February 18th, 2003
Benjamin Vander Jagt
benvanderjagt@adelphia.net
ICQ: 6730681
AIM: benvanderjagt
In my last Yoper
review, I gave a less-than-glowing personal experience with the
most looked up (on DistroWatch) Linux distribution. In fact, I
recommended against the distribution. Today, as I was browsing DistroWatch.com, I saw a new
release available! Let's see what's in the box...
System installed onto:
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1700+
Mommyboard: Jetway 867
RAM: 512MB PC133
Sound Card: Sound Blaster Live Value
Network Card: D-Link PCI network card
Video Card: ATI All-In-Wonder 128 with 16MB RAM
CD-ROM: Verbatim 48x12x50x CD-RW
Mouse: 3-button Genica PS/2
Hard Drive: 80GB 7200RPM Western Digital
Cable internet connection
The installation process was virtually identical. The only
difference I noted was that it estimated "10 to 30 minutes" for
installation as opposed to the original "5 to 20 minutes". Again,
it took 5 minutes, which is quite quick, especially for a Linux. I
think it beats Windows 95 for installation time.
This experience has been better so far. For example, I'm writing
this report on Netscape 7.02 in my Yoper installation.
CFDISK was just as confusing as ever for newbies and a bit confusing
for me. It kept complaining about an MS-DOS partition still
existing on the drive. I don't know what that was all about, but
it didn't seem to make any difference. It's still plagued with
artifacts as text can shift up and the program doesn't clear the screen.
Yoper is still the only distribution I've dealt with that doesn't let
me choose packages to install nor split the installation's directories
(/home, /boot, etc.) into separate partitions. The only desktop
available is KDE. It's the most popular and is indeed very
powerful and efficient. This isn't a big deal, since I can just
download and install any desktop I want, thanks to Yoper being
compatible with all the major packaging methods.
Speaking of Yoper being compatible with all the major packaging
methods, I tried installing Kopete
from RPM, but it failed on not one, not two, but forty-six dependencies.
I'm a little too lazy to hunt around for them all. However,
this shows that RPM works (in theory) in Yoper. (Let's face it,
how often do RPMs not need extra downloads? I really
like the packaging management of RPM, but it can be a real pain at
times.) I was pleasantly surprised to see that RPMBUILD was
included and seemingly fully functional. I forgot to check this
in the first Yoper I tried.
Another problem I ran into with RPM is trying to install something by
clicking on the icon instead of trying "rpm -ivh blah blah" at the
console. It came up with KPackage, which looks quite nice, but
when I told it to install, it asked for my password, which I entered,
and it just gave me a console.
Of course, Red Hat is not much better for RPMs, and they invented the
things! Red Hat Linux has a bad habit of breaking it's GUI RPM
support, usually when it encounters a bad RPM. It then refuses to
install things with uninformative error messages. Installing with
"rpm -ivh" still works fine from the console, and I prefer the
verbosity of it, so I end up just doing that.
There doesn't seem to be an ICQ client included. This is a
surprise, since many (if not most) Linux desktop users who use an
instant messenger use ICQ. AIM proliferates widely due to it
being included in nearly every piece of software you download for
Windows, and it has probably surpassed ICQ, despite the fact that ICQ
is better in every way. If you use Yoper and need an ICQ client
but can't get Kopete to work, try Netscape 7.02. It's very easy
to install and the servers are usually very fast. I regularly
download at around 350k/sec by cablemodem. Mozilla also has a
built-in IM client. (I've always been confused by the fact that
sometimes Netscape has an ICQ/AIM selector and sometimes it's only AIM.
For this reason, Mozilla may be your best bet. Plus, if you
install Mozilla successfully, you can add Galeon, which has to be the
best internet browser I've used.)
I still can't get over the "Load LILO" warning screen. The
warning is a little confusing, which is understandable, considering how
tough it is to learn English as a second language, but it ends with
"NOTE: You have been warned!" which is likely to scare someone
into selecting "No". This would normally be a bad decision for
most users, except for the fact that this is the only Linux
distribution I've used so far that did not have any meaningful
provisions for booting to a Windows partition. Red Hat, for
example, gives a GRUB configuration screen during installation, which
means that even if Linux totally fails to run on your system, you can
still get into Windows. With this LILO configuration, it's
possible to add a Windows listing (if you know what you're doing), if
Linux boots up and runs right! If it doesn't, then you need a boot
disk and plenty of Linux knowledge or you need to boot from a Windows
disk (assuming it's '95, '98, or ME) and run "fdisk /mbr".
You have been warned!
By the way, when it just says "YOS" in the corner with a countdown on
the bottom right, that's supposed to be your bootloader menu. If
you press something other than enter, it'll just sit there until you
finally do press enter.
I also recommend that Yoper not have the text "Failed" show up for
"Init" when booting. It says "Failed" until it successfully
starts. This could be disturbing. Nobody likes warnings or
errors. Think of how worried people got when they first installed
their bootlegged Windows 95 and saw a message that said, "This program
has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down."
Bootup is very quick, but programs don't startup or run any faster than
normal.
Red Hat is much more gentle to Windows using who are coming over to the
dark side (or was it "from" the dark side? I can't remember.)
My sound card was mostly detected properly. I have yet to find a
distribution that turns on EMU10K1 support in the kernel at install
time. Actually, I have never been successful compiling it into
the kernel myself, since the sequencer device seems to disappear.
