VectorLinux 6.0 alpha testing ground

[vector]

Please post anything related to our alpha release of Vector 6.0 here.
Thanks,
Vec

[nooby]

Is that link to a Live CD or a cd that wants to do an installation to a partitioned hdd?

[SuSE-Refugee]

The latter.
And it's an ALPHA-version, so bound to be riddled with bugs.

The release is for pricks like me to break apart and write it into the ground, so the devs learn how to get their act together.

[nooby]

then have fun I gladly test live cd but not installs.

[kc1di]

First problem I've encountered is the new Install app.  It won't work on any of my older equipment would suggest that you make the old install the default with the option of trying the new one until it's more comapatible with older machines.

But overall a quick use looks good. 

[exeterdad]

The release is for pricks like me to break apart and write it into the ground, so the devs learn how to get their act together.

Hmmm...  Me thinks changing your profile from "Dude In The Snappy Hat" to "Prick In The Snappy Hat" is in order. 

[wcs]

Typing from it now.

Very nice! Thank you for all the effort.
Great installer and the system looks great.
(I'm a bit nervous about this gnome change, though)

Anyway, suggestions for the installer:

1. It seems stretched on a widescreen monitor. Probably a pain to change the installer to support this, though.

2. I don't think there was an installation file checker like in the text installer in 5.9

3. There's a little scroll bar on the left sidebar, which doesn't seem needed.

4. When installing individual packages it reads "indivirual" (makes it look like something to do with viruses  )

5. Perhaps the short description of the packages should be added in front of them.

6. Perhaps the lxde packages should all go in a block as well, like gnome in the previous screen.

As for the system itself, almost everything that I tested is working, but:

7. Vasm says permission denied, as does vsuper

8. Upgrades in gslapt worked fine, except for slapt-get which fails due to depending on pkgtools (instead of pkgtools-tukanni)

9. Docs aren't there, but I didn't expect them to be (yet).

Other than that, I'm surprised that at such an early stage, things feel so solid.
Thanks a lot!

[Dweeberkitty]

You should post this release to distrowatch. It doesn't matter if it's ready for people to use, they don't expect an alpha version to be, or if anyone downloads it. What matters is that VL gets it's name out there and people get accustomed to seeing it.

[wcs]

Also, nvidia drivers installed fine.

(my computer is a Core2Duo E6300, 1.5G of RAM, SATA HD, onboard soundcard, Nvidia video card 7xxx)

[The Headacher]

You should post this release to Distrowatch. It doesn't matter if it's ready for people to use, they don't expect an alpha version to be, or if anyone downloads it. What matters is that VL gets it's name out there and people get accustomed to seeing it.

I disagree, posting about every early testversion on Distrowatch will just mean people will think we're big spammers. There's so much versions of VL out now, you can post something every day if Uel has a good week .

Also, I am used to seeing *buntu there, but I never ever click a single one of them.

[SuSE-Refugee]

Allrighty!
DL-ed the ISO, checked the MD5-SUM, burned it at 8-speed.(Better safe than sorry...)
And...

Here's some flack from Yours Truly:

Machine-specs:

• AMD Athlon, 1667Mhz
• Asus mainboard
• Asus Geforce 6200<something>,256MB
• 2Gig DDR2 RAM
• Realtek8939(I think...) Nic
• WD Caviar 200Gig(plus a little)
• Quantum Bigfoot 4 Gig
• AOpen DVD-re-writer
• LG "LightSribe"DVD-RW
• Soundblaster Live! (value)
• Sweex Multicard-reader
• IIyama E2202WS TFT (22"widescreen)

Oh!
And I'm not a big fan of "Graphical Installers" ;for this kinda stuff ncurses is "graphical" enough as it is in my books.

First impressions:
NOT GOOD!

