Linux for ordinary people through the eyes of a simple person
Hello, bright residents of Habrahabr. Remember, last November in the Linux for All blog we were told about the release of the first version of Simply Linux distribution ? The creators of this baby position him as a distribution for ordinary inhabitants of the planet Earth: managers, office workers, students, designers, a kind of open tool for the most part for the unassuming people who are not familiar with the Unix world. Some time has passed since the release of the release of this assembly based on ALTLinux, and the reputation of the system, thanks to some sources, has overgrown with moss the negative reviews of people who would like to appear competent in the eyes of others.
It so happened that I urgently needed to change the GNU / Linux distribution on my home machine. For several years of communicating with Linux, I happened to use different distributions: fedora, crux, gentoo, ubuntu. The latter has occupied its place of honor on the desktop for one and a half, and possibly two years. And, usually, on the desktop I have the co-development packages MonoDevelop, NetBeans with a bunch of plug-ins, the latest version JDK, LAMP and some others. Conclusion: I am not the most unassuming user (more on that below).
So, back to the beginning of the story. The other day, the faithful Xubuntu ordered to live a long time on her home machine, she could still be reanimated, but I did not want to strain the gyrus once again. All the necessary data was saved, and the computer was ready for resurrection, but in a slightly different form. For a long time I could not decide how to replace the previous distribution kit. I wanted something not very heavy, preferably on xfce, Russified, as much as possible, modern, able to support a set of devices built into the motherboard. But one desire was the highest priority: the owl did not want the next Debian, especially the next Ubuntu. Of course, I never want to delve into what the system can do for you. Whatever your guru (and I’m not, by definition), there are things for which you can always spend part of your free time, and with great pleasure, and this is far from the configuration of the system. And in this the successor should be like his predecessor. In addition, parents use a computer, albeit not as intensively as I, needed a simple system that looked cute and did not require additional knowledge.
For some reason, the options immediately disappeared: Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, Gentoo, (the reasons are different everywhere, but mainly because of their gigantism and super-universal orientation). After a closer look, Zenwalk disappeared from sight, which warmed the soul with unrealizable hopes.
The idea came to take a look at domestic distributions: I didn’t even want to remember about ASP, I looked at ALT with interest, especially after Kaganov Leonid’s flattering reviews about it, but after that I was afraid that the distribution based on the fourth platform might turn out to be somewhat irrelevant (maybe I just didn’t figure it out , or did not want to do this).
And then in his search came across Simply. Scared reviews, scared novelty, scared that this is not an official ALT Linux product, and third-party development, even if the guys from the ALT Linux Team are involved in it. But from something I wanted to take a chance and see if I could use this system for my own purposes.
After burning the image using cdrecord and rebooting, I was pleasantly surprised: the installer, by default, works with a rather low resolution, which allowed the installation to be performed without any difficulties. Usually, the system unsuccessfully tries to set the native widescreen resolution for my monitor, and the video adapter, which still does not function properly without a proprietary driver, displays only part of the image. Here, no problems, and so far I have not changed anything. A few clicks of "Next", disk layout, a few ticks in the dialog for selecting packages to install, a slight wait. Really? The installer without delay and additional connections to the network (in my opinion), suggests installing the native driver on a video card from nvidia, great. Well, it can't be that smooth. Reboot.
Simply meets gdm with a pretty login form, I enter the treasured pair of "login-password", the download is fast.
From the very first second of using the system: native monitor resolution, working sound, network, very good selection of applications. All that an ordinary user needs to be happy.
After a little check of everything and everything, it turns out that the sound is not recorded, although the necessary device is indicated in the mixer, and the microphone volume is turned out 100%. It doesn’t matter, run alsamixer with the "-V Capture" keys, raise the levels and experience the true pleasure of working with the audacity in normal mode.
A minute to turn on ALTLinux repositories in Synaptic, adding users, a few minutes to install additional libraries for development, emacs, gcc, make, kernel-headers to build your modules, Java SDK 1.6, LAMP ...
No problem. Very nice distribution. Simple and fast. I hope that this will continue. The new environment was to their liking and home. Oh yes, the wallpapers, which were so actively promoted in the release on Habrahabr, are pleasing to the eye.
Thanks to the developers. Huge and human. From a simple person. Distribution user for ordinary people.