Timidity (and therefore KMidi) still only has a piano and a
guitar, and they still take several seconds to stop after closing the
program window, and the sound fades in and out, making enjoyment of a
MIDI impossible.
My video card wasn't detected right, but I was able to tell it what the
chip was. I wanted to see if OpenGL were installed, so I
downloaded and installed Tux Racer
demo. It didn't complain at installation, but when I try to run
it, I get "libesd.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or
directory."
I downloaded and installed the Quake III Arena demo, which only ran the
install script in text mode and only if I'm superuser. It
installed, but when I tried to run it, it informed me that OpenGL was
not installed. Some of my systems have nVidia video cards, and
before I knew about the drivers from nVidia themselves, I spent several
nightmarish days trying to install Mesa and OpenGL, but to no avail.
I hope I don't have to go through that to get 3D working in
Yoper. I had to quit Q3 by feel, since the controls didn't show
up.
XAWTV is not included, which is really no surprise, since few Linux
users use their boxes for TVs. Therefore, I doubt that GATOS in
installed. It's really extremely easy to install. It's the
instructions that are difficult. (Just extract an archive into
the /usr folder and reboot...duh!) Considering how small, simple,
and open-source GATOS is, I'm surprised it's not installed with more
Linux distributions. (Go for the gold, Yoper! Provide easy
TV support for ATI capture cards and MIDI support for the EMU10K1 and
Turtle Beach WaveFront chips, and many people will switch to Yoper to
avoid headache. It's a possible competitive edge.)
The desktop still looks awful! I'm not sure if the
background is 16 or 256 color. The text in the background is
grainy, too. It's like someone grossly expanded an old standard
font onto the desktop.
Many things feel like SuSE, from the centralized configurations (very
very nice!) to the icons, to the startup sound. (Remember the
sound test in SuSE?) I found the system sounds to be simple and
satisfying.
I had something interesting happen when I opened the KDE menu. I
moved the mouse up to a menu, and it slowly slid open, whereas every
other time it instantly popped open. That doesn't bother me very
much, but it has happened a couple of times.
The network card was seen properly this time! I'm still
not sure what's going on with Samba. When I try opening "smb:///"
in Konqueror, it says that maybe it's not running. There don't
seem to be any sort of server configuration programs with Yoper.
I might have been able to turn on the SMB service from the
console.
I tried out Kaboodle. It's good to know that it supports seven
unknown file formats. (As in, they are listed as "unknown".)
Of course, MPEG support already installed gives Yoper some points
where Red Hat is avoiding the formats due to licensing issues.
(Yup, MP3 is patented. You can't patent mixed drinks, but
you can patent software. Go figure!)
I love that you can have Yoper remember the superuser password.
This makes desktop usage much easier. When I first started
using Linux, I was quite discouraged by the fact that you have to keep
entering the root password over and over. There's a console
command to give superuser control to a user, but I don't know how to
use it. It looks complicated. (Sorry, I can't for the life
of me remember what command that was.)
XMMS defaults to the OSS, which is much better than eSound. The
default skin is nice, too. Yes, MP3 support is built in.
:-) Unfortunately, there is only one skin. Easily
remedied, but I wonder how thin this installation is if they're
stripping items like skins.
The included games leave a lot to be desired of you are interested in
playing pre-packaged games, but Linux games really aren't that hard to
install.
Overall,
Yoper is Much better now. It's still a pain in the rear if you
want to add software or install drivers. Nothing crashed or froze
this time, though, and since the network card worked, I was seriously
emancipated compared to last time, when I was basically stuck inside
the box.
When I first heard that Red Hat's Bluecurve tagline was "It just
works", I thought, "Is that all? It doesn't do anything more than
that?" Now I see how valuable "It just works" can be. In
summary, I would still not recommend Yoper for anyone, but their
progress is quick and steady. I hope the Yoper gang doesn't get
disappointed and just quit. It seems to me as though Yoper is
working frantically because of the enormous boom in fame they have
received. Their website is many times better than it was just a
couple months ago. They seem to be growing pretty well.
Let's see what comes out next.
I've seen very few Yoper reviews online. One, from a site that
obviously liked Yoper from the start, said "In short, try it." I
would only recommend trying it if you have an extra hard drive
to install it on.
Installation is confusing and lacks any sort of customizability.
It's crummy as a server due to it's rather thin set of packages.
Very little of the packaged software actually works.
Hardware support, although seemingly better than before, still
lags way behind most other distributions. It's choc full of bugs.
The one thing that seems promising, the wide array of package
managers, doesn't seem to work right. If you try it, you're
likely to spend quite some time chasing down dependencies.
Bootup, shutdown, and installation are very fast! It's a very
weak operating system, though, especially for a Linux.
I would recommend that Yoper be put back in the oven for a little while
longer. I know a good product will eventually come out that will
serve as a good segue for the masses who will eventually switch from
Microsoft as the Linux penguin begins to show his fangs.
To avoid confusion, lest anyone think that I own or am
afiliated any of these things, these are the trademark owners for
mentioned software:
Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Yoper is a trademark of YOPER HOLDINGS LIMITED.
Red Hat is a trademark of Red Hat, Inc.
Bluecurve is probably a trademark of Red Hat, Inc.
SuSE is a trademark of SuSE Linux AG.
Windows 95 is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
Quake III Arena is a trademark of Id Software (Inc?).
Fuzzy Wuzzy was a woman?
Tux Racer is a trademark of Sunspire Studios Inc.