Ranking the 100% free distributions
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This guy ranked the 100% free software operating systems. Too bad gNewSense is ugly and horribly outdated. Trisquel needs more love:
http://blog.sudobits.com/2012/02/07/100-percent-free-gnulinux-operating-systems/
A pretty worthless blog post if you ask me. The guy just describes some characteristics of the distros. No comparisons, no analysis. No rationale for the ranking. Did I miss something?
gNewSense #1? You gotta be kidding - the thing hasn't been updated in ages (its status on distrowatch : dormant).
Actually gNewsense is active, no in distrowatch, but check their wiki
http://www.gnewsense.org/RecentChanges
and their repo
http://gi.archive.gnewsense.org/gnewsense-parkes/gnewsense/pool/main/?C=M;O=D
but yeah, this development is kinda obscure, since they don't make announcements often.
Most of those Recent Changes look like spam.
Yeah, sad but true.
But the project is still alive, in fact, you can bootstrap gNs3
http://www.gnewsense.org/Documentation/DebootstrappingGNewSense3
if someone is actually interested in track the dev of the project, join the mail list
http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/gnewsense-dev/
Trisquel has the advantage of using Ubuntu packages which are not only well
supported and up to date, but users can install a PPA for pretty much
anything they want. I've tinkered around with Debian in the past and have to
admit that the refinement of the Ubuntu codebase made me stick with it.
Especially the LTS releases for Ubuntu and Trisquel.
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As others have stated gNewSense is not dormant although I'm not sure I'd say it is an actively maintained distribution either. Does anybody know if packages are ever updated? I'm referring to security updates mainly in between releases.
They release new versions every few years and let it sit largely unmaintained between versions I believe. It isn't a distribution for the faint of heart. If you plan to actively use it there will a lot of manual work involved keeping things running.
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Before I discovered Trisquel I used gnewsense for quite some time, and I found it to be a terribly frustrating experience. Not only is the software out of date and poorly maintained, their community is not very welcoming either.
I believe that Trisquel is the #1 100% Free distribution because its up to date, and has a wonderful community.
That was very frustrating for me too. All my partitions was in ext4. So when i booted gnewsense i coudn't use my DATA partition. Then it use grub legacy, wich is a nightmare for me. And then each i boot i could hear 4 bips... ^^
I also believe Trisquel is the #1 !
Distros with recent updates:
1. Trisquel
2. Parabola
3. Ututo
4. Dynebolic
In my opinion, lack a free distro based on Fedora and updated, Blag is poorly done.
Trisquel is the best of all. Beautiful, simple, clean and fast, no comparison. The other free distros(Blag, Dragora, Musix, Venenux) do not matter, they are more of the same.
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In what way is BLAG poorly done? It is lagging behind Fedora releases, yes - but only because it is a lot of work on few people. You are welcome to join if you'd like to make it more proper:-)
Also, gNewSense is more or less in sync with debian squeeze if you debootstrap the latest version "parkes". Installed it last week, and it is quite nice - the 64-bit repo seems unstable, but i386 (and probably mipsel) works fine.
The new Dynebolic will be on one of my machines as soon as it becomes installable, but I also recommend testing Musix 3 - it is beta with a bug or two at the moment, but will be great when released.
Of the above, I mainly use BLAG and Trisquel - but all the free distros I tried have some excellent features of their own that shouldn't be missed.
Thanks to BLAG we have linux-libre.
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Blag has languished since Jeff Moe left. There have been attempts to get it going again, and there is a 14 K release (based on Fedora 14). But there aren't enough people developing it. It was my first libre distro.
We're in this together. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Let's not get sucked into some divide et impera bullshit.
It's a good thing there are many free distros. And every single one of them is doing very important work.
But we can say the truth...
On Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:26:53 +0100 (CET)
name at domain wrote:
> We're in this together. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
> Let's not get sucked into some ''divide et impera'' bullshit.
>
> It's a good thing there are many free distros. And every single one of them
> is doing very important work.
Right. Additionally it is difficult to make a ranking. Based on what principles?
The only ranking, based on clicks in a defined time period, I know of is at distrowatch.
