Hello caos ppl!

this is my first post to this subforum

I am a gentoo-user for my desktop, and I use slack for my server. I couldn't find an OS for my laptop. (Debian seems to hate my laptop, fedora/mdk to slow, slack has no packages, gentoo takes to long). Caos might be just what I need.

so I have 5 questions:

1) is it possible to use a new 2.6 kernel? I need it because the usb and acpi support is better.

2) the binaries of caos are optimized for i686 or i386 or ... ? distrowatch says i386...

3) because it is not tracked on distrowatch... Is cpudyn included?

4) does it start lots of (mostly useless) services at bootup. I don't want a fedora-like startup speed. gentoo default does a nice job at startup. If it takes to long can I change the services that get started easy? like editing rc.d directories? Is there a x-server started at startup? if so can I disable it (easily) ?

5) are the config-files well-placed... so you can edit them using a text editor without looking too hard?

Greetings

Geert.

Sorry for the late reply... Missed the thread post notification.

Answers/thoughts:

1. Can I answer this later? We are still playing with it. Please let us know if you (or anyone else) gets a chance to do this before us.

2. Binaries are compiled with --target=i386. We will also offer i586, i686, and athlon in the near future. We will also offer x86_64 and Itanium eventually (we need test hardware).

3. cpudyn is not included at this point. But if someone wants to maintain it, it can be easily integrated. (hint to all readers).

4. with cAos, you can really install a _bare_ bones system. With a core install, there are no open port services running. If you install the network packages, you will get sshd. If you install the desktop, you will get X. Editing the runlevel startup apps is as easy as using 'chkconfig kudzu off' for example (or the curses tool 'ntsysv'). (same as RH)

5. That is a _major_ goal of mine. If the file system layout is reasonable, there is _no_ need for GUI config tools (IMHO) even for newbies. We adopted the RH7.3 config file layout, but will probably start migrating that (of course keeping backward compatibility with sym-links) to something that is even easier.

Hope that helps, and again sorry for the delay!

Greg

thanks for your reply (a bit late, which i don't mind, but, you have actually me interested in cAos)

I am going to download it tomorrow or even today maybe...

I am going try that I will let you know something.

Well if I like cAos... I would have no problem maintaining cpudyn and maybe some other packages. (got to learn rpm-packaging , been using debian and gentoo... )

I like this... this is why I am going to test cAos.
The only thing I don't understand is Red Hat compatibility. Why?

RedHat compatibility because it is currently the most generally used distro of Linux, and with their new pricing we think there will be many people needing a free solution. Having a 0% (or roughly close to) learning curve helps the transition and allows easy entry to a new distro (well, at least for the people currently using a RH like system).

BTW, jump into IRC (irc.freenode.net, #caos). We are very active in there, and have a very good development group in there (as well as new package maintainers). The room is very helpful, and can defiantly get you into RPM packaging very quickly.

okay... I installed it.

The installer. One word: GREAT. Fast, simple, good. I like it more than those X/Ncurses-based installers. Very nice job... keeping simple what is in most distro's complex (take debian for example).

System boot up seems to be kept very minimal. All the tools you need, like gcc, are in there. Like that. Build the system yourself... instead of having it letting be built for you. Only the kernel source should IMHO be installed.

boot up does it without X and takes rather long by default. I will start tinkering with it quite fast. I would have liked to see the same thing as the packages configuration... Select what you need at bootup. Disable it by default.

eth0 didn't work for the first time... manually modprobed 8139too and ifconfig eth0 up seems to work. Second time I booted into caos eth0 was configured . I don't know this is a bug or not... just for your information.

oh and eh... I would like to see nano with the editor's... but vi also works for me .

After all... I like cAos more than I expected of it. It is not the Red Hat-clone I thought it would be.

Nice job.

BTW: I have visited your chan...

Geert