In praise of Wolvix

[oithona]

Interesting Distrowatch commentary  on the proliferation of linux distros, and in particular, derivative distros. A nice response in defence, in particular of Wolvix, from the developer of GrafPup Linux:

While I understand the comments I tend to disagree on a few things. For instance, Wolvix (a Slax remaster) is just plain fun, one of the most fun distributions in a long time.

[Wolven]

Thanks for the link and quote. Always fun to read positive feedback of your work. =) Let's hope I can mange to keep the element of fun in future releases too. I think the games are an important of what he means, guess he, like the rest of us is sick and tired of the GNOME and KDE games. ;-)

I don't understand this whining over the amount of distros. The way I see it, is that it's natural evolution which have a mostly positive effect on the GNU/Linux world. many great ideas and solutions have come from underdogs.

Why is it that there are so many developers who feel inclined to start their own project instead of joining another, more established one?

Well for me it's about starting somewhere and acquiring knowledge and understanding how Linux works. And about satisfying my creativity and curiosity. When I have acquired the necessary skill set i might be able to help a more established distro.

How about Damn Small Linux and Puppy Linux? Yes, these are excellent projects, but they are not designed for the average user's desktop.

Not everyone _is_ an 'average user' although I recon there are plenty of 'avarage users' using both DSL and Puppy right this moment.

Where is MEPIS?, some would ask. Well, MEPIS was an exciting project when it started, but there are signs that it is starting to suffer from a burn-out - long development cycles, too many bugs, lack of solid income despite honest effort and endless hours of work, the founder's health problems... One has to wonder how long MEPIS will still be around. Compared to PCLinuxOS, it lacks energy and excitement.

So the developer is having a hard time at the moment, give him a break FFS. There are ups and downs in this life. Sounds to me like the one suffering from burn-out is the DistroWatch maintainer.


We all have to start somewhere. Be it a remaster, fork or from scratch. It's an evolution, the best and strongest designs and ideas live on to spire new creations. The rest dies off or fade into oblivion.

Why do we need all these different cars and car manufacturers, when we could all be driving Ford?

[oithona]

Wolven, you make two particularly good points.

Not everyone _is_ an 'average user' although I recon there are plenty of 'avarage users' using both DSL and Puppy right this moment.

20-odd years ago there was an average user, who used MS - he/she had little or no choice but to be an average user. The great thing about linux is that choice -if you don't like what's out there, adapt it and produce something you do like. Patrick Volkerding and Ian Murdoch did just that, and now so can anyone else. The foss model encourages divergence and learning. That is revolutionary.

Sounds to me like the one suffering from burn-out is the DistroWatch maintainer.

That was precisely my reaction, but I sympathise. When he started out with a nice little site monitoring and presenting 10 or so distributions, he can have had no idea what he was in for!

[Wolven]

Sounds to me like the one suffering from burn-out is the DistroWatch maintainer.

That was precisely my reaction, but I sympathise. When he started out with a nice little site monitoring and presenting 10 or so distributions, he can have had no idea what he was in for!

I sympathise too and I think he is doing a great job. In fact I owe him plenty for placing Wolvix on the front page right away, instead of on the waiting list. However I think he's insulting quite a lot of rather established distros in his article. Zenwalk, Vector, Puppy, DSL, MEPIS, etc. Guess he's just frustrated, he must be drowning in emails.

I for one like the diversity, but then again, I don't maintain DistroWatch.

[Eyes-Only]

Hi Wolven! (and sorry I can't spell the other person's name where it's not shown the way this reply system works But Hi also!)

New user here of the Wolvix Cub 1.0.5 Beta. And boy Wolven you hit it right on the head when you said, "Why all the different models/makes of cars when we could all be driving a Ford?" (Well, Bentley would be nice. Or how about a Lambourghini? hehe!)

"Diversity is the spice of Life!" When it comes to Linux I agree! I've dealt with Win95 and Win98---both before they were officially released to the world in pre-alpha stage. That's like a total of 14 years or more, I've lost track of how long. I've recently come over to Linux at the start of this summer and seeing this wealth of diversity has been the greatest thing for me! I'm a former beta tester of software (gave it up a few years back for health reasons) so you can just imagine what it's like for me seeing this new world---Paradise on earth!

And who is to determine the "average desktop user"? Grafpup (Nathan's build of PuppyLinux mentioned above) serves me quite well as my average desktop because it's so adaptable. It's like a Timex: "Takes a licking and keeps on ticking." (This is NOT to promote Nathan's Flavour of Linux here on the forum. Sorry!)

I also have ZenWalk installed on this drive of mine. While I might not agree with their philosophy of "One tool per job", it does have a plethora of desktops which I really enjoy. (KDE on ZenWalk is my favourite ATM.)

Ah! But all is not lost! Last night I happened upon the Crown Jewel of them all! Wolvix Cub 1.0.5 Beta! As I said, who's to determine the average user's desktop? Out of the four flavours you folks offer here your Cub exactly fits my needs! In fact, it finally did it for me---I'm now totally Windows-Free as I erased my 98se on /hda1 and installed that Work of Art there, Wolvix Cub.

You folks have really done a fantastic job with the WCP! On my computer it was a 4 minute install---imagine that? (1.4gig AMD Athlon 512megs RAM 1gig swap as I do heavy image editing.) I've never seen an installer that worked so well on a distro. And if I thought Cub flew on the LiveCD? You should see it on the hard drive! It's like it anticipates what I want to open before I touch the programme's name!

And in conclusion, as I hinted to above: It has exactly the programmes I need---and then some. In fact, as I go through the list, more in every department of what I need.

So I'm one of the more than 10,000 now (where this thread was started a while back). I hope to stick around when my time permits and spread the word about this fantastic work of art named Wolvix and point out to friends and family that it comes in a flavour to meet each of their needs.

