MLED needs your vote on Distrowatch
 

Hi fellow Slackers,

The MLED project has been around for a few years now, and it's slowly but steadily gaining momentum. Aside from questions and/or bug reports, I've been getting quite a lot of positive feedback. I guess it's time for MLED to reach a wider audience, and it looks like the best way to achieve that is for the distribution (or meta-distribution) to be added to the Distrowatch site.

MLED has been added to the Distrowatch waiting list in March 2015. It's been almost a year and a half now, and it's still on the waiting list. You can change with a simple vote. Search for "Microlinux Enterprise Desktop" and click on the "Recommend" button, so the distribution moves up on the waiting list. Maybe sooner or later MLED will be added to the official distribution list and - who knows - even get a review?

http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=links#new

Cheers from the sunny South of France,

Niki

Sounds like it has a good spot in the Linux ecosystem - the power of Slackware with codecs and normal apps. It got my vote!

I just got an email from Distrowatch informing me that MLED does not qualify as a distribution, since there's no separate installation ISO to download.

Do you plan to offer an ISO at some point?

DistroWatch's decision makes sense now. I'm glad I saw this thread - next break I have I think I'll be extending the Slackware installation on my old machine.

Thanks!

Well, I don't know if it makes that much sense. Distributions like Gentoo or LFS are listed on Distrowatch, yet they don't sport an installation ISO. On the other hand, give me one cent for every Ubuntu-with-a-different-wallpaper, and I'm a rich man.

Gentoo most certainly does release an installation iso.

You're right. Last time I checked (a few years ago), they recommended to use the System Rescue Live CD to install it.

That site likes to bad mouth Slackware based distros anyway. If you don't do dependency checks and don't modify packages to create your own unique personal touch (vanilla bad/modified & unified design good) then the reviewer bad mouths the distro. That's what I gather.

I think its silly since many distros are modifications of other distros like Debian. I think the reviewer just wanted one unified iso to plop into a VM and quickly praise for heavy modifications or bad mouth for lack of.

It does beg what a Linux Distribution is in my mind. If someone took an iso and just changed the name of everything to "My Linux Distribution 1.0" and submitted it to distrowatch would that count as a linux distribution?

Hard to define what a distro is, although I wouldn't say repo extensions (another example like openSUSE EduLife)

Absolutely, if it's Ubuntu based, that is. :) (<- meant to put smiley face there, not at top of post)

Kubuntu or Ubuntu GNOME is not very different than another spin of Fedora or a SUSE Studio custom ISO. It would be more convenient anyways if the Kubuntu KDE Plasma version was included on the Ubuntu distrowatch page anyways.

MLED is something in between a distribution and a repo extension. The end result is definitely something like Salix or Zenwalk, the only difference being that I don't provide a separate ISO. Just give it a spin, you'll realize it's more than just a third-party repo.

This winter, I will :). It sounds nice

If your language page on DW doesn't have Recommend button use English link:
http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?res...anguage=EN#new

@kikinovak,
DW shows MLED in "Projects not yet ready" list after voting.
Maybe they wait for any condition other than number of votes?

Distrowatch would consider MLED "ready" if I provided a separate ISO. Here's my take on that:

http://www.microlinux.eu/faq.php#iso

I added my vote for MLED, unfortunately, I doubt it will change anything at Distrowatch.

Edit; I read your take on the separate iso.
If there was a separate iso though, it would make MLED available to the less experienced users
who want to try Slackware, and give them a taste of Slackware 'improved'.:)

Niki provided an answer to that point as well in the FAQs, and I personally find it reasonable and perfectly consistent with the Slackware philosophy:

I've never installed the MLED add-on, as I don't need it, but I understand that Niki's work is meant to be used, not necessarily installed, by the end-user. In fact, he does the installation and maintenance work for his customers, and MLED was created for them. Besides, providing a complete ISO might divert some of the new (or uninformed) Slackware/MLED users away from the official project, which is not desirable IMHO. Wisely, MLED is a complement, not a replacement. :)

I couldn't have said it better.

Niki

Which, to take nothing from mled, is exactly why I agree with distrowatch that it's not a distro. If mled is considered a distro, then is deb-multimedia also now a distro? Is rpmfusion now a distro? I completely agree that mled, as it is, should NOT be listed as a distro...it's not. It's, as very well said, a complimentary extension to Slackware, not a standalone distribution (and for those that will bring it up, no I don't believe "I put a different desktop wallpaper on Ubuntu" should be a distribution either like 98% of the list seems to be).

I can only agree with you. Unfortunately these days, "distro" also means "project worth to be mentioned on Distrowatch". It's a bit frustrating to put so much work into this complement to Slackware and not see it listed on DW, and then have another Ubuntu-with-a-different-wallpaper advertised. Although these days, the Arch remixes seem to be more popular. So for now MLED is flying under the radar and remains a confidential project.

Cheers,

Niki