What was Libranet, really?

[mdevour]

With a new Debian stable release in the offing I'm looking forward to the chance to upgrade to more recent versions of a few things.

It makes me wonder, though what the differences are going to be like versus the Libranet 3 updated to Sarge that I am running now.

IceWM will be the windows manager unless I change it. There probably won't be much left of Adminmenu, so I'd have to dig up a mess of configuration tools, I suppose. The installer will be different, but that won't effect me much on an upgrade.

I guess what I'm wondering is what else is going to happen? What are some of the other, less visible features or qualities of Libranet I won't have anymore, that caused so many people to say it was "polished" or "the best distro ever?"

Thanks,

Mike D.

[deanlinkous]

the stability of debian stable - more up to date- good defaults - fast boot (not sure how they tweaked that) - and some good adminmenu tools...

no handholding, just a helping hand for a few things if you wanted it...

hard to describe really :(

[danieldk]

Have a look at the adminmenu and libranet-config packages, these hold most customizations. Besides that we customized some important packages, and provided our own patched versions, like Kudzu. Kudzu did a lot of legwork for the hardware configuration, though it is not that much needed anymore, thanks to udev, d-bus, and HAL.

But obviously, most of the Libranet-specific work was in Adminmenu and the installer.

[ChuckM]

Libranet has me spoiled. Everything is so well thought out as far as convience of moving around the distro. I tried pure Debian last month and it was just too much work trying to make it as easy to use a LN3, so I'm back. I don't want to use those reference books on my shelf again. (Sigh)

When Etch is released I'll give it as try.

[danieldk]

Some weeks ago I installed Libranet in a virtual machine to make some screenshots for my site. It is nice to see what we did back then, and that most of the Debian competition has not picked up yet. The new graphical Debian installer is nice, but it is nowhere near the Libranet installer IMO (of course, it is just d-i with different widgets). Ubuntu took a heavyweight live CD approach, but I was not really impressed.

Of course, outside the Debian world there are good installers and administration tools, e.g. Anaconda and the Mandriva installer.

[Sergio1704]

Libranet has me spoiled. Everything is so well thought out as far as convience of moving around the distro. I tried pure Debian last month and it was just too much work trying to make it as easy to use a LN3, so I'm back.

Unfortunately the LN3 install DVD doesn't even boot on my hardware.

But even if it did, it wouldn't be my favourite way of installing Debian. Linux has simply changed beyond recognition since LN3.
I had been using Kanotix, but there hasn't been any stable release in a year, and now the future looks extremely uncertain.

It seems that the only possibility left is to use Debian Proper: not too bad, but you will have few or no configuration tools, nothing at all like Adminmenu.

Of all discontinued distributions, Libranet must be the most sorely missed, IMO.

[lurch]

I too will miss the functionality of Libranet when I make the permanent switch, probably to pure Debian, early in the new year.

I wonder if there is some way to extract LibranetPPP from the Adminmenu package (of LN3) so that it can be loaded on other distros? I find it quite a useful tool.

Phillip.

[danieldk]

Adminmenu is strongly tied to Libranet/Debian. It works with Sarge, but Etch will be more problematic (e.g. because network interface hotplugging specifics changed).

[lisi]

I intend to try - on a non-production m/c. I'll let you all know how fast it crashed. ;-)

Lisi

[ChuckM]

Hey Lisi, I look forward to it.

[AndreL]

It seems that the only possibility left is to use Debian Proper: not too bad, but you will have few or no configuration tools, nothing at all like Adminmenu.
What about this:
As some of you know, I have made a partly finished distro configuration tool a la Adminmenu with Etelerro, Benjamin and others.
http://www.linuxagora.com/vbforum/showthread.php?t=444 (http://www.linuxagora.com/vbforum/showthread.php?t=444)
I wonder if they are planning to distribute (sell) that as a standalone utility... Why would it have to be tied to a distro. Daniel has pointed out already how difficult building one's own distro could be, so, why not go for some Linux utlilies. Hell, Peter Norton made a fortune and his name selling that for the other OS!
.

[danieldk]

What about this:

I wonder if they are planning to distribute (sell) that as a standalone utility... Why would it have to be tied to a distro. Daniel has pointed out already how difficult building one's own distro could be, so, why not go for some Linux utlilies. Hell, Peter Norton made a fortune and his name selling that for the other OS!
.

The code is freely available from:

http://koala-config.berlios.de/

The problem is that we don't really have a direction or goals ;). I guess it's more for the fun of it. Though, I guess it could be useful to many people, if we seriously invested time in it.

[AndreL]

The problem is that we don't really have a direction or goals ;). I guess it's more for the fun of it. Though, I guess it could be useful to many people, if we seriously invested time in it.No goals as in what?

1- We don't really know if we want to sell this or give it for free?
OR
2- We don't really know what the features should be?
OR
3- We just wanted to see if we could do it?
OR
4- We don't really know if we should put some time into this?
OR
5- None of the above?
OR
6- All of the above?

[danieldk]

Primarily 4. There's Guidance and gnome-system tools. Most non-Debian systems have configuration tools. So, it seems a bit useless, especially if Guidance gets more complete.

[AndreL]

Primarily 4. There's Guidance and gnome-system tools. Most non-Debian systems have configuration tools. So, it seems a bit useless, especially if Guidance gets more complete.Yes, I see what you mean. I just had a look at Guidance and it seems promising. Close to "Adminmenu"...
No "kernel compiling tool" yet, tho.

Well, may you guys could work with them... :smiley2:

One funny thing: I don't know if these guys had been in the Libranet forum but I used to have "Libranet When you have other thinks to do than fix your computer" as signature. Their moto is "...because you've got better things to do than housekeeping". Just a coincidence, probably! :)

They're the dudes who made "Guarddog"!
I'll check them out: see if they need funds or anything...

[lisi]

Well - here is my first report. Libranet installed all right (of course ;-) ) The Etch update -> upgrade went fine. But the system crashed as soon as I tried to reboot, saying that it couldn't shut down the X-server.

I got the same result, however, when I tried to install Sarge from a net boot disk. I installed first from one that was in fact a testing net install - so although I had originally got it for Sarge, it would now have been installing Etch. That crashed complaining about X before it even finished downloading. So I installed Sarge from a net install disk that had Sarge in its /etc/apt/sources.list by name. That installed - then crashed, complaining about a misconfiguration of X.

I won't bore you all with what I did next and what went wrong. Suffice it to say that I am pig-headed, but ran out of time. Besides I only own a finite number of install disks. I think I may need to look at the hardware. Watch this space. :-(

Lisi