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Vector linux 5.8 standard gold was released before last Christmas. The code name was 'Santa'. It is currently ranked at 19th place at DistroWatch ( CentOS is at 18th place; SLAX at 20th).Well, Vector linux has been around for quite some time. This Canadian distro is famous for its speed. Taking Slackware as its base has made it very stable. I personally admire Slackware's philosophy. Slackware's developers walk the talk !
For this review of Vector linux 5.8, i used my Dell 600m notebook again. Pentium M (1.4Ghz with 256mb sdram and ati radeon 9000). This time i reviewed the speedy little Vector linux 5.8 standard gold edition which is free for download. The download was quite fast at this link http://ftp-osl.osuosl.org/pub/vectorlinux/veclinux-5.8/iso-release/. You can support Vector linux by paying for the deluxe edition, though. In this review of Vector linux 5.8, i wanted to see how speedy the distro is. I also wanted to test how much Vector linux 5.8's wpa_supplicant packages can support the WPA-PSK wireless protocol. The prequisite for this test :- the IPW 2100 adapter on my Dell 600m notebook was already supporting WPA-PSK protocol. So much ramblings about my reasons for reviewing Vector linux 5.8 standard gold edition. Back to the review proper ! After i booted up Vector linux 5.8 , i only needed to press the Enter key at the boot prompt in order to boot the kernel that support ide/sata drives.
Then the welcome message will appear where i could see the info regarding the specs of my notebook and also the linux kernel version embedded in vector linux 5.8. It's linux kernel 2.6.18.
The installation was quite straight-forward, for an experienced user, of course! You need to prepare your harddisk prior to installing. Select the FDISK option, not the INSTALL option. Once you've got the root partition and swap partition right, the installer will request you to reboot the computer for the effect to take place. When my Dell 600m notebook rebooted, i met with the boot prompt again, where i needed to do the same thing again: press the Enter key. Then, there was the welcome message again. I needed to press Enter again. This 'again' thing reminded me about the Teletubbies that my 26-month-old daughter watched on her Macmini. The Teletubbies in those episodes will repeat the word again many times. By the way, this 'again and again' thing may confuse a linux newbie. I almost got disorientated (experience in installing Slackware helped, though). Next, i was eligible to choose the INSTALL option instead of the FDISK option. From this point onwards, i was asked to select the swap partition, to select the root partition, and to select additional files ( firefox 2.0, opera 9.10, dillo, 3d arcade games, mplayer, xara, gimp, qemu, various printer drivers, etc ). Right after that, i was presented by the installer with 3 choices : i chose " INSTALL come on mate, go for it !!!". The real/absolute installing process started. It took only 8 minutes to install all the files to my harddisk. Fast, or should i say speedy. Then LILO installer showed up. I chose to install on my MBR because i wanted a dual-boot system. Well, I could have just skipped installing LILO and boot the root partition with the vector linux 5.8 disc. There are many things to learn before signing up for a certain hosting company. An online research can help you find the right company for your site. A good hosting company hires quality professional such as the ones who have cisco certifications like 646-203. Then, a good researcher can easily find special packages like, free softwareemail hosting. They offer internet software to keep track of the stats of your site too. Other than that cheap server hosting can also be located. One of the better hosting companies out there is godaddy. After installing LILO to MBR, the Vector linux 5.8 installer invited me to jointly configure the timezone, the hardwares, the networking, the sound, the x-window gui, and the boot time hardware initialization (pnp/acpi/serial/parallel/wireless/alsa/tmpts). Finally, i was asked to set the root and normal user passwords. That's it !! Sigh, the installer automatically rebooted my Dell 600m after the ' real installation process and the joint configuration '. When the LILO boot menu popped up, i chose to boot into Vector linux instead of XP. The bootsplash was very 'tuxy' though. Just look at the shot below.
Then came the login screen, where i could either login as a normal user or even as a root user. Vector linux 5.8 offered the ultimate root power ! Ha ha ha ha ! These days, many distro won't allow you to login as root user.
