Welcome to the 29th issue of DistroWatch Weekly for 2009! Leading the news this past week is Mandriva, who has released several new projects including updated 2009 Spring USB and MLO Live CD editions, as well as Enterprise Server 5. We also take a look at the issues and difficulties involved in making CentOS 5.3 run on a netbook. Elsewhere this past week, Moblin benefits with contributions from HyperSpace, while version 4 of ULTILEX is released - a new distro which ships several other distros on a single live CD or USB stick. We also include interviews with Richard Stallman and Mark Shuttleworth, and finally a case study which looks at the relationship between distributions and upstream projects. Have a great Monday and the rest of the week!
For a number of years my business and indeed my career have largely been focused on Linux and one distribution in particular: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). When I consulted for Red Hat, the company, in 2004 and 2005 and for sometime thereafter I had RHEL 4 installed on my old Toshiba Satellite laptop and it ran reasonably well.
Last month Radu-Cristian Fotescu, who writes the Planète Béranger blog, posted about running CentOS 5.3 on the desktop, describing his experiences as "simple pleasures". Mr. Fotescu has a well earned reputation for negativity, particularly when it comes to Linux distributions. He has been positively effusive about CentOS 5.3, going so far as to create his own repository of additional or updated desktop software for CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.x, and sharing it with the community. As a result I began toying with the idea of running CentOS on my Sylvania g Netbook Meso. CentOS is a 100% compatible rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux without support or cost.
I knew from my experience with the Toshiba laptop with both RHEL 4.x and 5.x that this wasn't going to be straightforward. Nobody has ever accused CentOS or Red Hat Enterprise Linux of being easy to install and configure. The reasons Red Hat has all but captured most of the corporate server and Linux workstation market are reliability, stability, security, and support. It's a professional operating system intended for Linux professionals. Generally most larger business and organizations do some sort of automated network installations. Doing a one-off installation of CentOS on an odd piece of hardware involves some work.
In the case of my netbook "some work" is quite the understatement. CentOS 5.x is based largely on Fedora 6, now more than two and a half years old and largely viewed as obsolete. The folks at Red Hat famously backport support for newer hardware into their enterprise releases which, in turn, show up in CentOS so I had hoped for fairly good results out of the virtual box. While it certainly is true that netbooks and nettops (mini desktops) have found their way into the corporate world it turns out they really are not at all well supported by CentOS just yet. In many ways making this work was analogous to putting a square peg in a round hole. I was, in effect, trying to do something that CentOS really just isn't designed to do.
This article should not be seen as a critical review of CentOS or Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Both are very, very good at what they set out to do, which is to provide an extremely secure and stable environment with tried and tested (usually meaning older) software. Rather it is a cautionary tale of what happens when you try to use this particular distro in a way that really wasn't intended. After all, when CentOS 5 first appeared there were no netbooks on the market yet. Even when the Asus EeePC first became popular nobody would have imagined netbooks in an enterprise environment. It took a combination of improved netbook specs and a severe global economic crisis to make that happen even on a small scale. Netbook support simply wasn't seen as something important to backport into to an enterprise OS.
While making CentOS work on a netbook is certainly possible it isn't for the faint of heart. I decided to document and share some of my experiences.
CentOS 5.3 uses Red Hat's venerable anaconda installer. Since my intention was to install to the hard drive I used the standard CentOS DVD iso image, not the live DVD. In effect what I was installing was all but identical to the upstream (Red Hat) product.
The first sign that this wasn't going to be easy showed up as soon as the graphical part of the installer loaded. anaconda does not support the 1024x600 resolution popular on netbooks with 8.9" and 10" screens. Instead the installer ran at 800x600 but rather than stretching to fit the screen as some distros do it left a large black space on the right hand part of the display. This really didn't present a problem in and of itself.
I began going through the normal install process, answering the usual questions. I chose to do a highly customized installation, reusing an existing partition and picking and choosing what to install on an application-by-application basis. While selecting packages the display went black. This wasn't the usual screensaver blanking as I was actively working with the system when it happened. I could use CTRL-ALT and the function keys to get to the virtual terminals and see what appeared to be normal installer progress but I couldn't get the graphical installer to reappear no matter what I tried.
I could have started over with the old text based installer which is still offered as an alternative with CentOS 5.3. Partly because I wanted to understand why this was happening and partly because I am more than a bit stubborn at times I decided to try anaconda again. I never did get an error in the log and on the third try it did get all the way through the installation process. I never did figure out what caused the problem. If you intend to try installing CentOS on a system with an Intel Express Graphics 945 video chipset I do recommend using the text based installer.
