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#1 Frugalware Linux 0.9

I chose Frugalware Linux as the first distro of this project because it is the latest stable release among distros (as of 2008-09-16). First thing is reading the webpage, and downloading the CD/DVD images. It supports CD, DVD, netinstall, USB and others installing methods. It has more than one CD or DVD, you can download via FTP/HTTP/rsync or Torrent. I have Internet connection, so I think I only need to first DVD. If I was wrong, I just download second disc and burn. Two archs are available, i686 and x86_64.

While downloading, I was reading its documentation. I felt it's like Arch Linux, or any distro relating to KISS philosophy. But it should be a simpler installation.

The installation has only text mode, but we can have Framebuffer support while installing. My computer booted from DVD at 4:43 with USB keyboard and I chose 800x600x32 VESA mode, which is the largest one in screen resolution. It support to install with Software RAID. Doesn't have auto partition. I use cfdisk (there are other two utilities for use) to part one swap 2.1G, rest are root fs ext3. It will let you to format by choosing from text menu, you don't have to use mkfs manually. Then you can choose if you want to use expert menus, I chose not to. If you say yes, you can finely choose C libs/compiler/include files/... packages. I only add one more group, network-extra, because I need PPPoE and I don't know if network group already has it. Now, the Frugalware is installing 1141 packages for me, it's about 4GB unpacked size, took around 23 minutes to complete the package installation.

The following steps is installing GRUB bootloader, setting root password, creating a normal user, hostname, network connection. It shows dhcp, static, dsl, and lo. I set up static, then dsl. Next items are hardware clock, console mouse, X screen resolution. I use 1680x1050.

Done, took less than an hour.



It took about 50 seconds to login screen. The resolution is 800x600, would try to solve later. Default session is KDE 3.5. The first task is updating packages, but there is no PPP link. pppoe complains missing of /etc/ppp/pppoe.conf. After manually set one in /etc/ppp/peers, I have the Internet connection. So I ran pacman -Syu, amazingly no package need to update.

Now back to video problem. I don't have DRI. I installed nvidia package and removed libgl and libglx because of conflicts. Downloading speed is around 1 MB/s. But it seems to have problem to insert kernel module, I got an error "No such device". I updatedb, and check for nvidia.ko, it's there. So, I rebooted, it asked for a password to do that. I broke X. Reinstalling libgl and libglx with pacman -Sd libgl libglx, trying to reboot *figures crossed*.

I tried to see if this nvidia driver (173 series) support my card or not, it seems that I need to use legacy 96 series driver. I switch to console to run installer. The installer needs to compile kernel module, after few enters and rebooting, I saw nVidia logo! But the resolution is still wrong. however I have DRI (glxgears: 1,791 FPS) now. After manually edited xorg.conf and restarted X, I have 1680x1050 now.
I plugged my camera and imported those photos, but I can't see them and there is no ufraw package. I have to use my laptop to do the job, don't want to use more time on it.

The Adobe Flash has installed by default for Firefox 3, and audio works.

Well, I think that's all for this install. Honest speaking, I didn't encounter any real problems so far. However, I think it's definitely not for a newbie of Linux, especially those don't know how to solve a problem. Installation process is less an hour, it's not fast nor slow. You don't have to run any Linux commands if everything works fine. It takes about 4.8 GB storage for default options. The only drawback is booting takes too long, especially before init.

(This post was written within Firefox on Frgualware Linux 0.9)