[Comm-en] Personal review of ALT Linux Junior

[Michael Shigorin]

On Sun, Apr 06, 2003 at 12:08:46PM -0600, djbouley wrote:
> http://www.virtualsky.net/altlinuxreview.htm

Umm... thanks, but it's a common misconception that ALT Linux is
being based on Mandrake: since Master 2.0 it isn't so.

The installer and (to large extent) configuration software is
still the heavily patched versions of older Mdk ones (8.x I'd
believe), but the whole distribution isn't _based_ on (and isn't
"parallel" to) some particular Linux-Mandrake release.

So telling "ALJ2.2 is somewhat based on Mdk9.0" is incorrect.

> Mandrake -and Red Hat for that matter- use the RPM software
> package handler

Umm... sounds like RH borrowed from Mdk and not otherwise :)

> Junior utilizes the Synaptic front end application; a huge
[...]
> As an extra bonus, Junior also has the capability
> of installing softare using the Debian based apt-get 

Ugh :)  Synaptic is exactly an APT frontend :)

> To update and upgrade the system files, I simply had to click
> on four icon buttons in sequence... Update List - Upgrade All -
> Dist. Upgrade- Proceed.

(in fact, "upgrade" before "dist-upgrade" would do all the
"usual" job -- dist-upgrade is really needed only with major
changes like going for another major release or tracking the
unstable tree, security updates are simpler and not "dist"-wide)

> If the software you want is not in the Synaptic list, you can
> always go to a terminal window and use Apt-Get.

Did you really find something via APT that wasn't accessible with
Synaptic?  It really shouldn't be so since APT is being used both
ways 8-O

> For those of you who prefer non-Windows look-alikes, Junior
> also gracefully supports Window Maker 0.80.2.

Thanks, there was a hot battle over whether to "bloat" distro
with WM :-)  but WindowMaker team won -- still the CD had to grow
to 700Mb.  BTW, seems there were no problems with that on older
CD-R drive?

> XRipper

Grip? :)

---

Overall: thanks David, I'm heading to LWN and friends with the
link in my hands :-)

-- 
 ---- WBR, Michael Shigorin <mike at altlinux.ru>
  ------ Linux.Kiev http://www.linux.kiev.ua/