Once I had CentOS 5.3 up and running I decided to install any security patches and updates before doing anything else. I saw no sense in running an insecure system even for a short while. Since I was planning a feature article on CentOS for DistroWatch Weekly (actually a review of CentOS 5.3 on the desktop rather than what I've published today) I decided to do things the user friendly way and use pirut, the graphical update tool, rather than yum at the command line. It turned out that these decisions may not have been the best.
I had never seen this particular netbook run slowly before. After the initial installation everything was creeping. Even filling in the icons in the Applications menu on the default GNOME desktop took time. That should have been my first order of business. Pirut ran but it was painfully slow. It showed a large list of necessary upgrades. I went ahead and clicked on the button to apply the upgrades. The result had the appearance of a fly trapped in amber: the system was trying to move but it just couldn't. I walked away, made a cup of tea, and did see some very slow progress when I returned. Opening the system monitor made clear that part of the problem was a poor connection to the CentOS repository or mirror with only intermittent network traffic. Even when the downloads were completed pirut still ran incredibly slowly. The upgrade process did successfully finish, more than three hours later. My recommendation here is not to repeat my mistakes. Tweak first and patch later. I know the security paranoid folks who are reading this are shaking their heads and with good reason. At the very least if you must patch first use yum rather than pirut.
With my system now patched but still excruciatingly slow I decided to start looking at the cause. I went into the System menu and took a look at what services were running. CentOS starts a lot of things by default that make sense in a large enterprise environment but which really aren't needed on a netbook. I expected that I'd have some services to disable and that I'd see improved performance once I'd done that. What I didn't expect to see was that everything I had deselected during install had been automagically reselected by anaconda. I had a long list of daemons running services that I had deliberately tried not to install.
The best explanation I have for the cause is that for the packages I wanted anaconda had resolved dependencies and deemed that all the cruft was somehow necessary. CentOS packages are built for maximum features and functionality, not streamlined for efficiency. This is a philosophical choice which makes sense for the target audience: enterprise customers with large, diverse networks. The result outside such an environment is bloat.
I first stopped and then disabled all the services I just do not need. The increase in performance was immediate and obvious. My system was no longer slow at all. A further review of what processes I still had running allowed me to do a bit more cleanup and the final result was a responsive system.
When I reviewed the services I actually added one: Network Manager. Once I had that running it became very clear that WiFi wasn't working. CentOS is the first current distro which I've tried on the netbook that didn't recognize my RaLink wireless chipset and load the rt73 driver. That driver wasn't part of the 2.6.18 kernel and hasn't been backported into the CentOS kernel as of yet. I visited all of the third party repositories I know of for RHEL/CentOS and couldn't find a package for the driver. The only available solution was to get the legacy source code from CVS on SourceForge and compile it.
My webcam was also decidedly non-functional, also due to a missing driver. This was despite the fact that anaconda had seen fit to install video conferencing software I had specifically deselected: software which is useless without a functional webcam. Once again my only choice was to download and compile source code. I actually haven't found time to do this yet.
Another mildy annoying issue is the way my SD cards are handled by CentOS. Instead of getting one icon on the desktop when I insert the card I get two. In addition, I can't unmount the card without forcing it as root at the command line. Right clicking on one of the icons and selecting unmount doesn't work. One icon does disappear but the card is still mounted and the system thinks the card is still in use. Unmounting by right clicking on the second icon doesn't solve the problem. Nothing happens at all. I haven't had time to troubleshoot this problem yet either.
Getting CentOS working correctly on my netbook has turned into a long and somewhat arduous process. Fortunately I am very, very familiar with this distro and I'm willing to get under the hood and fix things. Everything I've described can be solved and had I been slightly less stubborn and had I made some better decisions I probably would have it all done by now. I do expect that, in the end, CentOS will work properly on my system. It just takes a lot of work to get there.
By now I'm certain some if not most of you are asking why I just don't go back to a distro that "just works" on my hardware. Most do. My compelling reason for getting CentOS working and working well on a system where Windows XP would be sluggish is impressive to some and a good selling point. It's also nice to be able to successfully replicate much of my business computing environment on my itty bitty laptop, particularly when I travel. For the typical home user or Linux hobbyist the effort I've gone through probably isn't worthwhile.
Even under the best of conditions making CentOS into a desirable desktop environment for the home user takes significant work and visits to third party repositories and upstream sources for additional packages and upgrades. CentOS just doesn't have the software selection that popular desktop distros have. While I have no objection to tried, tested and reliable if somewhat older applications I do object to having apps with known and serious security vulnerabilities even after patching. I've also been known to complain about the amount of work I have to do after initial installation with Slackware. Slackware seems mild when compared with what I had to do with CentOS and I'm still not finished.
