LinuxPlanet - Print - Distribution Watch Review: Caldera OpenLinux Workstation 3.1 Beta

Distribution Watch Review: Caldera OpenLinux Workstation 3.1 Beta

By: Scott Courtney
Thursday, March 29, 2001 08:00:14 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/previews/3192/1/

The good: surprising progress for an early beta

On March 22, Caldera Systems announced the first public beta of their flagship OpenLinux Workstation distribution. They've skipped a few version numbers this time, leaping from 2.4 to 3.1 in one jump. As a long-time Caldera user, I was eager to download the beta and see if I could help them find a few bugs and also get a peek at what's coming in the next release. I did find bugs, some of them pretty nasty, but I also found a lot of things that worked surprisingly well for an early beta. This "first look" is a summary of my beta-testing experience so far.

Getting Caldera OpenLinux Workstation 3.1 Beta

Caldera, while making the beta open, requires an "application" from potential testers. According to the beta page, testers may be required to agree to a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). The company has, however, made a trio of CD's with the distribution's source RPM's available for download.

Test Environment

Epox MV3G motherboard with AMD K6-III CPU at 400 MHz
256 meg DIMM memory, PC100 speed
Western Digital WD136AA hard drive (13 gig)
ATI Xpert98 video adapter, Sony Multiscan 17sf monitor
Microsoft PS/2 mouse
Creative Labs Ensoniq audio adapter (ES1371 chipset)
Generic IDE CDROM
Adaptec 1542 SCSI adapter, floppy port disabled by jumper
Yamaha 426 CDR/CDRW drive
Netgear F310 Ethernet adapter ("Tulip" chipset)
3Com 3C905B Ethernet adapter ("Cyclone" chipset)

The Good

Caldera has a well-deserved reputation for not being on the cutting edge with new releases. They have always considered themselves to be a "business" Linux, one that takes a more conservative approach to upgrades in the interest of stability. Most readers will know of someone who's still running kernel 2.0.x, or even earlier, because it's still working and doing the job that it was built to do. If it works, don't fix it. This has been Caldera's mantra for years, so I was surprised to see just how current the 3.1 beta distro is.

The kernel is 2.4.2, as you might expect. With a *.*.0 kernel, just about anything that changes that last digit is likely to make it more stable rather than less, so Caldera probably felt they didn't have to choose between up-to-date and stable. I was pleased to find that Reiserfs support is built right in, not only to the kernel but also to the LIZARD installation process. This, of course, is something that other distros are also adding or have recently added, so Caldera isn't unique in this feature. Still, it was quite nice to be able to build the root filesystem directly in Reiserfs format, without undertaking the complex process of migrating an existing system to Reiserfs.

The levels of the desktop-related packages are very recent: XFree86 is at 4.0.2, KDE is at 2.1.0, and Qt versions 1.45 and 2.2.4 are both preinstalled. Freetype version 1.3 and Freetype2 version 2.0 are installed co-existing (don't ask me how this works), though there were no preloaded TrueType fonts.

At the core services level, the beta includes glibc 2.2.1 and gcc 2.95. PCMCIA support, at version 3.1.24, is standard as well. The biggest surprise, in my opinion, was the inclusion in the "recommended" package set of two major-league development tools: Qt Designer version 1.1.0 and KDevelop 1.4. By the way, if you haven't yet played with KDevelop 1.4, take a good look. My C++ prowess is very rusty and I've never written a line of KDE code, but I had a working "hello, world" KDE application in KDevelop in under fifteen minutes. KDevelop looks a lot like IBM's VisualAge, or Microsoft's Visual C++. I will definitely be spending more time with this IDE in the future, having at last found that long-sought excuse to dust off my Stroustrop book.

