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By : vasanth
Pardus is an independently developed system with notable visions/history. The first version was released during the end of 2006. The initial version had many promising features like a new package management system, control center, installer and init system. Pardus 2007 also had one of the best looking KDE customizations. The lack of some important packages (like fglrx), longer installation time and some hardware issues made me to switch to other distributions.
Pardus team has released RC version of their latest offering, Pardus 2008. This release has some noticeable features which made me to go back to Pardus.
2008 Features:
- Latest Kernel (2.6.25.5) and latest KDE 4 in repository
- PulseAudio
- Many speed/functionality improvements to all the major components (YALI/PISI/COMAR)
- New visual design
Booting & Installation:
Pardus offers separate ISOs for live CD and installation. There is no live CD for 2008 so far but I hope it will be available during the final release which is scheduled for 23rd June. The installation cd shows an orange colored grub theme from where you can boot into installation, change the language etc. The default language is Turkish. The boot splash process leads to a beautiful installer which offers options to configure language, keyboard layout, time zone, users and partitions.
The partitioning tool offers automatic as well as manual partitioning options. The manual partitioning shows one of the best looking and easy to use partitioning tool. Once you select the root partition for Pardus, the message on the partition selected, changes to "Pardus will install here", which is a nice addition. After configuring all these options, without showing a summary of changes, the installer asks for confirmation to proceed to install Pardus.
The installer is the second most beautiful installer after OpenSUSE's. You can get help on each step as you proceed to configure the system while installation. Though the installation is still performed in two steps ("Install Packages" and "Configure Packages"), the installation is faster than 2007 series YALI (Pardus Installer).
Hardware Detection & Desktop:
Pardus detected all my hardware components (ATI Mobility X1400, BCM43xx Wlan card, WSXGA+ display). The fglrx driver did not work in Pardus 2007. Also the front panel multimedia keys in the DELL Inspiron were not working in 2007. Pardus 2008 repositories now has the fglrx driver. The driver was installed properly and the front panel keys also worked as desired. Pardus also has the proprietary multimedia codecs installed by default.
Pardus uses KDE as its default desktop. The initial configuration tool (KAPTAN) offers options to configure the panel, wallpaper, network etc. The application selection in Pardus covers all basic tasks except torrents (no Ktorrent). Some of the important packages included are
- OpenOffice
- GIMP
- Firefox(RC2)
- PulseAudio
PulseAudio integration worked without any issues. Mplayer is still in Turkish.
PISI:
Pardus has its own package management system. PISI (Packages Installed Successfully, as Intended) is the package manager and it has a graphical user interface also. Installing application using the command line tool "pisi" as well as the GUI tool is easy. The GUI tool lists three categories of packages
- New Packages
- Installed Packages
- Upgradeable Packages
I was not able to install applications using PISI GUI tool in beta version but RC1 fixed that. The PISI tool is a lot faster and responsive than its 2007 versions. The repositories still lack some important applications but you can install them using their source packages. Also the package grouping is not complete as utilities like 'kvm'' is listed under 'Others' rather than under 'Kernel'.
TASMA:
TASMA is the Pardus configuration center which covers most of the system wide configuration like network, package, users, hardware etc. The KDE control center is integrated into TASMA. One missing feature in TASMA is that there is no partition management tool (command line tools parted, cfdisk are available).
Conclusion:
Pardus is one of the most user (beginner) friendly distribution. The latest RC release provides a stable, fast environment. As more and more applications are made available for Pardus, this version will make many users to switch to Pardus as their default distribution.
Re: Pardus 2008 RC1 - Great Distro Ahead
Thanks for your good review.
I am looking forward for the final release.
I always wander why Pardus is very underrated? although it is one of the best KDE distro available.
PCLinuxOS does not have lots of packages, but it is much more popular.
Does it have to do with the fact it is from Turkey?
Re: Pardus 2008 RC1 - Great Distro Ahead
Kais Hassan:
I agree that Pardus is underrated but I do not think being from Turkey has anything do to with it.
Pardus bug tracking system and user forums were initially available only in Turkish if I remember correctly.
