le lun 10-12-2001 � 00:40, guran a �crit :
> But there seem to be such a product, on LWN I read about an Elx distribution. > My concerns was about the difficulty to make choices, when you feel unsecure, > that is to say I don't think the new user wants to master Unix he/she wants > to achieve certain personal goals. I've read the review of Elx and really : impressive ! They use some fo the mandrake tools ( drakfont and harddrake at least ). It's a heavily integrated environment. The possibility to share folder by right clicking, the fact that lisa and reslisa are load at startup with some good predefined value ( so just click on Neighborhood to see your LAN ), the task manager ( too muh win like AFAIK ), the same hierarchical menu organisation ( inspired from mdk from debian ). It's really windows like, but the point after is about compatibility and now we got a problem : + mdk doesn't want to have a desktop of choice : it's a good and a bad thing. a good thing as you have choice and the distro is so polyvalent. a bad thing as they can't work on integration. For example to share things they use diskdrake as they can't do it in for both KDE/Gnome and also others wm. + mdk want to stay compatible with RH. Even if for example in KDE we have some blabla-mdk rep that may break compatibility or force to adapt, they use only what provide KDE. They don't customise it. The same for Gnome or others wm. So again they have to do everything outside throught the MCC. But the problem is that it is not integrated ! See example above concerning SMB share. In fact the samba config should be modified and be more modular. why ? put all shares in a directory and one file per share. remove/add a share is easiest and you don't have to modify the maybe custom config file with some comment in the globals part and other parts. We may think about a db that list shares, options and a unique ID for each share. So if you do a script in gnome/KDE/whateveryouwant you just have to use the ID to manage them. Users doesn't like that when they customise something but call at a time the GUI to add something this GUI remove their comments and customisations. So ( sorry for the digression ) we can pont out "problem" in Linux : heterogeneous environment. So a real linux desktop OS must make choice ( wm, prog, ... ) and limit upgrade possibilities ( for exmple everything in prelink to improve reactivity ). If an OS try to do several things in the meantime it will never be good in all place ( maybe never good at all ). For example, what can we ask from and desktop OS ? + speed/reactivity : the problem is that Linux is sloooowwwww when we arrive to the GUI/wm problem. If you use KDE/Gnome ( i.e desktop ) it's slow. reactivity of Linux/The GUI/XFree is poor ( only a premmpt kernel may improve this to hide theses latencies ). So you need prelinked binaries, good drivers, lightweight XFree ( or optimise ) and preempt kernel. You may want to read this thread : http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=fr&threadm=g0ktu9.a09.ln%40localhost.localdomain&rnum=1&prev=/groups%3Fq%3DSoooooooo%26hl%3Dfr%26group%3Dalt.os.linux.mandrake%26rnum%3D1%26selm%3Dg0ktu9.a09.ln%2540localhost.localdomain It's a little bit ironic to recommend using light wm as WM/blackbox/"E"/fvwm2 when the personn say that his system works well under XP ! can you believe it ? Now most of the time Linux users says : buy RAM it's cheap ( to use KDE/Gnome ) or use a lightweight wm ! When I think about the fact that before Linux users used to say that Win is bloat and that it's anormal to have to buy so many RAM or a new proc to use it ! Now for equals features windows is lighter ! Ok we have choice ( other wm, terminal ) but this means that there is a drift in Linux world. + features/multimedia capabilities : Linux is bad concerning multimedia ( sound card support/features, latency, available progs ), it's a reality. 2.6 kernel maybe will improve this ( alsa inclusion, preempt patch ( Robert Love way : http://kt.zork.net/kernel-traffic/kt20011029_139.html#2 ) and tweaking of the kernel ( Linus way ) ). Now efforts need to be done in user space. For example users must have the ability to easily find a sound recorder/editor ( grecord is not so good ) or a movie basic editor ( broadcast is dead and is a little bit complex ), or a multimedia player. Concerning multimedia player there is severals pbs : + closed format that decrease ease of support + licensing problem. For example mplayer dev says that it's illegal to provide binaries of mplayer ! But it's the best multimedia player available at this time ! There's xine but no dvd decryption and not all codecs are supported. Can we read divx with the mdk GPL version out of the box ? no. What's the licence