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Which Distros?


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Well, my whole goal in life has been to be weird, so that won't start a flame war.

 

SMGL uses a magic metaphor (Lunar Linux, another distro that split off from the original Sorcerer uses a kind of moonbase one).

 

spells (instructions for installing programs) are kept inside a collection of spells called a Grimoire. Collections of Grimoires are kept inside of a Codex. scribes control the collections.

 

There are two versions of SMGL, stable and development - inside each of these there are three scribes (devel, test, stable) plus any personal scribes you set up.

 

You install (or otherwise manipulate) programs with "cast" uninstall (or downgrade, etc.) them with "dispel" look into all sorts of aspects with gaze.... and there are many more commands.

 

here's the url for the SMGL Wiki, which will explain the different aspects:

 

http://wiki.sourcemage.org

 

Just to use up some forum real estate, here's the output of gaze --help:

 

terry@timestorm: /home/terry

18:47:09 $ gaze help



Invoke gaze with desired command followed by arguments.

Please note that anything in brackets [] is optional.



Command         Arguments       Description



-q              <empty>         disable human style output



alien           <empty>         Discover untracked files.

from            path/file       Discover what installed a file.

search          "phrase"        Searches for "phrase" in the long and 

                                 short spell descriptions and in the spell 

                                 name.

service         port|acronym    Displays spells that provide that service.

provides        feature         Displays spells that provide the feature.



what            spell           Print the spell's description.

short           spell           Print the spell's short description.

where           spell           Print the spell's section.

website | url   spell           Print the spell's website.

install         spell           View an install log.

installed       [spell]         View/query installed spells.

version         spell           View version of spell installed, and version in 

                               the grimoire.

license         spell [spell]   View the license of the given spell(s)

license         section [section]       View the licenses of spells in the given

                                       section(s)

license         license [license]       View information about the given license

(s).

compile         spell           View a compile log.

sources         spell           List the source files for a spell.

history         spell           Show history for a spell.



sum                     [spell]         Prints checksums.

md5sum          [spell]         Prints md5sums.

export                                  Make snapshot of box's configuration.

import          snapshot        Restore snapshot.



section         [section]       List grimoire sections.

maintainer      [section]       See who is the maintainer for a section

grimoire                        View a text listing of the grimoire.

html                            View a html listing of the grimoire.



newer           20020521        Show available spells newer than May 21, 2002.

older           20010521        Show spells installed before May 21, 2001.



prune           <empty>         Removes all old sources from /var/spool/sorcery

                                 and removes all old backups from 

                                 /var/cache/sorcery.



voyeur          [delay or spell]  

                               Peek into spell compilation.



pam             <empty>         Display installed or held spells that are

                                 Linux-PAM aware.





orphans         <empty>         Display installed spells that have no

                                 explicit dependencies on them.



depends         spell           Displays the spells that explicitly

                                 or recursively depend on this spell.



spider          <empty>         Validates urls for entire grimoire.

spider   <item> [<item> ...]    Validates urls for one or more items.  Items

                                 may be either spells or sections.



$SPELL_SCRIPT   spell   will print the spell script for that spell.

 

That $SPELL_SCRIPT means for example, gaze DETAILS divxcalc would display the DETAILS file for the divxcalc spell, gaze HISTORY divxcalc would display the file listing the the history of modifications to the spell, etc.

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I have tried 3.

 

First: Lycoris Desktop/LX It worked well, and was even easier to instal than mandrake if you can beieve that. It was descent, but it didn't feal like an OS. It felt like bits and pieces of different OS's.

 

Second: Knoppix. Knoppix runs live from the CD and it is an amazingly usefull tool for working on a computer with a crashed OS. You can also do a hard-drive install (whitch turns it into a custom Debian) and I did so. I loved everything about it except that it used a custom kernel that several things depended on and I hae a few pieces of hardware that require a recompile, so it didn't work for me ultimately. The best part about it was that because it's Debian, you can use apt-get, whitch is WAY better than urpmi.

 

Third: Mandrake 9.0: My all-around favorite so far. It took a me a while to get it installed because of some cheap four year old hardware from gateway, but now that it's going, it's great. I can use standard kernels with it, URPMI isn't bad, the mandrake control center is what linux has always been missing and ultimately I think this is where I'm staying.

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baa baa baaa ! you all seem to flock with the top 10-20 distros. do you guys ever actually visit other distro homepages and read about them? After trying three of the top ten distros and only liking one i did some reading and move on down the ranking scale. the distro i use now i like alot i would not think of putting any other linux on my pcs.

 

/bait :P

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distro's i've checked out:

sourcemage, college linux, slackware, libranet, gentoo, mandrake, red hat (not necessarily in that order)

ones i've used: Red Hat, Caldera (in 99), Mandrake, Gentoo-in that order.

