LugRadio tests the latest distros
In the latest episode of LugRadio, “One From Four”, we test four Linux distributions — Mandriva 2008, Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon, OpenSuSE 10.3, and Fedora 8 beta — in a series of real and ordinary tasks. Printing, connecting via Bluetooth, playing Ogg Vorbis and MP3, watching Youtube, using wireless. Is Linux really ready for ordinary people on the desktop? Well, we had fun finding out. Four identical machines, four non-identical presenters, four Linux distributions. The results were pretty entertaining to discover. (I ought to note that it was a little unfair on Fedora, since we were using a beta, but Fedora 8 isn’t out yet; certainly it did not embarrass itself!)
Also in this episode, the odd world of Machinima (making animated films using 3D game engines), the odder world of the Otherkin (what the fuck is that all about?), and a chap from Mandriva gets repeatedly beaten about the Mandrake Club. Plus all the usual fun and games. Go listen and tell us what you thought by email or phone or on the LugRadio forums.
What on earth does “connecting via Bluetooth” mean? Is it similar to “plugging in via USB”? Because you can connect easily with any distro, you just can’t do anything after that.
39 minutes later
Until gutsy can get by without erroneously detecting sound cards as lin modems and putting the i386 kernel minus important modules as the default on upgrading my machines from feisty I think fedora will still have my heart.
79 minutes later
Bastian: well, the idea behind the test was that we’d try “transferring files via Bluetooth” or “connecting to the internet via Bluetooth”, but nothing actually got far enough that those tests were even doable…
2 hours later
Karl: they sound like fairly serious bugs. You’ve reported them, I imagine? :-)
2 hours later
I’ve done both (connecting to the Internet and transferring files) via Bluetooth, on Mandriva, but it did require some chicanery and it was on GNOME (you’d probably have tested KDE, I didn’t listen to the show yet). KDE’s Bluetooth stuff seems to get a lot more work than GNOME’s does (GNOME still has two different Bluetooth applets, ergh), but it also gets broken quite a lot…
7 hours later
…and now I’m listening to the show, didn’t get into the actual reviews yet, but I’m disappointed already - you say you tested what most people would consider to be the stock, default media for each distro, yet you tested the Free edition of Mandriva 2008. This specifically is *not* the stock, default edition - if you go to http://www.mandriva.com , whack on the big green ‘Download’ button, and download the default selection, it’s the One edition. not the Free edition. One is a single-CD edition which includes all proprietary drivers and firmware. I am betting you’re about to give Mandriva a kicking for not making it easy to get these. Sigh.
8 hours later
yep, I hit the bullseye.
Okay, the error message sucks. Sorry about that :(. You don’t need to be in the Club to get ipw3945 firmware. You need to either a) install the One edition - which is the default, basic, stock edition, as I just pointed out - or b) set up the normal repositories (which include the official non-free repository, where the firmware package lives) and re-run the network setup tool. Yes, I realize this is a bit difficult if you have no wired connection, but Free is, well, *free* - it doesn’t include any non-free stuff. And Intel firmware is non-free.
8 hours later
Adam: Straight-off, my bad. Yeah I picked the Free edition. Had I not been getting a bunch of other isos at work (more than just the ones we reviewed, as we planned to play with a load of others if we had time) and doing it while I should have been been working, I might have absorbed the words ‘Free Download’ next to the Mandriva One download. My mind assumed the Free version was the free version and the One version was a Club membership required version and well, I didn’t want to mess around with ‘yet another thing which requires my web contact details’. This was of course an error in my thinking and I guess you have been unfairly reviewed because of it. I’ll do my best to make this error clear in the next show. It would be especially helpful if you were to email the show to remind us (me) of our (my) gross negligence. Feel free to throw in liberal insults. Sadly I can’t even blame Jono for this one.
Regarding the rest of the review, yes KDE made me itch like I was in a bath of cockroaches, but I’m a Gnome guy, I chose KDE to get what most people would choose when installing Mandriva, at least from a historical perception. I tried Gnome briefly and I did find it very nice. The package installer annoyed me by repeatedly asking me if I really wanted to install or update software and I didn’t like the Control Centre too much (I’m an Ubuntu/Gnome guy…), I couldn’t find what I was looking for for a few mins (I forget what I was looking for now) and I think things went a bit strange when I managed to open 2 Control Centres at the same time.
But on the other hand, I did find Mandriva a well put together distribution, I understood how to do what I wanted (discounting searching the Control Centre for whatever it was and my mistake by choosing the Free edition), the Gnome desktop seemed very nice and the bluetooth stuff seemed to work very well. And things could have been far worse, you could have been OpenSUSE (and reviewed by Aq ;)
I admit that most people when choosing which version of Linux to download would pay more attention to what they were choosing than I did, but it might be useful to make a big “Which version of Mandriva is right for you?” thing out of it. You kinda did, but it wasn’t distinct enough to override the ambiguity of naming something Free (as the name of the distro it’s a proper noun and so will always be capitalised) and my ignorant mind which happened to be on auto-pilot at the time. I really am sorry about that so mail in to the show or leave us a voicemail and we’ll set it straight.
10 hours later
Not sure what was going on with the package installer (rpmdrake) - I just checked running it here, from the MCC (run MCC, choose Software Management tab, click “Manage software”), the command line (”rpmdrake” as root), and the default menu entry (it’s on the top level of the system menus as “Add / Remove Software”), and it just launches straight into the manager, doesn’t ask me any questions. Do you remember the exact text of the question by any chance? That’d make it easier to figure out what was going on, I guess.
There is a ‘which version of Mandriva is right for you’ - http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Docs/Choosing_the_right_edition . I’ll ask if we’d want to link it from the download page.
12 hours later