On the other hand, if you plan on taking a netbook or any notebook into a business or organizational environment where security is a paramount concern you'd be hard pressed to do better than CentOS. Almost every authentication scheme you are likely to encounter is natively supported, as is SELinux. Stability and reliability are outstanding.
There is no one size fits all Linux distribution. For use on a netbook CentOS needs considerable tailoring. I thought it would be worthwhile to share just how much.
Things are steaming ahead in Mandriva land with a few new products recently announced. The first comes from the Online team who has released the second version of the MLO Live CD (announcement in French only). The Live CD itself is available in both French and English and brings several important new features, the most important of which is the focus on migrating Windows users. It also comes with updated versions of key pieces of software such as Linux 2.6.29 and version 4.2.4 of popular desktop KDE. There is a script on the desktop to automate the installation of a Flash player and audio-video codecs. Elsewhere, Mandriva has announced the release of its new Enterprise Server 5 product. The product is optimised for speed and ease of use, offering a 15 minute install time and the ability to easily configure email, file, print and directory services. Finally, the project has also announced the very latest Mandriva Flash 2009 Spring edition. The product can be purchased on a USB key from the online store, and comes in 6GB and 8GB versions. "Take your desktop wherever you want and let your friends share the Mandriva Linux experience by inserting your USB key into their PCs in the knowledge you are protected completely from viruses."
Phoenix Technologies who makes embedded systems, has announced plans to "align" its fast-boot "HyperSpace" technology with the Moblin project. HyperSpace is a highly optimised minimal Linux environment which includes a web browser, wireless network manager, booting from a cold start in under a second. Interestingly, HyperSpace can load Windows simultaneously in the background and let users switch between the two. Although targeted at Windows machines, the advanced in the Linux technology are to be further developed for the benefit of the wider free software community. President and CEO of Phoenix Technologies, Woody Hobbs said: "Moblin provides OEMs with an optimized framework for Intel Atom processor-based systems. HyperSpace enhances this platform with a unique, easy-to-use and fun interface and the ability to bring any application to life instantly." It will be interesting to see how this technology is adopted in the wider Linux community and indeed the Moblin operating system, as Intel prepares to do battle with ARM based systems.
Ubuntu has remained in the spot light, and this week we provide a link to an interview with Mark Shuttleworth, founder and leader of the project, discussing the future of the GNOME desktop. Ubuntu uses GNOME as its default operating system and the proposed changes to make up version 3.0 has been drawing much attention. Following a successful migration to new technology for the KDE desktop, GNOME is also looking to shake things up. One important new piece of the puzzle is GNOME Shell, about which Shuttleworth says: "We participate - although at some distance - in the GNOME Shell stuff, our design team was part of the User Experience Hackfest that sort of laid out the principles for GNOME Shell. Although we don't have dedicated people working on it at the moment." When it comes to improving the desktop experience, Shuttleworth points towards their recent "100 Papercuts" initiative and working with other specific projects: "A lot of the stuff we do is very public, like the "100 papercuts" and the design stuff we are doing engaging with apps like F-Spot, Empathy, Pidgin, Thunderbird and others." The next Long Term Release is scheduled for April 2010, when GNOME 3.0 is expected to be released. Will Ubuntu ship the new and potentially unstable desktop, or revert to the previous branch? When KDE 4.0 was released they did not release a LTS version, which turned out to be the right move.
Are you a fan of live Linux distributions? Always carrying around several on numerous sets of optical media? ULTILEX could help ease that burden! It is a Linux meta-distribution which combines several other distros on a single Live CD/DVD and USB devices. "When you boot ULTILEX, the first thing you'll see is a beautiful startup screen with menu from which you can choose the exact live Linux distribution to run. The current version of ULTILEX is 4.0.0 and it contains the following live Linux distributions: Slax version 6.1.1, Puppy Linux, version 4.2.1, Tiny Core version 2.1, System Rescue CD version 1.2.2, Parted Magic version 4.3." The latest version is now available for download. "One interesting feature of ULTILEX is that you can install it with ease on USB flash device and save the changes you've made during the live session on it. You can modify files and even install/remove modules and all your changes are saved on the USB flash." Is this a worthwhile project for you?
Richard Stallman (the father of the free software movement) has been making lots of news lately with comments on the use of Mono in distributions. He has also given an interview with technology website Neowin, in the current state of GNU/Linux. They discuss the availability of commercial products making use of free software and comparisons between closed source and open source software in terms of functionality, he says: "I have never used Photoshop, and just touched the GIMP once, so I can't compare them from personal experience. I have heard people say the GIMP is better, but the lack of a restricted color-matching feature hampered certain uses. I have used OpenOffice Writer occasionally, but I can't compare it myself with Microsoft Word. Large organizations have moved to it; whatever its imperfections may be, it is clearly adequate. Any conclusion about comparing free and proprietary programs depends on the values we judge them by. If we judge solely in terms of practical convenience, either one might be better, depending on specifics. But if we value freedom highly, the program that respects our freedom is always better than the one which takes it away." Finally, he finishes with a message for users of non-free operating systems, saying: "My message for anyone that uses Windows or MacOS is to notice that using them means that Microsoft or Apple controls your computing. They decide what you can do, and what you can't do. So escape! Join us in the Free World! We have worked 25 years to build it, for freedom's sake. Now all you have to do is choose freedom."
Linux distributions track upstream projects, releasing a particular version with each official release. But how far behind the latest versions do these releases linger? Scott Shawcroft aims to find out. He wrote to tell DistroWatch about his interesting new study into this relationship between distributions and upstream projects. Shawcroft says: "Over the last 10 months I've been working on Linux evolution research. Similar to distrowatch, I track the current versions of packages in a number of distributions and the current upstream version. Based on that data I then graph a number of metrics to understand the relationship between upstream and downstream." His presentation on the topic scheduled for next week's open source convention, OSCON, should provide an interesting insight into that relationship. Currently he is tracking 20 projects including the Linux kernel and GNOME on Arch, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, openSUSE, Sabayon, Slackware, and Ubuntu. It's a very interesting study and well worth a look!
Steve Langasek has announced the release of Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS, the third update of the distribution's special version with long-term support (3 years on the desktop and 5 years on the server): "The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the release of Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS, the third maintenance update to Ubuntu's 8.04 LTS release. This release includes updated server, desktop and alternate installation CDs for the i386 and amd64 architectures. In all, 80 updates have been integrated, and updated installation media has been provided so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation. These include security updates and corrections for other high-impact bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS." Read the full release announcement for a complete list of changes.
Onur Küçük announced the official release of Pardus Linux 2009: "The international CD of Pardus 2009, containing 11 languages to choose from, is also available from FTP servers. This new release contains many bug fixes and enhancements. A new, shiny KDE 4 desktop environment, improved hardware support, latest releases of Pardus Manager tools, up-to-date software repository, and performance improvements are among the many new features of Pardus 2009. Pardus 2009 has also been improved graphically in every part of the distribution. All splash systems, from bootloader to login screen, have been revised. The latest version of Pardus contains up-to-date packages like KDE 4.2.4, Linux kernel 2.6.30.1, OpenOffice.org 3.1.0.6, Mozilla Firefox 3.5.1, GIMP 2.6.6, K3b 1.66, X.Org 1.6.2 and Python 2.6.2." Here is the complete release announcement.
Stefan Lippers-Hollmann announced the release of sidux 2009-02, a desktop Linux distribution based on Debian's unstable branch: "A little later than originally planned, we now have the pleasure to announce the immediate availability of sidux 2009-02 'Αether', shipping with kernel 2.6.30 and KDE 4.2.4. The ISO is completely based on Debian 'sid', enriched and stabilized with sidux' own packages and scripts. 'Aether' mostly concentrates on integrating KDE 4 into sidux and implementing the changes caused by kernel 2.6.30. We strongly recommend against allowing 'ia32-apt-get'." Read the detailed release notes for further information.
Version 7.0 of ExTix a desktop Linux distribution from Sweden based on paldo GNU/Linux, has been announced: "ExTiX has full Swedish language support and many more programs installed than paldo. This new version of ExTiX Linux live DVD includes the 2.6.30 -extix kernel by default, GNOME 2.26.1, OpenOffice.org 3.0.1, all development tools, GIMP 2.6.6, Skype 2.0.0.72 (free Internet telephony), Apache, all win32 codecs, VLC 1.0.0, GParted 1.3.6, aMule 2.2.2 (file sharing), Firefox 3.0.11, WINE 1.1.20, GNU Emacs 22.3.1 and Epiphany 2.26.1. Unionfs stacks your ExTiX ramdisk on top of a read-only file system on the DVD, the effect being that one can upkg-install, and otherwise modify all of the files on the running system. The standard GNOME and system language is English." Check for more information on the ExTix website.
Browserpuppy. Browserpuppy is a fast and small (66MB) distribution based on Puppy Linux strictly for surfing the web. Office software is not included.
Ice-Z Linux. Ice-Z Linux is an Ubuntu-based distribution with new dark default themes. Other differences include the removal of games and the addition of functional packages. .
And this concludes the latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 27 July 2009.