Libranet today released version 2.8.1, which is an update to their earlier 2.8 release. Libranet is a Debian-based Linux distribution. The newest update contains the Linux 2.4.21 kernel, with XFree86 4.3.0, GNOME 2.2.2, and KDE 3.1.3, as well as Mozilla 1.4 and OpenOffice 1.0.3. Some improvements have also been made to the installer and Adminmenu.
Libranet 2.8.1 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Nice, I have tried 2.7 and 2.0. This distro is good if you want to run debian without having to go through debians installer. This a great distro.
I tested the free Libranet 2.7 after reading some positive reviews and during an evaluation period for a distribution for our department desktops. I encountered some problems with Libranet 2.7’s partitioning tool and its X setup. Basically it tries to be too smart and chokes on very new hardware. So, i never got a working X Server and i can’t comment on the reportedly excellent XAdmin tool. After all i have to say that i like the original Debian installer much more (if they just would not use this damn FB device – my eyes, my eyes!). I can’t see how the Libranet way is anymore useerfriendly… but that’s me, i guess.
Regards
Of course, it’s userfriendly etc.
I purchased Libranet 2.8 download on August 2nd, but haven’t had time to install it (shame on me – new job). Today, I noticed this was out, and remembered that their web site said if you purchased 2.8 in the month of August, you were entitled to a free download of the new release. I couldn’t find any instructions on the page, so I emailed their Libranet support to find out how to do it. I received a reply a few hours later from Jon.
Bravo!
(now, to find the time to install…)
Out of all the various Linux distributions, I’d have to say Libranet is one of the best. Its installer is top-notch, that much is for sure. Then again, it’s also one of the only two Linux distributions I could manage to get installed on my computer, thanks to a XFree 4.3.0 bug with the open-source nVidia device driver. I tried plain ‘ol Debian, but installing that felt like the Spanish Inquisition.
libranet IS a great distribution. any code that gives the superior finger to SCO = GO! from my experience tho knoppix is ‘finer’ for its features:
good hardware support
live cd
concise software selection
it’s Debian!
all sortsa stuff i have yet to find
oh..and it’s free
if that means everything to you guys and gals..
I just installed, and am posting this from, Libranet 2.8.1. My impressions of it so far are quite positive. The installation went without a hitch. All of my hardware was detected correctly and with the click of a button I was able to download and install a bunch of nice fonts; as well as install some fonts I have on a CD. By default, Libranet does not enable SMP support. Since I have a dual-processor machine, I needed to recompile my kernel. The process could not have been easier; push a button, make a small change, push Enter, push Enter again, reboot. Editing the Windows registry (which I feel is a good comparison) is a more difficult task; in my opinion.
Libranet is also quite fast. I was recently running a Red Hat system on the same machine in order to help a friend with some Red Hat questions. Libranet makes me feel like I just bought a new computer.
Anyway, thanks to Jon and Tal for putting out a very easy and useable distribution.
I’ve personally only tried out libranet 2.7 but I have to say I was very impressed. Libranet doesn’t actually offer you anything that you cannot find in Debian proper (except Xadminmenu) but installing Debian and tweaking it into a clean and snappy desktop is a pain that only hard core geeks are willing to go through. Although Debian has some nice command line system configuration tools, one needs secret information to find them. Libranet’s Xadmintool has gathered most of these configuration scripts into one GUI front end from where they are easily available.
What I like about Libranet is that it offers newbies an experienced Debian user’s desktop without such intimidating stuff as recompiling the kernel and adding responsiveness patches. I also find Libranet’s installer well-planned, intuitive, and newbie-friendly. (The next Debian release ‘Sarge’ will have a new installer and I truly hope that this time they put some effort to make it intuitive.) Apt-get with Synaptic as a GUI front end is the way to go in installing and uninstalling programs and in keeping your system up to date.
Libranet shows that Debian CAN be a very good distro for home desktop usage and IMO Libranet is out of the box one of the best and fastest desktop oriented GNU/Linux distros out there. For a newbie who likes to get an experienced user’s GNU/Linux desktop with minimal effort it will be well worth the money.
