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First Look at Libranet 3.0

Despite positive media reviews and a dedicated user community, Libranet GNU/Linux has never really impressed me. It always seemed like a re-packaged Debian with a price tag - a distribution with two noteworthy features: an intuitive installer and "Adminmenu", a functional (though ugly) graphical system administration utility. The developers have never provided a clear roadmap or release schedule and Libranet has always looked like a project that might follow some of the early "user-friendly" Debian-based distribution, such as Corel or Storm, and fold with the end of the dotcom boom. And indeed, the developers announced, at one point in 2001, that the Libranet GNU/Linux party was just about over - until one of the distribution's most devoted fans threatened to walk all the way from California to Vancouver (the home of Libranet) to help with development, just to keep the project alive!

Perhaps thanks to that heart-moving love affair of a single user for his favorite Linux distribution, the now 21-year old Libra Computer Systems survived. Yes, you read that correctly - Libra was established in 1984 as a small UNIX company, providing installation services and technical support for SCO, HP/UX and Solaris. The company's inaugural Linux release came out in 1999 which marked the beginning of a promising, but bumpy road of Linux distribution development. As such, it is fair to say that Jon and Tal Danzig, the two brothers behind Libranet, are probably some of the most experienced UNIX/Linux hackers in the distribution world today.

It was with these preconceptions, as well as a little skepticism, that I inserted the Libranet 3.0 installation DVD into the DVD tray of a 1.4 GHz Pentium 4 computer and began taking notes.

The first impression lasts, as they say, and it must be true, because from the moment the initial splash screen came up I knew that Libranet 3.0 was a very different product than any of the previous Libranet releases. It has a fully graphical installer now, launched after having auto-detected and auto-configured the system's native video drivers. Granted, by today's standards, this is hardly a major innovation, but up until version 2.8, the Libranet installation program was text-mode only, and even in 2.8 it was just the package selection module that was graphical. The installation program has been completely re-written and has become one of the best in the industry, competing with those of Xandros, Fedora or Conectiva in terms of usability and attention to detail. It also comes with a fully automatic hardware detection feature, partition resizing options, a package selection screen, and the usual user, network, and boot loader setup modules. In a word, the new Libranet installer is intuitive, powerful and beautiful.

Encouraged by these positive experiences, I was eager to reboot and start examining the new operating system. It booted into a somewhat re-designed GDM login screen which provided ways for selecting one's preferred language and desktop environment. By default, Libranet has historically booted into IceWM and this is still true in its latest release, but GNOME (2.8.1), KDE (3.3.2) and a number of smaller window managers are also available. Any of them would take the user to a desktop with a rather bland wallpaper and a handful of desktop icons, of which the "Adminmenu", and its user-level offspring "User Adminmenu", were clearly meant to differentiate Libranet from other distributions on the market and give it that proverbial leading edge.

In the previous releases of Libranet, Adminmenu was an application that would probably end up rock bottom in any GUI design competition. Fortunately, the utility has been completely re-programmed, incorporating, it seems, some ideas from SUSE's YaST (see screenshot). The left pane carries a long list of administration modules - everything from package and security updates to hardware and software configuration. Some of the less frequently seen items include options for installing Microsoft's Core Fonts or to create a Libranet boot CD - this can be useful if the system's boot loader fails at its task for some reason. There is even an option to re-configure and re-build the kernel right from within the Adminmenu's graphical interface. But the package management module could do with some improvements - the fact that there is no search function seems like a major oversight, especially since Libranet 3.0 comes with thousands of packages spread over 5 CDs. Luckily, the Synaptic Package Manager, which does include a search option, is just a mouse click away.

The rest of the operating system is pretty much what one would expect from any modern Linux distribution. It needs to be said, however, that despite superior hardware detection and a user-friendly installer and administration tool, Libranet, unlike say Linspire or Xandros Desktop, is not designed for your average granny. Its menus are mostly left in their default states and the Xterm icons are clearly visible on the desktop toolbars. The distribution comes with no custom documentation, whether printed or online. In other words, Libranet users are expected to be reasonably knowledgeable about computers, which would probably place this distribution in direct competition with the likes of SUSE or Mandriva, both of which provide much the same as Libranet.