PSThe OpenSource community has a slightly different value system. The question is for developers if they read this article. How can the project be helped? Say, documentation, packages, promotion at the university, among friends, localization?
A small addition for screenshot lovers:
Minimum design changes compared to the default settings (firefox, acc, bb):
Naked desktop and funny wallpaper:
It so happened that I urgently needed to change the GNU / Linux distribution on my home machine. For several years of communicating with Linux, I happened to use different distributions: fedora, crux, gentoo, ubuntu. The latter has occupied its place of honor on the desktop for one and a half, and possibly two years. And, usually, on the desktop I have the co-development packages MonoDevelop, NetBeans with a bunch of plug-ins, the latest version JDK, LAMP and some others. Conclusion: I am not the most unassuming user (more on that below).
So, back to the beginning of the story. The other day, the faithful Xubuntu ordered to live a long time on her home machine, she could still be reanimated, but I did not want to strain the gyrus once again. All the necessary data was saved, and the computer was ready for resurrection, but in a slightly different form. For a long time I could not decide how to replace the previous distribution kit. I wanted something not very heavy, preferably on xfce, Russified, as much as possible, modern, able to support a set of devices built into the motherboard. But one desire was the highest priority: the owl did not want the next Debian, especially the next Ubuntu. Of course, I never want to delve into what the system can do for you. Whatever your guru (and I’m not, by definition), there are things for which you can always spend part of your free time, and with great pleasure, and this is far from the configuration of the system. And in this the successor should be like his predecessor. In addition, parents use a computer, albeit not as intensively as I, needed a simple system that looked cute and did not require additional knowledge.
For some reason, the options immediately disappeared: Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, Gentoo, (the reasons are different everywhere, but mainly because of their gigantism and super-universal orientation). After a closer look, Zenwalk disappeared from sight, which warmed the soul with unrealizable hopes.
The idea came to take a look at domestic distributions: I didn’t even want to remember about ASP, I looked at ALT with interest, especially after Kaganov Leonid’s flattering reviews about it, but after that I was afraid that the distribution based on the fourth platform might turn out to be somewhat irrelevant (maybe I just didn’t figure it out , or did not want to do this).
And then in his search came across Simply. Scared reviews, scared novelty, scared that this is not an official ALT Linux product, and third-party development, even if the guys from the ALT Linux Team are involved in it. But from something I wanted to take a chance and see if I could use this system for my own purposes.
After burning the image using cdrecord and rebooting, I was pleasantly surprised: the installer, by default, works with a rather low resolution, which allowed the installation to be performed without any difficulties. Usually, the system unsuccessfully tries to set the native widescreen resolution for my monitor, and the video adapter, which still does not function properly without a proprietary driver, displays only part of the image. Here, no problems, and so far I have not changed anything. A few clicks of "Next", disk layout, a few ticks in the dialog for selecting packages to install, a slight wait. Really? The installer without delay and additional connections to the network (in my opinion), suggests installing the native driver on a video card from nvidia, great. Well, it can't be that smooth. Reboot.
Simply meets gdm with a pretty login form, I enter the treasured pair of "login-password", the download is fast.
From the very first second of using the system: native monitor resolution, working sound, network, very good selection of applications. All that an ordinary user needs to be happy.
After a little check of everything and everything, it turns out that the sound is not recorded, although the necessary device is indicated in the mixer, and the microphone volume is turned out 100%. It doesn’t matter, run alsamixer with the "-V Capture" keys, raise the levels and experience the true pleasure of working with the audacity in normal mode.
A minute to turn on ALTLinux repositories in Synaptic, adding users, a few minutes to install additional libraries for development, emacs, gcc, make, kernel-headers to build your modules, Java SDK 1.6, LAMP ...
No problem. Very nice distribution. Simple and fast. I hope that this will continue. The new environment was to their liking and home. Oh yes, the wallpapers, which were so actively promoted in the release on Habrahabr, are pleasing to the eye.
Thanks to the developers. Huge and human. From a simple person. Distribution user for ordinary people.
PSThe OpenSource community has a slightly different value system. The question is for developers if they read this article. How can the project be helped? Say, documentation, packages, promotion at the university, among friends, localization?
A small addition for screenshot lovers:
Minimum design changes compared to the default settings (firefox, acc, bb):
Naked desktop and funny wallpaper: