


Libranet 2.8 Released 182
Jon Danzig writes "Hi, Libranet 2.8 has been released and I hope you will inform your readers. Libranet is our implementation of Debian to which we have added our installer, up-to-date software e.g. KDE, Gnome, kernel, etc., and generally packaged GNU/Linux into a super smart fast and stable system. The installer has sophisticated hardware detection and setup with flexable installation of software packages. We keep hearing that the Linux Desktop is on the horizon and while the horizon never gets any closer Libranet is steadily making its way in that direction."
Damn you, Open Source. (Score:5, Funny)
Quit improving so fast. Wipe machine, install new RedHat. Wipe machine, install new FreeBSD. Wipe machine, install new OpenBSD 3.3. Wipe machine, install new Libranet.
Can we all just get along?
Re:Damn you, Open Source. (Score:2)
Rus
Re:Damn you, Open Source. (Score:3, Funny)
You missed out Windows 2003
Not installing Windows is missing out on something?
Re:Damn you, Open Source. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Damn you, Open Source. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Damn you, Open Source. (Score:4, Informative)
<pedantic>
move
</pedantic>
Slashdotted Already.... (Score:2)
Rus
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Slashdotted Already.... (Score:5, Insightful)
good question. In my opinion, to pay $70 for basically... well... knoppix, they better keep their own apt repository stocked with everything I could possibly want, and the latest builds. I want to apt-get the latest kernel within a day or two of release if I have to pay that much.
Otherwise, what possible motivation would I have to buy it? It doesn't really give me anything.
And don't think this is just the oss-won't-pay-for-anything mentality. Really... the screenshots look exactly like knoppix without the name. knoppix has the hardware detection, is based on debian, etc. So what logical reason would I have to pay for something that I can already get for free?
Re:Slashdotted Already.... (Score:5, Insightful)
As Debian is sooooo stable (and changes infrequently) I always wondered why more SW companies don't list Debian as a suported Linux platform. But it comes down to support, theyre not going to qualify a product on a platform they can't get business support for.
It's crap that SW companies will qualify a product on a RedHat or SuSE platform that becomes outdated in 6 months. Its to expensive to retest every Six months so technicaly don't support newer distributions (this why RH is shipping AS and AW versions).
Perhaps thats what Libranet's aiming for - bu then again they appear to be a little known disti so I'm talking crap.
Re:Slashdotted Already.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Slashdotted Already.... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Slashdotted Already.... (Score:2)
Doesnt look like a free download though.
Moreover it doesnt [libranetlinux.com] look like they even run their own repository from this comment in their forums (scroll down a bit).
Looks like a Debian with slightly newer packages and for which you have to pay.
Re:Slashdotted Already.... (Score:5, Informative)
Basically what you're paying for is, as far as I can tell, a raftload of up-to-date apps, an up-to-date kernel, some convenience apps for setting things up nicely, all on top of a relatively stable release of Debian. If they've bumped their price up as one poster said, I don't see how it's worth it. When I bought a copy, it was on a set of CD-Rs and came with a manual--on letter-size paper stapled together, no less.
It's nice, it's stable, it's relatively hassle-free (as hassle-free as Debian ever is, and then some) so decide whether or not that's worth your while. It wasn't to me, but then again, I'm foolish enough to use Gentoo Linux as my main distribution.
Re:Slashdotted Already.... (Score:1)
It's especially nice if you like to pick your own windowmanager like fluxbox of xfce - those come ready to use plus a bunch more.
Value is in the eye of the beholder but for me it's definitely worth it.
Re:Slashdotted Already.... (Score:1)
Menu proliferation (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, admittedly I'm not a KDE user so this might be something that KDE imposes rather than Libranet, but even so is it really necessary to have three submenus for this?
Cheers,
Ian
A problem with the KDE menu (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A problem with the KDE menu (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course We could always go do it ourselves...
Re:unified printing (Score:1)
Re:A problem with the KDE menu (Score:2)
Windows users should feel right at home.
Cool down (Score:4, Funny)
Look, where is Windows man? I mean Windows 2003, reviews, ads, interviews by Steve Ballmer about how his coders worked 46 hours a day, ads for Win 64 bit???
Slashdot must be neutral.
Re:Cool down (Score:1)
8 crashes in 7 days and counting. I now await the 100 MB patch surely on the way from them.
Re:Cool down (Score:2)
where are the screenshots of the installer? (Score:4, Informative)
I would never have the desire for a GUI install, it's just not necessary for me, but I would like to see what makes this particular distribution so special that I would have to pay for it...