The bad: installation hangups, networking foibles, and a glibc-enforced return to productivity

I'm used to installing Caldera OpenLinux Workstation and then immediately blowing away the included Java, Apache, and PHP packages in favor of newer ones downloaded from the Internet. In OpenLinux Workstation 3.1, though, this proved unnecessary. Java Standard Edition 1.3, with the Hotspot JIT compiler, is part of the standard installation. Apache 1.3.19 is also preinstalled and includes PHP 4.0.4 with patch level 1. The installed PHP includes support for OpenLDAP and MySQL (the latter being at version 3.23.33, again a very recent code drop). This is a ready-to-run web development environment, right out of the box.

There was no scrimping on Internet tools, either. Caldera has chosen to include Netscape Navigator 4.76 rather than the reportedly-unstable Netscape 6.0, but they have added RealPlayer 8.0 plugin preinstalled. Security mavens will be pleased to see that OpenSSH 2.5 is preloaded, with both client and server components. Caldera has also disabled FTP and Telnet daemons by default, a welcome move toward a more secure default configuration. By default, BIND server is missing entirely but BIND client utilities are at version 8.2.3. Samba 2.0.7 rounds out the network utility set. The new 2.4.x kernels, of course, use IPTABLES instead of IPCHAINS, and I was a little disappointed to see that Caldera didn't compile the ipchains.o module for the default kernel nor provide the IPCHAINS command set, for those who have existing firewall configurations and want to be up and running quickly. Perhaps this will be an option in the final release, or maybe the engineers at Caldera feel that it's important to make a clean break with the old kernel versions. The system configuration utility contains an option to enable "Load Firewall Rules" as a SysV init script, but there are no rules preconfigured.

Most of my applications Just Worked(tm) in spite of the leading-edge code base of this beta distro. Applixware Office 5.0 installed and ran perfectly, which frankly surprised me because I've had some problems with this product on XFree86 4.x in the past. Loki Games' port of Heroes of Might and Magic III worked flawlessly, and even had working audio music and effects -- a big surprise considering the audio problems that are documented later in this article. Netscape and all the included utilities seemed to work just fine, and Java 1.3 applets even worked correctly in the Konqueror browser.

The Bad

Considering its status as a first-public-beta code drop, Caldera 3.1 did surprisingly well in my testing, but there were definitely some six-legged arthropods to be found. My first installation, in which I decided to "go for the gold" and install all packages, appeared to work perfectly until the very end, at which time it issued an error message that "not all packages were successfully installed." It didn't tell me which one(s) had failed, though, and when I hit the "next" button to try to boot into the new kernel, the machine locked up, requiring a hard reset.

The second install, in which I chose the "recommended" package set, went almost perfectly, though. I still got the error message at the end, exactly the same, but this time the kernel booted perfectly. Caldera's README file documents several known bugs with installation, the most notable being that the video mode probe utility is badly broken. Fortunately, my test system's ATI Xpert98 card was perfectly auto-detected, so I didn't need the probe utility anyway.

The installation correctly detected the Ensoniq 1371 audio and loaded the requisite kernel modules for it. Surprisingly, though, the sound didn't work at all. I manually did a "modprobe" for mpu401.o (totally on a whim) and the sound started working as if by magic. Well, it almost works. System sounds in KDE are fine, and the "cat something.au > /dev/audio" test passes, but KDE's MediaPlayer plays only silence. MIDI Player crashes with a segfault, every time. After a reboot, the loading of mpu401.o isn't needed to get sound working, but the MIDI and Media players are still non functional. I'm still not sure exactly what is the cause of this problem.

There were some weird networking issues, too, though I suspect part of this may have been my own fault. During installation, I chose to enable PLIP (basically, use of the parallel port as an IP device) on the theory that I might someday need it. That, it turns out, was a mistake because somehow my default gateway (router) was set up to use PLIP instead of the two Ethernet cards that are also in the machine. I manually fixed this using the KDE Kontrol Panel, though this can also be done from the command shell. The only other problem I had was that, with two cards in the machine, the order of detection changed between the installation process and the first normal reboot. That means that the card which is normally eth0 for me became eth1, and vice-versa. Other than that, networking functioned perfectly under the beta.

