which distro / best distro / distro comparison

How does #! translate to Crunchbang Linux?

 

It's their logo, and in linux programming #! (used to point to a directory where a language is located) is called a crunchbag or shebang.

 

i have been running #! 8.10 using the generic kernel on a persistent usb stick for almost a month now. most things work ootb but i used a few tweaks that i found on a thread on the #! forum (very nice forum-btw). i really need to just install it already but even off the usb it is quite fast (boot time ~40 seconds wifi included but it doesnt hang during use like ubuntu). i really enjoy how minimal it is. the right click menu works very well. also, the built in short cuts are very nice. i run firefox undecorated inconjuction with personal menus and a slim theme which ends up saving quite a bit of vert screen space.

so, another vote for #!.

cheers,
ryan

 

Once I got my AA1 I tried Arch and several Ubuntu derivatives including #!. They all required too much tweaking to get running optimally. Arch just took too much time but was quick. Ubuntu require too much for a resultant slooww distro. So I went back to Zenwalk. Zenwalk 5.2 required a kernel rebuild to get everything working. Not really hard but daunting for a beginner. Zenwalk 6.0 installed flawlessly. Everything works. Most stuff out of the box. Bootchart recorded a 29 second boot time. Memory use is a little over 95 megs at start up with few things running.

For a step by step go to
http://m4xr8d.wordpress.com/category/linux/

 

does zenwalk have codecs pre-installed. How easy is it for a newbie to add software etc.?

 

Which version of Zenwalk did you use? The one (standard) I tried wouldn't even enter the install program.

 

If the installer doesn't start, you should check that the .iso you downloaded is not corrupt. The MD5 for the zenwalk-6.0.iso is fe22ea2f98265aa6489ae7eee489cecb.

 

I'd agree with that.

My experiences of other distros on a 512/8:

Ubuntu Netbook Remix
Remix interface was slow.
Opening apps felt slow and Firefox downloaded webpages like treacle flowing through a very narrow pipe.
Remix and regular GUI became unusable after my first OS update, preventing more testing. My machine was a few BIOS releases behind, and this might have been the problem - but updating the BIOS didn't help. Maybe I should have re-installed, but I didn't like UBR enough.
Oh - and no way of running apps in fullscreen no-borders mode (Alt-F11 in Linpus). Very bad!
points 1/10, unless you believe that re-installing post BIOS update would cured stability and slowness, in which case 7/10
Advice - AVOID.

Linux4One Light Release Candidate
Took two attempts to install.
Booted fast, ran fast, good choice of lightweight apps. Excellent Openbox windows manager and LXDE gui.
BUT on some level the system still thought it was Italian, although I'd set English as my language - eg it downloaded apps setup for Italian - from a British repository! And how ever long an interval I set between for double tap it missed 90% of them.
Plus its developers don't seem to have much confidence in it and are working on the non-Light version right now using the awful Remix gui.
points 4/10 - would zoom up to at 8 or 9 for decent release version with tap problem and language fixed.
Advice - AVOID FOR NOW.

Crunchbang
Ran from USB pen, wouldn't install despite 6 attempts from 4 pens.
EDITED TO ADD: Seems like this was a bad download! Crunch is now my favourite. I'd advise getting it via torrent and !!!checking the MD5!!! when downloaded.
Probably one most suited to users willing to edit config files and who won't be scared of having to look for stuff (like Add/Remove programs and newly installed apps) that should be easier to find, and needs to be able to fullscreen mode apps.
But great configurability and works well with the wireless etc.
Points, subject to longterm stability, 4/10 for technophobes, 6/10 for average users, 8 or 9 for techies and fiddlers.

Zenwalk Standard
MD5 showed a bad download. Will try again.

Kuki
Installed, but too early to say anything else.
EDITED TO ADD: SDHC problems, permanently mangled when I added and removed some items from the desktop panel - possibly as a result of my using the Task Manager to try to fix the resulting craziness. Still a pre-release, great potential.

My conclusion: go for Crunchbang if you're a Ghost In The Bourne Shell* want-to-be, otherwise (although I didn't test these, I'm going off reputation and having eliminated so many other options) install Mandriva 9 or Linux4One standard, NOT Light!

*If you don't either get that pun or automatically reach for google to work it out, then you almost certainly would struggle at least a little with Crunch.

 

Good point! No, they're nothing alike.

Btw - taking a look at Zenwalk's site I can see that they do make theMD5's easily available. A lot of distros don't, which is which is why I stopped looking! Good one, Zenwalk.

 

I normally use Distrowatch to keep me updated on distro development. Out of the top 22 distros only three distros don't have MD5sums or SHA1sums listed.

