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?

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