Distro#14 Linux Mint 6 Felicia Fluxbox CE

It has been about three month, I haven't not been trying any distribution. Now, I am back on track. Linux Mint 6 Felicia Fluxbox CE has just been released alongside KDE version, I decided to try Fluxbox because Fluxbox is relatively less seen than KDE. Just a sidenote, I am using Fluxbox on Fedora 10 and I am quite like it.

Linux Mint is Debian-based and compatible with Ubuntu packages. According DistroWatch.com, it's third popular distribution. This Fluxbox released is based on Xubuntu 8.10 Intrepid, Linux 2.6.27, Fluxbox 1.0.0 and Xorg 7.4

When you boot up the CD, the first choice is what type of LiveCD option you want to have:

• Full desktop: 300MB RAM
• Light session: 256MB RAM or 128MB & Swap
• Installer only: 192MB RAM or 128MB & Swap

From the options, we can assume Felicia Fluxbox CE is suitable for old computers. After the desktop showing up, I got the restricted driver notification. It detected nVidia correctly and suggested the right driver version, 96 series driver. It needs to get online in order to download the driver. So I ran sudo /usr/sbin/pppoeconf to set up the PPPoE. However the route table isn't correct (I may miss some settings), so I ran the following commands to set the default via PPPoE:

sudo ip route show
sudo ip route delete default
sudo ip route add default via [correct_gateway_ip]

I activated the driver, but it needs to restart and I don't know if this LiveCD can resume the session. Therefore, I continue to install Mint into harddrive. The installation took less than 10 minutes.

After reboot, it went into problem, can't get X worked. The video driver is nvidia in xorg.conf, I changed it to nv. Using mintUpdate to do first system update. I then re-installed the driver and activated it. After rebooting (30 seconds boot time), I got the login screen and correct resolution and xcompmgr is loaded and working.

This Fluxbox version is pretty lightweight. So far, except the PPPoE and video driver, everything is work-out-of-box and neat. Color scheme and style are consistent.

Lastly the screenshot:

Distro#12 gOS 3.1 Gadgets (SP1)

I downloaded the gOS, it's an i686 architecture distribution based on Ubuntu. The “g” in gOS seems to stand for Good rather than Google, even though supporting Google Gadgets is the major feature of it.

The CD is a Live CD, and includes WINE 1.0. The application dock is wbar. Using Live environment is not the purpose of this project, so I clicked the Install icon on desktop. It took about 15 minutes to finish at this phase. Here is a unusual action after the installer finished its job. It logged out X, ejected the disc tray, and rebooted! Directly, automatically did. Usually, the instally would tell you the installation process is done, take the CD, and click on Reboot button. Well, this is not how gOS does.

Anyway, after the first-time reboot, the resolution is wrong as usual. Once again, I need to pkill NetworkManager in order to get connected via PPPoE. Somehow this NetworkManager has no PPPoE to set up, I can only rely on Network.

Now, the first system update needed to download 280 MB for 218 updates. They are too many to read them all, so I just clicked to install. While updating, I tried the Gmail, it uses Mozilla Prism. So do Google Calendar/Documents and YouTube.The rest of Google services use Firefox.

The boot time is around 42 seconds at the moment. After rebooted, NetworkManager didn't stop my way to the Internet and PPPoE has been connected in the boot-time, I suppose and it should. I installed nvidia-glx 96 series package, enabled the driver, and rebooted. Now I have correct screen resolution. It's time to explore this distribution.

Desktop Effects can't be enabled due to compliz isn't installed by default. After installed, I still can't get it enabled. Flash works out-of-the-box and this I just watched.

This distribution does work like a charm for me, though there are few problems need to get resolved. But it is good indeed. I don't know if that is Ubuntu does good or gOS does good. No matter which does, I recommended this distribution, especially to the Google addicted users.

Distro#11 ZevenOS 1.0

ZevenOS is a distribution from Germany. It gives you a BeOS interface and it's based on Ubuntu. I booted up the CD and installed it. The installation took about 10~15 minutes. It boots up in about 35 seconds.