of ffmpeg ? it support Divx and many format. + games : for little games, Linux is the best ... but for the others games ? big problem. Ok i know, console are the best for games, but many people still use PC + Woindows for this. WineX ? Mandrake Gaming Edition ? http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/3940/1/ http://lwn.net/2001/1004/desktop.php3 disappointed concerning the mdk GE. I thought that in the price there were at least 3/6 months of subscription to Transgaming and during 2/3 months special prices for Loki Games ( with the Loki Demo tools installed by default just to test the games ). i'e I thought it was really a game plateform that allow to buy games from Loki with special prices and make others games runs via WineX ( with a limited subscription in the price ). in fact it's just a 8.1 + Sim's custom WineX + WineX Sims for me who play BGII and Diablo II, it's not interesting as I can do the same by hand with wine ( or WineX source ). Now Transgaming got the licences fro some games protection ( http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/f_headline.cgi?bw.101701/212902145&ticker=MVSN ) but this is available only for binaries, so for example if I want to play Diablo II on Batlle.Net ( most interesting part ) I have to subscribe to Transgaming. It's good and mdk GE should provide this. Imagine, if you buy a mdk GE with a full transgaming subscription ( and not a 3/6 months limited one ), you have the ability to dl automaticaly new release of WineX ( Maybe customs for mdk GE ) thanks to a tools that check new releases. I can assure you that in this case i will be very interesting as it offers me the opportunity to follow the evolution of WineX ( Cd protection -> DX8 support -> ... ). As you can see, this will be a specialise version of mandrake distro, not available on internet as non GPL ( can't have the source of WineX + Cd protection part ) but this solution will be fully for games and so be good for this. Of course there are still others programmes ( office suite, servers, security, etc ... ) so it could be used for others things. And now I see the opportunity to really do a true desktop OS. A heavily specialise mdk OS. Still in this mdk GE, include xine + DivX4/OpenDivx ( no licence pb ) + Codeweavers crossover plugins and what do you have ? a desktop OS which allow you to play games, read most video formats out of the box and read DVD. Of course read encrypt DVD won't be possible ( where is LinDVD ? dead project ? ) but most of things will be possible. Add a preempt kernel ( don't care about SMP capatibilities and server throughput/performance decrease as it aims to be a desktop/gaming OS only ). Not GPL ? yes and no. All mdk tools are GPL but because of some parts in it is not available in a GPL edition. So what about the standard edition ( GPL edition ) ? you can't add a preempt kernel as you can use it for server purposes or on SMP box ( unless SMP and enterprise kernel did not have this patch and only standard one got the preempt patch. what about the possibility to choose the default kernel in expert mode during the install ? ). Unless ffmpeg allow it, you won't be able to read Divx out of the box but you can compile/etc ... The same for DVD. And about windows programms/games ? you have wine so some games can works ( maybe you will have to provide NOCD crack ) and apps too, so it can be usefull. The problem is that most of the time wine in mdk is not properly configure so we ave to say to users : take the source , do this and you're right. ugly. teh mdk GE should serve to provide a working wine out of the box or maybe a wizard to set most of the parameters ( a little bit as the Coweavers one ). So you have a polyvalent desktop. If you want servers capabilities you install enterprise/SMP/preempt safe kernel. Firewall ? install SNF part. Desktop ? install the preempt kernel and config the wine thx to the GUI config tool. So there will have 3 main lines of products : +standard ( aka Standard ): polyvalent, average everywhere ( desktop, games, server, firewall ), many be ( i.e bleding edge packages ). +server/enterprise ( aka Pro Suite ): fully test, QA. No bleding edge for packages/features unless there is at least one month of heavy stress. +gaming/desktop ( aka powerpack/gaing edition ) : bleding edge apps/features, preempt kernel, Winex, StarOffice 6.0 or Hancom Office ( http://www.hancom.com/en/product_service/lhr4.html ). Besides this you can have some very specialise distro ( SNF, tiny server i.e only provides servers and servers tools with a minimal X/wm for graphical conf if needed, the kind of server you put in a cupborad ). -- http://perso.wanadoo.fr/linux_wizard/index.html - "Plus je grossis, plus je m'aigris." -- P. Geluck
