Review: Foresight Linux 1.0.1
March 5th, 2007 by jamesA new version of Foresight Linux has come out, not long after I wrote my review of 1.0. In my review of the last release, I noticed some problems, mainly with the fact I couldn’t get my Nvidia card working on it out of the box. A number of people commented on the issue discussing solutions to the problem (and also telling me it wouldn’t work because they thought I was trying to get my card working under VMware — which wasn’t true).
So now with a new release so soon, I decided to try it out again and see if my feelings from the previous release changed any.
For a bunch of screen shots and my thoughts on the 1.0 release, check my earlier review.
Installation
Because I removed my original Foresight install to make way for other distributions I am testing, I didn’t get a chance to try the upgrade feature. Regardless, the install was easy and flawless just as it was in the 1.0 release. In fact, I will just take this moment to once again praise the Foresight Linux installer. It’s really good and simple and it is one of the best installers on a Linux distribution I have used.
Nvidia drivers installation and 3D Desktop
My 1.0 review was highly critical of the fact the Nvidia drivers did not install out of the box, thus limiting my 19″ widescreen monitor and GeForce 7800GT to a sad 1024×768 unaccelerated resolution. This also meant I could not try out the 3D desktop capability of Foresight 1.0. Once again, I could have installed the Nvidia drivers manually, but the fact that feature didn’t work out of the box on the 1.0 release gave me serious reservations about it.
Based on the comments to that previous review, you have to specifically enable using binary drivers. This is the same in 1.0.1. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any documentation from within Foresight itself that you have to follow these steps, nor is there a graphical way to do it. This option should be part of Conary’s system configuration options.
In any case, I followed those directions so I could get the Nvidia drivers working.
My thoughts of Compiz under Foresight is that it is very sweet indeed. I wish it had working under 1.0, but I’m glad I got it working in 1.0.1 and I am able to use this very cool functionality. Foresight makes it easy to use Compiz if your hardware supports it.
Final words
My only real reason to try 1.0.1 was to see if the Nvidia drivers would work out of the box, but they didn’t without any extra configuration settings. They no doubt would’ve worked in 1.0 as well if I had known about the extra steps that must be taken prior to trying out 1.0. Unfortunately there’s no obvious way to do this through the package manager. Hopefully in an upcoming release they will add a way to do this without having to go to the command line.
Everything for 1.0.1 pretty much worked the same as in 1.0. I didn’t go through trying my printer configuration or installing a bunch of extra packages. I figured I might as well give it a try and see if my feelings improved from my original review. They did because I went through the motions of getting Nvidia working. Clearly it didn’t work because of my neglecting to take the steps to get it working, but that was due to the fact there was no indication in the OS of what to do to make it work.
In any case, Foresight is a nice distribution. It has a good installer, and once I got accelerated video working on my Nvidia card, I got to experience the coolness of Compiz. Still, I feel the original comments I made in my 1.0 review are still valid. I think Foresight is definitely worth a look, but I still feel it’s not particularly revolutionary. I have no doubt improvements will continue to be made. I’m looking forward to seeing what Foresight has up its sleeve for its next release.
March 6th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Some screens of Compiz would be nice.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:08 am
It would not install for me
March 6th, 2007 at 11:35 am
James:
Another James! Sorry to hear it wouldn’t install for you. Could you give us more details about your hardware configuration or what went wrong?
Manan:
I should have tried to figure out a way to include some screen shots of that. I might still do so later this evening when I get back to my home PC. It’ll be somewhat difficult to do though since most of the effects occur when you click on a menu or move a window.
March 7th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
my disappointment with 1.0 will prevent me from even taking the plunge with the updated release.
March 8th, 2007 at 12:10 am
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March 11th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
(As a contributer to Foresight everything I say is incredibly biased .. but it is anyway)
I’m glad to see you gave Foresight another shot so quickly!
The update to get the binary driver is a tricky one because the user-land libraries install over the top of Xorg. Conary doesn’t let you do that and thats why the update blew up the first time you tried in FSM. In order to get around it we use flavors to swap out parts of Xorg when you install nvidia. Thats what the group-dist[’!ati,nvidia’] is about, your saying you want the nvidia flavor of the group. Of course we’d like to hide this complexity from people that don’t care whats going on under the hood but it’ll take time. Until then you have to do it by hand.
Conary is the coolest parts of Foresight, its what enables a handful of people build a LiveCD in a week and (hopefully) get another release out the same day as Gnomes for the nth release in a row
If you like package managers its definitely worth checking out. If not then Foresight is a cool Gnome desktop where most things work and some things blow up for no reason.
March 15th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Black screen about half way through installation.. checked md5 sum, ok.
“Cool distro” I guess.
But it won’t install on some machines, and that adds up to narrow development.
Onward to other distros!
May 11th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Everything installed. On reboot i got cannot start graphical interface. Should be good for Radion200/250 driver. Anyway, all i can get is prompt and am not smart enough to fix it! dang
June 21st, 2007 at 12:12 pm
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September 19th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
I tried it. It has a good selection of software. But… on the performance front, it is looser. If you like Gnome flavors, try PCLinuxOS 2007 Gnome remaster available at Linuxgator.org.