What was it about eD 2.4?

[James Conner]

On Thursday 31 July 2003 05:49 pm, Tina M Berendt wrote:
> Given the recent interest in resurrecting and maintaining the old
> Caldera distro, I thought I'd take a minute to ask everyone to quantify
> what it was about eD (or eS) that was so great. Was it the file layout?
> The installer? The GUI tools? What? I used and loved eD, but find it
> hard to say why I felt it was so nice. I *think* a lot of my fondness
> has to do simply with familiarity... once I learned "the Caldera way" on
> OpenLinux, eD was such a natural progression that I think a lot of my
> 'it was so great' is simply because I *knew* it.. however, I now 'know'
> SuSE, but don't have the same warm fuzzy when talking about it as I do
> when talking about eD....
>
> It seems to me that it would be a *lot* easier to start with a current
> base system (perhaps LFS based) and then mold it to be whatever it was
> about eD that everyone liked instead of taking an old eD and upgrading
> it (remember that eD wasn't even ready for 2.4.x and 2.6.x is right
> around the corner).
>
> So, what *specifically* made eD so great?

Well, I cut my teeth on eD2.4.  I found the install very good for a newbie.  
It's hardware detection was very good.  After install, the admin tools(COAS) 
were the best.  Also, the way it used /etc was very straightforward.  If you 
wanted to change something you went to /etc/somewhere/configfile and changed 
it.  The file was usually commented quite well and COAS reflected the changes 
and didn't change it back to some default.  COAS was both ncurses and X 
Windows based.  You could also use webmin and do the same thing that COAS did 
and they both agreed and worked together quite well.  The menus were very 
easy to understand.  One thing I liked was that it shipped with KDE 1.1.2 and 
when KDE 2.x came out, Caldera provided rpms that worked.  Also, you could 
compile just about any tarball on it and it worked.  They used /opt which 
made sense to me(personal preference).  It was very upgradable and 
customizable.  Once W3.1 was released, over a year and a half after eD2.4, 
most people had upgraded eD2.4 to where W3.1 was or past and saw no need to 
install W3.1 and start over.  

I'm not sure if you could take Lycoris and rework the menu, update/include 
some packages and include COAS(proprietary code?) and it would be what most 
people would want.  I don't know if a LFS(ish) build would be the answer. 

Here are some things that would be needed:

- A Lizard type installer that detected most all hardware(like Knoppix's 
detection).
- You'd have to have good admin tool like COAS.
- Straightforward use of /etc for those that liked to edit files by hand.
- Changes by hand to config files would be reflected in the admin tool and the 
admin tool wouldn't overwrite them.
- Webmin(for those that didn't like the admin tool or remote configuration)
- Menus that made sense(very subjective for each person)
- Very good multimedia coverage.  It could handle most any multimedia file in 
or out of the browser.
- Includes OpenOffice.org for an office suite
- A rpm repository that would be maintained and reflect updated/new software 
packages as they were released.
- The ability to customize and upgrade with tarballs with relative ease as the 
user deemed needed.
- Use of /opt (again my personal preference)
- Had at least one and no more than two programs installed for every task 
needed.  Other packages available for user from rpm repository.
- It would be stable and up-to-date, but not bleeding edge, to satisfy most 
users.

I'm sure others could add to this list.  Those that want to work on such 
product(I'm not a developer), kudos to them.  They should be saving this list 
and other such e-mails to refer to while developing the distro.  

I've since moved to mandrake and like it, but again no 'warm fuzzies'.  It's 
admin tools are decent, but it's menus can be confusing.  Also, msec can 
change somethings back that you don't want it to change.  One thing that irks 
me is that they don't have a KDE package maintainer.  When KDE has a new 
release, you have to rely on texstar or somebody else to package KDE for you 
or you can try to compile it yourself.  This can lead to a unusable desktop 
if you break too many things.  Also, mandrake doesn't use /opt (my preference 
again).  

Sometimes I wonder if the 'warm fuzzies' from eD2.4 are just nostalgia, kinda 
like that car you had, or that favorite chair, or is it genuine admiration 
for a product well done.  I think since I'm not the only one, it's the 
latter.

Jim
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