I purchased Libranet 2.8 when it was released. I figured that since it had such a great image in the media I would give it a try. After checking out the forums on Libranet.com and getting that great community feeling from that I decided that I would give it a shot. Beforehand I have been switching between Red Hat, Suse, Slackware and Mandrake. Libranet just works out of the box. The full compatibility with Debian and the included 3D Nvidia driver support is definitely a good thing. Everything was auto-detected and worked find. After switching the apt-get trees to unstable I was running Evolution 1.4 and the latest versions of Gnome / Firebird and Epiphany without a problem. There are scripts in there to add all kind of support to many programs and the core system is a stable as can be. I have definitely found a distro that was right for me after using linux since 1996. This is a perfect distro for anyone wanting a desktop linux experience. All you really need to know is how the debian package management works and you are set. Congrats on the new release.
I’m a Libranet 2.8 user, but I feel I have to qualify your statement a bit. Debian is a good foundation for a desktop distro, but debian itself is NOT a good desktop distro for the average user.
Both stable and testing are HORRIBLY outdated. I can understand this with stable, but not with testing. Note that testing STILL doesn’t have Gnome2 or KDE3. I think it is obvious that they need to rethink their approach to the testing distribution. Perhaps they are spreading themselves too thin with all of the supported platforms. Perhaps they need to lower the stability requirement for testing. I don’t know what, but something needs to be done to make testing relevant.
So, since testing and stable are too outdated to be considered viable desktop distros, that leaves unstable. I’m pretty much a solid Sid (unstable) user now. I’ve updated most of my packages to the unstable version. However, unstable is toooo unstable for the average user. Problems do occur. Packages make it into unstable that just don’t work (sometimes they don’t even install). Now, this is to be expected from a distribution named “unstable”, but given how out-of-date testing is, unstable is really the only choice.
I really don’t mean to be bashing Debian too much. I use it and I love it. I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t care about it. I’m just saying that it is NOT ready for the average user.
Another problem with Debian is that the package managment system is too difficult for the average user (even with Synaptic). This isn’t to say that the underlying mechanism is bad (it works great actually), just that the interface isn’t simple enough yet. The problem for average users is that the whole interface is based on packages. When I want to upgrade to the latest version of Mozilla, I have to find the correct Mozilla package among THOUSANDS of packages. Then I am presented with a list of 50 related packages that need to be upgraded/installed/removed. Sure, it will do it all for you at this point, but this will just confuse the average user. I don’t mind doing this because I enjoy tweaking my computer, but for the average user, this is TOO much. Debian could REALLY use an application based system on top of the current package system. Just an idea…
>I really don’t mean to be bashing Debian too much. I use it
>and I love it. I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t care
>about it. I’m just saying that it is NOT ready for the
>average user.
Thanks to politics, it’s unlikely that raw Debian will become a good desktop choice in the near future. Libranet Debian is a big improvement (I use it myself, as my day-to-day desktop), but still has big flaws as a personal or corporate desktop, mostly thanks to upstream. At the same time, Debian’s big advantages – like their beautiful package management system – are slowly being chipped away by the non-community-driven competition (such as yum and apt for SuSe & Red Hat).
Hopefully, upcoming technology like “Debian flavors” will help boost Debian as an OS-for-all. We’ve already seen Debian-spinoffs like Xandros, Lindows, etc. with vastly different goals and personalities. A plethora of official and un-official “flavors” can only help Debian, especially if there is an official framework for them (as is in the works). If some third-party flavor happens to get Debian the certifications it needs for use in big deployments, even better.
Just to clarify some points where you apparently have a misconception. “stable” refers to the “inner workings” of the version, not the stability of the actual software. Think “not changing anything” when you say “stable” in Debian.
As for Sarge being outdated. Right you are, but they have set themselves high goals:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2003/debian-devel-ann…
Towns also addresses the confusion surrounding the stable/testing/unstable/x-perimental division. He is in good spirit, that Sarge will include such goodies as XFree86 4.3, Gnome 2.x and KDE 3.x.
As for the multitude of platforms, this is not a problem. Most sources are going to upstream and are packaged by a daemon for the corresponding platform. Only a few special packages have to be maintained by hand.
