Hello folks

[ekulnodlaw]

Just thought I would introduce myself, my name is Luke, and I have recently started using Vector.  I downloaded 5.8 SOHO a month or so ago and left the burnt CD on my desk and forgot about it. I have been an Ubuntu user until today. I decided to upgrade to Gusty 7.10 not long ago but had nothing but problems with it. I got fed up with the lack of control with it; no root logins, dumbed down gnome interface, compiz enabled by default (which I find highly annoying), and having to download so many apps just to get the system up an running how I like. Totally annoyed with gnome, today I installed Kubuntu thinking it might be more to my liking. I downloaded it, installed it, installed the apps I like to use, then performed a routine update. BANG! System doesn't boot. Highly annoyed and dreading the thought of booting up my pretty much unused Window XP partition, I looked around and found the Vector CD on my desk.

I have to say I am very impressed with what I have seen so far:
*perfect package selections with SOHO. I always use k3b, gimp, vlc, xine, openoffice, firefox, amarok, mplayer, ksirtet, libdvdcss, flash
*blazingly fast
*love the control of the text-based installer and most of all how quickly it installed. I didn't believe it installed that quickly at first; I let it start, went and had a coffee, came back and it was installed.
*package management seems simple enough although I still have to do more reading on slapt-get
*hardware detection was easy
*installation of Nvidia drivers was excellent

Although not essential it looks like Vector has only one weakness: graphical wireless configuration (which seems to be problem with most distros). Forgive me if I am not completely up to speed on the latest developments of this distro but for future versions seriously consider something like NetworkManager which is just a dream to use. And look at including the Liberation fonts in the next release.

Overall, wow keep up the great work!

[rbistolfi]

hi Luke!

Glad you picked VL, welcome to the forum.
I think you will be very pleased with the next release. It will bring lot of improvements in the wifi support. The devs are working really great, as always.

[exeterdad]

Hello and Welcome Luke,

Thanks so much for the input.  It's nice to have a fresh face with new and good ideas.  Some may be a little slow for our devs to make happen as I believe you can count on one hand how many regularly active devs we have putting our distro together.  Pretty impressive considering the task.

One of our respected devs mentioned the Federation fonts a few weeks back and highly recommended them.  Though I haven't seen them in action, I did Google and learn more about them.  Seems they are something to get excited about. Finally, a GOOD MS free font.  Thanks Redhat!

The packaging will be different than what you are used to.  But once you use it a bit you will find it makes sense.  It may seem at first that we have fewer packages than the more mainstream distro's, but we don't bust a package into little micropackages.  Nor do we have devel packages.  When you install a program or a library, you are installing the headers too.  If you want to compile your own stuff, you don't need to worry about installing "foo" AND "foo-devel".  It's nice.

See ya around,
Lee

[jduped]

Welcome