After yesterday's experience with Wolvix; I thought I'd try to install another Slackware based distro, VectorLinux. For those less familiar with the open source software environment, this site gives the basics; another good source of information is at this link.
Eh, maybe Slackware isn't so tough to get going after all; the Wolvix Hunter install went flawlessly, and I plan on keeping that one around, carving out enough space on the test machine to give it a more permanent home.
Slackware, if you're not aware, is well known for being the toughest to install, and the hardest to upgrade; so if you can get a nice GUI front end to do the work for you, then you can have a very spare and powerful machine, without all the compiling nightmares.
Since I did just install (and successfully!) a Slackware based distro only yesterday, I naturally will be comparing the two installs very closely. One advantage that VectorLinux had over Wolvix is in the graphics department; the Full install option in Wolvix leaves one with a subdued grey desktop, and not the shiny blue that Vector offers. I failed to mention this yesterday simply because if you have an older machine, the simplicity of the install and the speed of the system is much more significant than something superficial like the desktop background. Reading reviews that highlight this kind of thing make me want to slap my head--just change the background! Sheesh.
Once you look past the shininess of the exterior, the underneath workings are remarkably similar (not the CLI, not that far down); they both offer disk partitioning through GParted; package management is done through the Synaptic looking package manager (familiar to Ubuntu users) Gslapt; both are suitable for less than the latest hardware, and responsive (though Wolvix has a huge advantage here) on older machines; and both contain a number of less than standard but very useful utilities to get you up and running on the internet in a short time.
There the similarities end, and Vector better fix this if they want to remain a viable alternative for those seeking Slackware's speed and simplicity with a nice GUI front end; when choosing the vliveinstaller, a small menu pops up asking for the default root password (vector) in the liveCD environment, followed by a window that has a small disclaimer saying something like 'choose the partition you wish to install on, if you see a placeholder, then press escape, and partition the disk'. Well, I got the placeholder there, and no ability to choose the disk I wish to install to, so I launch GParted, which again asks for the (vector) root password.
Wolvix offers a small tutorial window on what exactly needs to be done, and the rough sizes required for a full install; no such niceties in Vector. In fact, the partitioner quit fifty percent of the time while in mid-operation, and then when re-launching it (and again with the password), the work I had asked it to do, was sometimes done, sometimes not. A very hit or miss operation, and if you have never used GParted, or manually partitioned your hard drive through a helpful GUI, then you would surely have no idea how to proceed.
And so it went for about fifteen minutes; opening GParted, choosing the slices of disk to partition, having GParted quit in mid-operation, opening vliveinstaller to see if the changes had been made (they hadn't), going back to GParted, it again quitting, and so on. What should be a very straightforward operation was very frustrating, and this is coming from someone who has learned to partition hard drives through the command line, in ncurses, and the GUI, without too many problems; at the end of this situation I was quite frustrated indeed.
To top it off, when asked in the vliveinstaller where I wanted to put my home partition (after having chosen swap space, and boot partition) the installer informed me that there was an error, and I would have to create a separate home partition manually, then began the install. It would have been nice to let me go back to GParted, or even detail the error, or better yet, ask if I wanted to cancel the install, but no such luck.
Installation itself was fairly quick, though I'm doubtful that most users will wait around that long, as the problems in the GParted and vliveinstaller implementations were quite noticeable. Finally rebooted, and then when asked for my password and username, just opened the CD drive bay, stuck in the Wolvix CD, and re-installed it instead.
Undoubtedly the installed version of Vector Linux is faster than the already impressive liveCD speed (though slower by quite a margin than Wolvix), but there just was no real point, as I had no plans to keep it around, especially after the very pleasant Wolvix experience. A bit hard to understand the 'rankings' at distrowatch.com; there surely must be some anomaly to explain this. A more favorable review here; Vector download page here.
Two other lightweight distros have been released, and both are two of my favorites for that 'out of the box' experience: DreamLinux has their Multimedia 2.2 edition out (ISO link), and LinuxMint has an XFCE (lightweight window manager) version out as well (ISO link, torrent). These are two of the very first distros I tried back when I was getting started in Linux, and they both very polished and easy to install, set up and run. No real tinkering required, and nice on older hardware. The biggest plus for those new to Linux is that both of these distros have all the media codecs for listening to MP3s and watching videos included in the initial install; that is what is meant by 'out of the box'.
Finally, the GPLv3 is out; oh, and most corporate users don't want to 'upgrade' to Vista, so Microsoft has made it easier for OEMs to, in their words, 'downgrade to XP'. Up is down, etc. Mwahahahahaha. A last note of shadenfreude: a Microsoft employee reviewed the security bugs in Vista against Linux, and guess what he found? Yuppers, Vista is more secure, and XP is the second most secure system around (this includes OS X). Though not everyone is convinced of the accuracy of this report. Just a wild guess, but if he had to review MIcrosoft server against open source,he would likely find that more secure as well. Well, seeing how Vista does have a smaller installed user-base than Ubuntu alone it's no wonder; that whole 'security through obscurity' myth comes back to haunt them. Poetic, that. Oh, and feel free to comment on other stuff not Vector or Wolvix related--this is a review; the comments section is for all tech-related stuff, Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, etc. I may actually write a bit about some of the open source stuff I've found helpful in using my iMac these past couple of days. Hey!, I bought it before I got the Linux bug, so cut me some slack, OK?
Update: Really bothered me that such a nice looking distro would have such serious flaws, so I tried it in vmware-server, thinking it might have been a problem with my test machine. While it did boot up fine in the virtual environment, just as it did in liveCD mode for the real test, the problems with GParted and vlivesinstaller persist. Had to shut it down after three unexplained quits by GParted, and the lack of any explanation on why it was happening. Not about to go to that much effort, especially with the amount of time and energy I put into it yesterday. Going to test Wolvix with much reduced ram, and see how that fares. Will report in next diary tomorrow.