> I know Libranet sells a debian-based distro and has paid support. I dont > know anything about them. Does anyone else have a opinion of them? > -Kev
Kevin, I run Libranet 2.8. I am happy with my purchase. Their distro is fully compatible with official Debian repositories, and is based on testing (sarge). The two shipped CDs contain all the important apps including OpenOffice/Evolution/Mozilla/Gaim (which saves a lot of time getting a fully usable system up-and-running without net access). Their installer is also very quick and easy and does a very good job of hardware detection and installation of the necessary modules and such. I thought I'd end up disliking Libranet and go back to "pure" Debian. But I was amazed at how little their distro preaches this or that method of doing things. They don't rely on Gnome or KDE or any other window manager/desktop environment. They default to IceWM, but let you choose whatever you want. They don't have any strange deviations from the typical Debian way of doing things, which is key. At this point, I don't really feel like I'm running "Libranet" anymore what with the pinning/upgrading I've done to unstable. I feel like I'm running Debian, but I was just saved the trouble of setting up my hardware and installing everything from scratch. Their Xadminmenu is "just another app" I use if I ever want to install something off the Libranet CD or use some of their other provided shortcuts. And their support forums/mailing list are full of helpful and friendly people ;) In a sense, I wish I had Libranet back when I was setting up Debian on my old computer 2 years ago or so. But on the other hand, it was a learning experience back then. I feel fine using Libranet now because that initial setup is just a chore. I want to get to coding ;) Overall, my opinion of Libranet is positive. That said, I wish they would release ISOs of their distro on their website (not the stripped down "classic edition"). I would still pay them, but I guess others wouldn't. Nonetheless, I think Libra's distro is much more in line with basic open source principles than the more dumbed-down distros based on Debian. -Andrew -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
