

Fuduntu: Back to Fundamentals, Gets it Right - tildeslashblog
http://www.linuxadvocates.com/2013/03/fuduntu-back-to-fundamentals-gets-it.html

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claudius
I never understand why people spend ages trying out fifty different distros if
they could get just what they want if they spent half that time actually
installing/adapting one distribution with a reasonably broad package base.

Or, put differently: Given the relatively high dimension of preference space
(desktop environment, window manager, file manager, icon set, web browser,
editor…), it appears strange to me to assume that more than just a few users
will be satisfied with the _default_ DE, WM, file manager etc. installed by a
distro. Just five different DEs, five different WMs and five different file
browsers already give 125 possible choices. How, then, is it sensible to judge
a distribution by its default programmes, especially since these can often be
easily swapped out against others.

Surely, the main points in considering which distribution to choose should be
the low-level ingredients (package manager, for example) and update policies
rather than the default icon theme.

~~~
mirkules
"I never understand why people spend ages trying out fifty different distros
if they could get just what they want if they spent half that time actually
installing/adapting one distribution with a reasonably broad package base."

Because if you have to do it more than once, or, say onto 100 desktops in a
work environment, the time spent searching for a distro will pay off. Besides
that, some people want stuff to work the first time - and every subsequent
time - without having to worry "oh I need to install this on another computer,
but I can't remember all the steps I took" in order to get to real actual
work.

~~~
claudius
If you just want the same programs on your laptop and desktop, use something
like dpkg --get-selections and dpkg --set-selections (for APT, I’m sure
RPMland has an analogue). If you also want the same configuration, copy over
your homedir or the dotfiles therein and be happy.

Futhermore, testing n distros is not really my definition of ‘work the first
time’, nor can you expect that what worked a year ago still works two releases
later.

Your point about 100 desktops in a work environment also strikes me as
slightly odd, given that I would consider using Puppet, Chef or possibly NFS
mounts (depending on the exact setup) rather than configuring/installing 100
desktops individually.

~~~
mirkules
Point taken about Puppet/Chef.

As far as same programs, I would still have to load them the first time and
know what to look for. So in addition to stuff I need for work (e.g. LAMP
stack), I would have to Google around (more than once) for stuff that I know
comes with other distros (example of slight annoyance: vim vs. vim-tiny:
thanks, Ubuntu). It's just a little bit less work.

But the beauty of Linux is that we can make these choices willfully :)

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jimparkins
Sounded great until I read that Fuduntu does not come with Apt or Deb and uses
Yum/Rpm instead...

"Apt is not installed with Fuduntu. Yum (Yellowdog Package Manager) is the
replacement. For more help on yum, "man yum" from a terminal, or google "yum
howto"."

"The "debi" package installer is not included. Instead, the "rpm" command can
be used to install .rpm packages. For more help on rpm, "man rpm" from a
terminal, or search the internet for "rpm install howto"."

~~~
INTPenis
Speaking as a former Debian fanboy, current avid Debian/Ubuntu user, Yum isn't
too bad. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it had rollbacks. And with 3rd
party repos, you can get just as current, if not more current than Debian
Sta(b)le, software.

~~~
LukeShu
I'm a fan of pacman, but find apt/dpkg acceptable (barely). My biggest two
beefs with yum/rpm are that it does not track "explicitly installed" vs
"installed as a dependency" (dpkg does, but it's fuzzy), and that when
processing dependencies, it does a brute-force recursive crawl instead of
building a tree.

~~~
elehack
Modern Yum does track explicit vs. dependency installs, though this is not
very visible in the UI. There are ways to query the Yum database for it,
though.

Yum also has an option (disabled by default) to remove unneeded auto-installed
dependencies when removing packages (set clean_requirements_on_remove=yes in
/etc/yum.conf)[1]. This option does not remove manually-installed packages
(though the docs are not clear on this point, unfortunately).

1\. <http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/56056>

~~~
LukeShu
That's good news! My latest experience was with CentOS and Fedora installs at
my last job, but most of the installs there were a bit older.

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iNate2000
That didn't sound "fundamental" to me. The author likes the distro, and it
sounds good to me too. But I missed how any of his favorite features were
fundamental to the Linux desktop.

~~~
tfinch
Absolutely my feeling too. The review fairly swiftly turns into a list of what
programs are installed. Let's face it, all of these are available in the repos
of pretty much all distros. The rest of the features seem to be visual tuning
and customisation.