Debian - not listed, but neither are the install cd/dvds. MD5sums and SHA1sums can be found with the install cd/dvds after wading through the Debian download page.

Gentoo - not listed and I haven't found any on their download site.

gOS - not listed and I can't find any anywhere.

 

Yes, but I was talking about Acer distros. What with this being an Acer forum and this being the sub-forum for discussing Acer One Linux distros, and this concerstaion being about installing Linux on an Acer One...

Although I'm beginning to think now that using an Acer specific distro was a mistake.

Edited to add: looking at one of the data pens I used, at least one distro put an MD5 there after it was expanded by UNet.

 

Still a beta.
Fast, used very little memory at runtime (less than 200MB with Firefox and Abiword open, using the Sickboy/Kuki kernel).
Survived updating.
Uses Ubuntu repositories.
Seems to have problems with SDHC cards in either slot - some people report success in the left slot, others not. 2 and 4GB SDs said to be ok.
GUI broke when I played around adding widgets to the launch panel; wouldn't come 100% back after reboot.

Once one ready for release this will probably be excellent. But if you need a reliable machine and/or lack tech skills I'd stay away from it for now.

 

Still using sidux here more than happy with it boots up to a working desktop in about 30 seconds not a login screen I haste to add!!

Using the XFCE 4.6 version, after doing the dist-upgrade to this version using smxi runs fast no lagging cant think of anything thats not working really suspend to disk works wifi light works sound level on screen with fn up and down for volume control all ok as long as you install kmix simple to do from the command line as root just type apt-get install kmix. XFCE 4.6 seems much better and quicker on the aa1 than the earlier versions.

On my 120 gig hard drive aa1 I am dual booting Vista, and sidux KDE 4.2 and both these systems are perfect on the Hard Drive machine. Vista takes an age to finally get up-to date but once it is fully updated its fast and works brilliantly, Install is dead easy but its the Microsoft updates that take an age to download and install took something like 24 hours for all the updates to install but once they are then its a great system. KDE 4.2 runs fantastic and is my favourite system though.

When all said and done though I tend to use the ssd aa1 the most as I take it to works with me most nights and running sidux xfce 4.6 its simply flys along!

I tried all the other popular distros but found NONE to be anywhere near as good as sidux, crunchbang is fast but too many features lacking such as the panel that wont hide etc. Loads of problems with Fedora both 10 and 11 versions renders nice but sound not working and is SLOW to load contrary to what others have said I found it to be slow in operation and slow loading up yes it boots up to a graphical login perhaps in around 25 seconds but then you have to login it then takes a further 20 seconds to finish loading !!!!! that is not fast! no wifi light unless using madwifi or ndiswrapper setups and other problems that I really cant think of at the moment except its just tooo much hassle

sidux install then dist-upgrade to latest version by using the superb smxi script and you wont look back!! you will always be using the most up to date software and kernel as they become available all done for you by the smxi script

Game over

 

@djtilko Can you give some specifications on your setup? which guide did you follow, how did you measure boottimes, did all hardware work out of the box?

You just triggered my sensitive nerf with your comment :ugeek:
Time to set some points right :!:

I 'm the post starter and I still run f10 configuered exaclty like you can find in the guide in the first post of this topic. And all hardware including the extra sd slot and the oh so important wlan led are fully functional
The only additions I made are "Xfce Autologin" and "kicked the standard network manager out in favor of wicd" (who works very sweet, but lets leave that for another topic)
And special for this topic thrown bootchart in the game.

Bootchart says boottime is down to 18s :!: :!:

But before you start dancing out of joy, I should add that my chrono clocked : that from the first button press ( :arrow: power button!) to the last harddisk light flash, it takes exactly 1min (inclusive the 10s bios time)

 

I keep seeing people talking about their boot times and yet there doesn't seem to be a good explanation on how they are testing their boot times. I don't have bootchart and can't find it for Mandriva even though I can find links to it but they don't work.
From the first power button push until the desktop is completed and the wireless connection shows connected I get from 57sec to 82sec on my Mandriva spring rc1 1.5Gb, 8Gb SSD AAO with Suspend (computer turns off and the power light blinks amber), Hibernate (computer screen displays the boot password screen waiting for the password to be entered), wireless and sound working out of the box. What didn't work out of the box was the wireless led. I am not sure if the SD card readers worked out of the box because I immediately added /sbin/modprobe pciehp pciehp_force=1 to the /etc/rc.d/rc.local file using Gedit text editor as root. When I remove the line in rc.local file then the right side multicard reader does not see the card unless it is in the slot when booting up. However if a card is in the slot in the slot when booting up then it can be un-mounted and removed and it will be seen. The card in the single SD card reader on the left side (power cord side) works out of the box.

