Well, all Right! Okay! You win!

[blackbelt_jones]

 ::)I'm in love with you!

http://justlinux.com/forum/showpost.php?p=873725&postcount=28

[rbistolfi]

  I have to say you was hard to convince, but I am glad Vector finally made it. I will take this as a hard test made by VL  . Your review was very nice. I have seen some of them very favorable for vec, but almost no one takes note of may be the strongest point of vl: the libs and dev tools are great out of the box, making the compilation process really easy. And the kde packages plus the gnome packages by easuter makes vector linux capable of run almost every app in the planet linux.
Your tip was good, many people just dont note the update button. May be you want to add the extra and testing repos needs to be added for the 5.8 releases, just because the iso was available before the repo was ready.

[exeterdad]

blackbelt_jones,

You put up a helluva debate earlier  But you remained a mature gentleman, so you're cool in my book.  You had valid points, and I respect them.  We all have different needs.  We're Linux users and won't be spoon fed how a computer is going to look and perform.

I've found that there isn't a Linux distro out there that can cater to everyone's needs.  Heck, I haven't found one yet that fits me like a glove.  But VectorLinux is easily broken in to be a perfect fit with a little added TLC from the user.
If we had everyone post a screen shot of their VL at this very moment, it would be like comparing snowflakes.  Yet they pretty much looked the same coming out of the box.
VL is so much easier to customize than a release from the "big dogs".  If you don't like the way something is built, remove it and compile your own flavor.  Try that with the big distro's you will probably break something.  Or a lot of somethings.  For the most part, our packages are pure.  There may be a patch here or there.  Mostly to fix something that is busted from the developer, maybe it adds extra functions.  Or maybe it's just to make it possible to package. Sometimes packaging is a complete different ball game then compiling and installing on the machine it was built on.  Even LFS, which is considered a very vanilla distro has a patch or at least a sed or two for the majority of all the installs listed in the book.  I can verify this, I was a LFS junkie for quite a while before coming here.
I'm sure you've had a look at Deb sources, or a source rpm from other distro's.  There are a mind boggling amount of patches applied.
Once the unfamiliar feeling of VL has worn off for you, you will find it will suite your needs.  And it doesn't take much begging for someone to build you what you need if you think it might be out of your league.  That's not going to happen when playing with the "big dogs"
Pound for pound, our devs kill the other guys, and there's just a handful of them. What's the other guys excuse? 

Welcome aboard mate, I'll fetch you a towel.

[nightflier]

Oh yeah, that swings! 

http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/a/alrightokayyouwin.shtml

[blackbelt_jones]

Well, you know I was impressed with Vector from the beginning, but I just wasn't convinced that it was what I wanted to run on this machine.  And now I am.

I still love Debian, and I've got Debian running on another machine.  So I still have easy access to all of those skajillion packages anytime I want it.  But I'm not really going to need it for my main desktop machine.

I'm using two second hand pentium 3 computers, which I purchased for a total of 135 dollars, because my  Penitum 4 computer, which was custom built by my brother for  a total of maybe 600 dollars, kept breaking down and requiring more and more money.   I don't know what the problem is with that computer, but just about everything in it has been replaced but the RAM, the hard drives, and the CPU.  The video card died after a month and a half.  The motherboard was replaced twice.  I think it was just God telling me to stop investing in new hardware.

  Since I'm not into gaming, there's really nothing that I would want to do with one fancy computer that I can't do by dividing the workload between two less fancy computers.  The debian computer handles 24-7 tasks like running  ktorrent and trancoding avi files into DVDs.  The vector computer handles web surfing, studying documentation, playing music, writing, and so on.

I've found that there isn't a Linux distro out there that can cater to everyone's needs.  Heck, I haven't found one yet that fits me like a glove.  But VectorLinux is easily broken in to be a perfect fit with a little added TLC from the user.

I believe that any Linux distro can be made to do anything any other Linux distro can do, if only the user is knowledgeable enough.  But most users have limitations.    Assuming that a distro isn't buggy as hell, (and they rarely are)  it's the user's limitations that define the appropriateness of one distro over another.  I can't get Slackware to work with my DSL connection, but that 'doesn't mean Slackware doesn't work with DSL.  Like I said earlier about Vestor, before I saw the light:  The fault is mine, not the distros, but the distro has to go.

And there's nothing wrong with that.  Most users have limitations, and I have them in spades.  The point I'm making, I guess, is that it behooves the user not to blame the distro,  Just try something else.

[blackbelt_jones]

I just had a close call.  I tried to compile liferea 1.4.2 without success.  Liferea is an RSS pretty essential because as far as I can tell, there's no way for agkregator to download mp3 podcasts.  The error messages weren't the usual "something's missing" messages:

gtkhtml2.c:158: warning: "struct request" declared inside parameter list
gtkhtml2.c:158: warning: its scope is only this definition or declaration, which is probably not what you want
gtkhtml2.c: In function `request_data_kill':
gtkhtml2.c:160: error: dereferencing pointer to incomplete type
gtkhtml2.c:162: error: dereferencing pointer to incomplete type
gtkhtml2.c:163: error: dereferencing pointer to incomplete type
gtkhtml2.c:168: error: dereferencing pointer to incomplete type
gtkhtml2.c: In function `stream_cancel':

And so on.  I have no idea what any of that means.  But I saved myself by going back, downloading and compiling the source code for liferea 1.4.1, the previous release.  And that worked without a hitch.   So I'm golden.  I can't think of anything that's essential to me that I don't have now.

[metvas]

Try this one on for size:
Got the laptop. madtux has removed it from their site? (not good), spent $90.00 US$ for XP home. First time on XP. Ignorance is truly bliss. The office suite keeps asking for validation. so I type in the code on the CD. Wrong it says. I type again ..wrong..again...wrong...wrong...wrong..again looking at every number and letter five time...wrong. I give up and go to Future shop...trial versions only of M$ Office 1885. F**k me. Another $180.00 US for the real thing.. I give up. What is next!!! I was using Win 98 out of protest, refusing to pay M$ for anything.
God do I love Linux...
Regards
Darrell

[Freston]

Wrong it says. I type again ..wrong..again...wrong...wrong...wrong..agai

I remember the fonts being very unclear. No noticable difference between 'G' and '6'. Don't get me started in the difference between 'l' and 'I' and '0' and 'O'.[/rant]

As back on topic. Yeah! I love Vector too. It's Slackware the way I want it. I've never done this little tuning and customizing on a distro before. It seems everything is just where it's supposed to be, and it works like it should. Only the auto detected VIA graphics driver seemed to work like 'all input == monitor off'. Vesa driver. Done.

[GrannyGeek]

trial versions only of M$ Office 1885. F**k me. Another $180.00 US for the real thing..

Why not just download and install OOo for Windows? It's free.
--GrannyGeek

[metvas]

The real kicker here is to have those price tags beside the VL and OO price tags, on a spread sheet. That is the whole point to this exercise.  From $600.00 total to $0.00 dollars total. Then the machines to run them...love that entry. I look at it ten times a day and always think..wow this is great.
Regards
Darrell