepage
    Will Lunar Linux run on Sun hardware ?

  • /. needs another section (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jacoby ( 3149 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @04:25PM (#4376233) Homepage Journal
    This is desperately needed: YAFLD.

  • Read the comments under the announcement... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jvmatthe ( 116058 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @04:27PM (#4376246) Homepage
    First there were the distro wars.

    Now there are the source distro wars. :^)

    Anyway, I thought this was a humourous comment under the announcement on the Lunar site that indicates just how far out of the mainstream source distro geeks are:
    Actually, lunar requires very little documentation to install. If you actually went through the install process you should see that. Also, the initial MOTD tells you to read a manpage that describes the features and commands to a first time user.

    Oh! I get it. First I burn the ISO and then boot and that gets to the MOTD. Then it points me to a man page which details lots of little command line programs that I use to install. That's gotta be the ultimate in user friendly! :^D

    Sorry, but it just made me laugh out loud when I read how easy [sic] it was. For what it's worth, I struggled through several Gentoo installs and, except at work where we have system administered by someone else, I use Gentoo and love it. Even "converted" one of my friends recently. I know what it's like to have to do obscure things, but sometimes it takes a comment like the above to realize just how "deep" I've fallen into the world of Linux geekdom.
    • Hehe... One of my favorites is cd-rom drives that ships with all documentation, etc, on a... You guessed it. CD-ROM! =-)
    • I dunno about 'struggle', if you read the installation instructions on the gentoo site it's a breeze... I was actually surprised and happy about how easy Gentoo was to install.
      • Well, by struggle I mean two things:
        - get my laptop's PCMCIA to play nice with their ISO image
        - get their kernel to work without having SMP turned on

        This is back from the 1.0_rc6 days, and rc6 worked just great with my system. Unfortunately, the way they had their kernel set up, you had to do a "make clean" right off the bat or you got something that didn't work quite right unless you left SMP turned on. Don't ask me why...that's just how it was.

        Furthermore, when they went to 1.0 (final) it wasn't clear to me that an upgrade would be a clean process. So I instead chose to install again, and their 1.0 ISO would cause a really nasty kernel hang when trying to enable PCMCIA on my laptop.

        From there I used my 1.0_rc6 disc to get the system half-working and then used the 1.0 final disc to finish everything up. I know it sounds odd, but it worked, and everything has been smooth since.

        Then there were a few compile problems, probably related to me using the gcc 3.x profile, but I worked around those too.

        Struggle may sound harsh, but that's how it feels when you're getting what look like serious problems and the help online isn't helpful enough.

        Note: Gentoo devs and mailing lists have seemed generally helpful, from what I've experienced, but I don't think they were nearly as helpful in March 2002 as they are now.

        In case people read this and not my other followup, yes, I'm positive about Gentoo.

    • I've heard good things about Gentoo, and I'm quite tempted to try it. I'm currently a Win2k user, but I plan on trying Linux within a couple weeks. Though I'm quite comfortable with Windows (including the command line), I'm a bit of a Linux newbie. So, do you think Gentoo would be worth trying for me?

      I wasn't quite sure whether your post was pro-Gentoo or anti-Gentoo ;). At one point you say "I struggled through several Gentoo installs" yet you "use Gentoo and love it"? (I'm not trying to be snarky, just honestly curious).

      • I recommend Gentoo for people who want to be closer to the internals of their systems but don't want the "gasoline poured into gaping head wound" pain of Linux From Scratch. LFS is great for doing once for the experience, but since it pretty much lacks a packaging system (back when I tried it), it's not for me. I'm willing to do some babysitting of my system, but not at the level that LFS requires.

        Gentoo promises a close working relationship with your system, access to the very latest packages, and a growing and generally helpful community.

        Try it out: Gentoo home [gentoo.org]

        See my other post in this thread for why I had problems with it initially.
      • If you are coming from Win2k without much prior Linux or Unix experience I was seriously suggest installing RedHat or Mandrake. Give it a whirl for a month or so to get familiar, then when you think you are 'leet enough (i.e. your pain threshold has risen enough), try out a source distro.