 

Ok I am shortly going to sleep as Ive just finished a night shift but before I do I will let you know that Ive just timed my setup aa1 with 8gig ssd drive and an added 1 gig of memory. From the button press to a ready to go screen with wifi connection up before the system is fully loaded it took 32 seconds!! this is using my stop watch no fancy benchmark software! the wireless connection is up and running indicated by the wifi light on solid before the desktop has finished loading.

There has been NO configuring of the system as was your case in using F10 no optimising of the file systems and write to alterations etc no fstab modifications whatsoever my system in using ext2 filesystem with no swap partitionl.

The only modification is by creating a fdi file in /etc/hal/policy to run the touchpad which is the same as in the normal xorg.conf file but as sidux is running the latest kernels xorg.conf is now redundant to a large extent as hal takes care of all the normal configurations such as touchpads etc. in fact I deleted the entire content of xorg.conf on my aa1 and everything is working perfectly. Once F10 catches up you will find your xorg.conf file will also be redundant more than likely

Another thing is that with F10 I was getting lots of drop outs from wireless connections you may not have this problem as you are using some software to work round the problem either madwifi ndiswrapper or some other bodged up make shift setup in sidux the connection is solid no drop outs using the ath5k driver as it is supposed to work in the linux kernel without recourse to such other software there should be no need whatsoever to use either ndiswrapper or madwifi to run the atheros wifi it is well supported in all up to date kernels so why is F10 still advising to use them?

BTW Why did you 'kick out network manager in favour of wicd?? nothing wrong with network manager in sidux whereas once again your having to resort to different software to work round another in-built problem with F10!!

Thats all for now gotta get some sleep

 

I just did a fresh install of Mandriva 2009.1 Spring (not the rc1 but the newest version). Anyway the boot time 75 sec from first power button to ready desktop with wifi connected as indicated by network indicator in the kicker. The right side multicard reader needs a card in it at boot time for it to be seen and then it can be removed and reinserted no problem. The left SD card reader works perfectly whether there is a card in the slot at boot time or not. Wireless and LED work right out of the box as does resume and hibernate (even though I don't see the use of hibernate as it just sets there with the login box showing). Sound works and when a headset is connected the main speaker turns off. So I say Mandriva 2009.1 Spring works out of the box without any modifications making it the best OS for an AAO.

 

I hate to spoil your fun, but the best distro/OS for your AAO is the one your most comfortable and happy with.

BTW...
Did your Fn+Fx keys work?
How about volume keys?Mute?
What are you getting in glxgears for a framerate? over 500?600?700?800?
How long does it take to compile a kernel on it? or wine?
Do you use an external monitor? If so, how hard is is to set up. Automagically or CLI?
When you shut your lid does your distro/OS go to a screensaver or suspend?
Are power saving features automatic or do you have to set them up?

Best is a strong descriptor. My requirements for best are probably different than yours. Personally I don't care if my wireless switch works, I don't use it. I do use my SD/MMC cardreaders on a very regular basis, having to remember which one has to be in at boot for it to work is sort of a PITA. That would be a fail for me. Granted it's a simple fix, but it's a sign the devs/packagers didn't go the whole route. Maybe they missed something else.

Enjoy Mandriva on you AAO, I'll be enjoying Zenwalk on mine AA#1

 

Good point but isn't everything a person post on a forum really their opinion?

Yes they work fine.

I do not know what you are referring to? If it is a game I don't consider the AAO to be a gaming machine.

I don't know how to compile anything but wine does work fine.

I don't use an external monitor since the monitor that comes with the AAO is fine for me even with my older eye sight and an external monitor would eliminate the portability of my AAO.

Good question as I hadn't tested it since I generally use the power button. I just tried it and it seems at first glance that the only thing seems to work for closing the lid is blank screen. I'll have to do some testing and post back.

Some power features are setup automatically or as default but you can set them manually also.

Yes it is but it is how I feel.

That's fine for you but there are many that want the switch and the connection and the LED to work out of the box as Mandriva 2009 Spring does.

I don't think there is any worry about which one to have a card in at boot since if you only use one reader then just keep the card in the right slot and don't worry. Then if you need another card just plug it into the other slot and it will always work so no worry.

I don't think it is a matter of the "devs/packagers" going the whole route as there are also problems in Windows with these card readers. I believe it is in the drivers and that they have just not matured enough yet.

Sounds like a good idea to me and thanks for pointing out some thing for me to check into.

 

Consistency. Not!

As the stuff about keys working as you'd expect after Linpus - the point of changing is to get something BETTER than Linpus. I can no press the "House key" and e - and emacs launches in fullscreen mode, "House" D gets me the desktop, House W gets me Firefox 3, etc.