Foresight Linux 2.0

Remember when commenting that I'm looking at usability and how good the release is for the "normal" user.

Too many people missed the point on the DreamLinux review because they couldn't grasp the significance of having an unusably poor installation process with regards to user uptake.

Really true!!

but i used iT!ª

I think this is a little unfair. You've pointed out that you can't even find the dialog for changing the title bar colour (it's right in there under Customise in the Appearance control). Yet you feel well placed to hound the add/remove software tools.

One of the differences of Foresight is the Conary package management, which you comment nothing about other than slating the simple user interface.

There is also no mention of the updates in Gnome 2.22.0 (which you make no mention of). These are also highlights over and above Ubuntu, PCLOS (have you checked the Gnome version - it's very poor).

You make no mention of the new tar-based install method on the DVD. It installs in 10 minutes or under, which is unheard of imho.

Please at least do some background research before trying to write an objective review. Or if you don't do that, make some suggestions to the Foresight team to improve the distribution.

Codecs are an issue I agree, but as you pointed out - if you read the instructions it's all there for you. In fact Foresight's manual is a huge bonus. It's well written and a very good starter document for newbies coming from the Windows world.

Part of the Foresight philosophy is to offer bleeding edge applications and interfaces in a reasonably stable distribution.

You have missed the point by making blind assumptions about the team's goal. Please go and sit in the corner and have a long hard think.

I think it's a great review. My only quibble is with your recommendation of Ubuntu on the basis of usability. I've been using Kubuntu since 5.04; I know that's not the same, of course, as Ubuntu, but it's close. At any rate, I've spent considerable time on the Ubuntu forums these last few years.

I don't think Ubuntu is as usable as it should be. Usability is always difficult to judge for those of us who have used Linux for a long time, but there are certain basics that I believe must be present in order to make the usability claim. Among these are wireless networking capability, which I know that you don't evaluate, but which is nevertheless essential in a world of laptop users (which is becoming more common than desktop users in terms of new PC purchases).

Ubuntu fails to deliver usability with several wireless cards. It also fails on ATI video cards. I don't mean that you can't get these things to work, but that they are difficult and often require sophisticated user intervention.

Anyhow, I don't know which distro is the king of usability. Believe it or not, Puppy may qualify, because their setup wizards are clear and painless. But I just don't think it's Ubuntu.

Thanks for a nice review. I agree with you. I tested foresight yesterday. It was not what I expected. Nothing really did work. Had problems with updates, codecs and almost anything else. I am a newbie, so I see things from an avarage user perspective. Most users who wants to try Linux would go back to Windows if they start their Linux advanture with Foresight. Most user don't care/understand what 2.22 means or/and conary stands for. They just want their OS to work out of the box. Those who are use to Linux surely will figure things out. But this review wasn't meant for those "experts". I'm using Pardus 2007.3 since this morning and man there is a difference in quality.
Thanks again and keep up the good work.

I liked the review, as it was written in the perspective of the normal user who is tired of Windows, wants to try something else, but then gets frustrated because distros don't realize that normal users don't know nor want to know how to sudo anything. I myself have given up on Ubuntu (although it and Fedora are my faves) because I can't figure out how to get two monitors to work in a spanned mode. Most users again are not going to know nor want to know how to edit their X.org file or whatever.

My feeling is when Linux distros realize that we all aren't Linux gurus, and some of us don't like having to research in order to get a wireless card or codecs to work, then and only then will it start to put a dent in the M$ world. Don't get me wrong I love where Linux has come from and would love to see it more widely used, however every time I install a distro, something in it (dual monitors, networking, etc) pushes me back to Windows, and that can't happen for Linux to take off. We're getting close..

Hmmm... I haven't tried Foresight Linux 2.0 yet, but what you have commented on sure is spot on for the previous releases. Not sure if I will spend the time downloading the DVD as my experience with Foresight in the past sure has jaded me. Why omit Gimp from the list of installed packages? Waht is ther instead, you don't mention that. Everybody seems to be bigging up PCLOS, well I did try it, and I am not a big fan of KDE 3.x.x, but I agree with Venper that if I had to settle on a KDE 3.x.x distro it would be Pardus. Anyway, I am currently testing Kubuntu 8.04 KDE 4 edition and I have to say that KDE 4 is building to be a good Desktop Environment. As for Gnome I think I will be sticking with Ubuntu. Even for all its quirks and faults, it is what has been on my main PC now since 5.04.