Can’t say much to your remaining points. Debian is not for the faint of heart and not for the average desktop user, agreed. I have never ever taken a look at synaptic, i am a dselect devotee 😉
Yup, the needs of home desktop users obviously aren’t priority numero uno for the Debian project. For servers stability is more important than using the latest software. However, there exists a great potential for GNU/Linux to expand its user base in the desktop arena and I, for one, would like to see Debian in the front row of this progression. Libranet is a fine desktop distro and for me it shows that Debian proper can also achieve the same if they decide that it’s worth the trouble. In fact, there already exists a Debian desktop project but I have no idea how soon it will produce something concrete.
And yes, Debian is pretty difficult to configure but there are also many nice small maintenance programs ‘hidden’ into CLI and when you use Debian long enough that you find and learn to utilize them, you begin to understand why many users simply love Debian.
Synaptic, BTW, has a search function and it’s very easy to use. You can also make a search in the descriptions of available packages by writing from the command line:
apt-cache search <keyword>
If you scratch Libranet a bit, you’ll find that there’s Debian underneath. 🙂
The reason I love Libranet is that unlike Lindows and Xandros, Libranet will uses just the standard Debian archives and not totally screw everything else up! It’s basically just solid Debian Sarge, but with a few added upgrades and the Adminmenu program.
As far as Debian needing a Application based package installation utility, look at tasksel and gnome-tasksel packages. They are exactly that.
“It’s basically just solid Debian Sarge, but with a few added upgrades and the Adminmenu program.”
I agree with your basic point that Libranet is great because is isn’t tweaked beyond recognition (KDE is standard KDE, Gnome is standard Gnome). However, I don’t think you are giving the Libranet crew enough credit. Libranet 2.8.x is far beyond Sarge. Sure, Sarge is their base, but they’ve brought a TON of things up to date. KDE 3.1.3 and Gnome 2.2.2 are hardly a “few added upgrades”. If bringing KDE to 3.1 and Gnome to 2.2 was easy, the Debian people would have done it already (at least in testing). Also, XAdminmenu, though ugly, is VERY useful. Thank you Libranet.
I haven’t had much time to look into it, but it looks like tasksel is based around tasks (families of applications) rather than individual applications. Is this correct? I’ll look at it some more tonight. Thanks.
RE: Friendly
Yeah, I understand that stable, unstable, and testing refer to frequency of change, not crashyness, but there is a correlation. Problems crop up in unstable because of the fast rate of integration. Most of these problems are corrected in unstable within a few days of when they are introduced. I’d be willing to give up a few weeks (even months) of outdatedness so that I didn’t have to deal with those problems, but not 6+ months (as is the case with testing).
Yeah, Debian isn’t for the faint of heart. I just find this frustrating because, as Libranet shows, there is SOOO much untapped potential there.
Famous CooCaChoo quotes. My favorite OSNews poster. Don’t let those ATTBI trolls keep you down man!
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3718#107138
then grab your wallet and buy the bloody commercial solution that is apparently superior or would that actuallt require moving out of your parents basement, get a job and actually be responsible for something once in your misserable and pathetic little life.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=4242#132108
Submitt stories from Kuro5hin? I might as well post the latest issue of the North Korean Daily times relating to the “great leaders” attitude to the west.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3568#100464
The reason why a large number of people don’t realise is because the majority of people are moronic simpletons.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3984
As for Word, are you joking? are you really that stupid?
Why are you such a clueless moron.
Please, someone buy this lady a clue
where have you been? hiding under a rock?
By another clue lady (jeepers, two clue orders within one post, must be a record).
I really couldn’t believe someone would be as stupid Ana O´Neemus unless they were a troll.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=4258#132898
I can’t believe people actually believe that Rotor is a full implementation of .NET. Are people here THAT stupid?
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3718&offset=45&rows=60#10…
Blame the idiot who made the first post and some how tried to relate it to X.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3833#113181
Nothing is worse than a company b*astardising a great design for the yuppy generation who have more dollars than sense or style.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3727#107900
what the hell do you think is going to run on the server which these applications will need to interact with? think about that sunshine before making such stupid remarks.
Confronted with his wrongness:
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3487#98039
Oh, your[sic] such a guru. A genius amongst the unwashed masses, how could I ever question such wisdom
http://www.osnews.com/moderation.php?news_id=4225#131574
it says they live with their mum and dad. When they get out into the big band world I beat they won’t be able to afford broadband let alone dial up on a wage from KFC as the garbage changer and table cleaner.