Review of Yoper Linux v2.1

Anonymous Coward writes "An interesting review of Yoper Linux has just been posted posted at linuxforums.org. Yoper Linux really does look like it could be the first serious competition Gentoo has had in a long time."

Competion for what?

[I_Love_Pocky!]

The first serious competion for what? The coolest new distro? That statement seems to imply that Gentoo is clearly the best around right now. I really like Gentoo, but I don't think I could dismiss all the other distros that easily.

Re:Too many Distros

[pnatural]

We don't need 100 distros. Damn, we don't even need 10.

Yes, we do need them.

The thing you're missing is (as Agent Smith would say) purpose. Many of these distros exist purely because they meet a specific purpose. For example, there are distros used for desktop computers, distros for firewalls, distros for embedded devices, distros for clustering, distros for servers, etc.

Put another way: choice is good!

Now, had you said "we don't need 100's of desktop distros" I might have agreed.

That's great

[prisoner]

there's plenty of competition in the linux sector. Now if we could just get someone to make a distro that actually competes with windows we'd be all set. If you want to flame me, please include an answer as to why in the world I would have to edit my yum.conf file to install a dvd player and compare that to the difficulties of installing the same software on windows. If you are stumped as to why I ask this, then employ your sage wisdom and explain why the average user would be excited about spending hours on usenet trying to figure out how to accomplish the most mundane tasks on linux. I love linux - it's my swiss army knife of choice but a desktop replacement? Yeah, I'm off topic, bite me.

Re:Too many Distros

[Bungopolis]

There's nothing wrong with variety here. The more diversity there is, the more likely natural consumer selection is to result in the dominance of truly better software for everybody.

Office Speed

[rjstanford]

Its funny - I haven't really tried open office at all lately, since I use Linux exclusively for server tasks (and we have full MSFT licenses), but this particular snippet caught my eye:

Yoper's speed is evident mostly in everyday functions, such a opening a OpenOffice document. I have always found OpenOffice.org to open painfully slowly, but the start time in Yoper was impressive. In most systems it can take 15-20 seconds to start the massive OpenOffice, Yoper manages this in about 10 (on my machine, these are not official numbers from OpenOffice, just mine).

His machine is a P4/1.8ghz/512mb box. Is it really noteworthy when an office suite opens in <sarcasm>about 10 seconds</sarcasm%gt; on a machine of that class? Really? Wow. That's ... pretty sad.

Other than that, the experience looked promising. Does anyone know if it works as well with apt as Debian does? Or as poorly?

I like it

[sometwo]

I've been using Mandrake for over 1 year. But am happy I've changed completely to Yoper. It's much faster; no more 15 seconds waiting for an app to fire. Also being part of a constantly evolving new distro makes it all more personal and significant. Sure there are packages missing. So we always can learn to build our own and add it to Yoper's repository. Rather than just sit back and complain. It's a very friendly and welcoming community there, no power battles or l33t t4lk - pretty cool methinks.

Mod Parent Down

[Anonymous Coward]

> a) It's a copyright violation

True, but there's no down-mod for that.

> b) It's karma whoring

Maybe, but there's no down-mod for that either.

c) It's informative

Re:How Gentoo won the community

[Anonymous Coward]

"Personally, Gentoo is crap in my opinion.. Sure building from source is nice and all, but the speed difference is barely noticeable comparing between other distros."

I fail to see how that makes Gentoo "crap". I'd run Gentoo even if it ran exactly the same speed as other distributions. It has a lot of up-to-date software available, all of which is easy to install and upgrade.

How does that make it a crappy distribution?

For reference, I've taken my two year old Gentoo installation from running GNOME 2.0 on a 2.4 kernel with devfs to running GNOME 2.8 on a 2.6 kernel with udev. All without ever doing a reinstallation.

That qualifies it as at least a decent distribution in my book.

Prelinking

[Anonymous Coward]

Something not mentioned in the review: you can also prelink in Gentoo. How do prelinked Gentoo systems stack up to Yoper? I got a big speed kick on startup times when I prelinked my Gentoo system.

