TechieMoe.com

Introduction:

Some of my most interesting suggestions have tended to come from either LinuxForums or random email feedback I get from my site. Pioneer Linux came to me via the latter.

This Ubuntu-based distribution is put out by a commercial company. They have both a free and retail version, and also (interestingly enough) sell bundles along with the Linux version of Nero burning Rom.

I get the impression they're trying to ease the transition of XP users. In fact, a tag line on their page calls Pioneer "A Windows replacement Operating System." That's a bold claim.

I'm testing the Community Edition for this rant. The boxed version of Pioneer runs around $80-110USD, which puts it in the same price league as Xandros. I'm curious to see if it's in the same functionality league as well.

Install:

The LiveCD booted and showed me a fairly standard KDE desktop. While I ran the installer I read through the "Readme.pdf" manual. It was well written and described several everyday tasks like installing 3D drivers and such.

It also described a bit more about the differences between Pioneer Basic (desktop - the one I was testing) and their other products: Stagecoach (workstation + server) and MigrationSERVER (just a server).

The manual also described installing MS Windows programs with Crossover Office. I was curious if the Basic version included this or it was specific to the Stagecoach workstation.

It should be noted that when I clicked on the Install icon, KDE Sudo asked me for a password. It turns out there is none, and clicking OK will get you through, but this could be confusing to their target audience of new Windows converts.

Once started, the install was identical to that of Ubuntu Gutsy. I noticed that the partitioning step took significantly longer than I remember when installing Ubuntu, however. It kind of worried me that it stuck at 5% for a couple of minutes, but that eventually jumped to 18% and the installer went on from there.

Upon reboot and login, I was brought to a desktop identical to that of the LiveCD. I looked in the "Programs" folder and found a program called "install_nvidia.desktop" inside a folder marked "Drivers." I clicked it and was treated to an amusing dialog that asked me "Are you Shure?" No, that's not a typo on my part. It didn't ask me what I was "shure" about, but I said yes anyway.

A terminal window popped up asking me for my password and then a number of screens flashed by. Before I could read what they were the screen closed. I didn't know if anything had happened or not. I did some investigating and found that this shortcut was launching a script in /usr/share/pioneer-desktop-main/sripts.

I ran the script from there and found that it was trying to install the nvidia-glx package but errored out when it couldn't be found. This is something I'd like to have been notified about.

I ran a few more of these scripts (one for codecs and one for Java) and the best I can guess is they are scripts for apt-get. However when apt-get returns nothing since my desktop was not connected to the internet, the scripts simply close and give you no indication of failure. This is a problem.

Another problem was that although my wireless card was detected and for once an open network was available (verified by my laptop), it could not connect. This meant I was essentially dead in the water. Ndiswrapper was not installed or available at all as far as I could tell, so I had no way of getting my card configured.

I was able to manually install my official Nvidia drivers, but the process was not one that would be intuitively obvious to a Windows convert.

I had to kill kdm, log in as regular user, reactivate root login, log in as root, locate and run the installer script, and activate the new module with modprobe. If you were lost by any of that, don't worry. It's not something that I learned how to do in the crib.

On the upside, I'm glad there is a functional GCC installation that allowed me to install my own Nvidia drivers in the absence of an internet connection. On the downside, I would never expect anyone other than a seasoned Linux user to know how to do that, and they're not Pioneer's target audience.

Software Selection:

Firefox, OpenOffice, and Pidgin were installed, but no GIMP. A demo of Nero Linux was installed, but it would not launch. I got an error that the demo had expired. Too bad, that would have been interesting.

I saw no sign of Crossover Office, but I tried installing my MS Windows version of Diablo just out of curiosity. Nothing happened. I can't say I was surprised.

The GNU version of Java 1.5 was installed, as was GCC. Everything else was standard for a basic KDE install. My multimedia files (MP3/MPG/WMV) would not play at all. Amarok was smart enough to try and download MP3 support, but not smart enough to realize it didn't work. I received a message saying it was installed, but once I restarted the program it asked me to install support again.

Conclusion:

The general idea I get from this distribution is that the developers spent a lot of time working on what we in the software world call the "happy path," meaning they worked hard to make things function properly when the user does exactly what the developer intended.

The problem with this is that they've completely ignored what to do if something goes wrong. All the Pioneer install scripts assume everything worked and do not give any indication if they did not.

I have no doubt that when installed on an internet-connected PC Pioneer is an interesting and relatively easy distribution to configure and run. However in my case none of the Pioneer-specific functionality worked at all, thus making this OS dead on arrival.

I wish I could give cheerier results to the pleasant fellow who recommended this distribution to me, but it simply doesn't cut it. Pioneer needs to examine long and hard what their target demographics are and put in some error checking contingencies for when those users inevitably try something they didn't expect.