Posted by Devin de Gruyl on Sep 16th, 2006
I have been using the latest beta of Vidalinux (hereinafter VLOS) v1.3 for a little over a week now… long enough to form a definite opinion about whether this is a good distribution choice for those looking beyond Ubuntu and SUSE for an alternative, “power newbie” flavor of GNU/Linux. Said opinions follow.
This was my test system for VLOS 1.3 beta 3:
- Home-built computer with MSI K8N Neo4 motherboard (nForce 4 chipset)
- AMD Athlon 64 3300+ (2.01 GHz)
- 1 GB RAM
- Two 200 GB hard drives
- Two 16X DVD writer drives (one with Lightscribe)
- PNY-branded nVidia GeForce 7300 video card w/256 MB onboard (PCI Express)
- Acer AL1914 19″ LCD monitor
- Realtek AC97 motherboard audio
- HP PSC 1610 all-in-one printer
- Microsoft Wireless Desktop 4000 keyboard/mouse combo
- Radio Shack PSX-to-USB gamepad adapter with PSOne Dual Shock controller
VLOS is a Puerto Rican-based Linux distro, based on the darling of the power-user crowd, Gentoo. Its primary difference is that, unlike Gentoo, VLOS uses the “anaconda” installer from the Red Hat/Fedora world, thus eliminating perhaps the biggest hurdle to overcome for inexperienced users intrigued by Gentoo - its extremely “hands-on” installation process. Just boot the disc, answer a few questions about your system and what you want to install, then go do something else while VLOS emerges itself from the DVD. About 45 minutes later, you have a fully functional Linux box.
(Yes, I am aware that Gentoo proper comes with a GUI installer these days that greatly simplifies the tedious process of installation. However, my own experience has shown it to be rather buggy and nowhere near as intuitive as the anaconda-based install. VLOS still wins the user-friendliness race in this regard.)
Upon reboot, I was pleasantly surprised by several things, not the least of which was that my nVidia card was picked up and the “real” accelerated x.org driver installed right out of the gate. On every other distro I’ve tried, even the Ubuntu family, I’ve had to manually install and configure the nvidia driver myself before getting proper 3D support. Secondly, whether you chose a default desktop of GNOME or KDE, VLOS also installs by default the Xgl extensions and Compiz window manager, giving you the eye-candy 3D desktop I discussed last month. This will very definitely turn some heads in the vicinity.
Out of the box, VLOS supports just about every multimedia codec there is… even non-Free ones like Real, Quicktime, and DivX. This is miles ahead of even Ubuntu, which (despite the advances made in add-on utilities such as Automatix for installing essential codecs) toes the strict, almost paranoid Debian line of “If it isn’t Free and Open, we won’t provide it ourselves,” meaning that even MP3 playback is not supported by default. From an end-user perspective, particularly one who’s a Linux newbie, such omissions tend to reflect poorly on the product as a whole, and surprisingly many of them give up on it before realizing that such support can be added in post-install. Scoff if you will, but first impressions are lasting impressions, and the importance of the “fresh install” experience cannot be overstated when it comes to Joe Webbrowser.
Happily, VLOS starts off (if you click the “everything” option during install) with just about everything you need for a solid out-of-the-box experience. In addition to the multimedia codecs, you also get both GNOME and KDE, OpenOffice.org, GIMP, Inkscape, Azureus, the latest Mozilla Thunderbird (not always included in most distros), and several chat/IRC clients, as well as several different desktop games.
Additional software is available through the Portage system, the signature hallmark of a Gentoo-based OS. It works like a combination of the Debian/Ubuntu apt-get and building a program from source; typing “emerge package-name” will download the latest source code from Portage, configure, build, and install it on your system. Naturally this takes a bit longer than installing a binary through apt-get (the standard distribution-upgrade command, “emerge world,” can literally take days on slower machines) but the trade-offs are A) a binary custom-built for your system, and B) a more up-to-date version of the software in question than waiting for a binary package to appear. (Packages tend to appear faster in Portage than they do through apt-get.) Compile-time options can be customized through the use of the “USE” variable, discussion of which could take up an entire book unto itself. Fortunately, VLOS includes a friendly GUI utility, Yukiyu, that makes choosing such options a breeze for the uninitiated. (Think of it as a Gentoo-ish equivalent of the Debian/Ubuntu utility Synaptic.)
All of my peripherals were picked up and detected without much user intervention. Even the PSX controller, which I was worried about, was installed without effort on my part. Plugging in a USB thumbdrive while in KDE gave the expected result of automatically mounting it and opening a Konqueror window for that drive. The DVD drives also automount with KDE and GNOME, with no “unmount” command necessary - just ejecting the disc is enough. However, neither desktop wanted anything to do with my USB webcam unless I booted up with it already connected. I was able to connect, install, and use all the features of my all-in-one printer without hassle, a nice change. (Usually, the scanner portion of my PSC gives Linux headaches, but not this time.)
The learning curve is a bit higher than it is with Ubuntu, and for that reason Ubuntu is still my first choice for introducing acolytes to the world of Open Source operating systems. If, however, you feel you’ve graduated beyond “training wheels” and want to see what a more “UNIX-ish” Linux is all about, VLOS is a great introduction. It gives you additional power-user features, while keeping a user-friendly face on things. It’s the best of both worlds approach to OS design, and in this case it works out very well.
VLOS is available two ways: As a free download, or as a $25 two-CD and one-DVD package from vidalinux.com. The pay-to-play option contains additional packages and tech support, but by no means is the free download “crippled”; all of the extra packages can be added post-install via Portage. Note that VLOS 1.3 is still in beta, despite the fact I find it stable enough for normal use, and as such all the usual warnings regarding beta software should apply.
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