Vector Linux

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**Vector Linux**
Vector Linux SOHO 5.1.2 desktop (KDE)
Website:	www.vectorlinux.com
Company/ developer:	Robert S. Lange; Darrell Stavem
OS family:	Linux
Source model:	Open source
Latest stable release:	Standard: 5.8 / December 18, 2006 SOHO: 5.1.2) / January 27, 2006
Kernel type:	Monolithic kernel
License:	Various
Working state:	Current

VL 5 SOHO Lilo boot screen

Vector Linux aims to be a user-friendly Linux distribution for Intel, AMD and x86 platforms based on the earlier Slackware distribution. Vector Linux was originally a Canadian distribution, and is now developed by an international community. The latest versions (as of December 18, 2006) are 5.8 Standard Edition and 5.1.2 SOHO Edition.

Vector aims to cater to the diverse needs of its user base, although the developers and user community pay special attention to new and learning users, as well as owners of relatively old hardware, such as Pentium IIs. For this reason, Vector retains legacy drivers for such hardware and the forum actively supports users of equipment that would be considered outdated by today's standards. Vector has even been used for software development and web serving, although none of these is the primary focus of the distribution.

1 Releases
2 Differences between SOHO and Standard
3 Live CD
4 Prominent Features
5 Graphical Frontends
6 Vector and Slackware Similarities
7 References
8 External Links

[edit] Releases

On December 18th 2006, Standard edition version 5.8 was released. This new Linux distro is based on Slackware 11.0 and runs a 2.6.18 kernel. There are several major improvements, to name some: full read/write NTFS support, new package format (LZMA instead of TGZ) which allowed developers to push more software on the setup CD, graphical enhancements and much more.^[1]

The experimental Dynamite releases (unofficial) are billed as the most lightweight distribution in the Vector family of products, and were also the first Vector releases to offer a flexible partitioning scheme during installation. Intended as a testing platform, Dynamite developed into a more stable environment, with the Fluxbox, IceWM and Xfce window managers as well as the 2.4.29 and 2.6.10 kernels.

[edit] Differences between SOHO and Standard

SOHO and Standard differ in a number of respects. SOHO assumes fairly modern hardware and includes larger applications, notably the KDE suite and OpenOffice.org. Moreover, choice of certain application versions is conservative in terms of stability, so as to prevent difficulties with newer and potentially immature software. SOHO chose to stay with the 2.4 series kernel, considered more stable than the newer 2.6 line of kernels, until 5.0.1. SOHO 5.1.1 was released with the 2.6.13 kernel. The Standard Edition includes the new 2.6 kernels since version 4.3 and chooses less resource-intensive applications, omitting KDE in favor of IceWM and XFce, and OpenOffice in favor of programs like AbiWord.

[edit] Live CD

Live-CD Vector Linux releases have been occasional experiments. The first was a live-CD version of VL Standard 4.0. Later, VL 5.1.2 SOHO and 5.1 Standard were also released in this fashion. Live-CD versions are expected to become official for future VL releases, due to the popularity of the 5.1.x live-CDs.

[edit] Prominent Features

One prominent feature that all VL versions have in common is the standard installation of maintenance applications, VASM and VLAPT (now deprecated and replaced by gslapt), system administration and package installation programs, respectively.

VASM stands for 'Vector Administrative and Services Menu', and it configures everything from disk partitions to XOrg. In addition to offering a GUI interface, a text mode parallel to the GUI VASM is available. VASM has been available since Vector 2.0 was released and has been upgraded continually over the years, with the addition of GUI functionality in SOHO 3.2. It is comparable to tools like YaST and DrakConf, though more lightweight in keeping with the distribution's goals. Traditional configuration tools like netconfig and alsaconf are also available in Vector.

[edit] Graphical Frontends

Two graphical frontends have been written for slapt-get, the backwards-compatible dependency-tracking extension to Slackware's package tools used by Vector Linux. VL-APT was the first, written originally by the Vector developers to serve the need for GUI package installation and management, while gslapt was written by the original developers of slapt-get for the same purpose. Until recently, either option has been viable; however, recent changes in the slapt-get packaging format have made VL-APT obsolete, and the developers of Vector have consequently promoted gslapt as the preferred method of graphical package management.

VL-APT (now deprecated) and gslapt are configured by default to use Vector's repository, which offers the majority of most users' needs. However, alternative sources, including mirrors of the official archives around the world, can be added through their respective configuration menus, or directly, through the textual slapt-getrc configuration. There is criticism, at least partially justified, regarding the size of the Vector package selection. However, these deficiencies have stimulated significant volunteer and developer response, and many desired software packages have now entered the Vector repository.

[edit] Vector and Slackware Similarities

Though Vector and Slackware differ in many respects at a high level, the cores of the two distributions are nearly identical. In fact, it is not uncommon to use the information in /etc/slackware-version in Vector to download and install Slackware packages from LinuxPackages.net and Slackware's official repository.