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<TITLE>The Answer Guy 31: Yggdrasil:
A Breath of Life for the Root of CD Linux Distributions?</TITLE>
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<H4>"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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<H1 align="center"><A NAME="answer">
<img src="../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif" alt="" border="0" align="middle">
<a href="./index.html">The Answer Guy</a>
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</A></H1> <BR>
<H4 align="center">By James T. Dennis,
<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com">linux-questions-only@ssc.com</a><BR>
Starshine Technical Services,
<A HREF="http://www.starshine.org/">http://www.starshine.org/</A> </H4>
<p><hr><p>
<H3><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" alt="(?)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">Yggdrasil:
A Breath of Life for the Root of CD Linux Distributions?</H3>
<p><strong>From Mike on Sun, 05 Jul 1998
in the</strong>
<a href="news:comp.unix.questions">comp.unix.questions</a>
<strong>newsgroup</strong></p>
<p><strong>
What do you know about
<a http://www.yggdrasil.com/">Yggdrasil</a> linux distribution?
They purport
significant advances in OS/SOFTWARE/DOCUMENTATION not achieved by
others. Is it real or make believe or worthy of mention? I was
impressed by what I read, however I am not all knowing but just
researching linux to find the best distribution/version to begin
learning yet have an os that is versatile enough to keep using once
abilities exceed beginner/amateur. Mike
</strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" alt="(!)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">
Yggdrasil's ``Plug and Play'' Linux was the first CD-ROM
distribution ever produced. They also developed and released
the first CDR recording software that was available under
Linux. Yggdrasil was also one of the earliest companies to
compile, print and bind "dead tree" versions of the LDP (Linux
Documentation Project). Back near the beginning of 1997 they
released an 8-CD set of Linux archives (not including their
own distribution). They are the only company that I know of
which has produced a video documentary on using Linux.
<br><br>
Adam Richter, founder of Yggdrasil, is still active in the
community. He frequently shows up and local user group
meetings (<A HREF="http://www.svlug.org">http://www.svlug.org</A>)
and he occasionally
participates in discussions on the 'Linux-kernel' mailing
list. In fact I saw him at the "midnight rally" that the
SVLUG and some other bay area Linux enthusiasts hosted in
front of Fry's and CompUSA on the night that Microsoft
officially shipped Win '98(*).
<br><br>
<ul><li>Specifically he and I discussed the fact that the
rally had just run out of the 500 S.u.S.E. CD's that
had been donated to us for promotional purposes.
He joked that he could drive over to his offices
--- a couple of miles from there --- and get a case or
two of old sets of the "archives" --- but also expressed
the concern that they were probably a little too old to
be of interest to new Linux users.
</ul>
Recently (just last February --- a few months ago), he
announced his experimental "Ground Zero" repository --- which
is an effort to provide a comprehensive and dynamic repository
of all of the available Linux packages in tarball (Slackware
compatible .tar.gz), RPM (Red Hat), and .deb formats.
<br><br>
Apparently Adam also has some interesting processes running
at his site --- based on some custom programming he's done.
It monitors certain FTP sites (and some other sites?) and
automatically fetches, builds and tests new kernels (and
some other packages?). I don't know the details --- but it
sounds very cool.
<br><br>
One of the things I really liked about Yggdrasil's distribution
was that it had an integrated source tree. You could easily
find the sources for anything in the distribution (I think it
included a '<tt>whence</tt>' command which was similar to the '<tt>which</tt>'
command except in that it pointed you to the source code for
a command, rather than just to the binary).
<br><br>
I mention that in the past tense since I haven't used
"Plug and Play" Linux in a number of years --- it hasn't
been updated recently. In response to your note I raced
over to the Yggdrasil web site
(<A HREF="http://www.yggdrasil.com/">http://www.yggdrasil.com/</A>)
in the hopes that they actually have a new release.
<br><br>
(I keep asking Adam and he just quietly assures me not to
worry about it!).
<br><br>
So, I'd like to know what you've read (and if there was a
date on it).
<br><br>
As for the relative merits of Yggdrasil's "Plug and Play"
vs. <a href="http://redhat.com/">Red Hat</a>,
<a href="http://www.suse.com/">S.u.S.E</a>.,
<a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>,
<a href="http://www.caldera.com/">Caldera</a>, and the most recent
<a href="http://www.slackware.org/">Slackware</a>
--- it's not a fair comparison. All of these other
major, general purpose distributions have been updated several
times since the last "Plug and Play" release.
<br><br>
So, I cannot recommend the old Yggdrasil version except for
historical (almost archealogical) purposes. That's why I want
them to release a new version.
<br><br>
(Meanwhile the "Ground Zero" effort is very up-to-date and
completely independent of your distribution --- so you should
definitely bookmark their site and check on it regularly).
</blockquote>
<p><hr width="40%"></p>
<H3><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" alt="(?)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">More on Distribution Preferences</H3>
<p><strong>
Answerguy,
What do you think of this distribution?
OpenLinux Base
</strong></p>
<font color="navy"><em>
<p><strong>
OpenLinux<75>: A complete Linux operating
system with all the system tools you<6F>ll need.
Plus valuable add-ons, like Netscape<70>
Communicator and backup utilities.
</strong></p>
<p><strong>
US and Canadian orders can take advantage of a $20.00
rebate from Caldera, bringing the price of OpenLinux
Base to $31.95
</strong></p>
</em></font>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" alt="(!)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">
I haven't used any of the <a href="http://www.caldera.com/">Caldera</a> distributions
recently. This is a much more recent version the those
that I've used. So, I don't have an informed opinion on
them.
<br><br>
Since you just asked about Yggdrasil yesterday I'm wondering
if this is a pattern. I hope you aren't going to send me
of these every day.
<br><br>
My opinion about Caldera <em>Standard</em> is that it is the best
choice for a site that has existing Netware servers or
clients. It was also the first distribution that was
supported by WordPerfect for Linux. There are a number of
other commercial software companies that work with Caldera
for releasing Linux versions of their product.
<br><br>
If the Caldera Base includes a copy of
<a href="http://www.stardivision.com/">Star</a>Office (as your
press release says it does) than that is a very good reason
to try it. (The installation of StarOffice that I have from
an early 4.0 CD is very unstable --- it dies quickly and
horribly under my
<a href="http://www.suse.com/">S.u.S.E.</a> 5.1 system.
I've heard that that
there are new libraries and releases that fix that --- but I
haven't been particularly motivated to go get them since I
still mostly live in text consoles).
<br><br>
StarOffice is a very promising product --- and the competition
between it Corel Office, and Applixware should be
interesting. The most important feature of either is to
provide me with stable, reliable access to MS Office .DOC and
.XLS files. The first one to successfully do that with MS
Office '97 wins my vote. (Since that is one of the few
reasons for me to get out of a text console and into X --- the
others being Netscape Navigator (when I need something that
just doesn't look right in Lynx), 'xfig' (to draw diagrams for
the book that I'm working on), and 'xdvi', and 'gv' (to
preview the LaTeX and dvips output for same).
<br><br>
At the same time I recognize the potential of these office
suites (and some others). As these get better we see Linux as
a more serious contender on the desktops of home and corporate
users. According to some surveys we're already winning against NT
in a number of server categories (including web, mail, DNS, and
SMB/<a href="http://samba.anu.edu.au/">Samba</a>). We've gained a
lot of ground in the technical and scientific workstation market
(although the push to get EDA and CAD/CAM suites ported is just barely
started). But all the "mom's" and "pop's" out there that have
their college kids buying systems for them need something a
bit less intimidating than 'emacs' and 'vi' --- and TeX and
friends.
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.kde.org/">KDE</a> and
<a href="http://www.gnome.org/">GNOME</a>
will provide the main interface and many of the
toys and widgets. StarOffice,
<a href="http://www.applix.com/">Applix</a>ware,
<a href="http://www.corel.com/">Corel</a> Office, SIAG,
LyX, Wingz, Xess, and others are all vying to provide the
main user applications.