The screenshots of the desktops look like any other KDE/Gnome desktop screenshot I have seen.
Where's the beef?
Re:where are the screenshots of the installer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:where are the screenshots of the installer? (Score:1)
Name? (Score:5, Funny)
(Insert smileys where appropriate - it's a joke, son.)
Re:Name? (Score:1)
Re:Name? (Score:2)
Kinda like hairnet.
Re:Name? (Score:1)
another distro??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Rare chance (Score:1)
My take is that these guys are going to fall by the wayside unless the open source community stands behind them bigtime. Imagine if SCO went after this company first.
Just a thought.
shhhhh...... (Score:1)
Great distribution (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Great distribution (Score:1)
Re:Great distribution (Score:2)
Re:Great distribution (Score:2)
YAD -- Yet another distro... (Score:3, Interesting)
Desktop environments such as GNOME and KDE are like reference implimentations. They demonstrate the technology they've created. They show one way it could be used to create a usable environment. I argue that they are not necessarily meant to fall directly into the hands of end users. The reason for this is that the coders are not user interface specialists, they're technologists. They have little talent for creating a system grandma can use. Case in point: look at the default GNOME 2 environment from the project and look at how RedHat reworked it. Out of the box, GNOME 2 is almost completely unusable in my opinion whereas on RedHat 9, it's excellent.
RedHat, in my opinion, have got it right. I recently tried installing RedHat 9 on my mom's new system and I will never look back at other distros for desktop purposes. They took technologies provided by KDE and GNOME and put them together in such a way that serious consideration was given to usability! They didn't just package up the source trees and say: "Here! Linux for the desktop!" They created a tightly integrated environment with simplified menus, a good theme, powerful but understandable tools for configuration, and all that. Once again: it's not just a blind repackaging.
If we want Linux to move to the desktop, there needs to be more effort towards making these environments really usable. They are currently designed by techies for techies and that just does not cut it. So in this respect, Libranet is not much better (save installation tools) than default Debian or any other distro that gives no thought to the big picture.
Well, have you tried Libranet? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well, have you tried Libranet? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not talking about usability for people who need nothing more than vi, find, and grep to manipulate their system. My mother doesn't care about installing packages or recompiling kernels. She, like many other users, wants a system that behaves in an intuitive way, and just works the way it's expected to work. RedHat has pulled that off quite nicely. Not to mention that in an ideal system, you don't have to install packages yourself or recompile the kernel (especially the latter). With RedHat9, everything my mother's system needed was right on the three discs. The kernel didn't need recompiled because it was all modular. Nevertheless, these still are not usability issues my mother is concerned with. What is a usability issue is that the menus were cleanly arranged -- programs she would use where there. The user interface is consistent, beyond just look and feel but also organization, and so on. RedHat 9's environment felt a lot like MacOS X's environment insofar as its clean, elegant features.
I haven't even gotten into how much better apt-get is.
I am a Debian user and have been for years now. Debian is the only distro that I would ever use and ever recommend to other technically minded people. However, after wrestling with boring, default Debian packages for the desktop environment and other annoyances that just would not work (truetype in Mozilla for instance) I found RedHat was far better suited to the task of being a desktop distribution. Most everything I needed worked out of the box, many things I never got quite right in Debian. As for installing things like Flash, that's 3rd party software and it's an annoyance on any platform.
Libranet is nothing special outside vanilla Debian, so that makes it even more irrelevant in this case.
Re:Well, have you tried Libranet? (Score:2)
I have been quite impressed by LibraNet for a long time (well, over a year). Yes, it's basically Debian. So? The point of *any* distribution is to take a version of Linux, select software that works with it, and package it together. There probably isn't a large market for Debian configurations, but LibraNet has been doing it well for quite awhile. And some of my systems don't have *ANY* internet co
Re:Well, have you tried Libranet? (Score:2)
To use the overworked car analogy "Should a driver be concerned the tools their mechanic has or even the tools used on the production line where the car was made?"
And some of my systems don't have *ANY* internet connection, much less a high speed one, so this is important to me. More and more of the distributions seem to assume that you will have a high speed internet connection, but this is only occ
Re:Well, have you tried Libranet? (Score:2)
I'm prettty much w/ you 100% on this one.. I used to use debian back in the 2.1/2.2 (I'm not sure what they are on now) days when the packages were a bit out of date for a distribution. Nonetheless as tools I really liked apt-* and even dselect. Redhat is a great user-friendly (nice fonts , 3rd party software) distribution but no apt-get/no dselect and up2date sucks.
