Pardus 2009 review
Media and Hardware Detection: Free software (Open Source if you like that term better) desktops have advanced enough in terms of hardware detection and media playback, that you don’t even think about them. On some distros, they just work – perfectly. On others, not so much. I’ll place Pardus in this latter category. Hardware detection and auto-configuration works just fine. Plug in a printer, for example, and it is auto-configured and ready to print in a flash. Just the way it should be and just the way I like it.
Your experience will sour when you insert an audio CD. You’d expect the system to auto-detect and start playing the CD with the right application. Not so! You’ll instead get the dialog box show below. There is no option to start playing the CD with any application.
Audio detection dialog
It gets better with a DVD video. The dialog box includes an option to play the DVD with Dragon Player, a DVD player capable of playing encrypted DVD videos. However, as shown in the dialog box below, this is not the default option. The options can be adjusted, but it would be nice if the right options were at the fore out-of-the-box.
Video detection dialog
Note: The fault with media auto-detection does not lie with Pardus (at least not all of it), but with KDE. Personally, KDE 4 has been a major disappointment. But that’s a subject for another post.
What’s special about Pardus 2009? With so many distros being based on Ubuntu, it refreshing to have one that is original. It gets really annoying having new distros almost every week based on Ubnutu that do not add any new functionality to differentiate themselves from their parent distro. That’s what makes Pardus a standout. It is an original. Although some of the graphical admin tools (the firewall, for example) are not as feature-rich as those on older distro like Mandriva or Fedora, they are custom-coded, and getting better with each release.
What needs to improve? Developing and maintaining a distro is not an easy task. The reviews on this site are not intended to belittle or ridicule the efforts of the distro developers and maintainers, but to make the task of choosing a distro a bit easier for our readers. That’s my only objective with these reviews. Sometimes I do get a few things wrong, but I think for the most part, my reviews are to the point and accurate, representing my experiences in using the distro for about a week, sometimes longer. And I always like to point out the areas where I think a distro needs to improve. So to end this review, here a short list of things the Pardus devs and maintainers need to work on, from an end user perspective:
- Firewall – enabled out of the box – with the icon placed on the panel
- The system updater should be run when the system boots the first time
- support for LVM. Yep, even on a desktop distro, some of us still need to use LVM. If you are new to Linux and are wondering what LVM is, you should read this.
- RAID, too
- Support for disk encryption. Before you say encryption is not really necessary, ask yourself why encryption is built into the Linux kernel, then read the Electronic Frintier Foundation’s Surveillance Self-Defense campaign.
- The Migration Tool is a very handy tool especially for dual-booters, but what is it doing under the Lost & Found menu category? Shouldn’t it be in the system control Center?
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John
I agree with Mark T. But it can be a good idea to wait to 15 january. Then the real Pardus 2009.1 will be released:
25 Dec – Beta
8 Jan – RC
15 Jan – Release
If I want a easy install and user friendly linux dist it are Ubuntu, Linux Mint or Pardus for me.
finid
The knock on Pardus is that there is no 64-bit version yet.
finid
Update:
I just had an email exchange with Onur Küçük, who I believe is the lead dev of Pardus, and here is what he had to say about the status of the 64-bit version of Pardus:
And here is what he had to say about the current version of Pardus:
Mark T
I just started using Pardus with the 2009.1 beta released in late December. So far it has worked nearly flawlessly. Install was easy. Nearly everything works out of the box.
The upgrade to 2009.1 RC1 was flawless and didn’t even require a reboot.
The repos are gradually filling up (152 games now) Networking runs fine for me except my hidden router which it can’t login to. I need to reenter my password, and try again. My public router (for everyone else in the house) connects fine.
I still like Ubu though as it is the easiest and most reliable install for my broad array of computers. Mandria has improved. Fedora NEVER seems to install right for me, nor does Debian.
Pardus is the closest in ease of install to Ubuntu I hae found so far.
John
Pardus 2009.1 coming soon:
“Pardus 2009.1 will be introduced during the CeBITexhibition in Istanbul on 7-11 October.”
I guess som of the issues here are fixed then.
finid
By 7-11, you mean October 7-11, 2009.