Note also, performance != app startup time execlusively.

Re:That's great

[Spyro VII]

Oh, you mean this one [mandrake.org]? Of course, mandrake is not the only "desktop distro" out there right now, but it's the best windows replacement distro that I've found so far. I have set up a number of PCs for friends and family running mandrake and they haven't had any problems yet. Of course, some things can give you trouble (certain hardware combinations), but the fact of the matter is that people like you need to get out of their shells and realize that there are distros out there that are bridging the desktop gap. And you need to either support them or atleast acknowledge their existence.

Re:That's great

[el-spectre]

I'm wondering myself why you'd edit yum.conf ... I'd just get the updated one from the Fedora Faq.

We're still getting there. Right now, linux DOES compete with windows, in the 'good with computers' or better class of folks. 5 years ago you had to be much more advanced. Over time, the OS is getting better, but folks (especially linux savvy folks such as yourself) don't help things any by standing around and whining that it's not perfect RIGHT NOW.

Re:not gpl compliant

[CoolMoDee]

that is gpl compliant. It just dosn't contain 100% "free software"

I don't use gentoo for *speed*, but *flexibility*

[Anonymous Coward]

This new distro looks interesting (runs KDE fast .. though I have long since switched to Mac OS X).

But I use gentoo on servers because of 1) the flexibility.. finally I can *remove* the crap dependencies like kerberos, etc, on package, and I can add the stuff I need (mbox vs. maildirs, etc).

and 2).. it is SO EASY to make ebuilds, and they really do keep track of the files correctly because of the sandbox concept. On our servers we use custom ebuilds to keep versions stable, we deploy apps to remote sites as ebuilds that automatically pull in dependencies, etc. I'm always amazed at how simple it is to whip up an ebuild. Just write a shell script that installs the files, basically. Compared to the bloated overengineered hell that is RPM, I was quite please.

I think people who think of gentoo as "that distro that lets you choose CFLAGS" are totally missing the point.. it's about flexibility and ease of building distros (i.e., a "meta-distro").

Re:Confusion...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they aren't building their own prelinking software. They're just running prelink on the binaries before distributing them.

Here's the "homepage" according to Gentoo [redhat.com]

Here's the Debian package page [debian.org]

You can run prelink on Gentoo or any other distribution, too. Just install it, tell it where to look for your binaries, and do soemthing like 'prelink -amfR'

You won't get a general 50% performance boost though, no matter what anyone says.

As to why the prelink people don't improve gnu ld, you've got me.

Re:*begs to differ*

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but debian is the fanboy distro. Some of us actually want to get work done without all the politics of debian.

Some of us actually want to get work done without the hassle of an unacceptably long (except perhaps for the "fan boy" who might enjoy such a chore, or the neophyte who may find it educational) install process or compiling stuff from scratch. We want a free operating system that "just works". We use Debian GNU/Linux.

Re:Full Text

[That's Unpossible!]

It is faster out of the box. At least, that is the claim.

Re:Competion for what?

[St. Arbirix]

I think they were referring to Gentoo's "title" of being the fastest running distribution. Gentoo is a pure and simple pain in the ass to install and requires you to become very well versed in the ways and workings of linux. If Yoper can compare in running speed to Gentoo and also include a quick and easy setup then it would indeed be competition, but I'm sure neither of us are too fuzzy of the rules of this "competition."

If Yoper can run as fast as Gentoo, with a fraction of the setup time, and be just as stable, Yoper will be indeed be the Windows-replacer I suggest for our future Installfests on campus. We've been installing Mandrake or Fedora Core 2 and were toying with the idea of getting a few dozen lab computers setup with distcc to make Gentoo installs feasible. Yoper would definitely save us the effort.

I'll still want to see benchmarks for game performance though. This could be my Doom 3 Linux distro of choice as well.

On a different track of thought, perhaps someone in the Gentoo camp will work on making some of Yoper's features available in one of the install stages. It's won't be blatant rip-off, it'll be the bazaar in action.

WTF is a Corel link?