• The fonts in the installer are rendered very bad; up and onto the point of being unreadable.
• As mentioned earlier by wcs: NO description of the packages to be installed AT ALL!!! BAD DEVELOPERS!BAD!Each package should have at least a one-sentence-entry, telling the user WHAT the package is supposed to do. Anything less is unacceptable.(And stupid crap like "package, created with vpackager xxxx...." is even worse: It's a bloody insult!
• Why is there a horizontal scrollbar in the left-panel at all? Just make that panel a tad wider, so the included text fits in there without the need to scroll. It's not like the rest of the screen is used for anything usefull anyway.(Do we really need a full-width progress-bar? I thought NOT!)
• "Minimum requirements: 2.22 BLOODY GIG?!?!?!?!?....
  HELLOOOOO! This is supposed to be a STANDARD version, y'know; "Best Of Breeds" and add what you like afterwards. Not some retarded SuSE-ripoff! 4.0 SOHO required less.
  And that one came with OOffice, The Gimp AND Blender(Amongst others)....
• It could be just me, but the copying of the files lasted MUCH longer than in previous versions. What gives?
• Also: I Haven't managed to get through the install, since it cheerfully re-started the (already quite time-consuming...) file-copying anew after I clicked the "OK"-button.
• So, since the button "exit install" was greyed-out (during the third time the files got installed...) I decided to quit the installer by hitting that l'il "x" in the upper right corner. It got me to some kind of terminal, which didn't take "reboot" for an answer. Nor "init 0" or "init 6".
  "shutdown -h now" and "shutdown -r now" didn't yield anything usefull either and left me no other option than to use the "reset"-button on my machine, since (going by the sounds of my harddrive) the installer was still busy, cheerfully copying files to my system...
• No option to check the files to be installed?!?! Messy....

Oh well; it at least yielded me a nice coaster.
But if this is the way Vector is headed, I'm sure it'll loose a lot of users...

[wcs]

It could be just me, but the copying of the files lasted MUCH longer than in previous versions. What gives?

True for me as well.

[wcs]

After giving it a bit more thought, I feel very disconcerted by this gnome + lxde combo.

On top of concerns about gnome's speed, my reasons for confusion are twofold.

First, what happens to the middle ground that standard was supposed to be (i.e., with xfce), which offered lots of features and customization, but was still light? Maybe I'm generalising my preferences to the other Vector Standard users, but it bothers me that the choices in this version are about something with a lot less features (lxde) and something that offers a lot of stuff that I wouldn't need (gnome). The middle ground was (I thought) precisely what Standard was supposed to represent.

Second, how does this impact the other versions? It doesn't get much lighter than lxde, so is VL Light going even lighter (say, only jwm)? How different will Standard be from Light, if one chooses not to install gnome?
It doesn't get much more full-featured than gnome either, so what will be different in SOHO?
It seems that if development of these other versions is pursued, there won't be much differentiation between the three current VL versions.

So, to me, this version feels like Light + SOHO, with no real Standard in between.

Of course, one will always be able to add xfce from the repos (I hope), but my problems are more in terms of "fit" between a wm and an underlying base, effort of testers (who can only spend a limited amount of time with each wm), and VL's image/message (which, up to now, has been of a very fast and light distro that nonetheless offered 3 choices on the "bloatness" scale).

[skyekeeper]

Hello.

I've used Vector sense 5.1 came out. I have a disability that makes it hard for me to type, so I am mostly "Read Only" Anyway....

Let's get to the testing!

Install screen
The screen was shifted to the right, almost to the point where I could not click "next".

I had intended to install on the free space at the end of hda, but gparted balked at that. It let me select the free space, but there was no dialog for 'primary' or 'extended' I could select any format but ext3.  Ext3 was greyed out. I could click 'next', but gparted pop up an error dialog and would not continue.

I used gparted to clear the disk and set up a 250 meg swap file, and a 13 gig / partition. and formated it 'rieser'. ext3 was available then, but I did not use it.

The new installer worked after that.  The cursor stayed at the extreme left bottom of the screen and would not come up to the dialog boxes. there was no feed back, and there was no way to tell when it was though. The mouse worked and I was able to click on the dialog box's and  complete them

The rest of the install was a run-away...  I think the Vector ncurser installer is one of the best!

Reboot was fine.

It looks like this is a refined alfa. I'm looking forward to testing it.

Test machine:
Motherboard: Elitegroup K7S
CPU: AMD Athlon 64  1600
Ram 512
Vid Card ATI Radion 9600
60 gig hard disk
Plextor   combo DVD/CD
Lan: Onboard
Sound Onboard
NEC 15 inch CRT

[M0E-lnx]

I can understand everyone's concerns about the new changes and stuff. But people, keep in mind that this is an ALPHA release. menaing it's not even beta yet, so with that said, If you're on board with the testing crew, let's do just that and not go back to the text-installer nostalgia here.
I'm sure when the system is done and ready for public release, it will offer an option to choose between the GUI or TEXT installer (I HOPE). But as I said, this is the very early testing phase of the project. IOW, this is there you tell us what didn't work for you, or what needs to be fixed and we'll get them fixed to make it work.
I've already picked up a couple of things from reading this thread so far, and do plan to fix them, let's keep wrting constructive criticism here and hopefully, we can come together and put another great release out.