Oracle Distro A Knock Out

[Mel Thompson]

Got home and decided to stay up till all hours installing various distros. The thing that blew my mind when I got to the Unbreakable Linux DVD from the new Oracle Open World project was that the thing just installed. The GUI was not only very simple, but much of it was actually beautifully done.

The install, unlike the slower-than-a-glacier Open Solaris I just tried, simply hummed. Everything was really fast. It made my 32-bit computer perform like the 64-bit SPARC I just couldn't afford. (Solaris said there was a way to get the 32-bit install option to go, but this faux geek here could not find that option, but I digress.)

So this thing whirls on in, looks sharp during the whole install, gets itself installed and just is ready to rock. First test. THE SOUND CARD! OS developers, do you hear me! A computer has a thing on it called a SOUND CARD. I mention that because almost all Linux distros overlook this point, not exactly of course.

(Parenthetically, I started learning line command, although I don't believe in it, kind of like the way I study the Bible, but don't believe in it, because in the real world, given the limitations we live in, well, they'll both have to do for now.)

And one of the main reasons folks need to learn line command in the terminals is because somehow they'll have to go back and make painfully obvious additions in order to have routine functionality. And now one of the main reasons newbies who just believe in Open Operating systems, who are hoping for a non-technical desktop, if they're serious, finally have to learn line commands is to get SUPER OBVIOUS STUFF to work. Now I saw a million postings on various sound card issues. Oracle solved the sound card issue by . . . dig it . . . . finding a list of all the major sound cards, loading them in to the kernel, enabling the system to then detect the card in question and enable it and the operating system to work together.

So now this distro just spins itself onto my hard drive, and starts pumping out sound before the install is complete, tests the sound in front of you, both speakers, and then asks you to adjust the volume if you want to. And the sound quality is the clearest and the strongest yet. The video simply required a flash plug in. But this too resolved itself in a stunning way. I hit the plug-in icon, and my operating system searched the internet for the plug-in, SO I DIDN'T HAVE TO! And then it selected the right one, without even bothering having me go through menus and so on, and then it yanked that program in, installed it automatically, turned the new program on and, within 60 seconds was spinnin' my video for online television.

Cats, let's pull this off in Fedora and Red Hat. (I talked to Red Hat tonight and told them that like, "Dudes! I've been trying to install a Red Hat or Fedora version with working sound since time began. What's up?" The representative insightfully produced the brilliant rejoiner, "Go talk to your salesman. Tell him." Note to Red Hat: When folks come to your workers asking about simple problems that you can solve, make sure your workers know that they need to relay that information to you so you can improve your enterprise product and clue Fedora in. SOUND! Look into it. (Dear Red Hat/Fedora: I never made it to the salesman. Someone else beat you to my desktop. No salesman required. Their name is Oracle. Check it out.)

Okay, okay, I semi-apologize, since I love Red Had and Fedora anyway, and when they do fix their obvious issues, those ones still unaddressed for oh, like, what, six years now, I'll be loading them back on my desktop first thing. (I love my little Red Hat, even wear the company-issued ret hat on my head.)

No, no, wait, I got it. Never mind, let's not fix the sound problem like Oracle did.
Let's have ordinary people with no computer knowledge spend their time contemplating Linux-Unix commands, NOT! (No, I'm not going to stop using Linux line commands, since I still have to experiment with all the other distros.) Props to SUSE for also working out the sound issue, not as cool as Oracle though because I like the more straight-ahead Gnome interface. KDE is brilliant, but all the Big Ks, remind me of a certain store I grew up with, and well, too much information there. (And KDE is given as an option during install.)

Eternal Newbie.

[techieMoe]

You realize that Oracle "Unbreakable" Linux is a repackaged version of Redhat Enterprise Linux, right?

[Roxoff]

I've not had a sound card go undetected by a linux distribution since, oh, before you were born.

On the rare occasions that I've changed soundcard and kudzu didn't detect it, I've had it up and working with system-config-soundcard within seconds.

If you have an unusual sound card chipset, or maybe you have some hardware resource conflict (or, even, a faulty soundcard), then maybe you could help the community to fix your problems rather than just criticising the volunteers who are doing the work.

Also, I wouldn't consider Unbreakable Linux to be a beginners system; it's based (as techiMoe says) on RHEL which is largely a server variant of the operating system.

[carlosponti]

We use it for our servers here where i work. its a solid distribution for that and as a workstation but I wouldn't be so prone to use it for much else.