<br><br>
(I personally think we'll also need multi-media GUI "Welcome to
Linux/XFree86/KDE" and "Welcome to Linux/XFree86/GNOME"
interactive tutorials --- with sound, music, via, and a
dancing, talking Tux. I want a system I can install on a
box and send to my Mom!).
<br><br>
<dl><dt>
Getting back to your implicit question:
<dd> Which Linux distribution should you try?
<dt> ... the answer is:
<dd> I have no idea!
</dl>
Unlike the marketeering weenies that you encounter in
every magazine, and newspaper, on every TV and radio
show and on billboard and busses every time you drive
anywhere ... unlike them, I don't want to push a bunch
of <em>features</em> on you and I have nothing to sell you
(except my time --- which is pretty expensive).
<br><br>
Helping someone select a Linux distribution (or anything
else) is a matter of requirements analysis. What do
you need? What do you want? How much are you willing to
spend? (Time and money). It is quite possible that I
would recommend FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BSDI/OS, or
even Win '95, NT, or MS-DOS --- <em>if</em> I understood your
requirements sufficiently.
<br><br>
Before you send me a list or essay on your requirements
consider that the Answer Guy is time I volunteer to show
my appreciation for all the work that people like Richard
Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, Arnold Robbins, and
so many others have put into the GNU project, Linux and
other freeware. I try to answer questions that I think
are of broad interest to many Linux users and potential
Linux users. (And possibly of interest to *BSD'ers
and eventually GNU HURD'ers).
<br><br>
The easy answer to selecting a distribution is: pick one!
Since many of them are freely distributable you might want
to start with one of those. Debian and Red Hat are definitely
freely accessible. I think Slackware is still available online
--- and I suspect that it's perfectly O.K. to borrow a friend's
copy of the CD. Walnut Creek might have exclusive rights on
CD distribution of Slackware --- I don't know. I think S.u.S.E.
is free for "personal" use (although it is a bit unclear my
S.u.S.E. 5.2 manual says:
<blockquote><code>
Copyright
This work is copyrighted [sic] by S.u.S.E. GmbH and
is placed under conditions of the GNU General Public
License.
You may copy it in whole or in part as long as the
copies retain this copyright statement.
</code></blockquote>
... (overleaf of the title page). It's not clear whether
"this work" is intended to refer to the book or to the
distribution that included it. The box and CD case (4CD's)
don't list any other copyright or licensing notices that I
can find. The only index entry under the term "license"
points that the Appendix of their manual that contains the
full text of the FSF GPL. That would suggest that you can
borrow my set of S.u.S.E. CD's and install it, and would
even suggest that someone could start creating derivative
works (other CD sets) to sell in competition with S.u.S.E.
<br><br>
However, I've always been under the impression that S.u.S.E.
is a commercial distribution. I purchased both of my copies
for it -- 5.1 and 5.2 --- and I've purchased many copies of
various Red Hat versions (the boxed set and the lower-priced
archives sets). So, you might want to ask a S.u.S.E. rep
before you go into production against them. However, I doubt
that they'd even want you to waste their time asking if it's
O.K. to install from a friend's set on an evaluation basis.
<br><br>
You're clearly willing to buy some distribution once you
find one you like. Personally I usually select Red Hat
for my customers (after I've considered their needs) simply
because Red Hat has a pretty good balance of the various
factors they care about.
<br><br>
Debian has more packages (slightly) -- but the last copy of
dpkg that I used was very convoluted (I'm hoping to get a 2.0
CD as soon as it goes out of beta). Slackware was nice when
I needed it --- but most of my customers aren't interested
in fussing with tarballs --- they want something with a
decent package manager (one that can be operated easily
from command lines as well as throught a GUI).
<br><br>
Under RH it's pretty simple to write a script to poll an
internal FTP site for package updates and automatically apply
any of them that appear. (I think there's a package called
'rpmwatch' floating around some 'contrib' directories somewhere
that does precisely that). I haven't looked at RH 5.1 yet.
<br><br>
S.u.S.E. and Caldera both use the RPM format.
