Distro Reviews 2

WetGeek

zmaint here's a good one

Thanks. Based on your recommendation, I'll put that ahead of Gentoo on my waiting list. (May never get around to Gentoo at all, but I haven't deleted the .ISO file yet.)

WetGeek

zmaint It's a little out of date

Hanna Montana Linux
That's the biggest understatement I've heard in a long tme. It was published 23 years ago, fergoshsakes! It's download site has been removed, and it's now in an archive (from which I was able to retrieve it).

Unlike Gentoo, though, it' just the kind of challenge I like. It'll be interestinig to see what Linux was like before I got my first taste of it. And who, of the male persuasion, could possibly pass up Hannah Montana?

For anyone thinking about joining me on this expedition, the download was fast. The .ISO is only 695.5 MiB. This will probably end up as my smallest distro ever. Certainly the most interesting.

WetGeek

Hanna Montana Linux
This is the first really different launch I've seen in a long time. No "live," of course, so it launched straight into language selection (with a surprising number available), and now it's ready to install itself.

The installation was surprising like one from today's distros. Same questions, same order. The only difference is that it's created an ext3 file system. I don't expect that to cause any problems, as this is just a VM, but I'll need to be careful how I shut down. As I remember, it's not a journaling file system yet, and I don't want to leave any changes on the VM when I close it for a reboot.

Looks like KDE. I should be right at home here. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's Plasma yet, but I was still pleasantly surprised to see Dolphin. The launch was very slow overall. It wouldn't surprise me if this is a 16-bit application. I'll stop writing now for a while, and go play with my new toy. Later ...

WetGeek

Hannah Montana Linux
Unfortunately, this delightful distraction with Hannah may come to a premature end. I've found no System Settings, thus no Display settings, and way to change the resolution beyond postcard size. That's also where I'd expect to find a Terminal, and I haven't found that anywhere else, either.

And there doesn't seem to be any nfs support. Although the networking support claims to include SMB protocol, when I try to look for my NAS using Samba, it claims that there are no such servers on the network. It's probably trying to use a version of SMB that my NAS server doesn't understand, 23 years later.

I didn't expect to find any modern browsers here, but it does have an /etc directory, and /mnt. I was hoping to be able to connect with my NAS shares, which would have pleased me. But with no NAS, and no Terminal, l can't think of anything more to experiment with.

I'm going to keep investigating further after lunch, but if I can't get any farther into this distro, I'll reluctantly need to kiss Hannah goodbye. Stand by ...

elfprince

Don't expect modern features after 23 years. 😆

WetGeek

Hannah Montana Linux
I was finally able to find an XML file that promised something about screen configuration, but I have no idea what to do with this. Apparently xrandr hasn't been invented yet, as HML hasn't been able to resize itself when I enlarged the VM window.

And no luck with the VirtualBov Linux additions, either. I got excited when I was able to load them into a virtual optical drive, and even open the mounted .ISO with Dolphin, but when I tried to run the script, I got an insufficient privilege error. And I could find no way to start Dolphin "as root," nor could I access a terminal in order to become root. So, it looks like another dead end.

(I just can't imagine any version of UNIX or Linux without a terminal. I suspect I simply haven't found the correct incantation to make it materialize, but I'm pretty sure I've looked everywhere by now.)

This was fun for quite a while, but I'm beginning to feel quite incompetent now, so I guess it's time to give it all up. On the bright side, it's allowed me to miss almost all of a Timothy Dalton James Bond movie (License to Kill) that my wife has been watching (his second and last one). We're binging through them in order, and next we'll be back to a few starring Pierce Brosnan (Golden Eye), and finally on to my favorite Bond of all time.

G'bye Hanna Montana (sigh). You're just not what you used to be anymore.

elfprince

WetGeek There are some Hanna Montana installation videos on youtube. Maybe helpful? Check the Duck?

WetGeek

elfprince There are some Hanna Montana installation videos on youtube

Thanks, but too late. I already dumped Hannah. And besides, if they're as old as the distro is, they probably wouldn't help anyway. I'm guessing it's not worth recreating the VM.

brent

WetGeek ya know elfprince had a point: you haven;t ventured into Slackware yet

brent

WetGeek good g*d what a detour🙂

wingman-4

WetGeek
Give Justin Bieber Linux a try 😀
http://biebian.sourceforge.net/

zmaint

WetGeek Thanks for taking one for the team! 😆

WetGeek

wingman-4 Give Justin Bieber Linux a try

Thanks, but I think I'll skip this one. The wrong persuasion, so to speak.

Time to check in with DistroWatch again, or maybe go back to binging James Bond movies (where every machine gun fires several thousand rounds without ever reloading, and never ejects a single cartridge case.)

brent

WetGeek binging James Bond movies

had quantum of solace and skyfall double feature a few days ago. I love daniel craig, then roger moore next. never got into the Dalton movies. as far as the Ian Fleming novels---all of which I've read--the closest physical resemblance to Bond imho was Pierce Brosnan who matches Fleming's description the closest. Brosnan had some great ones and some misses...but they all did. I find the Lazenby movie poignant and really liked that one.

wingman-4

WetGeek As I remember Justin Bieber and Hanna Montana Linux were introduced as a means to get kids to try Linux in Ubuntu bug # 1 days . https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1

WetGeek

brent you haven;t ventured into Slackware yet

You really do hate me, don't you!

elfprince

brent Roger Moore had style. Daniel Craig is an action machine. I guess, that's how they wrote the movie. More class in the old days, more laugh.

brent

elfprince Moore is probably #1...he delivered the best dirty puns and definitely had a style. Craig does not have that for sure. He has menace which is a new wrinkle.

brent

WetGeek not like that at all! my perception was that it was a not difficult distro. maybe i did not research enough?

WetGeek

brent my perception was that it was a not difficult distro

You could be right. I thought I had downloaded it and couldn't get a VM created from it, but I may be thinking of a different distro. Okay, ya got me. I'll look for a .ISO now and give it a try. Seems I should try to patch a hole in my collection, eh?

brent

WetGeek you're having a good time, and I'm not glued to Slackware....stay with your method: throwing a dart at distrowatch. there is a lot of undiscovered wild distros out there. I tried this one for a day called PsychOS. Indeed it was🙂

WetGeek

WetGeek I thought I had downloaded it and couldn't get a VM created from it

Slackware Linux
That's exactly what happened. As I got into the "installer," I immediately remembered what had happened the last time I tried this.

I got as far as trying to create some partitions, but every time I selected this option, it was like Groundhog Day. I was returned to the top of the list, and couldn't do anything else. Again and again.

I was pretty sure I knew how to create partitions without reading the installer help file first, but maybe I'll go back and do that now. There was no mention of that's being a requirement, but one never knows ...

... Nope, trying to get installation help just returned me to the top of this same list. Some help! Apparently I'm just not smart enough to install Slackware. This time I'll leave the .ISO file in my ISOs share, so maybe next time I'll remember that I've already tried it.

Such a shame, too. Slackware is the oldest Linux distribution that is still maintained. And it's the parent of a former favorite distro of mine. It would have been nice to be able to explore it.

Now it's just a choice between Distrowatch or James Bond.

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