LinuX Discussions and Forums

I Love this Lovely Discussion going on at the beginning of the year, unfortunately Cricket World Cup is on, hence, my contribution is mild and muted.
Being a medical man I look at problems in a practical way.

Poor patients need simple solutions not elaborate diagnosis and surgery.

This applies to Linux community and computer users too.

I feel Linux community's service to it user base is better than what the WHO offers to medical fraternity.
There (WHO) contribution, I feel us very, very poor.
Because there is no scrutiny.
We are experts and "nobody can contribute better" is their attitude.

When it comes to Linux (not Microsoft) everybody is an expert in one sense or the other as a user who has some good and some very very bad experience (pain and suffering of medical patients).
Unless Linux Guys and Girls voice their frank opinion (if patients do not tell us their difficulty we cannot help them) we cannot improve.

We should not pretend we are the best.

If we assume that scenario like WHO we are going to be doomed.

One voice had opined that Linux biggest strength is its wide variety of choice. And he turns round and say its biggest weakness is also that.

That is a professorial comment but taking a cue from Professor De Bono it is Lateral Thinking at its best! (Read his books Lateral Thinking, Beautiful Mind).

Linux Guys and Girls have beautiful minds (not like Microsoft) and Ideas.

That is why I love this forums and lively arguments (for and against).

Some people are not good at Lateral Thinking but I think these "flame wars" are part and parcel of Linux Evolution. I am of the opinion it is essential for the generation of new ideas. It is the Live (Love / Hate) Wire as long as nobody takes it personally (keep the evolved opinion "floating" for some time, till it finds a suitable land to settle).

That is why we have over 300 Live distributions.

There are over 200 inactive ones where discussions have ceased or died a natural death and new directions are not sort for.

That is where I come in and promote Live Linux 100 (like the 100 fortune companies).

MYAH, MORPHIX, TAOS, Video Linux and ADIOS are examples of good distributions that have gone inactive.

I push young ones to go to the dormant repository and have a good look at them and jump start them with new direction or fork them to new offspring.

They are too good to be in the archives.

My vision for future Linux is every one should be customized to individual (like medicine is tailored to young, old and the pregnant) needs,

We were going in that direction and unfortunately Cloud Computing is making a definite twist and turn to this need with corporate (not community) influence.

Keep on "bashing a bit" we are going to be none the wiser at the end of the exercise.

I work with young people and their enthusiasm lasts (unlike old ones like us) only a brief period. If we do not tap them at the right moment they are lost for ever.

In my case I go to the grave with a several inactive distributions in a sealed PENDRIVE (somebody could discover their potential a century later like Myahs of old Americas.

Good luck with your future discussions.

Linux in Sinhala-Hanthana Linux included-Debain Update

Reproduction from Distrowatch
(by Dr.Asoka Dissanayake (Medical) on 2011-02-22 22:52:30 GMT from Sri Lanka)


I have to confess now I support Light Weight Distributions and PCLinux is my my favourite,

But I love its Gorilla (dearly) Edition PClinuxfullmonty too.

I use it (PCLinux) as a Gold standard (not bench mark) for 32 bit hardware and Texstar is about to release the 64 bit version but he is keeping it close to his heart.

Coming back to Sinhala Linux Debian is the winner by neck and half length (horse racing terminology). I downloaded all of the CD and DVD and had a trial run of them and they are pretty good and elegant especially the KDE.

Again I confess I am a KDE fan especially because of its looks and the K3B burner which does not harm the hardware. Before I started using it I used to lose a CD/DVD writers almost every two to three months.

Both PClinucx and SuSe are KDE based. Suse is damn slow like windows but PCLinux is pretty fast.

Unlike you guts I have about 8 distributions in my laptop and I use them in rotation to get best out of them.

I have Debian also and I will tell you now why I use Debian.

It is the only distribution which can cohabit with all the others distributions and arrange the partition table so nicely in the GRUB and boot all the others.

Unlike Windows and Ubuntu, Debian does not fear other distributions.

SuSe cannot read more than 15 partitions and in the beginning they used to have over 60 (I stand to correction) partitions. PClinux some time cannot read FAT partitions and its partition formats are limited.

So I install Debian one before the last distribution and to get a nice boot flash I use PCLinux the last.

Debian make it easy for the PCLinusx to read the partition table.

There are many other strong points about the Debian that is why we use it in the Server Level in the University.

Regarding the downloading of Hanthana Linux I just checked it a few minutes ago with only two seeders it takes 3 days plus.

Fedora 13 (the 6 CDs) version with many seeders it takes little over one day. I will download Hanthana Linux after the Cricket World Cup which is my preoccupation currently.

Following is a summary of download times for your perusal.

Last there (3 days)
1. Bodhi 3 hours
2. Kubuntu 7 hours
3. EB4 9 hours
4. Pinguy 4 and a half days
5. Monty 2 days
and fastest was ArtistX one day and probably Fedora 13 too (also little over one day (according to estimate).
These are facts and not gut feelings,
I am struggling with pixie which has taken one day but still not finished.