Cheers

Hate to agree with you. But Foresight indeed got worseron many points. I've been involved with some directions it took for a while and also have been working on some issues, but once I found out that fixing those issues was not the main goal. I think your review is completely fair. Foresights team problem is that it got blind from working on some issues while totally loosing the point for simple user. You totally got the core problem- it is a highly experimental distribution but nothing a noob should try - but the team continues to claim the opposit no matter what experiences the users make. They need to get some reality. About PackageKit. Its a joined effort to create a new installer GUI for a lot of distributions but its far from end user ready. Your GIMP story: GIMP used to be part of the default install and also the philosophy was to give the user most of the software a user might want. Now they like to reduce size of the ISOs - but you cant have both. Foresight was VERY promising and still some underlying technology is nice. But the organisation and decisions could not be more worse than it had been - and also led many of its users to continuing problems. The core mistake was to start this big Foresight 2.0 shot without having the resources to make sure it will be better than any previous releases. From my insight I presume Foresight wont get any better for many months to come. I hope it will get on track and I will be willing to help it doing so if the team starts reflect on what the outcome of its actions were. The people working on Foresight are very talented technically but fail to connect to the simple user. Sad but true.

Ubuntu is vastly overrated. It's just repackaged Debian. Debian is no more difficult to install than Ubuntu, just as usable, doesn't come with non-standard components such as UpStart which makes many standard boot configurations not work, and has a more professional and knowledgeable community behind it than Ubuntu does.

You should be recommending Debian to new users, not Ubuntu.

i wonder how much the Foresight guys must have paid tho whom wrote this - http://mklinuxos.blogspot.com/2008/03/news-foresight-linux-20-released.h...

Are you sure you installed same distro as the other reviewer ?

Foresight is garbage. Sabayon, PCLinuxOS, and yes Ubuntu are the threats to microsoft. Redmond will fall, it's distro's like this that make linux look bad in today's age of prebundled codecs and apps for everything coming with even with non-bloated fit on one cd distros.

I was going to post my own review of Foresight Linux, which I tried out two days ago on my Dell Inspiron 700m. You've hit most of my gripes, but I'll summarize them here:

1. The installer could not detect my Intel integrated graphics (855GM) and so I installed the OS via text mode. Upon reboot - no X, had to change the /etc/X11/xorg.conf driver from vesa to intel.

2. The package manager is slow and uninformative. I've been spoiled as far as speed is concerned, as I have used Debian and Debian-based distros for quite a while now. For my money, I haven't found a package management system that is faster and that has a similar depth of offerings.

After installation, I tried to find how to insall emacs. Searching for emacs in the Add/Remove Programs section brings up nada.

It is my understanding (and experience) that the search is based solely on the name of the individual packages, and not the contents of the packages or any metadata. I imagine that this will be addressed in the future, but it is a painful shortcoming *now*.

I didn't progress much farther with my review, instead deciding to download the latest Hardy Heron alpha and give that a spin. It works extremely well (wireless too!), and the laptop is ready for our vacation. Just what the doctor ordered!

Well, I don't agree with you, but That's what you get for posting such a hard statement.

With a review like yours, from the 'regular user'-point of view, I have always the same remark: Would your mother (not to be offensive, but you used the same comparison in the review) be able to install windows or ubuntu or any other distro?

If you take stand for those people, than you have to agree that they always have someone around to do the installation for them, someone who reads up on stuff (manuals, howto's, google etc). I am someone like that: for several years I have done it using windows (since win95 I do everything myself) and now since 1.5 years I do the same with linux (Archlinux and Debian).

And as a consequence, I RTFM and I'm not ashamed for it, nor would I use it against a distro for pointing out how bad it is.

If you are a regular user, than you at the very least have someone to assist you in installing the OS. Installing codecs and everything-but-the-kitchensink-applications is part of the installation. The regular user should only care about setting up an emailclient, adding bookmarks and changing the wallpaper - everything else should work.

Have you ever tried playing an Xvid-encoded movie on a vanilla Windows XP? No? You have to go out and find a codec pack on the internet that is not infected with malware. You have to *know* which codecs or -packs you need and where to get them without getting infected.

My point is: your point of view is not good to review the installation procedure of an operating system. If you really want to stand tall for the regular user, then ask a dev of foresight (or any distro you will be reviewing) to install it on machine of yours (through ssh that should work I guess) and ask him/her if everything is set up correctly before you start reviewing the usability without having to read manuals.

The titlebar color thing is a Gnome issue. Gnome is the desktop environment that comes with Foresight. To make this issue go away, either log out and log back in, or go to Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal and type in "killall metacity" [ENTER] without the quotes.

