Dark Bit Factory & Gravity
GENERAL => General chat => Topic started by: Pixel_Outlaw on February 09, 2012
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I'm sure everyone will recall the new line of Commodore computers coming out. Basically they are modern machines running emulated Commodore software through a tailored version of Linux. You can download the whole OS today.
I have mixed feeling about this. It is nice that they are releasing the OS free and trying to be open. On the other hand I think people want true classic commodre machine resurrected.
That said, I don't really consider them the same old company. They appear to be a new computer company committed to open source operating systems. Their OS is actually a very tailored version of Linux Mint (the most popular distribution). I might try their OS before passing judgement on them.
Link here...
http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_OS_Vision_Download.aspx
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Quote ="classic commodore machine resurrected" I'm with you on that. :cheers:
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Will try on Virtual Machine.
I don't like the idea they are using a torrent file, since it means that they can't pay for servers :D
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Will try on Virtual Machine.
I don't like the idea they are using a torrent file, since it means that they can't pay for servers :D
They might be able to afford the servers. But if they use a torrent file they don't have to pay for the servers. It could just be an outlook of saving money that they do not have to spend. Then again, you could be right. Just trying to present another side. Either way I'll be taking a look at it later today.
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It is very common to torrent Linux distributions especially with small niche releases. It does make the longevity of such a release seem questionable. I would like to see success with such a company actually they might be just the company to push more open standards into the mainstream. That said their hardware is very overpriced in my opinion. I do LOVE that they used cherry MX blue key switches in the shell of the new Commodore. I have the OS downloaded today and will try it later. Nothing like torrenting an .iso for 7 hours. I think the price is a bit high, for their top end machine I feel that $ 900 might be a better fit.
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Linux distributions tends to be available in both "direct download" and "torrent" formats. It's just that I am not used to this format :D.
But finally, it seems there is enough seeds to get it quickly :P
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Yeah, I finally tried it.
So, it's based on Linux Mint 10 (the first loading of the installer still got the mention).
I don't like the theme (too much blue, not readable easily ... I did a screen shot for you).
The system needs around 9Gig to be installed. There is a live CD session, that I did not tried.
First start.
Strange, I got only a simple TTY login (console login). I can't start the X server.
And that's all, since I don't know what to do here (I am not linux expert, just normal user). I never had a commodore too ...
Sorry for that bad review :(
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I don't like the theme (too much blue, not readable easily ... I did a screen shot for you).
Of course it's blue:
(http://www.historycorner.de/Screenshots/Commodore/Amiga_Workbench.png)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/C64_startup_animiert.gif)
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Thanks Hellfire, but I know that.
I think that the Workbench or Commodore Basic are more readable that the screen I sent :P
Does anyone else has tried the beta ?
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I saw it briefly on a friend's computer. The sound effects are absurd (they can be turned off) the effects are well over the top (flipping menus that rotate when activated).
I didn't see much of the software nor emulators because my friend was using it in class but it felt very half assed yet over done in the effects department.
I'd reach for Debian before this in a heartbeat.
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I saw it briefly on a friend's computer. The sound effects are absurd (they can be turned off) the effects are well over the top (flipping menus that rotate when activated).
I didn't see much of the software nor emulators because my friend was using it in class but it felt very half assed yet over done in the effects department.
I'd reach for Debian before this in a heartbeat.
Littlewhite, usually when you just get a console at startup it means that your graphics card is not suppored directly. You may have to download drivers for it and those drivers may or may not exist. If you need to check your hardware you may try the following command
First, make sure you have "lspci" and "more" installed.
sudo apt-get install lspci more
Then run this command and you can scroll through your hardware to find exact data
lspci|more
Now that you have your GPU, it might be a good idea to go to the manufactuers website to see if they offer Linux drivers for either Ubuntu or Debian (both will have a .deb extension)
Navigate to the directory the downloaded driver is in, upzip the file if need be then execute
sudo dpkg -i package_here.deb
If the manufacturer does not support your card directly there might be an unofficial driver you can use.
You've found the greatest weakness of Linux as a desktop, some hardware lacks drivers until somebody mucks one together. :crutches:
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I saw it briefly on a friend's computer. The sound effects are absurd (they can be turned off) the effects are well over the top (flipping menus that rotate when activated).
I didn't see much of the software nor emulators because my friend was using it in class but it felt very half assed yet over done in the effects department.
I'd reach for Debian before this in a heartbeat.
Hey that's me :D. Anyways, like Pixel_Outlaw was saying, EVERYTHING makes noise. And EVERYTHING has some overboard animation. Even clicking in a text field like the address bar summons a big twirly box. The operating system comes pre-stocked with...everything basically. The initial install disc comes with all sorts of multimedia stuff such as VLC and some other stuff I can't remember off the top of my head. I also installed the extras disc, a second nearly filled DVD, and honestly I'm not even completely sure what it added. I know it loaded a bunch of retro games ported (remade entirely?) to run in Linux. Oh and the color scheme is really hard to look at. As an added bonus chromium was pre-loaded and included its own color scheme which found its way to all of my computers when I logged into my google account. Yay cloud computing! My overall opinion of it, completely overboard in the graphics department. I appeared to actually have better battery life in windows 7 than I did in Commodore OS. Also all the pre loaded programs felt like a shotgun approach loading basically everything they could think of. I should also mention that I did not have any driver issues loading it onto my Alienware M11x R1 laptop with the integrated graphics card disabled in BIOS.
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I was with VirtualBox ... ... so the graphic card could have work directly ... (I hate that)
Otherwise, I am wondering on which kernel are they, since ACPI improvement have been done in 3.2 (or something really recent).
So, from your review ... it's a clearly "nothing special" ... some crap packaged in a Linux with new color scheme ...