Distros Archives - Page 8 of 11 - Yet Another Linux Blog

Experiment Update!

After a lengthy downtime this past weekend due to a server hard disk crash, we’re back up. I moved the server to a new machine this past week as well so we didn’t get time to install Fedora Core current for review either. Therefore, the next step in the experiment will happen on Wednesday when we go forward with Fedora Core current. Mrs.devnet will take a look at FC followed by Ubuntu current next week sometime. She’ll then pick the top two distros of all those reviewed. Then we will have <assume Charlton Heston-like booming voice> THE GREAT DISTRO DRAW DOWN!!!</assume>. Mrs.devent will crown the victor and we’ll have our winner of the “Best New User Linux Distro”

Why is this important? Mainly because it has never been done before. Usually, a linux USER with experience will review a distribution. In this case, someone who has zero Linux experience is reviewing these distros and they’re doing it according to criteria that a windows user would have and rating it according to what provides the best experience for them out of the box; mainly, thing such as checking email, web surfing, file sharing, and playing music. A high percentage of people out there only want a computer for that very reason and this experiment is designed to address those people (such as mrs.devnet 😛 ) and encourage them to try out Linux and making the choice for Windows-Like distro easier.

When the winner is crowned I will draw up a nifty award badge that can be displayed as a linkback to the article which will linkback to the developers main site. I’ll also do a follow up Q&A session with the developer of the winning distro. I’ll also ask the main developer if they will display the LinuxBlog badge on the main site somewhere. This way, the distro that wins may get the attention it deserves. Believe me, whichever distro wins this contest will have EARNED it. Instead of just being a review of some distro from a fanboi as 90% of the ‘reviews’ are out there, it will be an actual deserved win for a distro that is the best for someone trying to get out of the windows rut.

Since the experiment is unique, I’ll need your help to make it a success and give it the exposure it deserves. If your favorite distro is chosen, I’d like to ask you all to help me promote the review. This means posting link backs to it in every single forum or site you can find. Remember, this isn’t to drive traffic here (that’s what blogrolling is for) it is to draw attention to the winner! Linux needs a champion for Windows converts and whichever distro wins this experiment will be the one Linux Blog will stand behind. After the experiment concludes and you’d like to help out, just post a comment under the article and make sure to fill in the blank provided for your email. I’ll contact you with information on where I’ve submitted to so that we don’t have double submissions and then we can get started promoting the winner!

If anyone has any questions or comments, please drop them in the comments section of this post. I’m open to suggestions! Thanks for reading!

Experiment 1.3: Update…Where have we been?

Where have we been?!?! What’s up with the experiment!?!? Well, let me tell you…Texstar has seemingly won over my wife with this distribution of Linux. As stated previously by her, she expected a glowing review of the distro and currently, she can’t get enough of PCLinuxOS. So, since this is such a great distro and it has interrupted the experiment a bit…mrs.devnet made me promise two things as far as the experiment goes… 1) Leave PCLinuxOS on the computer for about 10 days so I can use Limewire (massively fast speeds) 2) Since we’re spending so long on this one…I don’t want to do 3 more…so cut one distro from the list.

No problems there. I am going to cut Knoppix from the list since it is not primarily a ‘desktop’ distro. So, we’ll have Ubuntu current and Fedora Core 4 (test or full) remaining. After all is said and done, we’ll have a head to head rehash of the top two distributions…we’ll look really detailed into those for the final head to head review…and we’ll declare an overall winner.

On the distant horizon, we’ll be taking a look at Linspire 5.0, Xandros 3.0 Deluxe, and Lycoris.

2. Update to the Experiment

The experiment is still continuing. Last night we installed SimplyMEPIS onto the hard drive. Mrs.devnet did not get a whole lot of time to spend on it…she simply checked out some of the menu’s and the organization. She clicked on a few things, found the KDE Desktop Wizard and set up her environment with a Windows-Like behavior (i.e., double clicks, etc). However, with this distribution, I have not had to intervene at all as I previously did in four places with Mandrake.

The first place I intervened on Mandrake 10.1 was ‘alsaconf’ to get the sound running. With MEPIS, I did not have to do this…sound was enabled right off the start. I also didn’t have to point her toward installation of Java or Flash as I previously did as these are installed by default as well. Yet another task I didn’t have to do is mount the Windows share. This was also done by default and the icon was present on her desktop. Mrs.Devnet maintains her smtp and pop passwords and usernames to configure her mail. I suspect she’ll have few problems configuring her email client up but I’ll assist her like I did in Mandrake to even out the playing field.