Few seconds later , i was staring at a sleeky little vectorized xfce splash that appear just before .....
i faced off with the speedy and lightweight XFCE4 desktop. Once XFCE4 was fully loaded, i clicked the browser icon located at the left side of the desktop panel, near to the V-menu. A box popped up as a result of the clicks, requesting me to choose either firefox, mozilla, lynx, seamonkey or opera as the default. Thanks for the choices but concept of redundancy is very unlike the XFCE philosophy. But the Vector linux developer did stress the importance of being able to make choices when XFCE desktop loading. Remember the sleeky little thing ? Wow ! I could instantly surf the internet wirelessly after firing up Opera 9.10, without extra tweaking. I am sure all newbies will like it. I think it's time for me to review on Vector linux 5.8's support for WPA-PSK wireless protocol. The first i thing did was to fire up the new Wifi-Radar apps. OH oh, the Wifi-Radar didn't manage to get my Dell 600m (ipw2100 adapter) connected via WPA-PSK protocol. Prior to that, i had configured my Linksys WAG354G wifi router to use the WPA-PSK protocol. After a frustrating attempt to exploit Vector linux 5.8's wpa_supplicant via the Wifi-Radar, i had to turned to the old fashion way :- the Command Line Interface ! Lucky me, the MCEDIT editor was so easy to use in editing the network related scripts. The x terminal was also very informative. See shots below.
Now, now, back to the wpa_supplicant stuff. Before i could connect my ipw2100 card via this ultimate commnad :- wpa_supplicant -B -Dipw -ieth1 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf i needed to check/edit on these few files :- /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf /etc/modprobe.conf /etc/ifplugd/ifplugd.conf After checking/editing those 3 files, i issued this command :- ifplugd service restart. Unfortunately , my Dell 600m notebook still couldn't get connected to the gutsy WPA-PSK enabled Linksys router. Changing the option from -Dipw to -Dwext solved the problem. (issue this command dhcpcd -t 30 -d eth1 if you cannot surf the internet despite a successfully WPA-PSK connection. On the multimedia side, Vector linux 5.8 offered the versatile Mplayer, xine, and xmms. I could easily play encrypted A Beutiful Mind dvd movie, i could also play mp3 songs out of the box. The win32 codecs are also included. Going to the Google video portal with Vector linux 5.8 was indeed a pleasure. My 26-month-old daughter would get very annoyed if she couldn't play the Crazy Frog video clips from google video from a linux distro , as it was very easy for her to do it from her Macmini. Vector linux 5.8 saves the day ! Gimp is a must. Xara is a bonus. My screenshots or cybershots couldn't have been displayed on this page if it was not because of the mighty Gimp. Gimp ! Gimp ! Gimp ! gimp ! Actually i used the Gimp editor that came along with the just released PCLinuxOS 2007 Test1 (it's a livecd released on 21st january 2007) Office apps included are Gnumeric, Abiword and Jpilot. I had once opened a password protected Excel document with Gnumeric , when other well known Spreadsheets couldn't. Gnumeric loaded in just 2 seconds while Abiword took 3 seconds. The VASM system configurator was a delight to use. Simple. Things get configured ! Well, i could have used VASM to configure the network , but i just wanted to get my hands dirty.
Vector linux 5.8 also comes with GSLAPT, which is very similar to SYNAPTICS in Debian. The list of Vector linux repositories is not small. I can install KDE, Fluxbox, development tools, server packages, etc from GSLAPT. Of course, i can also install from the repositories via the console using slapt-get.
In conclusion, i enjoyed using Vector linux 5.8. It comes with almost all the necessary items, one would expect of a desktop. However, i must confess that i didn't really like the installation and configuration part of it. Yes, it's speedy, installing the files to harddisk was just 8 minutes. Firefox 2.0 and Opera 9.10 sprang up in just 4 to 5 seconds. The Thunar file manager took only half of a second to come to your rescue. I must congratulate the Vector linux 5.8 team for successfully integrating the wpa_supplicant component in Vector linux 5.8. I am very happy to say that Vector linux 5.8 supports the WPA-PSK protocol, although it may not be the case on every machines or wifi routers. One last thing, the ntfs-3g program also work out of the box. It was able to fully read/write on my ntfs partition even though i had shutdown the window xp in a 'dirty way' earlier on. Thank you for reading my review. By Michael Shee Choon Beng. (
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