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Conectiva Linux 9 Review 124

Posted by michael from the linux-down-under dept.
JigSaw writes "Here's an english review of a popular Linux distro in the Latin American countries: Conectiva Linux 9. Jason Prince investigates its installation, the desktop usage, the package manager (synaptic) and some of the problems he met on the way."
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Conectiva Linux 9 Review More

Conectiva Linux 9 Review

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  • Not that easy to intruduce a new OS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gnuman99 ( 746007 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @02:07AM (#8895807)
    For example, in Vietnam something like 90-95% of all people use non-legal version of Windows. MS revenues there are somewhere in the 100M range (mostly from gov't). BUT, almost no one heard of Linux!!

    No matter how good Linux is and how bad Windows is, people first have to know what Linux is. Once Desktop adoption in any country is over 10% or so, then it is a very slippery slope for MS. That is one reason why they are fighting so hard to keep >99% or so of the i386 desktop.

    • Re:Not that easy to intruduce a new OS (Score:5, Insightful)

      by spiritraveller ( 641174 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @02:33AM (#8895872)
      So true... this is probably why they don't try harder to combat piracy in Southeast Asia.

      Whenever they do, governments and corporations start examining Linux more closely.

      As long as people copy Windows and Office, they think they are getting something good for free, and they will want to use the same software at work.

      The best thing that could happen to Linux would be Microsoft cracking down hard on piracy and provoking governments and companies to switch to FOSS software to avoid legal hassles. But those same companies would still have to overcome the inertia of their employees who have grown up using pirated copies of Microsoft applications... of course, the same applies to the West.

      • Re:Not that easy to intruduce a new OS (Score:5, Insightful)

        by i_should_be_working ( 720372 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @04:14AM (#8896040)
        agreed,

        the only reason i started paying attention to linux was cause i was like 'hey, free (as in beer) software'. it wasn't until later that i started thinking about (and supporting) the open source idea.

        in my lab we have lots of windows software that is free (to us students) cause we either have a site licence or it's pirated. and i still have a hard time explaining to my lab partners why i bother with linux when i can get windows for free.

        i recently got one lab partner to try openoffice, and my main selling point was that she wouldn't have to worry about microsoft killing her OS because she had a pirated version of MS Office.
      • I hope to see your post get modded up to 5. If for no other reason, it has raised an interesting question. Could you sleep at night if you found a way to help promote prosecution of software pirates in these countries, even if your primary motivator is to surreptitiously supplant MS software with FOSS?

        Presents a real dilemma to me, even if it is just a hypothetical. I really don't mind millions of pirated copies of Win2k floating around Ukraine, but would I encourage busting a sample of them so the rest

        • This should have been in the first, but what about in the U.S.? Would you want to help the BSA, or whoever, crack down on software piracy here if it forces people to seek out alternatives?

          For giggles, I'm imagining droves of /.ers running to the BSA, trying to help out. :)
          • Would you want to help the BSA, or whoever, crack down on software piracy here if it forces people to seek out alternatives?

            One of the earliest cases of a company in the U.S. switching entirely away from MS was Ernie Ball. The BSA raided them, and discovered that they did not wipe the drives when moving engineering PCs to secretarial work, so there was much loaded but unused and unlicensed software. Rather than giving the company notice and some time to clean up, the BSA handed them a very large bill, a
            • When you say "did not wipe the drives"... does that mean they didn't actually remove the software? I have trouble believing that they'd try to level hundreds of thousands of dollars on a company for having 1 remaining dll hanging out on the machine.

        • Re:Not that easy to intruduce a new OS (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I would, in a heartbeat. Reaily, I would.

          I'd even feel really good about it since it would be the first time ever that I would be able to make MS happy (reducing piracy) and at the same time doing something for the growth of Linux.

          Now tell me, why should I feel bad about it? The only people that would feel bad about it would be dedicated software pirates who feel it's a god-given right to use pirated software.

          I'm still baffled at your assertion that I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. It just doe

          • I don't have a single pirated software package on ANY of my machines. What I'd feel bad about is causing someone in a poorer nation, or even in the US, some kind of grief over something like software piracy. I don't think software piracy is great, or even good... but I don't like people getting ridiculous fines or jail time over it either.
      • So true... this is probably why they don't try harder to combat piracy in Southeast Asia.