Also PCLinuxOS was first released in 2005 whereas Pardus in 2007. It will take some time before people
start following a distro.
Re: Pardus 2008 RC1 - Great Distro Ahead
Update:
It seems the bug tracking system is still in Turkish. Pardus is not detecting the existing Linux installations.
Filed a new bug(http://bugs.pardus.org.tr/show_bug.cgi?id=7385) for the same.
Re: Pardus 2008 RC1 - Great Distro Ahead
It is true there are a lot of missing packages, but the 2007 repositories (both official and contrib) were in a good position in last months.
However, the process of porting all packages to 2008 (with new gcc and etc.) is not finished yet.
For keeping in mind, in parallel to the official stable release, repositories will be much more advanced... Thanks for the review by the way...
Re: Pardus 2008 RC1 - Great Distro Ahead
Bug tracking system is universal. I use my production machine as English and bugzilla successfully identifies browser settings
then display the page in English.
I think, there is another issue about bugzilla.
You can visit worldforum to solve this issue, there are a lot of people ready for help :)
Thanks for the review.
Re: Pardus 2008 RC1 - Great Distro Ahead
Ktorrent is readily available in the pardus-2008 repository.
emre@voyager2008 ~ $ pisi search ktorrent
ktorrent - KDE için BitTorrent uygulama programı
(sorry it's in Turkish, but it will be English if you setup your system in English).
I don't agree that KVM shall be in Kernel, it's the userspace component of virtualization infrastructure in the kernel, thus, maybe it can be in the Virtualization kind of grouping.
I also don't agree that Pardus is a beginner distro. Yes it's very user-friendly, but if you want to do some advanced stuff, all is readily there to serve you. :) For example, I'm running my Pardus installation as a virtual KVM guest, but with built-in performance functionalities (virtio) enabled on the fly with a mudur= swith on grub kernel line.
Re: Pardus 2008 RC1 - Great Distro Ahead
Emre Erenoglu:
Yes, Ktorrent is in the repo and I was able to install it but for a new user, It would be easy if there is an
application which can download torrents without installing a client from repos.
Every Linux can let the user to do the advanced stuff but being a beginner friendly is what makes a distro successful :-).
Also on the package grouping, there are too many packages in the 'others' group. They can always be grouped like you said.
Re: Pardus 2008 RC1 - Great Distro Ahead
I have Pardus 2007.3 with the contrib repository:
http://en.pardus-wiki.org/Contrib_repository
SMPlayer (http://smplayer.sourceforge.net/) and VLC are the best.
Re: Pardus 2008 RC1 - Great Distro Ahead
One of the big problems Pardus faces
is that it intoduces even more fragmentation
in package management. At the moment, if you
want to build packages for an app for all
major distributions, it's possible to build one
.deb and one .rpm and pretty much hit them all.
I'm absolutely furious that supporting Pardus
means adding a new package format.
Re: Pardus 2008 RC1 - Great Distro Ahead
Yes, it was the most user friendly Linux distrubition i have ever used
Re: Pardus 2008 RC1 - Great Distro Ahead
I agree, it is very user friendly :)
Re: Pardus 2008 RC1 - Great Distro Ahead
I am going to be the one to say that I have never used it lol.
Re: Pardus 2008 RC1 - Great Distro Ahead
I'm not sure I understand what is the main purpose of the program?
Re: Pardus 2008 RC1 - Great Distro Ahead
Yes, that's right,
Pardus is one of the most users friendly distribution. Its really stable!
Re: Pardus 2008 RC1 - Great Distro Ahead
Every Linux can let the user to do the advanced stuff but being a beginner friendly is what makes a distro successful :-).
Also on the package grouping, there are too many packages in the 'others' group. They can always be grouped like you said.
Re: Pardus 2008 RC1 - Great Distro Ahead
I like the partition portion of the program. Very intuitive!
Re: Pardus 2008 RC1 - Great Distro Ahead
hi guys,
i am from Turkey and iam using Pardus now.(i am so
sory for my English,sorry my mum sorry teacher :P)
Pardus released its first version in 2006. So Pardus
isn't following another linux distros.
it's so good :)