        I haven't tried out a source distro yet (it seems the only occasions I have to install Linux happen to be pretty bizarre network installs...so I usually just opt for RedHat because this is the *only* distro I've been able to get to install easily in these circumstances).
        • I'd second the above poster's advice; and recommend Mandrake over RedHat. I have used source distributions but if you are new to Unixes there are just going to be way too many assumptions of knowledge in the documentation. For example it might say stuff like "configure startx with your favorite window manager" and you:

          a) don't know what startx is
          b) don't understand what it is doing
          c) don't know what a window manager is
          d) don't have a favorite

  • innovative Linux distributions (Score:3, Funny)

    by cpeterso ( 19082 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @04:30PM (#4376272) Homepage

    I'm glad to see some new innovation in Linux distibutions. Lunar Linux is completely unlike those other Linux distributions. It includes innovative new software that other Linux distributions do have, such as Mozilla, GNOME, KDE, gcc, and the Linux kernel.

  • Old Term New Term (Score:4, Funny)

    by Hard_Code ( 49548 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @04:30PM (#4376277)
    Old Command: rm -rf /
    New Command: fakelunarlanding

    Old Term: Kernel Panic
    New Term: apollo13

  • ISO Download (Score:4, Informative)

    by viper21 ( 16860 ) <scott@@@iqfoundry...com> on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @04:31PM (#4376289) Homepage
    Does this mean that the guy from last week will now have 38 Operating Systems on 1 PC [slashdot.org]?

    Since the lunar-linux site is probably bogged down at the moment, you can probably grab an ISO from:

    DistroWatch [distrowatch.com]

    or

    LinuxISO.org [linuxiso.org]

  • Got burned... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Junta ( 36770 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @04:33PM (#4376307)
    Got burned by Sorcerer Linux before this offshoot started. Hope they improved on the system, but I'm a gentoo user now, and don't really see what could be missing...

    If they are compiling in Ramfs still (Like Sorcerer used too), it is a horrible waste, the benefits are negligible compared to the pains in the ass it can cause and the limitations it must have to deal with under the circumstances. I thought RamFS would be cool, but there is not much of a difference on an operation the user rarely performs and one that isn't baby-sat. If you are already on the install-from-source mindset, you have given up the speed of, say, binary apt installs to gain what is needed in terms of speed at runtime (and customization).

    • Re:Got burned... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MSBob ( 307239 )
      How do I configure PPPOE on gentoo so I can install the rest of it? I'm serious. I tried gentoo and I got to the stage where I had to configure my networking and none of the docs told me how to do it if my network was a PPPOE dsl. I gave up but would like to try it again if they made it any easier...
      • Never had to worry about PPPoE, but perhaps a search on the gentoo forums could help? I see one [gentoo.org], a more detailed, but German one [gentoo.org], and another here [gentoo.org].

        After that, I suppose I see the charm of other source based distros. Gentoo really isn't that intuitive on the installation for those unfamiliar with the guts of the software...
      • Luckily, the Gentoo 1.4RC version includes pppoe. It worked out of the box for me by issuing the command "adsl-start" before starting installation (try to ping a well known site to confirm you are online before continuing).

        But yes, it was not document. I was just about to install it myself from a floppy when I noticed it was already there.
        • Thanks. I'm going to give 1.4 a try. Last time I tried to install gentoo was in the days of 1.2 I think... Hope it'll work for me too.
        • I realize you're not an official Gentoo guy, but do you have any info on when 1.4 Final might be released? I'd like to give Gentoo a try (I'm currently a Windows user), but I figured that I'd have my best shot with Linux using a non-RC product ;).
    • Using tempfs to compile is an option with lunar, but we don't recomend using it. Setting your gcc options within lunar to use -pipe is a much better option.