So far, a small problem is I need to re-plug my USB after booting and another bigger problem  is that you can't unlock Network and the solution to change the settings. You must do manually in order to get updates and solve this issue.

So I set my laptop as gateway and upgraded these two policy packages (didn't help), then I did system update and installed nVidia driver. Enabled the driver and rebooted. I have correct screen resolution.

I think this is it, it's not worth continuing trying this distribution. The traditional ending,

Even though this is a little bit disappointing, I still wrote this and post this on ZevenOS.

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• 2009-01-03 Added the solution of unlocking problem. (Thanks, Leszek!)

Distro#10 Simplis 2009

Simplis' website doesn't have much useful information about the distro itself. According to Distrowatch, this distribution is based on Fedora and it does look so, and it was called “Vixta”. It seems to have special support to eeePC and AcerOne.

After booted up, it's KDE 4.0 desktop environment. The screen resolution is 800x600. The desktop has few icons, I am interested in simplis 3D and webcam. The main menu has aMSN. But I think I should install first, therefore I clicked on Install Simplis icon on desktop. The installation took about 10 minutes.

After booted the newly installed Simplis from harddisk, you will be prompted to create a normal user. In the login window, beside my normal account, there is already an user called simplis. After logged in with the normal user, I got prompted to input the password of simplis account. Since I don't have the password, I could only ignore.

I set up DSL connection using NetworkManager and ran the first time system update. The repository source actually is Fedora and RPMFusion as well. I timed the boot time, it's about 45 seconds. I then remove PackageKit (troublesome) and tried to install nVidia 96xx driver, but I was being kept asking about kernel 2.6.27.9-159, which is not visible in yum. I downloaded it from Koji directly, then I installed kmod-nvidia-96xx. Now, I have correct resolution 1680x1050 and Compiz. Flash already works in Firefox 3.0.5.

So far, I really don't see any visual customized stuff, which is different than Fedora. But I think the point of Simplis is that if you can install it, then you would have multimedia things worked out-of-the-box. I would say Simplis provides a different installation, but after all, it's same as Fedora. Of course, the default desktop environment is KDE.

Lastly, a screenshot

This post was written and posted on Simplis.

Distro#7 Foresight Linux 2.0.6

Foresight Linux is based on rPath Linux (according to DistroWatch). It supports installing x86 and x86_64 via medium DVD (1.3GB for 2.0.6). Here is the Getting Started documentation.

I booted up the DVD with graphical installer. The installer looks like as same as Anaconda installer. I also noticed the default boot loader is EXTLINUX not GRUB. The first phase of installation took less than 20 minutes. The first-boot gave me out-out-range. I set up the PPPoE manually (using rp-pppoe), NetworkManager doesn't help again. I went to download official legacy nVidia 96 series driver and do first system update via conary. Currently the system used 3.7G and kernel is 2.6.27.5.

After system update was done, I rebooted and timed. It took about 40 seconds to login screen. Then I booted up with runlevel 3 to install the nVidia driver. But the installer told me no ld program. So I ran:

sudo conary update binutils

Then I got gcc was not found. I try to install using

sudo conary update group-gnome-dist-devel

As instructed by "HOWTO setup a 2.x build environment", but I got

group-gnome-dist-devel was not found on path foresight.rpath.org@fl:2-kernel, foresight.rpath.org@fl:2, conary.rpath.com@rpl:2-qa (Closest alternate flavors found: [is: x86(~sse2)])

Luckily (yea... took me an hour at least), I found this thread. And the solution is:

sudo conary update group-gnome-dist-devel['is: x86(~sse2)']

Now I must say the package manager is a HELL. Who a newbie reads [is: x86(~sse2)] would know how to use that? Anyway, I only install group-devel['is: x86(~sse2)'], but this still installed a lot of package that I don't need.

However, the driver installer still can't build kernel module, there is something wrong in kernel source. I followed the instructions in log file, but I got another error. I gave up from here!

The screenshot:

This post was written and posted on Foresight Linux.

