Tags
Conary, distribution, Distrowatch, Foresight Linux, GNU/Linux, installation, Ken Vandeen, review, Tomas Forsman, Xfce
Once upon a time, when I was a relative newcomer to GNU/Linux, I found a wonderful little distribution, which was also new at the time.
Tomas Forsman, a member of the Foresight Linux team, probably doesn’t even remember me from back then. I frequented the old support forums for Foresight Linux back when it was in version 1.0. I think that was sometime back in 2006. I remember FL creator Ken Vandeen from back then. I found Foresight, a fork of rPath Linux, while perusing Distrowatch one evening. It looked intriguing. Besides, I liked the green color theme. Green is my favorite color, you know.
I’ve had Foresight on many of my systems over the years since v1.0. It’s never been my primary operating system. You all know that I’m a Slacker, but that doesn’t stop me from experimenting with other distros. I have my favorites that are never far from one of my systems. I can usually be found tweaking (often breaking) these distros on any given day.
I did a major system overhaul a year or so ago and never was able to get a working copy of Foresight installed. It wasn’t Foresight’s fault, though. Tomas knows that I’m an Xfce fan, so he provided me with an alpha of their Xfce version. It didn’t seem to like my hardware for some reason. Well, that was a while ago, anyway. Their Xfce 64 bit version is in final release now and installs and runs perfectly.
I know this because I just installed it a couple nights ago. I didn’t have any issues during installation. For any of you who have ever installed a GNU/Linux distribution on your system, you’ll not find any surprises with the Foresight installer. It’s pretty straight-forward and relatively easy.
Once I had FL installed, I did my usual tweaks here and there under the hood and with the Xfce interface. All went well. I have a completely updated and usable Foresight Linux installation on my system now. I made a quick custom wallpaper for it and took a nice screenshot for you folks.
If you’d like to give Foresight a tryout, you’ll find that the distribution has excellent documentation and a helpful support community. Tomas also visits Scot’s Newsletter Forums – Bruno’s All Things Linux quite often. You can catch up with him there occasionally. Foresight is a stable, full-featured distribution with a sterling pedigree (RedHat, rPath). It’s suitable for a home system or a business server.
Stop on by the Foresight forums. Tell Tomas I sent you. He’ll get you up and running with Foresight in no time at all.
Have fun with it! 
Later…
~Eric
Image credits: Foresight Linux “eye” logo owned by Foresight Linux.
Nice summary Eric, thanks!!!
It’s a nice distro. You’d probably like it. It’s simple and it works. Conary is a robust package management system, too… similar to Pacman in Arch.
I never tried that one out. Their package manager always seemed like a special one; during updates, it only downloads the files that changed in a package, and not the whole package.
It should appeal to Slackware users, just as Arch usually does, because of its simplicity. Give it a try. You might like it.
Exactly, that’s the great thing about it. Differential updates, keeps bandwidth down. Some other but major distributions experimented with it way later.
Oh yes, used it too a little bit around the time of 0.7-0.9 or so. But I’m not really a GNOME guy and that’s all they had then. Might try the Xfce x64 version too!
Thanks for the review and for the kind words. Appreciated alot.
I hope we can generate some traffic for you, Tomas. Foresight really is a great distribution. It deserves some broader airplay.
See you here and there…
~Eric