Interview With Lead Yoper Linux Developer

Bongoots writes "Andy Kissner from Linuxforums.org has just posted this: 'In the past few weeks, there has been a lot of hype and controversy surrounding Yoper, ranging from insults to ruthless Gentoo comparisons. I recently sat down with Andreas Girardet, who is a key developer for Yoper, to dispell all the rumors and discuss the direction in which the Yoper project is headed.' Click here to read the rest of the interview."

Oh well

[Surye]

I was excited about this for my old 350mhz celeron laptop. Unfortunately, on completely default install settings, it crashed and burned on the first boot. Back to gentoo + distcc.

Re:Thought Police.

[DriedClexler]

They actually might start doing that. If you tangibly support such a project that goes contrary to IBM's interest, they could fire or even sue you. Happened to a friend of mine (not at IBM). Tread lightly.

I'm a bit sick of Linux distributions...

[zecg]

...being valued based on how 1337 they are or what other distribution they have spawned from and how politically correct its roots are re: OS ideology.

Modern distribution should focus on a system for upgrading / installing which handles dependencies well, a base of hand-picked packages covering as many functions with quality software, making the installation process as easy and transparent as possible, building a community and encouraging its members to provide well-written documentation and lobbying with hardware vendors for open drivers (e.g. ATI).

Also, some professional-quality design work for the website and visual presentation wouldn't hurt.

Most everyone is going to use Linux in another 10 years (barring a totalitarian world government which bans it as a tool of terrorism) - so get on with the program, people.

Re:Oh well

[FlipmodePlaya]

In the interview he stated that a LiveCD version is planned, so we will all have an easy way to see if it is appropriate for our systems.

Too Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a Google text ad next to the article on linuxforums for the following:

Linux Comparison

Get The Facts: Windows vs. Linux.
Read The Independent Analysis Now.
www.microsoft.com

So let me get this right: if I click on the ad linuxforums gets a dollar or so from Google via MS? The only thing better would be a SCO ad.

Time to throw an extra angle on the /. effect. =)

Re:What distros need to do...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the Mac does it right: you drag the icon to your Applications folder. Voilà. The first distro to accomplish this will be king.

Ah, so the first distro who becomes a hardware maker with rock solid control over computer configurations so that every machine looks exactly like every other machine will be king.

Why does Mandrake, arguably the most desktop-ready distro, still have printer settings in PrinterDrake, printer settings in the KDE control center, and another panel full of printer settings in the KDE menu?

Meanwhile, their crack team of software developers will rewrite every application so that they all use the exact same interfaces.

Better support for basic peripherals

While their stealth ninjas will rappel down from Lexmark's skylight by moonlight and steal the secret implementation plans for the top secret drivers.

You may be saying you don't have solutions, but these ARE the solutions.

Kinda like Linspire...

[superrcat]

with them ripping off icons and interface cues from Mac OS X. I wonder how much longer their site will be around seeing that they are running a trial version of IPB Portal. Let me pull out my venture capitalist checkbook!

Yoper Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that the Yoper people have already told us what they think of us and that we are not their target market, I'm not sure why we're discussing Yoper again...

yoper (site admin): Why bother to be a rude and brainless chicken. Stay away. We do not need you. It might not be Your OS. This is freedom of choice. We convert businesses. We save businesses. You are obviously not a business or in any way our target market. We are a business.

We compiled, tested, packaged, compiled, tested, packaged, compiled, tested, packaged. Until one of you actually tries it how can you even start talking. It is a complete new Linux not based on anything else, targetting the i686 business market. You nerds arenot our business. You nerds are no ones business and this is the reason why as a community we fail to fight M$ properly. After years of dev you could have actually given it an objective go instead of slagging it off and blindly comparing it to slackware only because it was posted on /. in the same article as slackware. Ignorance is bliss. Stay in your matrix and stay blind. This is a business and not a charity organization for brainless and gutless chickens that fill a forum up with junk. Stay with your Linux and leave us alone. Business users need us, since they are sick of YOU. We do not need brainless nerds with too much time on their hand. We need businesses who want to save time and money and save their behind from having to hire you.