        Exactly, here in the US you can lose your house or business if you get caught trading in illegally copied software. In 3rd world countries what are they going to do, take away your oxen and goats?

        LK

    • If choosing between free Linux or Windows... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ...why go with Linux? There's nothing worthwhile to run on it!

      Seriously. I'd thrown on a pirated version of Windows before Linux any day. You're not gonna make Linux headway in countries where EVERYONE pirates stuff. It doesn't matter that Linux costs nothing, so does Windows, for all practical purposes. And since both are equally free in cost, it makes beter sense to go with the one that has the real apps written for it.

      Linux will only be attractive in places where licenses have to be bought. And with Li
      • MS-SQL Enterprise Server 20 connection licenses - $10K

        Visual.NET Studio Developer Suite 2.5K perseat x 2 = $5K

        Windows XP Server 1000$
        XP - $250 x 2

        Full MS Office (db web dev etc) - $500 x 2

        Photoshop - $800 x 1

        Almost $20K ... but you'll be so productive you'll earn it all back in a day or so ...

  • A bit late though... (Score:5, Informative)

    by keeboo ( 724305 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @02:12AM (#8895820)
    Conectiva Linux 9 is already rather old...
    The 10th release is arriving soon. [edugraf.ufsc.br]

  • Conectiva (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kurt Russell ( 627436 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @02:13AM (#8895826)
    They were the first with apt-get for rpms. Pretty cool distro.

  • The new Conectiva CL 10 is entering in RC stage... (Score:5, Informative)

    by helioc ( 513705 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @02:18AM (#8895839)
    Was really nice see this review of Conectiva 9 even now near release of next one. For everyone interested in help with next release development, go to https://moin.conectiva.com.br/TechnologyPreview ( English link ) and see download directions to latest test release.

  • Yet another KDE based distribution... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by baywulf ( 214371 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @02:35AM (#8895877)
    Seems like all the major distributions now are either solely KDE based or a KDE+Gnome combination. Anyone know of a Gnome only distribution? I currently use Fedora but I am concerned that Redhat doesn't have much focus on the home desktop market.
    • I believe UserLinux [userlinux.com] is GNOME only...
    • I think Fedora is fine for the home desktop. I've got my relatively computer illiterate girlfriend using Fedora on an ancient Celeron. It's been up almost three months, and she uses it for everything, word processing, web browsing, email, etc.

      I use Fedora with Gnome on my laptop for a variety of tasks. Once I tweaked it a little bit, it does everything I need it for. I'm actively looking forward to Fedora 2 to be released (not as a test release, test 1 didn't play nicely on my laptop) this summer.

    • Re:Yet another KDE based distribution... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Majix ( 139279 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @05:06AM (#8896129) Homepage
      Sun's "Java Desktop System" is a GNOME only Linux distro. Then there's some fringe ones, like Gnoppix and Progeny IIRC.

      I don't think any distro of importance is GNOME or KDE only at this point, which is good. Hopefully after a few more years of Freedesktop.org cooperation the whole point will be moot and most will be using the best KDE (K3B, Kdevelop etc.) and GNOME (Evolution, Gimp etc.), software on a hardware compositioned X all jimmied together in some kind of nutty bouillabaisse with Mono thrown in for the hell of it.

      I'm guessing Novell/SuSE will be one of the first, since they're now such a strange combination of KDE (SuSE) and GNOME (Ximian) people and neither faction is likely to back down.
      • Progeny, the Linux distro, is dead. Progeny, the Linux company, is very much alive. Gnoppix is just a hacked version of Knoppix that uses Gnome as the default desktop as opposed to KDE. I have been using Gnome on Redhat/Fedora as my exclusive desktop for the past year... and I can say that most distros probably use KDE because KDE is a better desktop. After a year of Gnome use, I realized that Nautilus is worthless, and the taskbar, applications menu is not even edit-able!

        Its just plain crap. KDE has

  • Patched (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @02:41AM (#8895887) Homepage
    Something that greatly impressed me about mi was the ability to slipstream the updates right into the main installation, instead of having to install the base distribution, followed by the updates. You just boot straight off the Update 1 CD instead of the original installation CD1 ? the process is exactly the same, but the resulting system is pre-patched.