 

one's still on my "to try" list: sourcemage, debian, and of course LFS (if you can consider LFS a distro)

 

i see your /bait, and i raise you a /superbait:

what, you think using an unkown distro makes you l33t? :wink:

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baa baa baaa ! you all seem to flock with the top 10-20 distros. do you guys ever actually visit other distro homepages and read about them? After trying three of the top ten distros and only liking one i did some reading and move on down the ranking scale. the distro i use now i like alot i would not think of putting any other linux on my pcs.

 

/bait :P

 

Nnaa, not bait. For something quick and dirty. I use Peanut. :)

 

 

But really, I'd look into which distro best supports all of your hardware. The top 5 or so probably all do so about the same.

 

This could be answered with another question.

What do you want in a distro? Lots off apps and games, small and very fast, ect.

 

Tech

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sarah31: took a look at arch linux (saw you mention that's what you use in another thread), looks intriguing...i see you guys need someone to monitor security lists...hmm...i might be interested, although i'd have to brush up on my programming skills. i don't mind reading security lists (i do this a lot anyways) and writing up announcements, but I'm a little unsure about my skills in patching...

 

anyways, i think i'll install arch on my second unused drive (or part of it) and see what it's like....

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sarah31: took a look at arch linux (saw you mention that's what you use in another thread), looks intriguing...i see you guys need someone to monitor security lists...hmm...i might be interested, although i'd have to brush up on my programming skills.  i don't mind reading security lists (i do this a lot anyways) and writing up announcements, but I'm a little unsure about my skills in patching...

 

anyways, i think i'll install arch on my second unused drive (or part of it) and see what it's like....

 

do the ftp install there have been some changes to the package manger that will cause some annoyances if you install from cd.

ftp will give you the latest stuff.

 

any troubles drop into the irc channel or forum.

 

btw it was not a challenge to install arch but since arch is well down the list and it is pretty darn nice i wonder what other distros are out there that people pass by because they are programmed to go to gentoo or other such ilk.

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distro's i've checked out:

sourcemage, college linux, slackware, libranet, gentoo, mandrake, red hat (not necessarily in that order)

ones i've used: Red Hat, Caldera (in 99), Mandrake, Gentoo-in that order.

 

one's still on my "to try" list: sourcemage, debian, and of course LFS (if you can consider LFS a distro)

 

i see your /bait, and i raise you a /superbait:

what, you think using an unkown distro makes you l33t? :wink:

 

bah those are all top20's :P

 

and no i don't think using an "unknown" distro makes me l33t at all. i don't know enough to be l33t.

 

/me is just a grumpy polar bear wondering why no one ever talks about distros outside the top 20. they can't be a bad.

 

/me returns to eating her seal meal.

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well, if it makes you feel any better, you inspired me to check out other distros :-P

edit: somehow i missed your (sarah31) post replying to my post about arch....i'm blind i guess.

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I have tried 4

 

knoppix 3.1

 

Lycoris Desktop/LX amethist

 

mandrake 9.0

 

mandrake 9.1

 

Lycoris was basicaly just caldera with a few extras. REALY nothing special.

 

knoppix was great. It's meant to be run live from CD, and you can do a hd install if you want and it installs as a custom debian system. You can get a debian sys setup in less than 15 minutes. Very cool. Also, reguardless of your primary desktop, I think EVERY COMPUTER OWNER WITHOUT EXCEPTION should get a coppy of the live knoppix CD and keep it handy AND learn to navigate an already configured liunx system if they don't know yet. I can't tell you how many times I've done something stupid or tried to help someone else who had done something stupid, and used the knoppix CD to back up files before a format or manualy delete bad files and make other repairs. It is a God-send.

 

mandrake is my favorite. Of course, I like 9.1 better than 9.0 Best hardware detection of the what I've tried. MCC is great for the linux learner who doesn't have time to go LFS and it's very stable on my system.

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The Distros I have tried (in no particular order)

  • RedHat 6.0, 7.2, 9.0
     
  • Mandrake 7.1-9.1
     
  • Morphix
     
  • Ark h20 alpha 7
     
  • AltLinux Junior 2.2
     
  • JBLinux

I keep coming back to Mandrake, though. I like it a lot more than anything else I have tried. I was thinking about trying a couple more distros, though; but that will have to wait until I get a third computer.

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Distro's I tried:

 

RH - Got it installed at work, where I first learnt about Linux.

SuSe - Someone told me it would be a good place to start.

Mandrake - A friend gave me a copy of 8.1 and have followed it since then.

 

Personal views, they all look very pretty and have some wonderful colours on the screen. One of then even had a little lizard on the desktop, and that was nice!

*Well I cant pass a technical view, so thats as good as it gets :lol: *

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