I haven't tried Fuduntu, but may be tempted at some point, and I can
appreciate the amount of work that has gone into it, but this review doesn't
really sell it for me.

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BHSPitMonkey
Under-the-hood decisions aside, this distro seems to fairly closely match the
philosophy of Elementary OS [1] (which, admittedly, seems to be "follow OSX").
One main difference is that, whereas Fuduntu uses rpm/yum, Elementary OS is an
Ubuntu fork and uses its repositories (dpkg/apt).

[1] <http://elementaryos.org/>

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Wow, that's by far the best looking Linux distro I've seen. Judging from the
screenshots, Fuduntu, like most distros, is pretty fugly. ElementaryOS
actually looks like it has someone making UX choices and creating a consistent
design language. The system font isn't great and type could really use some
font smoothing, but that's the case with all Linux distros I know of.

They're even working on a curated App Store:
<http://elementaryos.org/journal/introducing-appcenter>

I think this is exactly what Linux needs to become a platform consumers like
to use. Once it's out of beta, I'm definitely going to install ElementaryOS.

Screenshots: <http://elementaryos.org/journal/when-its-ready>

~~~
mehrzad
>Wow, that's by far the best looking Linux distro I've seen

Have you seen any Window Manager only (without Desktop Environment) desktops?
They're very nice, even nicer than OS X or Windows. Examples:

<http://www.anony.ws/i/2013/03/28/3BtzL.png>

<http://www.anony.ws/i/2013/03/28/dV2Ac.png>

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Yah, sorry, don't like it one bit. I don't understand how you could think that
works better for consumers than OS X or Windows. I do think the desktop
metaphor is on its way out, though (see iOS and Win8)

~~~
mehrzad
>better for consumers than OS X or Windows

I didn't mean to imply that. I just said it looks nicer, but I guess it
doesn't appeal to some people. I like a desktop-style workflow more than a
mobile one, but I guess it may be worse for normal consumers, but that's not
what I am.

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renke1
I am pretty happy using Debian testing with xfce4. It also gives you a
minimalistic and traditional desktop. It's perfect for me because I am
actually too lazy to configure some fancy window manager and other stuff.
Also, everything just works out of the box.

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kriro
I have an Aspire One Netbook (Edit: different model, mine is a 722 with 4GB
Ram, 1.333 dual core processor, 320GB HDD) like the OP and run Xubuntu on it
which works perfectly fine (in case someone is looking for alternatives to
Fubuntu).

Might give Fubuntu a try some day for kicks, wasn't aware it existed. I'm
perfectly happy with Xubuntu though, I also run it on my beefy desktop.

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christopheraden
The name choice seems bizarre to me. It's like a portmanteau of Fedora and
Ubuntu, yet has very few of the features of Ubuntu. Judging by the default
GUI, Facintosh seems more appropriate.

~~~
CanSpice
I keep reading it as FUDuntu -- Ubuntu for spreading Fear, Uncertainty and
Doubt.

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sciurus
Distrowatch reviewed it a while back at
<http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20130121#feature>

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notmarkus
Off topic, but Linux Advocates, your "Cloud Categories" widget is morbidly
obese. It's a mass of swirling red letters that looks like it's straight out
of a 4chan Zalgo-Text thread. It's using more memory than all my other Chrome
tabs _combined_.

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EugeneOZ
Everyone has own opinion what is "right".

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caycep
This distro needs a better name. The current one is kind of unfortunate...

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Zirro
My experience with the designs used by Linux desktop environments is limited,
but haven't the dock and some of it's (folder-)icons shown in the article[0]
borrowed a little too much from OS X?

I would much rather see them go about improving the GUI in their own way
rather than trying to imitate another OS.

[0]:
[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iQDB5aZg__U/UVHDwY33wAI/AAAAAAAAHb...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iQDB5aZg__U/UVHDwY33wAI/AAAAAAAAHbc/kk8H2Z7ZhzE/s1600/Workspace+1_008.png)

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bluedino
Cairo is a project to make a OS X-like dock. It's not enabled in any of the
main distributions (Fedora, Ubuntu...), but you can add it if you'd like.

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gcb0
Not at all!

Cairo is a vector graphic renderer for X (and others, but i think only for X
now)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_(graphics)>

~~~
bluedino
I'm sorry, the full name is 'Cairo-Dock' (<http://www.glx-dock.org/>)

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GhotiFish
why not replace the window manager?

Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water.

~~~
willismichael
Well, the first three letters _are_ FUD.