    Absolutely brilliant. This can only be a good thing, the latest numbers I saw indicated that a large amount of spam came from rooted linux boxen. Make it easy for those noobs to be patched, and they will be. Make it hard, and they won't bother. I wonder how much spam it would save us all if all the major distros did something like this.

    • Re:Patched (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      the latest numbers I saw indicated that a large amount of spam came from rooted linux boxen

      Could you please provide a link, or is this just a piece of FUD?

  • Synaptic (Score:5, Interesting)

    by crass751 ( 682736 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @02:43AM (#8895890) Homepage
    I installed apt-get and Synaptic on my laptop running Fedora 1. I absolutely love them, everytime I fire up my machine and the RHN applet tells me I need to upgrade, I use Synaptic to do it. Easy, painless, and fast.

  • Good review but... (Score:5, Informative)

    by mvdwege ( 243851 ) <mvdwege@mail.com> on Sunday April 18, 2004 @03:23AM (#8895973) Homepage Journal

    How can I trust it when he is overlooking something so obvious as the 'Find' option in Synaptic?

    I quote: it won't let you search the apt catalogues using natural language queries. For example, searching for 'word processor' returns no results; a more experienced user would know that they had to search for 'OpenOffice' or 'Abiword' to display the packages they were seeking. It would be great if Synaptic could search the package descriptions, as well as the title.

    Now, in my Synaptic install (Debian unstable) I see the following: in the right top corner is a search box that does an incremental search on package name only. In the Package menu I find an option named Find (shortcut Ctrl-F, as a Windows/IE user would expect it) which allows me to search on all fields of the package. By default the search dialog that comes up searches on both package name and description.

    Otherwise I would say, Synaptic rocks! It is the nicest package manager I have ever used. I still do apt-get install for individual packages, but for finding packages and just browsing the tree, I use Synaptic. The daunting aspect the reviewer notes is due to the sheer amount of packages available, some 5500 on Conectiva, and some 14000 on Debian.

    Just try it. Get synaptic (and if you're on an rpmbased system, apt4rpm) and give it a whirl. You won't go back.

    Mart
    • I belive they're talking about remote repositories.
      You cannot get rpm description before the said rpm is fetched.
      For this thing to work, you need to introduce a server which will index rpms and search for descriptions and answer queries so the whole rpm isn't fetched.
      Good idea though.
      • This is exactly what apt does. It has indexes of the RPMs, their names, versions, depedencies, descriptions, etc... you can run searches against that index using Synaptic. The guy just doesn't know how to use Synaptic.
        • Not so certain. Don't know if debian apt has these features, but apt-rpm certainly doesn't. i.e. you can search only for package name.
          Enlighten me how to do it from the command line if I'm wrong.
          • The only commandline method I know of is "apt-cache search". However, in Synaptic, there is a GUI method (under Package->Find) for searching not just filename, description of the package, etc... and combinations of such fields. This is Synaptic on apt-rpm on Fedora that I am looking at right now.
    • No, he is right. Synaptic does have a search box, but is just a front for "apt-cache search" which does search, but does a pretty piss-poor job of it. Did you try to duplicate his query for "word processor"? On debian it does result in some actual word processors, but also things like "lg-issue42 - Issue 42 of the Linux Gazette."

      Try searching for "web browser" and tell me that is helpful to a newbie. Also, the package summaries displayed look frightening and not very helpful (Lindows click-and-run has the

  • really? (Score:3, Informative)

    by SignificantBit ( 677809 ) <carlosgaona@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Sunday April 18, 2004 @03:39AM (#8895994) Homepage Journal
    "Conectiva Linux, developed by Brazilian vendor Conectiva S.A., is the most popular distribution in South America,.."

    As a south american geek i have to say that i have never meet someone who use Conectiva. I've use Linux for.. i dont know... 6 years, and in my personal experience RedHat and Debian are the most common distributions- at least in Chile.
    Conectiva is well-known -as in TurboLinux well-known-but-not-much-used.
    • Here in Venezuela i don't know anyone using it either. The prefered ones seem to be:

      Mandrake, Debian, Suse, Slackware, Gentoo, and Knoppix.

