Vine Linux 5
I keep an eye on Distrowatch frequently to see what distributions have been released and I’m always downloading this one or that one. Some make it onto DLR as a review and some don’t. Today I snagged Vine Linux and thought it would be fun to look at something from Japan.
I’m normally somewhat reticent about reviewing distros in other lanaguages as it can be a bother to deal with translation issues. However, that may simply be laziness on my part and thus I will try to make sure I don’t write off any interesting ones simply because their native language is other than English.
Here’s what Wikipedia had to say about Vine Linux:
Vine Linux is a Japanese Linux distribution sponsored by VineCaves. It is a fork of Red Hat Linux 7.2 since Vine Linux 3.0.
So that will give you an idea of what you can expect to see when using Vine Linux. If you’re familiar with Fedora then you’ll be pretty comfortable with Vine Linux.
What’s New In This Release
Working off the Google translation, here’s what I came up with for new stuff in this release:
Reduced memory consumption
Reduced start up time
i386, PPC and x86-64 (PPC release is being prepared)
Font improvements
Improved boot up screen
Easier package updates
Kernel 2.6.27.29
glibc-2.8, gcc-4.1.2
Gnome 2.26.3
Firefox 3.5
There’s more but that will give you an idea of some of the major changes in this release. Click the link above for more details.
The Vine Linux desktop features a gorgeous flower or vine as the wallpaper.
(7 votes, average: 2.71 out of 5)
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I enjoyed this distro as well. But I fond some oddities if not irregularities:
In the 64 bit version when I tried to install Abiword, dependencies were missing, couldn’t make spell check work in OpenOffice, and installing multimedia codecs from Synaptic caused these codecs and other files to be downloaded and installed from source. Also, gnomebaker and brasero were wonky.
Hmmm…thanks for the heads up about those problems, Joe. That’s good to know.
I installed Vine 5 on my desktop, and I have to say, I was astonished. Distro is great, fast, I really like the rpm installer, you can install any rpm package via that little proggy, so, I installed OpenOffice 3.1.1 downloaded from Openoffice.org, and I also installed Firefox from mozilla.com site to avoid Japanese preference since the version that comes with Vine is a community edition made to prefer japanese sites and language. Codecs were easy peasy, self-build packages built from source, newest packages, a veru good kernel, everything works great. I think, Vine Linux 5 is somewhere between RHEL 5.3 and Fedora 11. Just were it should be. I recommend it.
I’ve had the English/native language problem with other distros developed for non-English speaking markets. But on the other hand, I’ve had the same problem with English-centric distros translated into other languages. So the problem seems to be common.
The wallpaper are cherry blossoms which are very famous in Japan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_blossom
=)
Thanks for reviewing something out of the ordinary, Jim. I always enjoy reading about different distributions. I do not try out every single one, and I am going to pass on this one, but I still value the information.
Did you learn any Japanese or any culturalisms along the way? Back in the mid nineties when I was at Digital, I worked with a Japanese employee who was on six month assignment with our Internationalization (I18N) department, where I worked at the time. I had a GREAT time with Toshiki and a number of other team members, as well as visitors from several other countries. A few years later, I ran into Toshiki again, when he was once again on a six month assignment. The years in between had caused me to lose the ability to understand his accent and I could barely understand him, but it sure was good to see him anyway. I enjoy cultural differences very much!
@ Carlo:
Carlo thanks for letting us know what it was. I’m…er…botanically challenged…heh.
@ Brian Masinick:
Brian I took one week of basic, intensive Japanese and promptly fled the class because it was way too hard. Yes, I am a wimp.