[EvilStein]

You know, NOT ONE of these "Corel links" has worked that I've seen.

If you are going to post a mirror, post something that works, okay? :P

Re:Office Speed

[adiposity]

P3 700, Win2k SP4:

Word 2000: 2 seconds (first time)
Word 2000: 0 seconds (second time) It literally just pops up...something OpenOffice has never done for me.

OpenOffice 1.1.2: 16 seconds (first time)
OpenOffice 1.1.2: 3 seconds (second time)

I include the second time to see how much caching helps, but this has been typical for me since the first OpenOffice. It takes a bloody long time to start.

I don't know what the latest OpenOffice is; perhaps it has sped up quite a bit. But I'm using Word 2000, and I know OpenOffice 1.1.2 is newer than that.

-Dan

Re:Full Text

[Carnildo]

Yoper is faster because you don't need to compile it.

Re:different purpose

[Minna Kirai]

making all kinds of comments about Gentoo without understand what it's purpose even is.

We know what the point of Gentoo was supposed to be. We're also aware of the numerous side-by-side benchmarks that've shown Gentoo machines to run slower than Fedora and Debian, on the same hardware.

Re:Gentoo Competition?

[moosesocks]

Clearly you joke.

Gentoo users pride themselves upon the fact that there is no installer for gentoo.

But they will insist that the documentation is very nice.

That is --- when they're not compiling. A decent installation (comprable to a stripped-down Fedora/Debian/Knoppix) took about a week to compile on a Duron 800 I used for the experiement.

I think that was what made me convinced that PC users truly are insane and got a mac.

Re:Gentoo Competition?

[mark_lybarger]

the documentation is good as long as things don't go wrong. when things go bad there's nothing that points what you need to do. configuring xorg? good luck. hope you have plenty of hardware manuals around and access to plenty of time to spend in the forums/irc.

Sir,

[warrax_666]

I think you've misunderstood what Gentoo is really about(*) : USE flags. Just try implementing something like that in a binary distro -- it would cause exponential growth of the number of packages. This is the #1 reason I use Gentoo.

(*) Forget the speed difference some people try to claim, it's a red herring -- like you said, nobody really notices the difference either way.

Re:Competion for what?

[hitchhacker]

I don't see gentoo as being "just another distro".
Sure you can make it into a distribution, but portage is more like a collection of recipes for making distributions.
It could be universal to all distributions.. gnu/linux, bsd, hurd, or whatever.

I suppose the init scripts might make it a distribution.

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Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Competion for what?

[bigredradio]

I am glad you said what you did. It further proves a point I have been trying to make for a long time. Gentoo is for not-so-knowledgable users who want to FEEL like a l33t hacker because they followed some instructions to build a system.

Gentoo is basically the equivelent of a "build your own AM radio" kit from radio shack. Yeah you have a deeper understanding of how it works, but I personally I would rather go and buy a nice Stereo. Does the kit mean you now have a deep knowledge of amplitude modulation and can substitute a degree. No.

Building a Gentoo system gives someone a little bit of knowledge that they can throw around at the IRC cocktail party. IMHO the real l33t hackers are only concerned with consistancy in their environment, the ability to develop with little interuption, and ease of use. If they want a system faster they may decide to use Gentoo. Not because they like tweeking the system, but because it allows them to get more done.

I can forsee Yoper becoming a Distro for those users because it allows them to get more work done. The "kit makers" will continue with Gentoo and I say, more power to them! My issues with Gentoo have only to do with the zealot users who feels that everyone else who uses a different distro are just cattle or newbies. They don't see that they wear their ignorance on their sleeve.

Re:Sir,

[rd_syringe]

I never got the rationale behind USE flags. It seems most OSS software, instead of providing a simple run-time option, forces you to recompile the entire package for some random feature. Why can't I just click a checkbox?

You imply that a binary distro would have massive amounts of packages to compensate for all the user configurations, but in reality they just compile the binaries to include all possible features, so that no matter which configuration setup you want on your box, the packages will play nicely.

Honestly, is there some sort of filesize difference that requires you to compile out unused features?