Of course, maybe they just think if they delete enough of their own forums, that we'll forget & forgive?

Original link was here [yoper.com].

And the forum where the deletion of the original forum was discussed used to be here [yoper.com].

rho

Re:Debian is the future

[Kenja]

From three years ago.

"Red Hat is the future. Well, maybe not Red Hat proper, but Red Hat derived distros such as whatever are it. period. Sorry, the games over now. Everything else will fade and Red Hat and it's derived distros are handle every_single_complaint I've ever had."

Sounds silly now.

Our own worst enemy

[thunderpaws]

I find Yoper to be a great step in the advancement of Linux. Yoper, Linspire, Mandrake, and others I'm sure are marketing Linux distros that are easy for Windows users to install, use, and upgrade. Andreas has done an outstanding job and should be applauded. I have been very pleased that my wife and some friends are now happily using Yoper and are now free of the horrible frustrations that are Windows. Linux is about choice, and having fine choices such as Yoper for average home computer users should be supported and promoted. While I would prefer that my friends an family were all using Macintosh, I would never advocate they use my favorite PC OS, Slackware. With so many more people using Firefox instead of IE, there is a growing need for consumer level Linux distros. So far Yoper seems to me is one of the best.

Re:What distros need to do...

[kundor]

1. Easy installation of any Linux software. Don't give me RPM-hell, dependency hell, command-line compiling, proprietary click-n-run depositories, or any other excuses. Only the Mac does it right: you drag the icon to your Applications folder. Voilà. The first distro to accomplish this will be king.

Zero-install does exactly that. http://zero-install.sf.net/ [sf.net]

Re:Personal Mission

[dfj225]

I don't know why so many people make it their mission to defeat Microsoft. I think it sounds really bad when you are asked about your operating system that you are developing and you start spouting off about how Microsoft is evil and they need to fall. To me, it seems childish. If you think Microsoft is evil, thats fine. If you use that as inner motivation to work a full time job, then come home and make a free linux distro, even better because I could probably never do something like that. However, judging by his article it seems like his goal is to make a free version for everyday users and have "enterprise" class software or something more customized for corporations. If I was looking for something to run on my servers, I would probably want a distro that seems like it comes from a professional source, not someone who just wants to topple a mega-corporation. I think he should ignore the success of MS (at least publicly) and concentrate on ways to do something innovative and better than than other distros and better than what comes out of Redmond. Helping this guy with his personal vendetta is not good motivation for me to use his product. Being able to get a great distro from him is.

Re:This guy is an idiot

[GreyPoopon]

No, seriously, this guy is either an idiot, or has never really used gentoo. Let's look at his list here:

Thank you for providing a rather redundant (at least for me) list of all the options you have with Gentoo. Now, tell me how long it will take for you to determine what works best for each and every package on your system. What about all of the configuration options that you CAN'T control with the USE flags? Think about it for a minute. An expert with Gentoo could probably get through everything in a few days of dedicated time (don't forget compiling), but then comes all of the testing to make sure the configuration is optimal and that everything is stable. I would guess the whole process would take a couple weeks. A novice with Gentoo would probably take well over a month to accomplish the same thing. Don't get me wrong. I'm a Gentoo user. I believe it offers the most flexibility in obtaining the ultimate performance. But what this guy is doing is much of the experimenting and testing for the rest of the community. I wouldn't be too surprised to find that most people who are willing to give Linux a try are probably experimenting with older machines, and providing a system that has many of the optimizations already included makes that process much less painful. Gentoo is not really for beginners unless they are actually trying to learn how the system works.

If you still think he's an idiot, then I would challenge you to produce your own distribution based on Gentoo and targeted for the i686 platform that performs as well or better than YOPER in less than two weeks. Remember that you have to test everything for stability and be able to keep it up to date with periodic changes. Make sure you also check out all the packages included in YOPER so that you don't miss anything. If you can manage that, I will forever support your right to call him an idiot.