Distro#5 Sabayon Linux 3.5.1

sa‧ba‧yon defined as
dreams we can believe in

After one and a half months, I finally picked up another Linux distro to continue. I have a good feeling with Sabayon because booting options look quite nice from the installation DVD. You can have Live environment/EeePC Boot/Anonymous Internet Browsing/Graphical or Text Installation/XsistenCe or Play Sauerbraten Game. I have no idea some of them are. Anyway, Graphical Installation is what I am going to do.

The installation media have DVD or a Mini edition (fits in a CD), and there are two common architectures, x86 or x86-64.

After a while the waiting screen, I saw the nVidia logo, which means Sabayon loads the official nVidia driver. Although the resolution is not the best one, but that is really a good start. I also like the graphical design and the blue tone throughout the installation so far.

The first thing to decide is the desktop environment. KDE/GNOME/XFCE/Fluxbox, special for EeePC, or only core stuff. I chose GNOME. In the partitioning, I see it using LVM. And now it's installing files, the only thing I think that's missing is the DVD integrity check or I did miss?

While waiting file installing, I am reading Sabayon Linux Overview on its wiki. It is based on and compatible with Gentoo Linux, follows Out-of-the-box functionality and KISS as their philosophy. This wiki page also explains those booting options which I didn't know before. The package management system is Entropy. The installation system is a Fluxbox DE, you can do things just like in a Live environment.

The booting takes about 53 seconds to login screen. I saw Picasa, Google Earth, Battle for Wesnoth, and few others on desktop. First thing is to set up PPPoE. Once again, I need to set up with pppoe-setup manually. After connected, I launched Spritz Package Manager to do the first time system update. Currently the installation has taken 11GB space, that is quite huge, but you really get a long long list of applications. There is one thing to note, I saw an ad space in Spritz.

Just a note, if you force to quite Spritz for some reasons, you need to remove /var/lib/entropy/entropy.pid and reboot to let Entropy system to get working again.

I ran the NVIDIA X Server Settings on desktop to change the resolution and that did change on the fly.

Then, I realized that PPPoE still not working even I did get an IP, but I don't want to fix that. Generally the OOTB philosophy is not the case in my install, and that's all for this distro.

Distro#3 Pardus 2008.1 Hyaena hyaena

Pardus is from Turkey. The version I installed is 2008.1 Hyaena hyaena. It only requires average hardwares:

• 256 MB memory (512 MB recommended)
• 800 MHz Intel or AMD processor (1200 MHz recommended)
• At least 4 GB of free hard disk space (10 GB recommended)

I guess that is why I didn't see "64" in the download options. You can download a normal installation CD or a live CD from FTP/Torrent. Here are some screenshots from 2007 release.

At 1600, booted from CD, I pressed F2 to switch to English interface. In a few moments, it brought up the Pardus installer. The installer use the correct resolution of my LCD monitor, which is 1680x1050, it's a well-designed soft orange theme. The first thing to do is accepting GPL, then I can check the CD integrity, that took about 3 minutes. After checking, setting timezone and creating a new users. In the creating user screen, it allows you to give the administrator privileges to new user, I didn't check it. Once you satisfied to proceed next, you can set the root's password and hostname. Next step is partitioning disk, then GRUB. The automatic partitioning doesn't create a swap for me. Anyway, I clicked on Begin Install button to start installing. While installing and configuring, you will see some well-known icons of the packages, that is interesting. After exactly 20 minutes, this phase is done. Time for first boot!

It took 48 seconds to logging screen. It is a KDE. The first window is one called Kaptan Welcome Wizard, it let you do some configurations for this new system. However, the Network doesn't give me the PPPoE option. After finished all steps in this window, it told me about Tasma, a configuration application for Pardus. I still can't have PPPoE in this new Tasma tool, therefore I am seeking help from Package Manager, PiSi. I searched for PPPoE and tried to install it. Obviously, that can't be done since I don't have Internet connection for now and CD isn't in. However, there is not rp-pppoe package on the CD, but I saw ppp package and installed it. For unknown reason, I can't su. Later, I realized that I need a administrator privilege to su or sudo. After manually set up a DSL link, I did a first updating with only three packages only.