But
http://shrike.freshrpms.net/
(it is available for red
Re:Well, have you tried Libranet? (Score:2)
Considering that Libranet offers support for users who purchase their distro, that is one offering over Debian. I'm not talking about mailing lists or newsgroups, but full "corporate approved" support. Granted, their support staff doesn't equate to that of RedHat or IBM, but I imagine there are a few small businesses who have gone with Libranet because its a company designed around their distro.
RedHat h
Re:Well, have you tried Libranet? (Score:2)
Re:Well, have you tried Libranet? (Score:2)
Only where you have a situation where a machine is used and administered by the same person. This list (including installing the system in the first place) just isn't relevent where there is a user (or users) who simply use the machine.
Not just the menus. Libranet's Adminmenu tool allows any newbie to setup a personal firewall, install packages, recompile a kernel, install Flash, install Microsoft
Re:YAD -- Yet another distro... (Score:3, Interesting)
(Yet within the
Re:YAD -- Yet another distro... (Score:2)
Re:YAD -- Yet another distro... (Score:2)
I personally don't like KDE's bastardization in RH 8+, but I don't think anything less of RedHat for it-- they're selling a unified product to their customers who
Re:YAD -- Yet another distro... (Score:2)
As for the desktop I think the KDE group would prefer that RedHat
-- Offer a RedHat Gname
-- Offer a vanilla KDE, Ice, Windowmaker...
in other words since RedHat is
Re:YAD -- Yet another distro... (Score:2)
Re:YAD -- Yet another distro... (Score:2)
The KDE group believes (and probably correctly) that RedHat users who choose KDE over Gnome are KDE fans who like other aspects of RedHat (for example their very good kernels) and
Re:YAD -- Yet another distro... (Score:2)
Re:YAD -- Yet another distro... (Score:2)
1) A KDE designed to look and act like the RedHat desktop (i.e. like Gnome)
2) KDE
Remember that's the only group of users this effects.
Re:YAD -- Yet another distro... (Score:2)
Best summed up a
Re:YAD -- Yet another distro... (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:YAD -- Yet another distro... (Score:3, Insightful)
They are most certainly "getting it right". When I can plug in a printer and have it working in 4 mouse clicks, or my Palm, or whatever else, I'd say things are in pretty good shape. While Windows isn't largely usable, it's better than most OSS default desktop environments. RedHat's modifications and clean-up certainly clears Windows right out of the picture -- it'd say is more in league with OS X as f
Re:YAD -- Yet another distro... (Score:2)
Everything else seems to be working, but this is a show stopper for me. I have a network of tons of windows computers, and need to share printers, files... and see their printers and files.
So I guess I
Re:YAD -- Yet another distro... (Score:2)
Uh, what? Look, I know that you're trying to ramp up lots of karma in order to troll later, it says so in your user profile, but if you're going to do it, do it properly. GNOME2 doesn't use sawfish by default, and the top bar is not "Mac like" - that would imply that application menu bars get put there. It'
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
Because if it were easy to install, it wouldn't be Debian.
Re:Why? (Score:1)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Re:Why? - re: easy Debian installs (Score:2, Informative)
Installing 'Woody' was far easier. There is now a really good mini-cd [debian.org] (unofficial) with some damn fine h/w detection stuff to install a very basic Debian. The rest can be retrieved via apt.
There is a team of people working on an official redesign of the Debian installer.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Because they can. What more of a reason is needed? If people are buying it, then its a good move for them.
I'd like to try it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, this is not to say there's anything wrong with trying to make money from Linux. However, it's truly unfortunate that there's no way to check out this distro without shelling out some money. RedHat lets you download for free, as do all the other major distros. However, they'll also take your money if you want the box version or if you want support. Libranet can't seriously hope people will shell out money to switch to this without being given a risk-free chance to experience it.
And, since they basically took Debian, modified it, and made it not-free as in beer, I'm wondering why they just got free publicity on Slashdot.
Re:I'd like to try it... (Score:1)
Since it doesn't appear to be possible to get a free
Re:I'd like to try it... (Score:5, Informative)
They don't have to give away the software, however, they can't stop someone from buying one copy and then giving away copies of it (assumming they don't have non-free components - in which case those components would need to be removed).