At the moment for free distros it looks like this (taken from http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity)
One year statistics
Rank Name
83. ConnochaetOS
87. Trisquel
129. UTUTO
177. dyne:bolic
181. BLAG
188. Musix
226. Dragora
280. Parabola
290. Venenux
6 month statistics
Rank Name
92. ConnochaetOS
96. Trisquel
167. dyne:bolic
177. UTUTO
177. Musix
195. BLAG
199. Parabola
226. Dragora
283. Venenux
3 month statistics
Rank Name
84. ConnochaetOS
109. Trisquel
162. Parabola
164. UTUTO
165. dyne:bolic
171. Musix
190. BLAG
218. Dragora
280. Venenux
One month statistic
Rank Name
54. ConnochaetOS
109. Trisquel
147. Parabola
152. UTUTO
156. dyne:bolic
158. Musix
194. BLAG
210. Dragora
273. Venenux
El 24/02/12 20:03, Henry Jensen escribió:
> On Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:26:53 +0100 (CET)
> name at domain wrote:
>
>> We're in this together. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
>> Let's not get sucked into some ''divide et impera'' bullshit.
>>
>> It's a good thing there are many free distros. And every single one of them
>> is doing very important work.
> Right. Additionally it is difficult to make a ranking. Based on what principles?
>
> The only ranking, based on clicks in a defined time period, I know of is at distrowatch.
> At the moment for free distros it looks like this (taken from http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity)
Congratulations Connochaetos!
Nevertheless we should bring free distros more downloads in order to
raise them by 10 so that we can reach at least the top 10 downloaded
distros. Any idea to pump up the download rate of free distros?
On Fri, 24 Feb 2012 23:15:32 -0500
Quiliro Ordóñez <name at domain> wrote:
> El 24/02/12 20:03, Henry Jensen escribió:
> >
> > The only ranking, based on clicks in a defined time period, I know of is at distrowatch.
> > At the moment for free distros it looks like this (taken from http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity)
>
> Congratulations Connochaetos!
>
> Nevertheless we should bring free distros more downloads in order to
> raise them by 10 so that we can reach at least the top 10 downloaded
> distros. Any idea to pump up the download rate of free distros?
Measuring downloads is difficult, especially if you distribute over
different channels, e. g. mirrors, bittorrent, etc.
For ConnochaetOS I can say, that the ISO of 0.9.0 was downloaded 20,000
times the server since its release in August 2011 - torrents not
includes. How that results in actual installations, I have no idea.
As for becoming more popular, that is a matter of marketing and
self-positioning in the market. This topic is going to be slightly off
topic on this list and perhaps should be discussed at another place.
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There is nothing wrong with multiple free distributions. In particular if there is a good reason for it. In some cases it gives the community the opportunity to test certain features. Other distributions then implement those features when they become more stable and easy to implement.
A good example of this was knoppix. There was a distribution before that too which got things rolling although died. Now all distributions are "live" and can be used without installation.
There are some privacy enhancing distributions too for instance. Some of these distributions are so strict that the majority of users would never be able to use them. Some of the features though may one day make it into the mainstream distributions. There are some features I would love to see added. For instance the Tor project releases anonymity enhancing software thats included in some distributions in addition to other stricter features like apparmor (developed by yet other projects). Some main stream distributions include limited versions of apparmor. Others include SELinux.
Not all GNU/Linux distributions are available as live systems. I am thinking of ConnochaetOS, which is 100% free (succesfuly examined by the FSF although it has not listed it yet). ConnochaetOS is made for really old hardware. It is tested on a Pentium I with 64 MB of RAM and 2 GB of hard drive! Such computers do not have enough central memory to run a live system.
That is another example of the importance of having different 100% free GNU/Linux systems to fill different needs.
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I have not heard of this distribution, but it looks great. I really like to see old hardware revitalized with linux. I have a couple of machines that I will enjoy this system, thanks for the link!
You meant GNU/Linux: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html ;-)
Trisquel has the advantage of using Ubuntu packages which are not only well supported and up to date, but users can install a PPA for pretty much anything they want. I've tinkered around with Debian in the past and have to admit that the refinement of the Ubuntu codebase made me stick with it. Especially the LTS releases for Ubuntu and Trisquel.
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