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Posted by: stak
Posted on: 2005-01-23 15:28:04
so I read this really great review of Yoper Linux, and decided I wanted to try it out. in case you don't know what's coming, it's a review of my install.. and the short version is that it was quite underwhelming.
i downloaded the single CD (v2.1.0-4), burnt it, and booted it (after backing up my data, of course :) ). i got to pick between a text or vesa installer.. naturally i went with vesa. it went through a bunch of hardware detection stuff, spitting out a few warnings here and there, but nothing serious.
then it mounted a system and dropped me to a command prompt with the instructions "type yoper to install". i figure the command prompt might be useful in case of system recovery.. so it kind of makes sense to have it. i ran yoper, which took me to qtparted, the partitioning utility. this is when i discovered that it doesn't allow me to resize existing ext3 partitions. it can resize ntfs, but not ext3. go figure. so i booted back into windows, ran partition magic and squeezed out 6 GB from my existing linux /home partition. reboot back to the CD. back to qtparted, create the swap, root, and home partitions, select them. it allowed me to choose which filesystem i wanted, so i picked the default selection (reiserfs). it ran fdisk to set up the filesystem journals, etc.. i had to confirm a few "YOU WILL LOSE ALL YOUR DATA ON /dev/hd8"-type messages.
then it went to the "install" screen, which is just a message telling me to wait 5-15 minutes. and to be patient. so i waited.. eventually it finished and asked me to set up the bootloader. grub was experimental, so i went with lilo.. it then asked me if i wanted to install lilo on /dev/hda. the two options: yes, which i knew would clobber my existing lilo and make my other partitions non-bootable, or no, which would, as it said, make yoper non-bootable. tough choice.. i went with yes since i can always restore my other lilo from the rescue disk.
then it configured alsa (sound) and the timezone. it then said that it would reboot and told me to pop the cd out of the drive after it rebooted (makes sense), but then it dropped me to a command prompt with the instructions "type exit + enter + reboot + enter". why on earth could they not have automated this step? having the user manually type in the reboot command seems ridiculous. again, it does give you a command prompt if to tinker with if you need to, but it seems quite unnecessary at this point.
anyway, i rebooted. it took quite a while on the first boot-up, re-detecting my hardware and whatnot, then ran SaX2 to configure my display. at the time iit was running at 640x480x65536, so i bumped it up to 1024x768x32m and enabled 3d acceleration. it said that it would use the settings the next time it started. that was kind of odd, since usually the changes take place right away, but i restarted X anyway. guess what.. the changes did not take place. i even rebooted the machine, but no luck. at least it auto-detected the network, so i'm typing this on a misaligned 640x480 screen before i wipe yoper off my machine.
despite the wackiness with the X server, it is definitely a nice-looking KDE-centric distro. they've customized a lot of the apps so they fit in with the general look and feel. icons, cursors, etc. are all nicely done. it feels fast and responsive, even with stuff like transparency enabled - this probably has to do with the fact that the kernel was specifically optimized and compiled for 686 architectures rather than the 486 or 386 most other distros come with. (not a problem with mandrake since it has multiple kernels and picks the most appropriate - i've now installed mandrake 10.0 on 5+ machines, and have yet to see the same default kernel on any two machines).
another thing the review mentioned was that it comes with apt-get and synaptic and all the other cool debian install mechanisms. well, i tried them out and i'm not that impressed. mandrake's rpm managers (despite being buried deep in the kicker menu) can hold their own against it. dependency handling and all that is pretty much taken care of automatically.
overall, it wasn't too bad, but there is a LOT of room for improvement. i think the main problem is that they need to figure out who they're targetting - a newbie or a pro. the install seems to go for pro, since it's mostly text interfaces and it drops you to a command prompt a couple of times. on the other hand, the GUI integration with KDE and all the effort put in the UI in general seems like they're targetting a newbie (or more specifically, windows converts). looks like i'll be sticking with my mandrake for now.
anyway, back to lemmings..
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