thelinuxlink.net

Posted: **Sun Jan 29, 2006 3:36 pm**

http://www.rubixlinux.org/

This looks very interesting to me. If I understand correctly, it's essentially slack with pacman. As much as I like arch, one thing about it I could do without is the bleeding edge aspect of it.

I think I'll throw rubix on my testing box.

Posted: **Sun Jan 29, 2006 5:48 pm**

Nope, never tried it. Reminds me of Frugalware.

Underground Desktop/Arch has been working just lovely for me. And right now, my test box is an eyeOS server. So, distro testing is kind of the last thing on my mind at the moment.

Posted: **Mon Jan 30, 2006 12:52 pm**

Snarkout wrote:http://www.rubixlinux.org/

This looks very interesting to me. If I understand correctly, it's essentially slack with pacman. As much as I like arch, one thing about it I could do without is the bleeding edge aspect of it.

I think I'll throw rubix on my testing box.

Here's a Perl script I wrote to test new distros to see if they meet my requirements. Call it with the distro name as a parameter.

Code: Select all

#!/usr/bin/perl
# Script to decide if I should try this hot new distro

my $distro = shift;

if ($distro=~/fedora/i) {
        print "Fedora! Use this distro!\n"
} else {
        print "Not interested, use Fedora!\n"
}

It says I should pass and keep Fedora instead.

Posted: **Tue Jan 31, 2006 3:37 am**

unless rubix is in some way original, I don't really see the point in trying it; most mature linux users have settled into their own distros and are tired of spending weekends trying out new ones.

Posted: **Tue Jan 31, 2006 1:53 pm**

thetza wrote:unless rubix is in some way original, I don't really see the point in trying it; most mature linux users have settled into their own distros and are tired of spending weekends trying out new ones.

There are plenty (especially here) who still consider it fun to try the latest and greatest. It's a hobby I guess.

I've got a spare partition I use to try different distros, but anymore I'm so busy I don't even get a chance to install test versions of Fedora.

Posted: **Tue Jan 31, 2006 2:03 pm**

I can see a couple of reasons to give it a whirl. I've just gotten into Slackware, and I have to admit that I really have enjoyed the experience so far, but coming from Kanotix, I miss slick package management through apt-get.

There are a few things that I would like to get running on Slack, but compiling and fixing dependencies on my own isn't something I'm looking forward to doing.

Packman offers slick dependency resolution.

Where Rubix perhaps falls down in offering anything more than straight Slackware is its lack of packages. Until they offer more than the stock install (which seems to be what they are offering according to their website) there doesn't seem to be a compeling reason to switch.

Personally, I'm going to learn some more about Slackware's way of doing things, and try my hand at learning to compile on my own before I try something else. I will admit that I'm watching things like Rubix, Frugelware, and Arch which seem to offer the promise of clean setup with package management.

mowestusa

Posted: **Tue Jan 31, 2006 5:09 pm**

You know...I have tried Underground desktop but its seems kinda buggy to me. I've had problems where apps would not close and my system would hang for a while. when is there going to be an update to it..Oh yea and when I tried to do an update it would not let me complete it because it would say that there was some issues with KDE 3.5 and some font and that no changes were made..like the distro but can't get pass that. any thoughts?

Posted: **Tue Jan 31, 2006 7:13 pm**

Gomer_X wrote: There are plenty (especially here) who still consider it fun to try the latest and greatest. It's a hobby I guess.

I've got a spare partition I use to try different distros, but anymore I'm so busy I don't even get a chance to install test versions of Fedora.

True, true; I've been toying with LFS and heretix personally. But a new distro is going to have to offer more than a "Great desktop" or "better package management"... after all, most of us already know how to customize a desktop from scratch, and I don't really see how FreeBSD's ports, netbsd's pkgsrc, and/or Debian's apt-get could be improved upon.

Thus, originality and innovation is the key things I look for in new distros; however, there's even a catch there, since too much deviation from the norm means a steeper learning curve.

I should just build my own distro and stop complaining

Posted: **Tue Jan 31, 2006 7:20 pm**

dookiesmack wrote:You know...I have tried Underground desktop but its seems kinda buggy to me. I've had problems where apps would not close and my system would hang for a while. when is there going to be an update to it..Oh yea and when I tried to do an update it would not let me complete it because it would say that there was some issues with KDE 3.5 and some font and that no changes were made..like the distro but can't get pass that. any thoughts?

Nothing that comes to mind. I've never had those problems on my UD systems (all four of mine and two others I installed on co-worker's PCs).

All I can think of is that I comment out the Arch Testing repositories in my pacman.config. Testing reminds me too much of my Debian SID frustrations.

Last time I exchanged e-mails with the UD developer, February was the month in which the next release was due.

Posted: **Tue Jan 31, 2006 7:47 pm**

Sweet, Thanks for the fast reply.I guess I have to wack out my kanotix drive again for UD..

Posted: **Mon Feb 06, 2006 10:35 am**

I installed rubix last weekend and have been playing with it some. It's a nice distro, but so far nothing about it seems vastly superior to arch, and I have to admit that their naming convention for their pacman repos is confusing to me. I actually haven't posted at their site, but the main dev is there all the time, and extremely helpful and courteous. The installer is IMO no better/worse than the current arch installer which works fine for my needs - only different. It, by default, chose hd(0,0) for my root partition, and this wasn't correct, so I had to do a little hand munging of my grub config, but that's really all that went wrong.

Posted: **Fri Mar 17, 2006 5:11 pm**

I've been following rubix for a while now, and really like a lot of the ideas I see coming out of it. They (he?) just released v1.0 which so far is very nice. My only concern so far is "Is this a sustainable model?" I've had a hard time figuring out how many devs there are - right now it appears to be basically just one dood, which makes package testing sort of dicey I'd imagine. Still, so far I've had no problems at all. If you like Arch, don't care for bleeding edge, and don't mind compiling your own stuff (even the "community" repo is fairly slim on packages) you might test it out and see what you think.

Posted: **Fri Mar 17, 2006 11:45 pm**

rubix is dead; however, its been reincarnated as "heretix linux".

http://www.h-e-r-e-t-i-x.org

I remember hacking at the script awhile back; its awesome b/c its so easily extensible if you know ruby. for example, to add a package you simply inherit a new class.

Posted: **Sat Mar 18, 2006 1:52 am**

thetza wrote:rubix is dead; however, its been reincarnated as "heretix linux".

http://www.h-e-r-e-t-i-x.org

I remember hacking at the script awhile back; its awesome b/c its so easily extensible if you know ruby. for example, to add a package you simply inherit a new class.

That was rubyx, not rubix.

Posted: **Sat Mar 18, 2006 2:36 am**

ah crap, someone take away my whiskey

thelinuxlink.net

Anyone use rubix?

Anyone use rubix?

Re: Anyone use rubix?