LibraNet, anyone? based upon Debian... Current version for Download is 2.0.2 (kernel 2.4.18)
I installed LibraNet 1.9.1(kernel 2.4.3) on one of the Compaq Deskpro 2000 computers I got at a sale (5 for $50). I am seeking a clean distro that works... tried so far, Evil Entity, Slackware 8.1(might be the right one?), and several others. Might even try my old Storm, as it always came through on any system I tried.

These are 100 to 200 mhz Intel PI's, with 32Mb ram, onboard Cirrus 1 Mb video. I add the NIC, CDRom, sound card, as there is already a 2Gb hard drive and a floppy.

I then found that the Reiserfs was not so hot for these old clunkers... or, that I have a problem somewhere, because, after 2 hours of loading, it had an error and dropped out of the plain text loading of individual packages... and mentions a logged file of incompatibilities (probably should have tried to use EXT2).

Loading 1.9.1 back on, with a NIC that it has a driver for, instead of the Realtek RTL8139C, I put in a RTL8139A.

Any comments about LibraNet?

I installed LibraNet 1.9.1 some time ago after trying Mandrake SuSE and Redhat. I was curious about what a Debian distro would be like. The claim of Libranet is that it has the ease of installation of Mandrake and the power of Debian.

Although I am not a newbie to computers I am fairly new to Linux and for similar folk the problem with Libranet 1.9.1 was the text-based installer. Friendly it isn't! The first stage I encountered was a text-based partioning/formatting program called fips which is not something to be messed with unless you know your way round hard drives. It would not be that difficult to wipe out an existing system but I suppose that is one way to get rid of Uncle Bill.

The rest of the installation wasn't that much better in terms of user-friendliness and after the system was finally installed I was dumped into a text screen and left staring at a prompt. Most users would have expected to boot straight into a graphical environment.

Another problem is that unlike Mandrake and Redhat you can't buy Libranet CD's from 3rd party suppliers for a few dollars (or pounds) as they do not make ISO images available for download. They are following the same policy as SuSE in that respect and whilst it probably makes economic sense to them to do this it also forces you to pay a lot more each time you upgrade to the lastest version of the distro.

If memory serves me correctly they had no upgrade option when installing the latest version of the distro. You had to wipe the existing system and start again. Of course some of this may have changed by now but my feeling was that Libranet had some way to go to catch up with Mandrake for ease of installation and value for money.

But to be fair to them they do excel in technical support. Mandrake are pretty bad in this respect and I don't think Redhat are any better. So if your requirements are more complicated and you need tech support Libranet may be your best choice.

Regards, Alan

One of my favorite distros. The last version I tried was the 2.7 beta. It had a nice auto partition and the install was easy.

I use Libranet 2.7 beta3 on my desktop, I love it, getting apps is so easy and I think that the install was really easy, there are so many software titles included in the install you really dont have to download any others, also upgrading was made a snap with Synaptic.