      And i personally love FreeBSD :)

    • Re:really? (Score:2, Informative)

      by e.colli ( 630500 )
      "Conectiva Linux, developed by Brazilian vendor Conectiva S.A., is the most popular distribution in South America,.."
      As a south american geek i have to say that i have never meet someone who use Conectiva....

      Correct, Conectiva was the most popular distro in BRAZIL.

      Now Kurumin [guiadohardware.net] , a nice, small (just 180Mb download), easy installation, Knoppix/KDE based distribution is taking the first place, acording some downloads sites [ubbi.com.br].

    • Re:really? (Brazil vs. rest of Latin America) (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Mark_in_Brazil ( 537925 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @07:35AM (#8896340)
      Conectiva is quite well known in Brazil. I think this is because of the language barrier. While Spanish and Portuguese are similar enough that reasonably intelligent speakers of the two can communicate with each other, there are significant differences.
      However, the size of Brazil's population and its economy make it the most economically important nation in Latin America. It is a nation of 190 million people with a large and rapidly growing economy. Many economists believe that the nations that will dominate the 21st Century economically are the so-called "BRICs:" Brazil, Russia, India, and China. I mention this because I'm sure Mexicans will get upset seeing me say that Brazil is the most economically important nation in Latin America. Anyway, even if Conectiva were to only have its distro widely installed here in Brazil (and I'm not sure if that's the case), it could still be the most popular distro in Latin America. Consider that even though all the nations of Latin America except Brazil speak Spanish, a majority of people in South America speak Portuguese (the population of Brazil is larger than that of the rest of South America combined). I believe that Portuguese is narrowly not the language of the majority of Latin Americans because México has a large population.

      Anyway, I am in the process of founding a company for industrial production of food (I prefer not to be more specific right now), and I intend to use Linux on our computers-- not just the servers, but the desktops too. Because of its native support for Portuguese (developed by native speakers too... heh) and because of the presence of Conectiva right here in São Paulo, I am almost certain to use the Conectiva distro. Yes, people like my office manager, who know only Windoze, will have to learn to deal with a new GUI, but she's smart enough, and I am planning for training of all workers who will use computers. The cost of that training comes out cheaper than paying MS licenses.
      I am trying to build a "Values-Led" business, and I like that we will be supporting another Brazilian company and keeping the profits from our software expenditures here in our community instead of sending them to Redmond. It's also nice that the technical support will be from people here in our city (M$ phone support in Portuguese is reached by dialing a toll-free number here in Brazil, but the people who answer are Brazilians working in Redmond... strange but true). I love that we will not be treated like criminals by our software suppliers and will never have to undergo a license audit. I also love that my employees will be able to take Conectiva CDs home or download the images at home and be able to install exactly the same software at home as they use at work. Even if we upgrade the machines at work, the employees who use computers at home will be able to keep pace. Contrast this with the Windoze situation, where people use Windows 2000 or XP at work, but typically use Windows 95 or 98 at home.

      It's also cool that some well-known kernel hackers have worked at Conectiva, including Marcelo Tosatti (he left and is now working elsewhere, but he was at Conectiva when he was asked to maintain the then-production kernel) and Rik van Riel.

      --Mark

    • Stop the hype! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by sombragris ( 246383 )
      I'm in Paraguay, right in the center of South America, and I never heard of anyone running Conectiva.

      What people use here is Red Hat/Fedora, Mandrake, Slackware and (sometimes) SUSE. Conectiva, people never heard about it.

      I am aware that Conectiva is fairly well known in Brazil, but Brazil != South America. To call Conectiva "...the most popular distribution in South America" is quite a stretch,and nothing but a stupid marketing hype statement

    • Re:really? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      As a south american geek i have to say that i have never meet someone who use Conectiva.
      - at least in Chile.

      Hmm... The last time I checked Chile was part of North America.
      Really, I think that Chile even applied to be integrated as a state of USA.
  • That would seem to be a good way to sell it--don't they have less silly vocal homonyms than English? Right! Not left? No, right!
    • That would seem to be a good way to sell it--don't they have less silly vocal homonyms than English? Right! Not left? No, right!

      Yeah, but how's a computer supposed to recognize all of that gibberish?

      Seriously though you raise a good point, the hodge-podge of words from every language on the planet that is modern english is difficult to parse.

      Something like Spanish or especially French would be good candidates for non-english speech recognition.