The current X display driver is nv, so I installed nvidia packages and ran nvidia-xconfig, then rebooted. But that didn't work, so I removed and tried the package directly from nVidia. Still couldn't get it to work, it reported that it can't open /dev/nvidiactl. I am not gonna solve this.

The sound system works, so does Flash. The default fonts seem to only have western fonts. One strange thing is it use runlevel 3 to bring up X, not usual runlevel 5.

I think this distro is nice and cute, e.g. PiSi. However, I still met few problems, like PPPoE and nVidia driver. So far, I haven't installed a distro which can completely work out of box for all my needs. It doesn't take too much storage, about 3.X GB after installation. Memory usage is ok, about 3XX MB after logging in. Didn't take too long to install, just about 30 minutes. This is an regular distro, you won't get into much troubles, but still need to fix!

Lastly, a screenshot:

Distro#2 openSUSE 11.0

The second distro in this project is openSUSE 11.0. I burned the DVD for 32Bit PC, it also provides 64Bit PC and PowerPC as well. You can use DVD, LiveCD, or netinstall to install openSUSE. Beside FTP/HTTP downloading, Torrent is also available. The installation guide shows the good looking screen, I think that's the best I have seen in my experiences of five distro installs.

After booted up from DVD, I asked checking media at 1:46, I always do this if there is a option when I firstly install from a new burned disc. You don't want to wrongly blame a distro not working because there is a problem on the disc. It finished checking at 2:03, took almost 20 minutes.

After checked the disc, it directly loaded the installation system (YaST2). So, here we go! After accepted the terms, it started probing the hardwares. I used the Automatic Configuration and then chose GNOME 2.22. It also provides KDE 3.5/4.0, XFCE, Minimal X Window, and Minimal Server Selection (Text Mode) at this stage. As for partitioning, you can use LVM if you want. Next step is creating a normal user. In this screen, there is an checkbox says Use this password for system administrator, therefore I assumed that is like we have on Ubuntu and OSX. I didn't uncheck Automatic Login.

Now it gave an overview of installation before performing the installation. It gave the last warning about the harddisk is going to be formatted. It started installation around 2:20, and finished at 2:34. In the process, it shows a nice time meter about packages/size/time.

At 2:35, it brought up Automatic Configuration window. At this stage, you have to choose detecting or skipping a type of hardwares, one type by one type. After that, I saw a green background and lasted a while. Then an error message about GNOME Settings Daemon, but I sure that the installation is completed at 2:42.

Now, it's the time to do first-time updating, but I need to set up DSL, I suppose. I opened up the Control Center, and DSL is right there, the first icon. After I created a new provider, it asked installing a new package smpppd, and it can't access package database. So I clicked on Install Software, and hope I can installed that package from DVD. Again, I got same error. I also tried the options in YaST.

By the way, memory usage is 230 MB. I checked the disc, and found /media/SU1100.001/suse/i586/smpppd-1.59_SVN16-10.1.i586.rpm. I use rpm to install three RPMs

sudo rpm -i wvdial-1.60-31.1.i586.rpm smpppd-1.59_SVN16-10.1.i586.rpm wvstreams-4.4.1-32.1.i586.rpm

DSL configuration window seems to work now, the packages are getting installed from DVD. After rebooted (takes about 53 seconds to desktop completely), I have Internet connection. At 3:19, I finally can do the first-time update, it only took a minute for some packages. Then, update notifier said there are another packages need to be updated, so I did update. The weird thing just happened, for the administrative tasks, after I typed the root password, I got nothing. No error window, just nothing. After rebooted, still nothing, I broke openSUSE, nooo!

Since I have broken it, I am not going to do anything more, although I can still su in terminal. Time to conclude. The whole process till now, I saw few small errors. It's kind of buggy. They may be avoidable if I know more about openSUSE, or maybe not. It's easy to install, and easy to break something perhaps?. I didn't feel it's easy to use. This could be biased by my other experiences. The memory usage is low, which I like. Overall, I wouldn't use it.

Lastly, a screenshot,