Vector Linux - Chaucer's Beautiful Hag

LXer Feature: 25-Apr-2007 Chaucer fans will immediately understand when I say that Vector Linux is a modern retelling of the Wife of Bath's Tale - with a few twists.

In the Wife of Bath's Tale, part of Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales", a knight caught in the act of raping a woman is sentenced to discover what women truly desire. To help our modern readers understand how that might be considered punishment, it's a lot like sending someone to discover why Windows crashes without explanation. The knight winds up baffled, unable to answer the question - and thus bound to die for his crime.

Alas, he encounters an old hag who saves his life by giving the answer, and then demands he marry her as repayment. To make a long story short, the old hag becomes young and beautiful - but not before he grants her "mastery" over him. And they live happily ever after. And so the relationship with Vector Linux 5.8 Standard Gold edition begins - ugly, but practical, giving way to faithful beauty.

At least Vector Linux gives the user a glimpse of the beauty it will become. But after seeing the nice boot screen, the user is plunged into a console-based NCurses-driven installation routine. It's just plain old ugly to look at. That said, it is quite useful - a very practical installer. In fact, not only is it fairly easy to use, it's even rather helpful. The knight had to ask the old hag questions, but Vector Linux actually gives you the information you need to make basic decisions along the way. What's more, Whereas the old hag demanded her knight allow her mastery over him, Vector leaves the user in charge.

By way of example, the installer offers the user as to which mode you prefer to boot up in - graphical, framebuffer, or standard mode. I won't bore you with the details, but there is some text that suggests using standard mode, unless you have reasons to use one of the other modes. Rather than make the decision for you, it lets you choose. The ability to exercise choice like that is important to many a computer user.

I installed Vector Linux on an ancient HP vectra, a PII-450MHz box with 192MB RAM. The installer held my hand most of the way through. The only problem I encountered was that Vector choked on the sound card. I haven't had time to investigate, so it could be a dead sound card, or a simple configuration issue to resolve. If I do get that resolved, I'll report back the resolution. I would be more concerned were this a working desktop system that I use for listening to audio files. The rest of the installation went smoothly.

I suppose I have gotten used to distributions that tend to hide some of the control - at least on the surface. For example, while Debian doesn't seem to even hint at needing to configure your monitor, you can do so by choosing the expert mode. Although novices and the fearful might prefer that, control freaks everywhere will be glad to know Vector doesn't hide this step. I don't remember the last time I had to choose between a PS-2 and an AT-Style keyboard during installation. AT-style? Sheesh! My first computer used the AT-style keyboard and a serial port for the mouse.

When the installation routine finished, I booted into a beautiful XFce environment. The Vector Linux team has taken great care in designing the theme and layout of XFce. While Abiword and Gnumeric are capable, you'll want the SOHO edition if you need OpenOffice.org. I couldn't find OOo in the default Slapt-get repository. I understand Vector is only slightly challenged by the lack of a 10,000-package Slapt-get repository, but you can still install any standard Slackware package. That said, I do hope the repository grows. Just so you know, the SOHO edition uses KDE instead of XFce.

XFce's file browser is missing a feature I find rather useful in Konqueror and Nautilus - integrated SSH capability. One thing I do a fair amount of is moving files around. Having SSH integrated into the file browser lets me do that without configuring NFS. Of course, I could also say integrated SSH makes me lazy, but many people seem to be looking to ditch NFS because of its lack of security. That, and many desktop users would find integrated SSH easier to manage than NFS - create a link to the target box, enter your login and password, and you have an instant (relatively) secure network connection. This issue is specific to XFce, and only affects you if you choose the Standard Gold edition.

As the Wife of Bath's tale goes, the knight really didn't want to perform his nightly duties for his haggard old wife. I just worry that some of you geeks out there will shirk your nightly duties for a chance to master the enchanting Vector Linux. Let's see if I can put that another way. Regardless of whether you're a woman who desires mastery over your computer, or a man deeply afraid to surrender control to your computer, you'll love running Vector Linux.