<br><br>
S.u.S.E. includes more packages that the last couple RH CD's
I used (4.2 and 5.0). It seems to have a pretty good
installation interface though I have mixed feelings about
their interpretation of the SysV init scripts. They have a
large shell script named /etc/rc.config (mine is about 770
lines long --- of which about 500 are comments). This file
contains a long list of shell variables and values. You
can edit this file by hand or you can use YaST (Yet another
Setup Tool) which is their curses based system's administration
interface. The idea is that the other scripts all "source"
this one file and use the variables that apply to their
operation.
<br><br>
On the one hand this is very nice. Concievably I could
create a particular installation profile (which they support
via their installation interface), install the system,
configure it via YaST and put it into production.
<br><br>
Let's assume I use the 'chattr +i +d' (immutable and no-dump)
flags on all the files that came with the distribution and
unset them as a pair whenever I change any of them; this would
allow me to use the 'dump' program and <em>never</em> backup files
that were from the initial installation off of the CD). This
is for a "data+config" backup strategy.
<br><br>
If I've stored the rescue floppy they created, and the
rc.config file --- I should be able to restore the whole
system to its configuration with just my installation
CD's, my rescue diskette, and the rc.config file. (Naturally,
I'll have to restore all my data as well).
<br><br>
Another nice thing is that I might be able to create
a little script to generate new rc.config files from a
master form and a couple of other data files. If I have
<em>lots</em> of new machine trickling in I might have a few
files that contain lists of IP addresses, hostnames,
NIS domain names, shared printers, and other local (LAN)
data. I might conceivably be able to generate a new custom
rc.config file for each new box and automate even more
of the deployment.
<br><br>
Under other distributions I have to mess with over a dozen
separate files. Unfortunately it's not that easy even under
S.u.S.E. If you use NFS you really want to use NIS or synchronize
the 'passwd' and 'group' files across your systems (since
maintaining ugidd maps is not scaleable and NFS relies on
the uid/gid values to determine access and permissions.
<br><br>
None of the distributions I've seen prompt me for a
passwd/group file set prior to installation. So, if I use
Red Hat on one system and S.u.S.E. on another (I do)
--- there will be some base files that differ between them
(most of the uid's created by most of the distributions
<em>do</em> match -- there were only a couple that I had to
run through a "masschown" script). (Distribution Dudes!:
This is my enhancement plea for the month! Please let me
hand you a passwd/group file set --- from floppy or over
ftp/nfs/http --- and use that to map the ownership as you
install).
<br><br>
These days, for large sites, I recommend creating one
"template" installation one a typical box, cutting that whole
installation to tape or CDR after configuration but <em>before</em>
any <em>use</em> (data). Now you can do all new system installations
as "restores" from your backups. You can also take that
opportunity to make sure that your recovery plans, rescue
diskettes and backup media are all in working order. One
reason I recommend that is that it takes me about
four hours to fix various permissions and configurations
(hosts.allow, hosts.deny, etc) after I've completed a new
installation.
<br><br>
One final note about choosing a distribution: don't just
ask me. I'm only one person. I've only used about a half
dozen Linux distributions (some of which no longer exist!).
Don't just go to the newsgroups and mailings lists and ask
"Which is best?"
<br><br>
Ask questions that relate to your situation: Will you be
integrating this into a Novell network? Do you have friends
or family that will be working on your Linux box? Do any of
them have experience with a Linux distribution? Do any of them
use some other form of Unix (free or otherwise)? Do you have
any particular applications preferences? Is system security
a concern? What are the risk profiles that are acceptable to
you? What is your native language (German speakers will probably
be much happier with the German S.u.S.E. or the DLD (?)
distributions, Japanese users seem to prefer FreeBSD, the French
have their own distribution, etc.)?
</blockquote>
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<P> <hr> <P>
<H5 align="center"><a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html"
>Copyright &copy;</a> 1998, James T. Dennis <BR>
Published in <I>Linux Gazette</I> Issue 31 August 1998</H5>
<P> <hr> <P>
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