Vector Linux Review

[EarlSmith]

Just installed Vector Linux and it is all Barry said it was. Very fast, very Puppy like.
Installation was not as simply as Puppies installation on HD, but just takes a little longer. Also will require a learning curve to know how to do things like install packages like printing (cups). Comes with Abiword so very like Puppy....also... IceWM ..great!!
From a non-programming user standpoint, a little lean on useful programs. But I have started installing new programs. Firefox (1.0.2)is very fast and no suprises. Also has good multimedia support. Seems very solid and stable.
Looks like a very good decision.

[rarsa]

I actually didn't find it fast at all (I was going to say slow as a dog, but our blazingly fast puppy would not like it).

Here is my review although I've just been playing with it for a day.

The UI is quite polished out of the box, although there are certain anoying things that I hope will get resolved when it is released (remember that right now its a beta). It seems like a version 0.9 not a version 5.0. It would not be my primary distro and I would not recomend it for a newbie. Although the little anoyances I found would not affect using it as a puppy compilation environment.

The good:
A really nice looking UI, they choosed a nice default theme.
It comes with a bunch of clean looking themes.
Nice selection of Window Managers.
Very professional Icon set.
And best of all: The animated login screen! Actually ignore all I say in the next section. you HAVE to install VL5.0STD just to know what I mean. Walking/falling pinguins and ripple waves. I gotta find how to port it to my FC3.

The bad: (I'll send this list to the Vector team, they have a fine distro that does not deserve these anoyances)

Acronyms for tools on the desktop that actually have extended names that don't match the acronym,s in the menu. e.g. 'IM' on the desktop 'Gaim (Messenger) on the menu. 'VLAPT' on the desktop 'Vector Advanced Package Tool' on the menu. Very confusing for newbies.

Inconsisten use of the single/doble click. Equivalent task sometimes is single, sometimes is double.

Poor selection of default applications using 1 GB. (now I realy wonder what's puppy doing to have all that great selection in just 60 M)

I had trouble configuring my wireless. It does not like my rt2500 chipset although it comes with the right drivers out of the box. I had to configure ndiswrapper manually. The VASM wireless configuration did not recognize my connection.

Xine played avi at a very low frame rate. it actually notified my about that.

Mplayer shows a message about a font path being wrong. It still plays mp3. It does not play avi.

Rox filer looks nice but has an extremelly clutered left click menu (It shows you folder options even when you click on a file!)

GTK-Gnutela ignores my download folder. It leaves the files in the 'partial' folder with an '.OK' extension.

When you 'su' it does not find the console editors (that's the only thing I've tried) it seems as if they were not in the root path!.

It's very difficult to find the right package in the package manager. It shows them unsorted and there is no way to sort them. It shows you all the packages even the ones that you've already installed.

When you configure something and click 'next' or 'ok' the configuration window goes away, you have no idea what's going on until it comes back a few seconds later (or more than a few in certain cases) or does not come back at all to tell you that it's done. I thought that visual feedback was one of the basic guidelines in GUI design..

The background does not change when you select another background. The background does not resize to 1280x1024 even if you set it to.

xfsamba did not find my windows computer.It gave me a 'File not found: nmblookup'.

Nedit did not let me save files (I could not type the file name)

Ok. I could keep looking for more anoyances but this list is long enough for you to know what to expect.

And remember you HAVE to install this distro to see the login screen.

[Lobster]

I did not find Vector fast either - quite the reverse - it seems quite a slow distro.
However certainly not unbearable and suitable for compiling . . .
It is visually (and therefore emotionally) very pleasing . . .

Tee Hee - Do you write in C or wish to compile programs?
Well then you probably do not need Vector. Wot you doing? Return to kennel . . .

If Jesse takes a day off work (hey it is a bank holiday here - anyway)
and puts in some hardcore programming we might end up with Puppy C
(Vitamins for Pups) Hey! Hey! Hey!

I have just been using 1.0.4 of Gambas (A Basic compiler for Puppy) - so far so good . . . 1.0.6 is the latest stable - but may be getting bigger?

Can not program? Wiki? Can not wiki? IRC chat? Can not chat?
Well eh . . . go be frisky . . .

[GuestToo]

i haven't tried VL 5.0

i could try it and find and report bugs
i did that when i tried VL 4.3 ... i reported about 10 bugs ... they did not fix one bug that i reported

including root's path being limited and nedit not being in root's path ... (easy to fix, just set your path in /root/.bashrc ... but i find Vector always seems to require a lot of tweaks like this ... and, no, i don't think Vector is good for newbies, unless they want to learn a lot about tweaking Linux os's)

i don't like nedit anyway ... i replaced it with leafpad (i find my VL getting more and more like Puppy)

4.3 has a gui boot screen ... i quickly disabled it ... i boot to the command line ... i wrote a script to start X windows called x ... so all i have to type to start X is ... x

it uses xdm, so you have to type your name and password each time you boot ... there's a way around this using respawn, but i never bothered to set it up

there are ways to get xine/mplayer to work better ... one way is to use the sdl sound drivers (i setup my Puppy dotpup mplayer package that way and it works well on my machine)

Rox is a newer version, and works a little differently ... i prefer Puppy's simpler rox menus ... i do like the way the newer rox highlights the newest files and folders

i haven't used 4.3's package manager much ... i installed slapt-get, used it to install tvtime, but haven't used it much either

another bug i reported was that the wallpaper didn't resize ... they didn't fix that either

Vector originally was aimed at older slower computers with limited memory

i tried it a few times, but it didn't support my audio card properly ... i tried the live cd, the sound didn't work, but it was easy to get it to work ... then i tried 4.3, and the (alsa) sound worked properly ... i never intended to keep using it, but after i tweaked it a little, i found i liked it enough that i didn't want to get rid of it ... so i'm still using it

[BarryK]

Yes, lots of annoyances ...which in a way is quite good, makes us appreciate Puppy more!

I primarily evaluated VL5 as a compile environment, which it seems to be doing okay as so far.