  • What? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Noose For A Neck ( 610324 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @04:42PM (#4376381)
    Who cares? Doesn't Gentoo already have all these features, and more? Hasn't Gentoo also had a lot more time to refine itself?

    I always hear this stuff about not reinventing the wheel and such here on Slashdot, and yet I see it every day...

    • I've considered doing Gentoo Linux, but alas, that one thing I read has always led me astray: "You will need a relatively fast internet connection to complete the install of Gentoo Linux".

      So there's a problem. I only have a 56k modem. Is there a way around this? Do I at least have the ability to continue where I left off? Or if I get disconnected, am I screwed?

      • I have done an install of Gentoo over 56k. There are better ways though. You can do the "emerge sync" on the local box. This downloads the 10mb package header list. After that, you do "emerge system --pretend". This will give you a list of packages that would be downloaded. Copy this list to a floppy and give it to a friend along with a case of Jolt. Have him download the files for you. Take the CD he gives you and drop the files into /etc/portage/distfiles. Then you re-run "emerge system". It sees that the latest files are already in the correct place, so it doesn't try and download them.

        That being said, a straight install from a modem takes about 30 hours from start to bash. About 30 more hours till I had kdebase and kdenetwork installed. It wasn't really that painful, I just had to do something else for a few days...
    • DUH! They explain why right on the about page:
      In the beginning the reasons for the fork of SGL were important because that was what motivated people to start up Lunar.
      But so much time has passed that the reasons no longer matter at all so we will not waste time trying to explain.

      What, you want them to actually have a "purpose" or something? Stop harshing our buzz you square!

  • More Variety (Score:5, Insightful)

    by j_kenpo ( 571930 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @04:45PM (#4376403)
    This is a good thing. Without so many different flavors of Linux, people wouldnt be able to choose a distro closer to their personal preference. This is what makes Linux stronger than Windows, that and stability, security, free applications, ect. So im sure an all source version will fill someones niche. And if their careful, they wont even have to call it GNU/Linux....

  • Point of source-based distributions? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by koali ( 175176 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @04:46PM (#4376412)

    The latest rage is to say that compiling your stuff is pointless, because the binaries are not that much faster than generic binaries.

    Well, I really don't know, but I'm running Gentoo anyways... why?

    Perhaps is that I like tinkering, and perhaps it's that I have too much spare time (although only some packages are time consuming, namely Mozilla and OpenOffice), but I find some advantages to source based distros.

    After all, it's much easier for developers to provide packages for them. No need to support a zillion architectures. No need to choose ./configure settings (Gentoo's USE works very well). You can also make cvs packages available (that fetch the latest cvs version and compile it).

    Even though I still consider Debian's apt (and esp. the quality of packages) superior to Gentoo (just a personal oppinion), Gentoo usually provides more modern stuff (for the reasons outlined before), but I have chosen to give Gentoo some time.

    Certainly, the state of Linux distros is getting pretty interesting. Debian and Gentoo have worked perfectly for me. I keep hearing good things about SuSE and Redhat's newest releases.

    Perhaps some of the myths about Linux are beginning to fall?


    • For me it's not about the 2% speedup (well in some cases it's a lot better for certain apps, but I digress...), it's about the ease of source modification.

      You see, if I have a RedHat isntallation that uses an RPM of apache, and I decide I need to tweak the apache source a bit, it's a pain in the ass. I suppose if you get really used to using SRPMs it's manageable, sorta.

      With Gentoo, it's real easy for me to add a patch to an ebuild and re-install - or to unpack an ebuild, edit the soruce in /var/tmp/portage, and then finish off the install with "ebuild qmerge ..."

      And well, a bunch of other things, but I guess the overall point is that for the draw is the power over the system, not the speed of the binaries.
    • It doesn't take very long to compile these days, and it takes as long as it ever did to read the documentation, so either way, it'll be ready for you to use before you're ready to use it.