Mrs.devnet will be using the desktop this week and finding out how it suits her. She’ll use both KDE and Gnome since SimplyMEPIS also comes able to use either desktop. She’ll use SimplyMEPIS for the next week and post back on her findings. I’ll give you a hint though…I did see a smile on her face when she opened up her website and the java mp3 player began to play. Keep tuned! More to follow this week…she’ll post her initial take on things sometime in the next couple of days.

1. Update to the Experiment

The experiment continues. Today, mrs.devnet spent about 5 hours in her new Mandrake 10.1 environment and was scribbling away with a notebook on her likes/dislikes. She then opened up Open Office and began typing up a storm. I took a couple of screenshots while she got up to take a break so we can have some eye candy for the review. I also had to intervene 4 times right away…so I think what we’ll do is intervene on these four things for EACH distro so that they have an equal playing field. The following items were where I intervened…

I had mrs.devnet run ‘alsaconf’ on the distro because sound wasn’t enabled right away. I checked Kmix beforehand for mute but to no avail for it was unmuted. It seems Mandrake had problems with the SB Audigy X-Gamer sound card I have. No worries, I got it up and running with a quick alsaconf…which I will do for each distro if needed. Reason being, there wouldn’t be much of a review if mrs.devnet couldn’t listen to music…she’d give up before even starting. There is also no way that she would ever figure out to open up a terminal, su, and run alsaconf (now she will…before, no way).

I also mounted a music share to the desktop so that mrs.devnet had access to her music library. I will also do this for each and every distro.

Mrs.devnet also consulted me on a couple of points as well and I attempted to bring mandrake into swing with java and flash with only minimal assistance (i.e., showing her the correct website to get stuff from and showing her where the instructions were…not doing it for her). We’ll have to wait for her final review to see if she got it configured.

The last thing done is that I gave her our smtp and pop server logins and passwords so that she could connect to check her mail. So those four things were done in this distro and will be done for each distro installed.

She’ll continue to use Mandrake 10.1 Community for the next 2 days and then switch back into windows. Then she will compose her review based on the criteria posted in this blog and also her own criteria. She’ll rate the distro on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the best for each area in the criteria. We’ll continue on to the next distro which is the latest stable version of SimplyMEPIS, SimplyMEPIS 2004.06. After MEPIS, PCLinuxOS followed by FC 3, then Knoppix, and finally we’ll add Ubuntu…just for kicks. We’ve got a good start thus far! We’ll keep you posted!

Anticipated Problem in Fedora Core 3

I’ve hit quite a few snags with FC3 lately. Very odd that people consider this one of the most new user friendly. I have a bad feeling that this is actually going to score very low with my wife when she takes it for a test drive. The reason I say this is that FC3 doesn’t play mp3’s! That’s right, you heard me correctly, you can’t play mp3s with FC3…I was shocked as well. I did some snooping and it turns out that Red Hat thinks they can’t distribute the mp3 codec legally…or are just to scared to do so. Pretty odd considering all of those mp3 players out there seem to be a-ok with being able to play mp3s. Let me setup what happened and how I came to this conclusion.

I decided to go back to FC3 to do some more messing with it…mainly because quite a few of the Lxer.com crew seem to LOVE FC3. So…I install and have it up and running. I mount my shared music drive and decide that I want some mood music while I mess with compiling a few things. XMMS pops open and decides that mp3’s aren’t something it wants to play. Here I thought of two things I could do.

Convert all of my mp3s to .wavs immediately so that FC3 would be happy with it and play them.
Find out what in the world was up with this and get a workaround

Now, if this were the review we’ve been building up to for the past couple of months…I’m afraid a new user would be more apt to replace my number 2 above with a “ditch Fedora Core 3” and they’d be perfectly justifiable in doing so. How many new users have even been to a forum before? How many have asked for help? If we’re shooting at being viable competition for Windows, we’ll need a distro that allows a person to operate WITHOUT GOING TO FORUMS or helplines. It will need documentation available to it immediately after installation and it will need things as simple as listening to mp3s to work out of the box.

Snooping led me to a tips and tricks post on a forum that shows me a bunch more stuff I haven’t even run across that doesn’t work out of the box. I wouldn’t be too concerned if they didn’t have to deal with really basic tasks such as playing music. But alas, one cannot wish for too much out of a distro evidently. Fedora came up majorly short in this department and I suspect that my wife will give up on it if she runs across this problem. We’ll see what happens I guess 😛