Linux distro review

Product: Libranet 2.7 Pro: Apt-get feature makes it easy to install applications, lots of included apps Con: No GUI installer, difficult 3D graphics config, defaults to IceWM Summary:       Good distro, comes with a lot of software and is relatively easy to install. Could use a GUI based install and automatic configuration of 3D acceleration. Score:

Company: www.libranet.com

SuperGuide: Desktop Linux Blowout! Monday: Mandrake 9.0 Tuesday: Red Hat 8.0 Wednesday: SuSE 8.1 Thursday: Libranet 2.7 Friday: Lycoris Desktop/LX When the topic of Linux distros comes up, most people think of Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse or some other popular and well-known product. Each of these distros has a flashy GUI installer, a well known brand name in the Linux world and large distribution in stores like Best Buy, Circuit City and others. Earlier this week, we've looked at each of these, focusing on the new features and capabilities in the latest release.

But sometimes good things come in plain, even unattractive packaging. And that's the case with Libranet, one of the better kept secrets of the Linux world.

Libranet is a Debian based distribution. Debian, as you probably already know, is best known for its apt-get feature. Apt makes it extremely easy to install & configure software. Unfortunately the Debian developers have never gone out of their way to make their distribution easy to install and configure. It has never been aimed at the masses. Most of those using Debian have been part of the more elite Linux crowd.

Fortunately Libranet has made Debian accessible to pretty much anyone. If you can follow prompts on a text menu then you can install Libranet. It comes with KDE 3.03 and Gnome 2.0 as well as some other desktop choices.

Additional Linux Resources Linux.com: News, resources and software. Linux Today: News, products, jobs. Linux Online: Downloads, news, distros, documentation. Linux Journal.com: Monthly Linux magazine.

Editor's Note: We've also got an extensive list of features for the latest release, along with installation instructions and an FAQ with more resources for Libranet users.

We obtained the two Libranet 2.7 ISOs at the Libranet site, burned them to CDs and started the installation. We used the same machine that we used for our Lindows review - a Dell Dimension 4100 (1Ghz processor, 256MB of RAM and 40GB hard disk, sound blaster and Geforce 2 video card). Overall installation took about a half hour.

You won't find a fancy or pretty GUI installer like the one in Suse or some of the other distros. But what you will find are pretty simple on-screen directions via text menus. Libranet's install is essentially a tweaked version of Debian's. We'd like to see the Libranet developers add a GUI based installer - that would set some newbies a little more at ease with the install.

Libranet, unlike Lindows, does not allow users to run as root by default. During installation we were asked for a root password and then we were prompted to create a regular user ID and password.

Libranet comes with a disk manager tool that gives you three options: Automatically partition and layout drives Automatically layout drives (using existing partitions) Partition and layout drives.

The first option will give you one large partition and will blow away anything else on the machine. We opted for that since we were using the test machine. Libranet also comes with the GNU Parted tool if you need to resize existing partitions.

After we finished choosing our partition setup, Libranet made the initial installation and asked if we wanted to install its bootloader. We said yes and then it was time to pick our software packages. Libranet comes with a LOT of software. Here's a list of the categories of software that come with Libranet. PCMCIA Software Laptop Software Chat Software (IM, IRC, etc.) Dictionaries Documentation Text & Programming Editors File management software Financial software Games (more than 400MB of them) Email Office PIM Printing (drivers, daemons, scanning, file conversion) Shells & Terminal Emulators Audio (MP3, mixers, cd players) Toys System Utilities (system monitors, filesystem, compression, benchmarks, etc.) Picture & Video Internet Window Managers Java Open Office Math CD-R/RW Recording Emulators (Wine, DOS) Development Networking

There's quite a lot of software included with Libranet. You will find all the popular applications - The Gimp, Evolution, GAIM, Kmail (and all the other KDE apps), Galeon, XMMS (Libranet's version plays MP3s without any configuration, unlike Red Hat's latest) games and a whole bunch of other stuff, far more than I can list here. All these included applications make Libranet very valuable, compared to other Linux distros.

Unfortunately you can't pick individual packages (with the exception of Open Office), you have to install the whole applications category. Hopefully the Libranet developers will allow users to drill down into categories to snag individual packages in future releases.

Our package installs went well with one exception - the installer barfed when trying to install Acroreader. This caused the package installation to abort though the rest of the installation continued. We ended up restarting the entire install and decided to skip the category that the Acroreader was listed in (Picture & Video). When we did that the rest of the package installation went well, with no problems at all. We weren't sure whether the problem was in Libranet's packaging or if the CD had had some kind of burn problem when we created it.

Detection of our network card, sound card and video card went off without a hitch. It's not as slick as Lindows, for example, but the on-screen prompts were easy to follow and everything was automatically configured without any direct intervention from us.

We did run into a problem with 3D acceleration though. The default configuration did not turn it on, even after we'd downloaded the updated Nvidia drivers. Libranet needs to fix this and make it simple for users the way that Suse has. In Suse 8.0 it's pretty simple to download the Nvidia drivers then use Yast to turn on 3D acceleration automatically. In Libranet it's necessary to edit X11 config files by hand. It's past time for this to become unnecessary in Libranet too.

After everything was installed and configured we were taken to the Libranet login screen. We typed in our user name and password and then were taken to...an ugly and nasty looking little desktop. We were expecting KDE or Gnome but the default was instead IceWM. I'm sure that some folks like IceWM but we preferred Gnome. So we logged out, went back to the login screen, clicked on Session and changed the default to Gnome. A few seconds later we were right at home in Gnome 2.0.

The Gnome desktop is clean and it's pretty easy to get started even if you've never used it before. Bear in mind though that there are essentially three sets of menus - one for Gnome apps, one for KDE (which we liked since it's nice to have access to all of the great KDE apps right on our Gnome desktops) and one for Debian. The Debian menu is important, there's a ton of software listed under those menus.

Some newbies to Linux might find this confusing but, since Libranet is not really aimed at the Lindows crowd, we don't find anything wrong with handling the menus this way. As long as you understand this when using Libranet it's not a problem at all. All our favorite apps were there - Open Office, Galeon, GAIM and Evolution were all ready to go. We added a few icons for them by dragging the icon from the menu and dropping it onto the desktop. And that's about all we had to do.

We also checked out the KDE desktop and that too was fine. KDE 3.0 is there, in all its glory. But since we're Gnome people we quickly logged out and headed back to more comfortable desktop territory. Nothing wrong with KDE but Gnome floats our boat a little bit more.

Linux is often criticized for being difficult to configure and administer. Libranet has fixed that problem with a handy utility called Adminmenu that makes configuration pretty easy.