Choosing an XFCE-based distro

stillborn · **Posted:** Tue Feb 19, 2008 8:51 pm

http://beranger.org/index.php?page=diar ... sed-distro

a12ctic · **Joined:** Tue Apr 11, 2006 1:30 am **Posts:** 32

the poster makes the statement on his opinion of zenwalk

Quote:

I am banned from their forums

I detect some bias, In my opinion Zenwalk rips all those other "XFCE" distros to shreds.

Ghostvirus · **Joined:** Mon Feb 04, 2008 10:55 am **Posts:** 76

This guy sounds like he has a personal beef with Zenwalk's devs. What's the deal with this post?

fushark · **Joined:** Fri Mar 30, 2007 5:51 am **Posts:** 1677

I think Beranger aka Radu-Cristian Fotescu has an unhealthy love and hate relationship with Zenwalk.

mynameis · **Posted:** Wed Feb 20, 2008 3:00 am

Quote:

The Zenwalk team is not always receptive to suggestions, complaints and bug reports, and they have simply refused to examine or fix some bugs.

From what I have seen that is far from the case!

Quote:

Being mostly a French development team, the French forums tend to be more active than the English language ones.

Being a French distro at heart I would assume this and would not have a problem... why does he?

In fact this is a major plus point for anyone that speaks French!

Quote:

Regardless of the fact that Zenwalk's packages include building scripts who attempt to download the source packages from the upstream providers, you can safely say that Zenwalk is a binary-only distro: there is no source repository. They used to offer the sources in the past, then they stopped offering them, and now they started to build a source repo (not complete as of yet; and I am banned from their forums). The GPL requires you make available the FULL sources needed to build the binary packages, either in direct download, or through a written offer (valid for at least 3 years) providing the user with a way of getting the sources, being it for the price of preparing and sending them on CDs/DVDs (like MEPIS is doing). Zenwalk is not completely GPL-compliant by the law.

The GPL stipulates that the source must be available, and it is.

Quote:

Some people might prefer to see Firefox and Thunderbird (and the well-known icons) instead of Iceweasel and Icedove.

And some people might prefer to see IE and Outlook, as well as the icons. People need to break their habits!

Anyway Iceweasel and Icedove are basically identical to Firefox and Thunderbird, plus the default icons don't take too much thought to figure out.

hyperion · **Posted:** Wed Feb 20, 2008 6:08 pm

The best thing to do about Beranger is to ignore him.

There are, and always will be, people who spend most of their time spreading FUD rather than doing anything useful by themselves.

Take a look at the "Project & Develoment" section on Dérangé's website : http://beranger.org/index.php?page=projects

Méprisable et inutile personnage !

It's the last time I post something about him, he even managed to make me waste 2 minutes today : writing this post.

JP

sugarfree · **Joined:** Fri Jan 04, 2008 4:02 am **Posts:** 6

I read it's article.It seems that he didn't take so long time to test the distros.Personally i'm an xfce fan and i have test some of these distros even for a month.Zenwalk seems the most stable in xfce.Xubuntu didn't like it and it wasn't so stable.Sam seems a little outdated with not so good support but it was fast that's the truth.GoblinX is good eye-kandy,fast stable but not like zenwalk.I believe GoblinX is better in kde,seems more well-fitted there than xfce.Btw the last version of GoblinX has a problem with it's installation and you have to remaster it :s.Zenwalk just rocks all of them,tested :p

cfuttrup · **Posted:** Sat Feb 23, 2008 8:41 am

I thought to reply on Bérangérs BLOG, but decided (like JP), it isn't worth the effort. Bérangér has his followers on his forum.

Anyway, I think he softened up a lot. I appreciate that we're at the very top of the list of XFCE distros l!!!

One quote:

Quote:

The Zenwalk team is not always receptive to suggestions

The term "always" makes his statement true. Which distro (or any other business) is always receptive? You can't fight that statement, but it also has no power - I suppose anyone who is not a follower of Bérangér will read other reviews - and they usually praise our positive attitude. The true "Zen" way of life, with a positive attitude, mutual respect and being in balance.

Bérangér also stabs at our "security" thing - IMO a cheap one he bought from Distrowatch. His statement will not affect us in the long term.

Bérangér complains about GNU compliance with a missing source repo. A complaint soon to die. He is aware of this (because I mentioned it on Distrowatch when SN made a distro review in the Weekly).

I recommend that we do not spend our energy on him.

Best regards,
Claus

Akuna · **Posted:** Sat Feb 23, 2008 12:37 pm

LOL... What's funny is that he obviously hates our guts but somehow only ends up promoting us more.

Being so blatantly biased against the 'mean guys' behind Zenwalk, he is only doing a disservice to himself & shows that even the rest of his writings & 'analysis' cannot be taken with much seriousness.

The reasons behind this irrationality, as Yusri mentioned is probably a love/hate relationship with us, because in the beginning, he seemed to love us as his first review of Zenwalk Live & Zenwalk attests: http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue ... 31#review0

Something must have happened since then... something that obviously offended him personally & is now clouting his judgment.

Pitiful, really.

Ghostvirus · **Joined:** Mon Feb 04, 2008 10:55 am **Posts:** 76

Akuna wrote:

Something must have happened since then... something that obviously offended him personally & is now clouting his judgment.

Seems that way. I just switched from Xubuntu to Zenwalk and pretty much everyone here has been nice enough to answer my n00b questions.

cardinals_fan · **Posted:** Sun Feb 24, 2008 8:17 pm

Bérangér should just say what his issue with Zenwalk is and be done with it, rather than making vague comments insinuating some sort of sinister conspiracy. It seems like he spent about 5 minutes testing these distros, I found Zenwalk much preferable to Xubuntu and Wolvix.

beranger · **Posted:** Mon Feb 25, 2008 2:51 pm

Almost to the end, you'll find it: I'm still able to be impressed.

Now find a reasonable explanation for not providing a patched kernel in -current. You are the only one not to have done that.

Apparently, my forum ban was lost in the process -- or was I only banned from the French forums? (Could be, I don't remember.)

fredg · **Posted:** Mon Feb 25, 2008 3:36 pm

Quote:

Almost to the end, you'll find it: I'm still able to be impressed.

I really don't want to read something from you, I just think that all you want, in fact, is just some personnal advertisement. Sorry if I'm wrong.

Quote:

Now find a reasonable explanation for not providing a patched kernel in -current. You are the only one not to have done that.

I'm just waiting that all kernel related packages are done, tested and approved, i. e. the nvidia package in order that the nvidia users will be able to make the upgrade without troubles.
Good or not, it depends on the point of you.
But, yes, I know that you will not agree, that you will say that everybody don't use for example nvidia drivers, argllll proprietary drivers, ....
Let's go, make your criticizes .....

Quote:

Apparently, my forum ban was lost in the process

No, it wasn't a definitely ban, we are some nice guys, you know (surely too nice)

.

Quote:

or was I only banned from the French forums?

I didn't see you there, I should remember a french speaking user with loads of criticisms

* fredg is waiting for the complaints

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beranger · **Posted:** Mon Feb 25, 2008 6:29 pm

Yeah, in the meantime you just updated it http://www.zenwalk.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=72 / http://zenwalk.fr/news/13/, at 25-Feb-2008 17:16.

It's a very Zen attitude to let your users worry while waiting for a security update. Cute move.

And, obviously, it's all my fault.

fredg · **Posted:** Mon Feb 25, 2008 6:45 pm

That's all ? pfff ...

And don't worry for our users, they don't need you to ask/say/request something.

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Choosing an XFCE-based distro

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