My favorite game, SimCity 3000 Unlimited, installed perfectly but won't even run the splash screen. It was built on glibc 2.1 and it segfaults instantly on the glibc 2.2.1 that's included with the Caldera beta. I'm sure Loki Games will have a patch out for this, but in the meantime I am stuck doing useful work. (sigh)

...and the ugly.

As you would expect with any beta, there are quite a few things that are functional but have cosmetic problems or other annoyances. The boot process is, well, just plain ugly. Caldera's normal boot screen is a user-friendly graphical affair with nifty little progress reports at each step, but devoid of the detailed console messages. Personally, I like to see the console messages, and I have been known to recompile the kernel without frame buffer support just to achieve that (and to shrink the kernel a bit). In OpenLinux Workstation 3.1's beta, you don't have a choice -- the graphical boot screen appears but it is quickly trashed with a plethora of console messages. Several times during boot it reappears only to be once again zapped by more messages. It's purely cosmetic, but if you install the beta for a new user to play with, be sure to warn them not to be alarmed at this. Or just set up the boot options to disable the graphical mode altogether.

Passwords can't be changed from the KDE account management screen. This is a known and documented beta bug, according to the Caldera README, and the "passwd" shell command works just fine. And for some reason, at least on my test machine, pressing the big "K" menu activator has a habit of trying to log out the session, requiring a "cancel" at the confirmation dialog. The first time this happened I thought I had accidentally dragged the mouse rather than clicking it, but the problem has repeated often enough that I don't think it's my fault any more. No harm done -- just a minor annoyance.

There are also some included applications in KDE itself that seem not- quite-ready at this point. The Quanta HTML editor looks really nice, but it segfaults if you try to preview the page. And we all know that KOffice, while showing great promise, is still an evolving product. I mean no disrespect to the KDE team -- in fact, I am amazed at how good KDE is and how fast it's getting even better -- but there are still some imperfections to be overcome, and these are naturally reflected in the Caldera distribution.

During installation, I was unable to configure a remote printer using LPD services, because the requisite menu options were entirely missing. After installation, though, remote printing can be configured from Caldera's COAS tool or from the shell. This release uses the new CUPS printing protocol, by the way.

Speaking as a person who thinks the GNOME/KDE wars are an idiotic waste of resources, I would be happier if Caldera also included the latest GNOME version and let the user choose between GNOME and KDE. My personal preference is KDE, but Linux is all about choice and I tend to feel that commercial distributions should offer choice to the user whenever possible. GNOME can certainly be installed after-the-fact on Caldera, but novice users shouldn't have to attempt this on their own. On the other hand, I can understand how Caldera might want to focus their support resources on a single desktop. Each customer will have to decide for himself or herself whether lack of GNOME is a serious problem.

Closing thoughts

I'm not a distribution bigot, by any means. Each distro appeals to a particular kind of user, and they each have something unique to offer. I've seen RedHat and SuSE and Mandrake, but Caldera remains my personal favorite because it works well for the things that I need to do. The new OpenLinux Workstation 3.1 will be a significant upgrade for Caldera users, and well worth the wait since eDesktop 2.4 was released last year. If you tried Caldera's "Technology Preview" release, as I did, and were disappointed, you will be pleased to know that the 3.1 beta is much more stable and usable even in its early stages. The engineers at Caldera have not been idle these past few months.

Will OpenLinux Workstation 3.1 be a compelling reason for users of other distributions to switch? I really can't say. Personally, I think the LIZARD installer beats just about everything else out there, especially for a novice-to-intermediate user. I've used LIZARD to successfully install Caldera on systems where Mandrake's installer stopped cold or crashed. Advanced users, though, may feel confined by Caldera's graphical installer and may prefer a text-mode installation tool. Caldera offers a non-graphical installation, but I didn't get a chance to try it in the 3.1 beta.

For existing Caldera users, the upgrade is likely to be a no-brainer. This is an extremely easy way to build a web development workstation or desktop client, with all the latest bells and whistles. There are problems today with the beta, but Caldera's past history suggests that these will be fixed by release day. OpenLinux Workstation 3.1 promises to be a worthy upgrade to Caldera's excellent Linux distribution.