And this is also true when it comes to price. At $80, Libranet 3.0 is no longer cheap, but the added value in custom utilities and the increased number of available applications (Libranet 2.8 came on two CDs only) perhaps justifies the price increase. Still, SUSE LINUX comes with three thick manuals in the box, while Mandriva's PowerPack includes a number of commercial applications. Libranet has none of those while, at the same time, it lacks the name and fame of its two big commercial competitors. As such, it will likely have hard time to compete in this market segment.

Summarizing these several hours of investigating Libranet's latest release is not particularly easy. It is a nice enough distribution that works as advertised. Despite that, one is left with a feeling that it is missing some spice, that it lacks something truly remarkable or fabulously innovative. Libranet 3.0, improvement as it is over the previous release, offers nothing that hasn't been seen elsewhere. Some would argue that it does have a friendly, knowledgeable, and dedicated user community on its mailing lists and forums and that's certainly true. For many people, belonging to a friendly family of users is a valid enough reason to buy each new release. But for Libranet to grow and for the company to prosper, there needs to be something more remarkable: more innovation, more awe, more passion. Maybe something to think of before the next release?

Comments (5 posted)

New Releases

Terra Soft Releases 64-bit Yellow Dog Linux

Terra Soft Solutions has announced the release of Yellow Dog Linux v4.0.90 for 64-bit POWER PCs. ""With Tiger 'unleashed' in 48 hours and even Microsoft caught-up in the 64-bit wave, we give into peer pressure and release this interrum set of ISOs. A compilation of our work to date as we move toward the early summer release of v4.1, Yellow Dog Linux v4.0.90 is built upon eighteen months in-house and customer experience with 64-bit," states Kai Staats, CEO Terra Soft Solutions."

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Tamil Linux Operating System Released (GeekInformed)

GeekInformed notes the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Tamil Edition. Tamil Linux will join the ranks of other local Indian language versions such as Bangla, Punjabi, Hindi and Gujarati. ""We were able to do localization in a year and a half. This not only shows our commitment to the local market but also of the community that contributes to Linux (code)," said Javed Tapia, director, Red Hat India during the launch of Tamil Linux."

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Distribution News

An amd64 Debian sarge release in the works

One of the most controversial features of the upcoming Debian "sarge" release is that it does not include the amd64 (x86-64) architecture. The amd64 team has just sent out an announcement that it will be creating an independent sarge release for that architecture - and that it will be providing updates and security support as well. This release may not be quite as good as official Debian inclusion of amd64, but it is still good news for amd64 users.

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Debian Project Leader report for 2005-04-24

Branden Robinson provides his first report as Debian Project Leader. Topics includes the Sarge release Challenges and Progress, Woody Security Updates, Debian Assets, Leadership Team Status Report, Interviews and Public Appearances, and more.

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More Debian News from Debian Planet

Debian Planet reports that Jordi Mallach has announced the availability of GNOME 2.10 packages for Debian. "The packages are currently spread across experimental and the pkg-gnome archive on alioth whilst waiting for some new and updated packages to enter experimental."

Some problems with XFS support in Sarge's 2.6.8.1 kernel are discussed in this article. "There are certainly no plans to replace 2.6.8 in the sarge installer since this would require a significant amount of work at a really bad time. You should aim to immediately upgrade your kernel as soon as possible. With a bit of cunning you can even do this before your first boot."

Here is a look at official Debian support for the 80386 sub-architecture in Sarge, which may be dropped in favor of newer architectures.

This article contains links to some resources for Debian system administrators.

