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I was reading a post in the Lockergnome Linux Fanatics issue today about the future of Autopackage.  For those who don’t know Autopackage think of it as the Windows Installer for Linux.  It takes the binaries and puts them into an easy to install package very similar to software installs in Windows.  I installed a game once using Autopackage (Globulation Alpha 15 (0.8.15)).  I was very impressed with how clean the user interface was and how easy the installation was.

In general, Mike’s post on Autopackage talks about the current state of the project, where it is heading, the good / bad / ugly of the situation and how to get Autopackage out there in the public more.  There appears to be reticence on the part of some Linux Distributions to adopt Autopackge or even get it to work well with their distributions.  Since I do not have any first hand knowledge of this I cannot comment directly.  However, I do know how hard it is to get some software working in other distributions, so I do not fully understand why distributions would not start to embrace this type of software.

One comment on Mike’s post makes a great point.  Chris wrote:

pushing Autopackage harder than crack to people thinking about software installation on Ubuntu. With the Debian XULRunner problems, and Firefox 3 using Autopackage by default, you’re going to have a good opportunity to use Mozilla as a lever to get into Ubuntu.

When I wanted to install Firefox 1.5 in Debian when it was first released I was told that it was basically broken for using the ‘apt’ tool and to download the binaries from the Firefox website.  Well I did that and it did work, but doesn’t that go against the purpose of package management?  I am sure that Debian has fixed it by now, but it sure was frustrating to find it difficult to install the newest software.

So, if I ever get to use Linux full time again (I’m considering giving Ubuntu another try) I will sure push for some sort of unified software installation and management software.  If not Autopackage then something like it.  Users just want to be able to USE the software and not fight it during the installation.

One final thought… someone will surely mention that software installation in Windows is NOT full-proof.  I will admit that.  However, it is pretty darn easy to install software of any type.

One of my pet peeves with Linux is not having the 3D Accelleration available while in Linux.  Since my Windows hard drive completely failed, working in Linux hasn’t been so bad, but a couple of the games I like to play are a bit slower due to software rendering.  Below I outline the steps I took to get the nVidia drivers (1.0-8178 at the time of this writing) working with a default netinst of Debian Testing.

Get into pure console mode (runlevel 3)

• Reboot into Recovery Mode or switch down to runlevel 3 or the equivalent
• apt-get update
• apt-get install binutils

Install Kernel Source

• apt-get install linux-source-2.6.12
• replace 2.6.12 with your kernel version (’uname -a’ or ‘uname -r’)
• cd /usr/src
• tar -jxvf linux-source-2.6.12
• ln -s linux-source-2.6.12 linux

Install Kernel Headers

• apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.12-1 linux-headers-2.6.12-1-386

Install nVidia Drivers

• sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8178-pkg1.run

Finally, Reboot to get back into X.

These are the steps that I found to work for me.  I started to do it the "Deban Way" with Debian packages, but I couldn’t find nvidia-kernel-source in Debian Etch.  After experimenting with a botched Debian Testing netinst, I reinstalled with the default packages (base system, Graphical Desktop, base system config after a reboot).  X came up just fine using the ‘nv’ X server.

From all the reading I did on the Internet there is a drawback to this method.  If you build your own kernel, or update your system and this update changes X config files you will have to do this again.  However, the only step you have to do is the last one: sh NVIDIA-Linux-X86…

Please leave any suggestions in the comments for this article and I will make changes as I can.

My main desktop computer (TWEAKED) was having issues tonight so I did a "chkdsk /r c:" upon reboot.  During the first 3% of Stage 4 my hard drive started making a pinging sound.  Being a computer technician I know that is not good.  I shut the computer down and restarted again.  It only detected my secondary hard drive (Mepis Linux), but not my main hard drive (Windows).  Since this computer was given to me by a friend I do not have any of the original installation media so I feel left in the dust.

Fortunately, there is this other operating system out there called Linux.  I have tried several distributions of Linux over the last 5 years and found that I prefer those that use the packaging tool called "apt", which is a Debian tool.  If I can find a distro that uses apt and is desktop friendly that is what I am going to continue to use on this desktop.  I have always wanted to switch to Linux full time on one of my systems.  Heh, now appears to be the time to do this.

As a result of this I think I am going to do a series of reviews on various Linux distributions.  I will create a separate post that will outline the criteria I will have for each distribution.  I am thinking that I will use each distribution for a month before I switch.  I do not know if that will be completely feasible, but we will see.

If anyone has comments on which distributions I should try please leave them in the comments of this post or the next post (which should be up in a couple of days).  The laptop I am using now has Windows XP on it so I am not completely moving away from Windows.  In today’s world you cannot completely move away from either Windows or Mac OS unless the shop you work in solely uses Linux.  My work has three Linux boxes (one NAS, two DB servers), but the other 30 are all Windows 2000/2003 servers.

Thank you for any comments that you have on which distributions I should try.