      Lastly I think you mean homophones. Minute (60 seconds)and
  • Doesn't the climate make it difficult for them?
  • As a a geek living in latin america, I can tell you I've never seen or heard of anyone using Connectiva Linux.

    Everyone uses redhat, lots of debian, etc... just like in USia

  • this is not the brazilian Linux to watch (Score:4, Informative)

    by Knights who say 'INT ( 708612 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @09:50AM (#8896681) Journal
    Conectiva is just bad, and that's pretty much a consensus in the brazilian Linux community. If that wasn't enough, their solutions are overpriced, and they're pulling political levers to get government contracts instead of Microsoft - even though their product is _more_ expensive than what Microsoft produces.

    Just a few months ago, they got the current left-leaning party to push for a change in public contractor law that put a "priority for Free Software solutions" above other criteria in public contracts.

    I mean, they're just out to leech out taxpayer money with some lame nationalistic excuse.

    My attempts to get this on the frontpage keep getting rejected, but the brazilian distro to watch is Kurumin, a noppix variant that fits on a mini-CD and includes just SO MUCH fucking software in 180 megs, and so much functionality.

    This might seem overstated in bandwidth-abundant America, but it's way easier to download 200-odd megs to try out this new-fangled kool linux thang than the 4x600Mb downloads the new distros have been requiring.

    Disclaimer: I'm in no way affiliated with Carlos Morimoto or the Kurumin crowd. Yes, I'm a brazilian taxpayer.
    • Conectiva is just bad, and that's pretty much a consensus in the brazilian Linux community.

      Yeah, I know there are trollish bigots in the Brazilian Linux community who would prefer MS-DOS 3.3 instead of using Conectiva.

      Kurumin may be ok for desktop and, yes, it's a very basic distribution with its 200mb CD.
      But, I wouldn't use a fanboy distro like Kurumin in a server... Thank you very much.

  • Being a Brazilian geek, I do know about Conectiva (Score:3, Informative)

    by KGBear ( 71109 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @09:58AM (#8896720) Homepage
    I've know about them since their first version, which was RedHat translated to Portuguese. The main reason for its popularity in Brazil was and still is the Portuguese language. This makes it popular with people who don't speak English and don't want to learn - which is simply a stupid move for someone working in IT.

    Conectiva has undoubtedly matured in many ways but they're not as easy as Mandrake or as popular as RedHat (even in Brazil) or as power-user oriented as Debian or as Unix-like as Slackware.

    It is a fairly popular distro in Brazil, but mostly among domestic users. Not many corporate users. AFAIK their biggest client is the state government of the state where they're based and it usually makes sense for a state government to favor local companies.

    About the translation, it's extremely heterogeneous. Since it was done by contributors and not very well edited or verified, you find everything from great translations to simply incomprehensible ones. As a consultant in Brazil, I have come across a few companies using Conectiva over the years and more than once I've had to open the original RedHat man page alongside the translated Conectiva just to make heads and tails of it.

    My genral impression has always been that Conectiva is a good way to start using Linux if your only language is Portuguese and if you know nothing about Linux and Unix. I don't know of any mission critical or big private companies using Conectiva.

  • conectiva and piracy (Score:3, Informative)

    by protomala ( 551662 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @11:04AM (#8897065) Homepage
    There is a explanation for conectiva and linux scuess in Brazil: the fight agains piracy. We had a tax os 90% until the 80's, now the tax is just a big above 50%, mostly of domestic users, in the companies the rate is much more like 20 or 30%. This let to some companies start evaluating linux because they simply can't afford windows licences. Conective did a big help in this transformation, they even had a nice ad "seja legal, use software livre" - "be legal (legal means nice in portuguese too), use free software", and give support for companies changing to linux. Now, the fear of using linux is motly gone in Brazil, and people simply try it and see if it works for them. Conective is a very smart and nice company, even that I don't like their distro.
  • I'm tired of reading always the same stuff.
    What's the point of grabbing articles from OSNews and Newsforge? Aren't there less known journals and web logs ?
    There are so many other good articles that are not published here. Anyway...

    Regarding Conectiva, I think that in Brazil people use it because it is in Portuguese basically. People who use Conectiva many times don't install it, IT people do it for them, whem it's used for call centers for instance. Then, why not just installing better distros with the def

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