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New Distributions

Peachtree Linux

Peachtree Linux hit our radar screen this week by sending several security alerts to bugtraq. Peachtree (not related to Peachtree accounting software) is being developed by several students/former students at the Georgia Institute of Technology. It's been in the works since the fall of 2002, according to the website, but Release 1 (codename "Atlanta") only dates back to last February. Peachtree Linux aims to be a small system for the seasoned Linux user. No GNOME or KDE, and generally only one program per any task. Atlanta is available for Pentium II and higher x86, NewWorld Power Macintosh, and Digital Alpha systems.

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Distribution Newsletters

Debian Weekly News

The Debian Weekly News for April 26, 2005 looks at the rise of Free Software in Europe, GNOME 2.10 in Experimental, GFDL and Debian, a user poll on removing non-free documentation, the Debian Day (at LinuxTag) Call for Papers, a new policy for Debian consultants and much more.

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of April 25, 2005 is out. This week's edition looks at Project Dolphin, a new experimental subproject to provide a feature-enhanced LiveCD version targeted at system rescue, two new international mailing lists, and several other topics.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 97

The DistroWatch Weekly for April 25, 2005 is out. This edition looks at PC-BSD, Momonga Linux 2, and more.

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Minor distribution updates

Foresight Desktop Linux, now cooler looking! (GnomeDesktop)

Footnotes announces the release of Foresight Desktop Linux v0.8. "FDL 0.8 includes many updates to existing packages, great hardware detection using hal/udev/gnome-volume-manager, and a new bootsplash."

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Package updates

Fedora updates

Fedora Core 3 updates: libtiff-3.6.1-10.fc3 (add jpeg support), mc-4.6.1-0.14.FC3 (fix invalid memory allocation and other bugs), net-snmp-5.2.1-10.FC3 (new upstream version & fixes for 64 bit issues), dia-0.94-5.fc3 (rebuild).

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Peachtree Linux updates

Peachtree has security updates for PHP (remote code execution and remote DoS vulnerability), Gaim (multiple remote vulnerabilities), MPlayer (remote buffer overflow and possible code execution), libcdaudio (remote DoS and possible code execution), libexif (remote DoS vulnerability), CVS (buffer overflow, memory leaks, and NULL pointer dereference).

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Slackware updates

Slackware Linux has updates for binutils, cvs, python and more. Click below for this week's changelog entries.

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Trustix Secure Linux updates

Trustix has updates for lots of packages in two multi-bugfix advisories. Advisory #2005-0014 covers amavisd-new, apache, courier-imap, cpplus, cyrus-sasl, dev, hwdata, libpcap, libtiff, mysql, netpbm, nfs-utils, ntp, openldap, portmap, postfix, postgresql, samba, spamassassin, sqlgrey. Advisory #2005-0016 covers bind, courier-imap, cpplus, cyrus-imapd, cyrus-sasl, hwdata, php, php4, postfix.

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Newsletters and articles of interest

An Interview with Branden Robinson (Bloggage and Dunnage)

Rob Levin has put up an interview with Branden Robinson, the newly elected Debian Project Leader. "Rob: What are the most important tasks ahead for you as DPL? Branden: In the short term, the most important thing for me to do is to make certain I don't get in the way of the release managers. They have a long-awaited release to get out. While I have ideas for reform, I'm not really crazy about the thought of starting a big flame war with some novel idea of mine when people should keep their attention on the release." Debian Planet has links to other interviews on Linux Magazine and Linux.com.

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Creating a custom Linux LiveCD With PCLinuxOS (NewsForge)

This NewsForge article looks at how to create a custom LiveCD using PCLinuxOS. " The mklivecd tool, which is used to create a LiveCD Linux, can also be used with Mandrakelinux. However, PCLinuxOS has a couple of advantages that make it better suited for a LiveCD Linux project. First off, PCLinuxOS comes with mklivecd already installed and configured, so you don't have to spend time doing it yourself. Second, the Synaptic package manager that comes as part of PCLinuxOS offers an easier and more fool-proof way of adding and removing software than RPM-based systems. Finally, PCLinuxOS comes on a single CD and offers only a small set of programs by default, which makes it less time-consuming to remove unwanted software packages."