Thank you for taking the time to install and review Foresight. Your comments on the codecs in the userguide were right on, and I took the time this weekend to update the userguide with instructions on how to do it in a GUI, and how to open a terminal to use the command line.

Your feedback on PackageKit is appreciated, and it's a work in progress. We will be adding better support in the feature to improve search, and the ability to search by metadata and even in groups. (Image editors will show F-Spot, GIMP, etc).

Paul Cutler
Community Manager
Foresight Linux

I also tried Foresight at home and I agree with what you've written. Foresight is too complex for even an advanced user due to the conary system, which does not provide so manu packages, and does not have a good packages browser. IMHO Foresight is a NO-GO.

Thanks for the review - I thought it was just me.

Package management - which should be a big strength - is very weak in Foresight.

Slightly OT: I'm running it on a brand new KPC from NewEgg.

For whatever reason, it shipped with only 15 of 80 gigs formatted.

More seriously, I'm having a hard time installing any other distro on the machine. Ubuntu fails (even using the alternate install) with a message that the video is 'unsupported.'

Both SUSE 10.3 and Mandriva One '08 also fail, for reasons related to having to use an external dvd rom drive with the box.

I'm sure the problems are solvable, but for now, Foresight is it - and I'm not all that happy.

Scott Atkinson
Watertown NY

Thank you as well for such an excellent and detailed review. I know it may sound harsh, but don't forget that Foresight IS trying to project itself into the consumer market. If it's going to offer a mildly-tweaked Gnome with an experimental package management system that doesn't even look half-ready, then it's undoubtedly going to come across FAR more disparaging comments unless it doesn't live up to its own claims.

I was going to purchase a Shuttle KPC, but opted for the stronger K4500 instead for the extra power. I received it yesterday, played around with Foresight, and strangely enough had the same experience as you had.

As if the Gnome environment didn't feel just a tad bit stifling enough, I most certainly was not happy trying to figure out where everything was hidden, from locating the command line (as you say, mentioned a lot in the manual, but never a mention of WHERE to find it), to editing the menu.

On paper, the Conary package management system has great potential -- in practice, the GUIs look only like half-baked supplements to the CLI (assuming you can find/work with it). Only PackageKit Updates give you a file listing with details that remotely approaches Synaptic -- and while the manual DOES direct you to a website giving you a comprehensive listing of available software, it's a poor substitute. What if I wanted to see what software I have available? How can I search by categories (video editors, cursors, etc?). How do I use that cool rollback feature?

And speaking of questions, I've frankly written far better user manuals than the one supplied on the desktop. The presentation is bland, boring, uninteresting, and not as comprehensive as the other review makes it sound. For one thing, would it have killed them to add some pictures?

About the only good thing that came with the Shuttle-tweaked Foresight is that it comes with a good assortment of applications (including GIMP!), and it has Compiz Fusion enabled. However, Compiz on a relatively bland and uninspired Gnome system is akin to the old adage of "lipstick on a pig". This, in addition to the fact that the feel of the system, despite the 2G of RAM, seems sluggish and jittery.

The enclosed Foresight live media were,... yep , you guessed it,... install disks only, and unable to detect the proper resolution at that (try using the Foresight installer in 640x480 resolution,... it's annoying!).

And to add insult to injury, it seems it uses hard drive encryption as well, as no other Linux distro can view the contents of its install partition.

After about 2 hours or so, I had had enough. I wasn't a big fan of Gnome anyway, but at least systems like Ubuntu, gOS, Mint, and Fedora Core make the effort to be usable as well as unique. Like with the AsusOS on the EeePC, Foresight is positioning itself as a gateway to Linux by stripping off some of the greatest strengths that 90% of all Linux distros have to offer. And in doing so, it ends up embarrassing us, and putting my work and that of countless other volunteers to shame.

FYI, I installed MiniME 2008 (a precursor to PCLinuxOS 2008), and I couldn't be happier. With the exception of the Ethernet which simply needed a quick activation through the PCLinuxOS Control Center, everything was detected and set up easily, and (after wiping out the drive using GParted) installation took no more than THREE minutes. Once I booted back in, it took another 10 minutes to select and install all the applications needed to turn it into my dream system, and now I'm happy enough to cry. The system has MORE applications, MORE eyecandy, MORE cusomtization options, and is all-around far MORE usable, yet is also faster and apparently a lot kinder to the K4500's fan.

Spending $300 for THIS system would not only be a bargain, it would be a complete revolution! Perhaps that's the reason why Linux PCs with "caveats" are sold instead,... there's just too much risk in rocking the boat.