John
I saw at this page:
http://worldforum.pardus-linux.nl/index.php?topic=2982.0
serif
thanks tubitak pardus team for this reliable and stable distro.i am pretty sure, mark my words here that it will be racing with ubuntu, fedora in a couple of years.keep up good work.but the only request from visual team developers:pls get rid of these cartoon based logos of kaptan pisi etc..on system windows, believe me it will be prestigious with new bussiness-style logo pictures
serif
more, 64 bit and gnome versions are looked forward to.as for me,if pardus gnome comes i will quit ubuntu at that mo.
mitsuzero
not complain about pardus
hmmmm my hardware is working out of the box, i dont encounter problems of use.
Ubuntu broken 2 disk (Sata) when i burning disk, i hate it really, i changed because of it.. and intel drivers ..
I get Pwned by Ubuntu …. xD
64 bit is in development.
John
I saw the problem “capricornus” had with the network with Pardus 2009.
Its a known bug by Pardus in Turkey. Some PC can not get internet connection. But I hope they will solve the problem soon.
Johan
I agree with Henrik. Put in a DVD movie in Pardus or Linux Mint and it start to play with no problem.
Do the same in Fedora, Mandriva or Ubuntu and nothing happends. You must spend some hours in forums and try out to find the correct media-codecs to install.Then maybe you could get it working. If you like that thats fine, but most people want systems thats works “out of the box”
So Pardus and Linux mint are very userfriendly and modern in that sense.
Henrik
I have tryed almost all of the greatest Linux distributions, Mandriva to. Pardus works best for me so far in a desktop PC. So of course I will tagged is “one of the best Linux distribution”
Based of my own testing.
“Just works” is the priority for me as for mr Smith here.
Henrik
Pardus 2009 have all avaible media-codecs, Java etc.. pre-installed. So it works “out of the box” To get the same thing in Mandriva you must pay and upgrade to the Powerpack version. ATI and Nvidia drivers works good to. Ubuntu have often problems with them. So I think Pardus are one of the best Linux distributions at the moment.
When people realise it I am sure it will be more known and popular.
finid
I’m not a fan of Ubuntu, and I think that Pardus is better, in some respects, than Ubuntu, but until Pardus provides support for LVM, RAID, and disk encryption, you should not be comparing it with Mandriva or tagging it as “one of the best Linux distributions.”
John
I use Pardus 2009 and want to say that many new programs have been added the latest days to the Pisi.
Maybe not as many as Ubuntu. But for example, when this review was written it had 53 games, now its 118.
So I think you got lot of choises now.
smith
Excellent, thorough yet easy-to-read review.
These days, I use “just works” distros almost exclusively. On my range of hardware, Pardus falls into that category.
64-bit is not a priority for me. Speed is not a priority. “Just works” is the priority. Compared to issues with other popular desktop distros, the CD audio dialog is easy to deal with (it’s good that you draw attention to it, though).
Again, thanks for your excellent review.
capricornus
On a rahter straightforward system with a wired LAN (DHCP), working well on all distro’s, Pardus will show me the LAN/DHCP but NO connection whatsoever, whatever I try. Back to MINT.
Luca Beltrame
Notice that Pardus’ Network Manager is not the NetworkManager usually found in most Linux distributions. It’s unique to Pardus.
Ahmet
Nice distro and i think it’s best KDE4 distro. Very fast and stable with KDE4.
And, x86-64 port of Pardus is coming in June 2010 (by Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University-Turkey)
MinteyFresh
I HATE distros that add buttons to the panel. I WANT IT EMPTY!!!
MacLone
I like Pardus a lot but that repos are always empty for months. Pardus 2008 repos are filled up with almost everything so… when pardus 2009 will get all the stuff?
adna
i think the most important part that pardus is missing is that there is no 64bit! i have only heard good thing about this distro but i wont touch it before they go along with the future…
finid
Good point. The newest computers, Intel or AMD, tend to be 64-bit, and those distros like Pardus without a 64-bit version will steer some users to other distros with 64-bit versions
Ganesh
Pardus 64bit is in progress and will be out soon.