Rev for Linux "Seal of Approval"

Thu Jul 6 14:47:34 EDT 2006

Hi Bob, 

I personally have Ubuntu linux (Debian family) installed on my laptop PC and
PC as the second OS. Really happy with this. Earlier have tried Fedora Core,
but this one used to have some annoyances with laptops and multimedia. Then
switched to Scientific Linux, multimedia was OK, still the main annoyance
was corrupted RPM and updating system due to the bug in Red Hat family
Linuxes. They likely got fixed this now, but as I have already switched to
Ubuntu - not going back to Red Hat ;-). 

Regarding the criterions I would suggest taking compliance with LSB 3.1
standard as the main criteria because that's what all the standard is for...
All serious Linuxes should implement this standard. 

Linuxes that are closiest to the imlementation of the LSB 3.1 are: Xandros,
Red Hat, Novel, Ubuntu. Also Debian Common Core (DCC) Alliance - this means
all Linuxes based on the stable Debian 3.1 (Sarge) are aiming at LSB 3.1.
The DCC includes Knoppix, LinEx, Linspire, etc... 

Viktoras 

-------Original Message------- 

From: Bob Warren 
Date: 07/06/06 21:07:36 
To: use-revolution at lists.runrev.com 
Subject: Rev for Linux "Seal of Approval" 

The Rev for Linux "Seal of Approval" doesn't exist. I'd like to suggest 
it, but perhaps under the more practical heading of "Currently approved 
Linux distros" for use with the Runtime Revolution programming system. 

There are hundreds of Linux distros out there, all at different stages 
of development, and with slightly different characteristics - 
particularly in the details of the file system. In my view, such a 
situation is perfectly natural and normal, and it is just a question of 
time before commonly-agreed standards and greater uniformity arise. We 
all remember what cars looked like a few years ago. You could, for 
example, tell an American car a mile off, and nobody could ever mistake 
it for an English Minicar, a German Beetle, or one of those French cars 
that looked like a baby's inverted pram. Nowadays, because of a natural 
process of optimization and other factors, it is very difficult at first 
glance to identify whether a car is American, Japanese, European, or 
whatever. 

>From a programming point of view, the current situation is very 
intimidating, not only for Runtime Revolution, but also for anyone 
hoping to program in Rev for Linux generally rather than for a 
particular distro. However, the first great hurdle has been overcome by 
Rev: the IDE runs successfully on just about any distro you can find, 
whether installed on the HD, or running on a ramdisk using a Live CD. 
Heck, it runs beautifully even on Puppy Linux! However, what we need to 
evaluate as Rev programmers is whether any particular distro is worth 
supporting at all in its current state, and whether the peculiar 
characteristics of its file system are worth catering for in terms of 
time and energy devoted to our programming efforts. 

A great way of evaluating a considerable number of the distros out there 
is to adopt the hobby of collecting live CDs. You just pop them in your 
drive, boot up your machine, and Bob's your uncle. Of course, if you 
have some kind of Linux already installed on your HD then this is a 
help, since a lot of Linuxes running in RAM make use of the HD's swap 
partition if one is available, but this is normally not essential, and I 
have never tried a live CD and had any kind of subsequent trouble with 
my Windows as a result of accidental interference with the HD. For 
anyone interested in trying out Linux together with Rev, there is a 
great list of live CDs at http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php 
which can be downloaded and burned. 

So what criteria should be used for selecting "Rev approved" Linux 
distros? I suggest the following stringent list: 

1. The distro runs or installs automatically (i.e. can be done by a 
layman) and configures all normal hardware, even on old machines, 
including Windows network printers, floppy diskette drives, etc. 

2. The distro plays all normal files (AVI, MP3, BMP, PDF, DOC, - i.e. 
common Linux AND Windows files) automatically "out of the box". By this, 
when the file is clicked or double clicked, it is already associated 
with an appropriate utility to play or show it, and the program doesn't 
break or lack codecs, etc. 

3. The Rev IDE (and consequently Rev standalones!) runs OK and looks good. 

Applying the above at this very moment, out of the 300 or so distros 
available, no more than a few are left. (I don't know the number 
exactly, because I haven't tried out anything like all the distros. 
Perhaps you can help with this evaluation.) And there are some 
surprises. I have always been a great fan of Ubuntu, and apart from its 
wonderful social philosophy, I think it shows the greatest potential of 
all the Linuxes, but at the moment it fails dismally over criterion #2. 
Red Hat Linux, one of the original most famous distros, supported 
indirectly by Rev in that they give special attention to "RPM" 
packaging, is such a big flop over criteria #1 and #2 that you might not 
even get as far as evaluating #3. Their new Fedora Linux - which looks 
like a copy of Ubuntu, except that it uses their own RPM packaging - is 
not much better, at least not on my old Pentium II with a very simple 
hardware configuration. In my limited experience, the only distros which 
roughly fulfill criteria #1-3 above are: 

a) Puppy Linux (!!) 
b) Linspire 
c) Kurumin (Brazilian Linux, an improved Knoppix) 

The case of MEPIS is rather tragic. It fulfills criteria #1-3 very well, 
but unlike the other Linuxes, Rev looks really crappy in it. The Rev 
font set (which appears to be independent of the system fonts chosen for 
the OS) is all small and spidery. 

Of course, other Linux users/experimenters are likely to disagree with 
my own subjective selection, and naturally the exact files for testing 
under criterion #2 is a thing which needs to be agreed upon. At this 
very moment I would have the tendency to suggest the following in 
relation to Rev's "seal of approval": 

I. Since Ubuntu is one of the most stable and popular distros out there, 
and it has a magnificent philosophy, I would "hang fire" on a Rev seal 
of approval until such time as criterion #2 is adequately fulfilled, 
hopefully in the next release ("Edgy Eft", due in 6 months or so). 

II. Try to define a SINGLE alternative distro for a Rev seal of approval. 

I therefore ask for your help in telling me what the best Linux distro 
is in your experience (approximating criteria #1-3 as defined), 
preferably one which can be tried from a live CD, and also what you 
think the most crucial file types for out-of-the-box playing are under 
criterion #2. 

Thereafter, at least theoretically, attention could be better focused on 
the peculiarities of the file systems involved and what recommendations 
could be made in obtaining fundamental system info through Rev (such as 
how to implement the specialFolder Path functions, where to find the 
fstab file - if indeed there is one - giving info about the floppy 
disk's existence, and so on). 

Regards to all, 
Bob 

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