If you get your hands on a copy the GPL kicks in, but the GPL doesn't force them to pay for the bandwidth so you can have a free copy.
Re:I'd like to try it... (Score:1)
Actually, they have no obligation to supply you with source unless you buy the distro.
Re:I'd like to try it... (Score:1)
Re:I'd like to try it... (Score:1)
So what is the real difference? (Score:2, Interesting)
Should be better than knoppix (Score:4, Interesting)
Since we have to pay for it, they should really offer something worth $70 over other free distros. Firstly, if they can somehow offer the drivers with the package, nvidia, tokenring in default installs, they'd be QUITE different.
But I would personally pay for a distro that can completely strip down the binaries, even stripping off READMEs and man pages, and compiling it optimised for size. Knoppix is one awesome distro that can detect most hardware, and comes with so much command line utilities, but something that can beat that would be worth 70.
free download? (Score:1)
thanks, but no thanks. I'll stick with Red Hat.
Re:free download? (Score:1)
They do have their own repositories, and one can upgrade their distro from 2.0 to 2.8, via dist-upgrade. I have done it, and it works great.
Libranet works quite nice, with all the stuff in place, but nothing you couldn't achieve with debian sid and a little work (excluding this adminmenu, wich is a nice util, but nothing special)
libranet trolls (Score:5, Informative)
Libranet is also well known for having superior technical support and has a very friendly userbase that offers to help the newbies rather than tell them to RTFM.
Try before you Troll, thanks
Re:libranet trolls (Score:2)
Free Libranet Mirror? (Score:1)
Perfectly acceptable under the GPL, right?
Re:Free Libranet Mirror? (Score:2)
Danzig! (Score:2)
Not about to use Gentoo! Do you want to Libranet with me?!?! Let me show you whats its.....* fierce drum beat*.....
ALD???? (Score:1)
Another Fork?
Toghter we stand, Divided We Fall....
no, not "another" (Score:2)
This is not "another Linux Distribution", this is an old, well-established Linux Distribution; if you want to complain about something, go complain about "new-fangled" Distros like Mandrak
Desktop Debian *IS* closer (Score:3, Informative)
Also, the debian-installer people are making big progress as we speak. Debian is improving daily. Desktop Debian is a reality for some, and will be a reality for more people soon.
Posted from Libranet 2.8 (Score:1)
The GPL does not prohibet selling code, just modifing it and not releasing it. All the source is located on the installed hard drive in
Re:Posted from Libranet 2.8 (Score:2)
Re:Posted from Libranet 2.8 (Score:2)
I was with you until you started to bash knoppix
I bought a new Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100 last week while abroad. I knew I was going to be buying a laptop while in North America (NA keyboards are better from programming than Euro keyboards. I live in Italy (no tilda, no backtick on Italian keyboards) and though I could remap the keyboard, in brain-dead moments it's nice to have a visual queue. And with the Euro being so much stronger than the Ameripeso and Canpeso, I was in for a (relative) bargain.
With
Re:Posted from Libranet 2.8 (Score:2)
The GPL allows you to modify code and not release it.
The GPL takes effect when you distribute code, selling is a type of distribution. What it prevents you from doing is distributing binaries without the source being available, to whoever you distribute the binaries to, or attempting to place restrictions not in the GPL to anyone you supply the software to.
Xandros vs. Libranet vs. Knoppix (after install) (Score:2)
Re:Xandros vs. Libranet vs. Knoppix (after install (Score:2)
This is one of the nicest distros around (Score:2)
The 2.7 distribution is very reasonably priced, especially when you consider what's available in it.
Now as we all know, any Linux system contains code that's freely available over the Internet. It's the packaging that we pay
bittorrent? (Score:2)
Re:first post (Score:1)
Re:first post (Score:1)
DYI... (Score:2)
Re:How is this allowed by the GPL? (Score:5, Informative)
So, the website does not have to have links to downloadable ISOs or something. But if you buy their product, the sources have to be available to you. And _you_ can do with these sources whatever you want to (under the GPL), even provide free downloads on the net.
It is allowed by the GPL. (Score:1)
Under the GPL, you're free to sell the software, at any price you desire. That's fine, since no one is obligated to buy it. You must also provide the source, but only to the same people you distribute the binaries to.
So, what they're doing is just fine by the license. We'll see how much success they have by the market, though.
Re:How is this allowed by the GPL? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How is this allowed by the GPL? (Score:1)
Re:How is this allowed by the GPL? (Score:2)