Antergos

 by +Max Wachtel 

Antergos is an arch-based distro that aims to be user-friendly. It is fairly new and the installer that I am using is the testing version which has come a long way. They recommend using either the suse usb maker or dd (I went with dd). My computer, a HP/Compaq 6510b laptop, booted into Gnome with the wireless working which is needed because the installer downloads fresh. The sound works and this laptop has touch controls for sound and wireless which are working. The installer (cnchi) came up automagically.

                                   I chose the graphical installer

                          Then cnchi checks internet and disk space

                                            and set the language

                                                  and location

                                              now set keyboard

                                         next, choose Desktop

                        and then you choose what software you want

                  next, you choose where you want to insall Antergos.

                                                then click GO!

      the install took about 15 min, then rebooted into my new system

                         the package mgr for Antergos is pacmanXG

                                   and there is a lot it can do

     but it is based on arch so you can do it all with the command line

Over the past few weeks I've tried the gnome version of ubuntu, fedora, openSUSE and debian and none of them was as responsive as Antergos. I must say though, I don't mind using the terminal but having a graphical interface makes looking for programs eaiser. Between the offical arch repo and the arch user repo, I found all the programs I use in other distros. As I've always heard good things about arch but taking the better part of a day just to get to a usable desktop is a bit much for me. Antergos gives me what I want without the hassle! And if you get stuck, they have a very frendly and helpful forum.

On the inside it comes with chromium, music/video players and as I chose to include proprietary software, all media played without fuss. I like Clementine for audio and VLC for video and using pacmanXG is fast and easier than some of the 'others' that seem to take forever to finish. LibreOffice software is included but I removed it and installed Kingsoft along with abiword and gnumeric. I use Google Chrome instead of chromium and getting it, Dropbox and SpiderOak installed was fast and they were up and running in no time. I have a small home network and the arch wiki was very helpful in getting samba going.

All in all, I am very impressed with this distro and will be sharing it with all my friends. It's ease of installation is a big plus in my book and using arch as a base, they have a large selection of software for their users.  -- Max

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Cloverleaf Dead: The Kids Pick Up Their Toys and Go Home

by Dietrich Schmitz

It began with Fuduntu's spring closure announcement, then its team opened a new project called FUSE, a spin of openSUSE.   And now comes another announcement by Shawn Dunn "...we are stopping development on Cloverleaf...":

"Due to many factors, the most important being lack of available manpower, we will be refactoring our efforts as part of the openSUSE project, whether in an official or non-official capacity. 

Initially, we had calculated on having 7-10 active developers available to work on Cloverleaf as an independent distribution, based on openSUSE. 

As things turned out, many of the developers we had factored into our plans had things pop up in daily life, whether personal or professional, and that has cut down on our ability to keep up with changes from the upstream and still develop Cloverleaf into a distribution that would have the same sort of polish that Fuduntu did.     Right now, we only have three active developers and it just isn’t possible to develop a satisfactory project with our current manpower."

That's too bad.  But perhaps the bar was set too high?  And to do anything with openSUSE would have meant developing a much deeper understanding of its internals which are quite broad and expansive.

I personally think that the brain trust of Fuduntu was largely a 'one man band'.  The take-away is that having any one individual in charge of development will always be risky, which left all of the Fuduntu community 'high and dry', unfortunately.

You should therefore ask yourself these questions:  Is my Distro being maintained by more than one programmer?, and, Will my Distro still be around in five years?

I happen to believe only a few Distributions will remain in five years and they will consist of Debian and derivatives, Ubuntu and derivatives, Mint, Fedora, openSUSE, Mageia, Arch Linux and Gentoo.

All others are cookie cutter Distros of sorts and have no real redeeming value beyond being mixes of the aforementioned base Distributions.  There's no innovation in that.  The programmers who maintain them will eventually leave their respective communities 'at the drop of a hat', kind of like what happened with Cloverleaf.    When they chose openSUSE following the initial Confused by FUSE episode, I suspected then the project wouldn't have longevity.  It turns out, I was right.

The Kids picked up their toys and went home.  So long.

-- Dietrich

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