Hymera Open Not so easy and stable

My story about this new debian based distro goes like this :: although the DW Hymera page says it is multilingual including en but they installer is only italian and all you have to do during installation is to do a guess work plus the installer is not easy at all as compared to what Hymera people say, and after installation the system refuse to boot at all beyond GRUB:::something related to kernel???

I adopted a different method for installing Hymera:::grabbed a lenny netinstall cd:::installed base system and added hymera repo ( http://mirror.hymera.it/standard/ ) removing lenny official repos and installed full hymera system maintaing ext3 file system instead of ext4 and lenny kernel . You can see my Hymera installed system in these screenshots.

 
Now the repository from hymera has huge packages available but lots of packages are still missing and you have to re add lenny official repos to get a working system despite the warning from hymera team to use only their own repos. Also you have to set keyboard ley out from italian to en.

This distro has potential but needs lot of work and despite the adds given by hymera at DW this distro is not yet ready for its claimed potentials and I am sure not everybody would either think of or adopt an alternate method of installing this distro as I did.

To be honest and not too critical it doesn`t have something really exciting except some latest packages e.g Open Office which is again broken, ext4 file system and latest kernel which gives problem after installation .

The boot loader gets installed to mbr: I checked grub menu to confirm but something is wrong with the kernel that prevents system to boot at all and many has reported this issue on their forum.

Still wish best of luck to Hymera team .

How to install GRUB & set repositories for ALT Linux 4.1.1 Desktop

ALT Linux is a Russian Desktop Linux and Alexey "Ktirf" Rusakov is the Head of Systems development dept. ALT Linux Technology. He announced the availability of an updated release of ALT Linux "Desktop" edition, version 4.1.1 today on 15/01/2009.

This updated release of ALT Linux "Desktop" edition 4.1.1 also offers an English only install DVD with English as the default language so that those who want to install ALT Linux in English will not be choosing English from the cryptic Russian letters on boot menu by pressing F2.

The English only DVD of ALT Linux can be downloaded from the main ALT Linux Server.

There are two small issues I want to mention here regards ALT Linux Desktop which might be of interest to many.

1: How to install GRUB on ALT Linux

LILO is the default boot loader for ALT Linux and somehow ALT Linux team loves to stick with LILO despite the fact that most of the latest desktop distributions are switching over to GRUB than LILO e.g Vector Linux due to many reasons which is a separate topic. I personally like GRUB , thanks to "silicium" one of the development team member of ALT Linux Desktop who sent me this ALT Linux Wiki page for how to install GRUB on ALT Linux.

2: How to choose ALT Linux Repositories for Desktop Version.

ALT Linux Desktop should be set on Desktop/current repositories rather than on branch or Sisyphus which are equivalent to Debian "testing" & "sid" accordingly. I thanks "thresh" for clarifying this ALT Linux repositories setting to me. So you can enable these repositories on your ALT Linux Desktop 4.1.1 to if you want all the security updates/updated packages and stable softwares packages.


rpm [updates] ftp://updates.altlinux.org/4.1 i586 updates
rpm [updates] ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/ALTLinux/4.1/branch i586 classic
rpm [updates] ftp://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/ALTLinux/4.1/branch noarch classic

I will add the recommendations of Alexey Rusakov the Head of Systems development dept. ALT Linux Technology regarding the repositories for ALT Linux Desktop 4.1.1 in his own words here which he sent me in an email regards the settings for repositories.

"Concerning repositories - try our new 'Update sources' module in ALT Linux SystemManagement Center, it is much more obvious than the list in Synaptic :)And yes, you'll be able to run Synaptic from it afterwards.Under the hood, it is rather simple anyway: we have branch/4.1 repo,that is a branch new distributions are built on; we have 4.1.1/Desktop,which is the repo of the vanilla Desktop distro, and 4.1/updates, thatis updates to Desktop. thresh was right, using 4.1/branch is not reallyrecommended, they may be some occasional instabilities there. Use4.1/updates instead, it is as stable as we can make it. "

"

I wish everybody happy home computing with the latest ALT Linux Desktop 4.1.1 !

Lapis Linux KDE4 ,Can Anything be more pretty than this?

Erkan Kaplan is a workaholic , never tiring guy who is on the pursuit of something interesting and pure from GNU/Linux.

I installed the GNOME version of recently release Lapis Linux and installed KDE 4 on it as somehow I am unable to live with GNOME. I was facing problems here and there and Erkan Kaplan was never hesitant to help me with those issues.

He personally prefers KDE 4 than KDE 3 as he believes KDE3 has no more future. I was constantly pushing him for issues I was facing with my Lapis Linux KDE4 and then came a news from him that he is working on a pure KDE4 version of Lapis Linux .

It was hardly a week and here is the KDE 4 Lapis Linux released. I am posting from the Live DVD of it at the moment . I have tested many KDE 4 distributions and nothing could be as pretty as this Lapis Linux KDE4 desktop is.Erkan has put all his best efforts to make this version in a very short time.The Lapis Linux KDE4 can be downloaded from Lapis Linux official site .It is a DVD ISO with size over 700MB so you have to burn it to a DVD.

There is another good news with this release. Those who want Lapis Linux in English are not supposed to worry about setting locales this time. Just press F2 on boot menu and your Lapis system will boot to this nice looking desktop in English language .

Installation is straightforward from the icon Lapis Linux Harddisk Installer with no hassles.The most beautiful part of the Lapis Linux Installer is that it added my BRLIX installation automatically to the GRUB menu so I don`t have to worry about reinstalling GRUB later and chain loading BRLIX.

Once you have installed Lapis Linux you boot into a perfect KDE4 desktop and the only words I can say are " Just enjoy it " :)

I am a big fan of PCLiunxOS, KDE and wanted to use KDE4 and lots of distro-hopping did not satisfy my demands .

I have no hesitation to recommend Lapis Linux to all those who want PCLinxuOS based distribution and want to have KDE4 . There might be some issues but I saw so many issues with openSuse,Fedora 10, Kubuntu 8.10 so these issues seem minor to me.Lapis Linux might not be up to the highest mark and standards but it does need testing and exploration.

I appreciate the devotion of Erkan Kaplan and I will request and urge everybody to test his work and offer him words of appreciation.

I am loving it !