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Desktop Computing, Served up BSD Style (KDE.News)

KDE.News takes a look at PC-BSD, an OS that combines FreeBSD with KDE. "PC-BSD aims to be user-friendly, especially in the area of software installation and management. Of course PC-BSD comes with a nice graphical installer which can also be used by other Free-BSD users to install the OS in a modern fashion. Screenshots and an ISO for Download are available immediately."

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My Workstation OS: Damn Small Linux (NewsForge)

NewsForge has this report from a Damn Small Linux fan. "I run DSL on an old Pentium II with 128MB of RAM. With every new release I reinstall the operating system to the hard drive, which admittedly kind of sucks, but since my initial install I have began saving most everything to CD-RW. Running from LiveCD would make the update process easier, or eliminate it all together, but I must put my old 1.2GB hard drive to use somehow."

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Distribution reviews

Review: Kubuntu 5.04 'Hoary Hedgehog' (NewsForge)

News Forge reviews Kubuntu 5.04. "Kubuntu is a pleasure to use: a snappy, well-designed distro that puts the power of Debian in a easy-to-use package. It's worth a look from new and experienced users alike. Kubuntu Linux is built upon Linux kernel 2.6.10, incorporates the Debian/APT package management system and X.org 6.8.2, and the brand new KDE 3.4."

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Ubuntu Linux: Free and Fabulous (PC World)

PC World reviews the Hoary Hedgehog. "It's hard to come up with a list of gripes about Hoary. The annoyances are mostly minor--there's no pretty startup screen at boot time, for instance. The only glaring blemish is an unfortunate decision to change the default behavior of Nautilus, the Gnome file manager."

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Fedora Core 4 Test 2--Plenty to Look Forward to in FC4 (LinuxPlanet)

LinuxPlanet reviews Fedora Core 4 Test 2. "Fedora Core 4 Test 2 brings lots of goodies to Linux users everywhere. Not only does it provide the latest versions of GNOME (2.10) and KDE (3.4.0) for desktop users regardless of your political persuasion, but it also includes a preliminary version of GCC 4.0 for the developers among us. Since GCC 4.0 was officially released in late April, I'm sure that the official release of FC4 will include GCC 4.0, which promises to be a true milestone for GCC, as it introduces a new optimization framework that promises better and higher-performance code than ever before."

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Mandrake Corporate Server 3.0: Server software made easy (NewsForge)

NewsForge reviews the Mandriva Corporate Server 3.0. "I've always liked Mandrake's various distributions, but I've often had trouble getting them to work properly -- especially when they first come out and are in need of updates. The concept of Mandrake Corporate Server 3.0 is a good one -- it's lighter, faster to install and boot, and cheaper than comparable products from Red Hat and Novell. It's got nice GUI configuration tools that make it easy to manage."

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Kanotix: Debian/Sid on steroids (LinuxTimes.Net)

LinuxTimes reviews Kanotix. "To wrap it up, I must say that I am really impressed with Kanotix. It does nothing that has not been done before, but it's Knoppix done right. While Knoppix is a great live CD to demonstrate the power of GNU/Linux or to use it as a rescue tool, it is too messy and bloated for a HD install, at least for my taste. Kanotix successfully combines Knoppix' hardware detection with a good interface. Like Kano writes about Knoppix: "I like it much, but I had to improve it :)""

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Review: Libranet 3.0 (NewsForge)

Bruce Byfield reviews Libranet for NewsForge. "Building on a 2.6.11 kernel, Libranet offers an overwhelming array of packages. An automatic installation includes more than a dozen editors. Most, like gedit and Kate, are graphical, as you might expect in a desktop distribution, although Vim and nano are also included. Similarly, a half-dozen Web browsers are installed, including current versions of Mozilla, Epiphany, Firefox, and Opera. Games are even more exhaustively represented, with more than 60 in the default installation and two to three times that number installed if you select the Game package category. All software versions are those currently in Debian testing, which makes them relatively current, if not always cutting-edge."

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