DesktopOS published a Libranet GNU/Linux 2.8.1 review. The author describes the installation, configuration and community of Libranet, and gives some good tips as well.
DesktopOS published a Libranet GNU/Linux 2.8.1 review. The author describes the installation, configuration and community of Libranet, and gives some good tips as well.
2.8.1 has been out for a long while now.
and v.3 is on the way
Yep, v2.8.1 has been out for a really long time now. I’ve used it for a while.
If you have broadband, like the article mentions, you can update and pretty well up to date machine using 2.8.1 as the start.
Libranet 2.8 was the reason I dumped Red Hat for good last year. Since then I’ve never looked back. I’m now a happier Debian user.
I gave Debian Woody a shot, but Libranet is *a lot better* in terms of ease of install and hardware detection.
I liked so much I wrote my own review, read it here (or click in my username):
http://www.planetalinux.com.ar/article-76.html
(sorry, spanish only
.
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fww…
Libranet is really one great GNU/Linux distribution. My no1, no doubt about it.
–Vecc
I have installed it a couple of times over the years. The main problems I have with it are:
1) You have to pay to run the latest version.
2) It isn’t pure Debian so you have to jump through extra hoops to apt-get dist-upgrade. If you just do that, you will break it.
3) The new Debian Installer makes it almost as easy to install Debian as Libranet is.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with much of what was said above. It is a very well put together distro. It does an excellent job configuring your system. I think for the user that doesn’t want to struggle setting up his system then Libranet is an excellent choice.
As the author of the article i’ll disagree with your comments.
1) You pay for Suse, Mandrake etc yes? I don’t hear people complainging about that.
2) It most certainly is ‘pure’ Debian. Most people break Debian or Libranet because they do not know what they are doing. There’s a black art to knowing what to do with apt-get, sources.list and apt pinning. Why would you consider doing a apt-get dist-upgrade? Use unstable packages is generally a recipe for potential disaster from time to time. Ask any hardcore Debian user and they’ll tell you that when using unstable repositories you occasionally will get a broken system (or packages).
3) I haven’t played with the new Debian installer. It looks good, but is still behind what it should be imho. Even post install of Debian, setting things up is awkward. Xadminmenu does make that job easier – especially for the newer user, or someone who’s lazy.
Support – i’ve subscribed to the Debian mailing lists before and have had mixed reactions. Some of the users are extremely arrogant and rude and plainly unhelpful (others are really nice and helpful, most are seemingly unfriendly and reclusive and uncaring from my perspective).
Linux is about community, and Libranet has a solid community. I value that community, because in the end, I work with the community on a daily basis, helping other users, getting help from other users, exchange ideas and thoughts. I have to spend less time administrating my Libranet system than I did Debian ‘woody’.
Dave W Pastern
PS Nice nick name 😉 O Elbereth Githoniel!
I was once an avid fan of Libranet, but they are going to have to speed up their release schedule. Version 2.8.1 was released 1-1/2 years ago. It can be debated just what is a “reasonable” release schedule, but in the fast-moving world of Linux I would expect once every six months or so to be reasonable. I would also think that, since Libranet is a commercial product, it would be in their interests to release often since they do charge for new releases.
Well, I continue to wish them luck. Does anyone know when version 3.0 will be out?
I own a PII, when i install Woody and dist-upgrade to Sarge, the automatic shutdown stops working, something to do with APM and my BIOS being too old. Not with Libranet, it works flawlessly.
On my hda i got Libranet 2.8 installed, updated to the ‘secure archives’. On my hdd i got the same Libranet but dist-upgraded to Sid. I commented the Libranet and stable security lines in the sources.list and jumped into the void. Invariably, it crapped out and gave me a ‘dpkg error:1’ type of error, I did an update and a few ‘apt-get -f install’ and voilá, it took off like a deer.
So now i got Sid and Libranet, it’s fun!
Quote: “It can be debated just what is a “reasonable” release schedule”
That is a good question. Part of the problem is that Libranet is based on Debian and that means that it is inextricably tied to the release schedules of Debian. The only way to avoid this is to move to another “source” for Libranet that allows more recent (and unstable) packages to be implemented.
Debian is about stability, even the unstable repository is more stable than Suse, Mandrake, Redhat offerings. Unless you want Jon & Tal (the owners of Libranet) to write the packages themselves (which would then make it non Debian based and more customised and not 100% Debian compatible). You can’t have your cake and eat it.
That said, Debian is an ever evolving project/process. I know people who installed Debian Potato 2.2 several years ago – they simply have used apt-get to upgrade to Woody etc. This is the advantage of Debian over other distributions – you can generally speaking, easily update/upgrade it to suit your needs incrementally without having to download an entire CD set again and start from scratch like other distributions.
Dave
I downloaded and tried out Libranet a little less than a year ago, and honestly didn’t like it. For some reason, it was the only Linux Distro (besides Mandrake, at the time) that for some reason didn’t seem to detect my basic PS/2 mouse.
I installed the newest Libranet (2.8.1) a few weeks back, and am very pleased with it, on my oldish computer.
FWIW: I agree with Haldir, all the way.
Libranet is a good distro. But, from my experience, libranet is not completely Debian compatible. When I edited /etc/apt/sources.list to only debian repositories, then did an apt-get update, apt-get upgrade; I broke my system.
I’m using stright-up debian now, and things seem to work better.
JMHO.
An ex-mandrake user myself, I’ve found this distro dependable if not exiting and have kept it ever since I installed it about a year ago. I was most interested in the safe update tool, but it was less up-to-date than what I expected. I’ve since upgraded a lot of packages to unstable.
But there are better “Debian Access” distros out there, more up-to-date. As soon as I get my broadband connection back, I’ll give Mepis a spin.
I’ll keep an eye on what’s in 3.0 (the admin menu mostly). Contrarily to my experiences with Mandrake Control Center, all AdminMenu functions have worked for me.
I was once an avid fan of Libranet, but they are going to have to speed up their release schedule.
Well, at this moment the release is (afaik) slowed down because Jon and Tal rewrote the installation software. Besides that Libranet has high quality standards. I agree that it has been a bit long since the last version, but I think the next release will be very good (as all previous releases). And I’d rather like to wait a bit longer, but have a good and stable release. After all, you can always make your system up-to-date thanks to APT. E.g. I am now running Libranet with a Sarge and Sid mixture.
Version 2.8.1 was released 1-1/2 years ago.
The last release was actually about a year ago, 2.8.1 was released on 2003/08/21.
What’s the use of releasing 2 libranet per year? This is not fedora based you know, it’s debian. I’m running kde3.3 and kernel 2.6.7, very up to date system, works like a charm.
#apt-get -t unstable install kde
#apt-get -t unstable install kernel-source-2.6.7
wow, that was real hard. Linux is soooo difficult. I sure hope libranet will have a new release soon cuz I’m not sure I’ll be able to type those commands another time….
wow, that was real hard. Linux is soooo difficult. I sure hope libranet will have a new release soon cuz I’m not sure I’ll be able to type those commands another time….
And synaptic is there for the less command-line savvy users
.
And debian provides that wonderful tool to compile and install new kernels. Running 2.6.8 preemptible with athlon optimisations.