Thank you my new-found friends!

Amicalement, / In Friendship,

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

"We never know just how much a kind word, or a gesture, will lift the spirits of a friend, or person, in need and heal them." (jimmymac)

[Wolven]

Greetings Eyes-Only and welcome to Wolvix.

Thank you for your kinds words and your enthusiasm. Glad you've found a distro to suit your needs.

Being a former beta tester, I recon you let us know if you encounter any problems. ;-)

One application per task is a bit too little for me. I like to include some alternatives, as people have different preferences and some apps supplements each other with features. There is also the luxury problem of choosing which apps to include, since there is so much great software too choose from. It's  like being a kid in a candy store. =)

[oithona]

Mornin' ...it's oithona, don't ask why. And thanks for the kind words on WCP - a real compliment from a pup user.

[Eyes-Only]

Hi oithona!

I take it you've seen the Pup installer, eh? Well.... Actually, I've only seen the PuppyLinux installer once. I never could get that installed to my hard drive as it doesn't support --throws hands up-- whatever my drive THINKS it is. On the boot-up it reports being an SCSI drive and on the modprobe it reports on being an IDE-SATA. I guess it's "take your pick". LOL!

But Grafpup, which is a fork of Puppy based off from either Puppy 1.0.4 or 1.0.9, has an installer somewhat similar. It's VERY simple... just graphical enough to be a GUI while still booted in the desktop. HEY! Here's a great description! "Ncurses in a small GUI-box." How's that?

But your WCP oithona? Whoa! I think more distros could learn a thing or two off from you with that. No joke! Somehow you two have figured out how to take what Wolvix has seen as a base for the keyboard, monitor, hardware, etc., and just incorporated all of this into the install, no questions asked (except for "I found other Linux partitions---wanna add them?" I wished more would ask this! ZenWalk doesn't!), and it does this great install, tells me everything what it's doing...

...all the while inside a beautifully-made GUI window. It's just---I'm amazed at the simplicity of this in regards to the job that it's doing, see? Other distros make such a fuss, and half the time they're so confusing you make a tonne of errors. With your installer it's, well... the closest thing to "faultless" that I've seen in a long time.

Well... I could say more but it'd be giving away too much personal data on myself. I can see I already made the mistake of saying I was a former beta tester of software and already "someone's" ready to induct me into the army. :-P I need to learn to keep quiet on forums. LOL!

j/k of course Wolven. Actually, I'm no good at all anymore in finding bugs. Seriously. I've had to give up many things on account of my health and I'm at the point now where I can't tell a bug from a feature.

Later folks!

Amicalement mes amis!

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

[oithona]

No I haven't used their installer, although I've downloaded 2.02 and been meaning to try it. I've played around with some of their other utilities, and read about how puppy is put together, and was impressed by this rare example of someone actually sitting down and thinking about something before wading in.

" Don't just do something, stand there! "

From your subtitle I'm guessing somewhere in French Canadia - if so, what you doin' up at 5.00 am?

[Eyes-Only]

Hi Oithona!

Sorry to take a bit to reply. Family life got in the way of "Real Life" (my computer LOL!).

Actually, the latest PuppyLinux out now is v2.10 and I'd recommend strongly upgrading to THAT if you'd like to "play around" as that's been entirely upgraded from gtk-1.0 to gtk-2.8---more "good stuff" now runs on it straight from BOTH Slackware AND Debian, not to mention the SEVERAL Puppy repositories which MU has brought together into one GUI. Talk about an awesome programme! It even works on my Grafpup Fork (based on Puppy 1.0.9 I believe, though I've upgraded it to gtk-2..

I'd have to say that Wolvix and Grafpup, then after that Puppy, are my 3 favourite distros, which just go to prove, in my opinion over all the distros I've tried, that you don't have to have 700megs on the CD (or 4 CDs) in order to have tonnes of great software, desktops, window managers, etc. Just look at Wolvix Cub: A window manager (Fluxbox) and a desktop environment (Xfce) and more software in each category than most should ever need---with the virtual wealth of GSlapt to boot should you desire more!

Ditto for Grafpup: In the Deluxe version you have not only the wonderfully themable IceWM (which I adore BTW), but if you move the several .sfs files from the disk to the hard drive where the pup_101.sfs file is saved (your settings) then you can have TWICE the amount of software, not to mention KDE-Lite. Upgrade to gtk-2.8 and with the upgrade comes Xfce and Thunar.

Between these three distros alone now, I'm not having my computer dictate to ME anymore, work is no longer drudgery, but instead I look forward to when I can sit down here at night with my cup of coffee and PLAY. This is what work seems like now thanks to these delightful distros, and mainly to Wolvix let's not forget here folks! This is THE icing on our little cake here, the cherry ontop of our Sundae!

Sorry... I'm letting the old editorialist in me come out. LOL!

To answer your questions Oithona: Not French Canada but close! French-Speaking Maine, USA, the original---and STILL---first French-speaking state of the USA. YAY! Louisiana got their French, 'Cajun, from us, "Les Akadiens".

However, I myself am not Akadien (I prefer the lesser-known spelling) though it IS my Mother Tongue, English being my second language. I'm half Native American, followed by French (from France, not Franco-American), and Irish. I was adopted into an Akadien family, hence why I speak the language. Unfortunately it's dying out of course, like everything else. While I didn't teach it to my children (though my son was begun in English, Akadien, and Arabic [my wife]) we decided finally to raise them as anglophiles. Then my eldest daughter thought it was best to pass the language on to her son. So often my 4 year old grandson and I will chatter away back and forth.

"Sometime" I'll explain to you why I'm nocturnal. I've taken up more than enough bandwidth already. My apologies!

Amicalement mes aminches!

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"