      I think the real advantage is being able to get the same package regardless of your library versions. So long as they're source compatible (and library providers generally try to make sure of that), the same source package will install on a huge number of systems which would require different binaries (if it links against 10 shared libraries, and there are 2 binary-but-not-source-incompatible versions of each, that's 1024 different binaries you'd need).
  • Great, now that guy that was on TECHTV last week with the PC that had 39 O/S's loaded can break the 40 barrier.

    This is like watching B.Bonds go for the HR record!
  • It looks like Kyle, the original Sorcerer developer is maintaining it again at the original url sorcerer.wox.org [wox.org]. I gave up on following that soap opera a while ago, but what did I miss? Is Kyle back to running his Sorcery tree?
    • You didn't miss any things. Supposedly he released a new and improved sorcerer under a closed source license. After doing that he put the site back up, but then stopped posting news to it. I guess he doesn't like people knowing what he is doing.

  • distros (Score:1, Informative)

    by august70 ( 209266 )
    It really amazing when looking at Distro Watch [distrowatch.com]
    How many distro's for Linux there are around. Some spouting optimised for 686 or desktop or server env. If you really are into Linux for the long haul, most of us usually do end up either rebuilding our packages or upgrading to a newer version before the actual vendor does. Be it because the package was fsck-up or because or some vendor favors a package verses another and doesn't look at the big picture of the software overall extending the software to it's fullest capabilities. my current dist is Arch Linux [archlinux.org]. Shameless plug I know, but this dist for the most part meets my current needs.
  • Version 1.0? I thought all linices had to be 8.x now? What the ?
  • One of the huge benefits of source-based distros is for sysadmins -- you can easily set up an "install" server on the network that contains the source code modules you want. Then instead of pointing each workstation's install scripts to the repository on the distro's web site you point them to the internal server. That gives you a customized library of sources and each workstation's software has been specifically built for that machine.

    Of course, for slower/older machines it would take a while to perform the install, but based on my experience with SourceMage the install can be done remotely and for the most part unattended.

  • More on the fork (Score:4, Informative)

    by Apostata ( 390629 ) <apostata@hotmFOR ... m minus language> on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @07:09PM (#4377439) Homepage Journal
    In case this wasn't posted yet, there are two major forks from Sorceror: Lunar (which I believe kept the main contributor of Sorceror), and SourceMage. SourceMage (who keep the nerdy witchcraft shtick happening) is approaching 1.0, which I believe is due for a Halloween release.

    Link: http://www.sourcemage.org/

    Sorceror was a cult-hit when it first hit the attention of Slashdot (late last year?). Many people raved about it, so I'm happy to see that both prongs on the fork are following the same tradition.

    • Re:More on the fork (Score:3, Informative)

      by osu-neko ( 2604 )
      For those who haven't kept up on the soap opera...

      Actually, Source Mage GNU/Linux is not, technically speaking, a fork of Sorcerer. It is the original. However, after the Lunar fork, the old leader of Sorcerer, Kyle Sallee, blew a fuse over having his distro forked and declared Sorcerer dead. The problem being, of course, Sorcerer, being an open source project, is not only open to forking, it can't be closed down simply because one guy has decided to take his toys and go home. The rest of the Sorcerer team said, "Hey, no it's not!" and continued maintaining the Sorcerer distro. Then Kyle decided to get back into the game, and called his own tree (now covered by a closed source license to prevent forking) Sorcerer. The original Sorcerer team then changed their name to Source Mage GNU/Linux to avoid confusion and emphasize their commitment to an open source licence, and they drew up a debianesqe social contract.

      Phew! Anyhow, that's the Readers Digest version of the story. Thus, confusingly, the distro that was called Sorcerer is now called Source Mage, the distro now called Sorcerer is a fork by the old project leader away from the rest of the old Sorcerer team, and the distro called Lunar is the original fork that caused all this confusion to begin with.

      And now you have the rest of the story... :)

  • The big problem I have with the source distros is the need to start from a CD. Is it not possible to start from an old Linux install and download something that allows the bootstrapping of the new system from there?

    TWW

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