Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn

I am a real distro whore and have moved to yet another one. My favorite so far Ubuntu has always been on the top of the list of distros I wanted but with telkoms internet connection prices I have always chosen distros with more software then comes on the Ubuntu free cd.

I have used fedora 4, 5, and 6. I think that fedora gets a lot of free publicity because of Red Hat. It is no way near to the functionality and ease of use in the GUI that can be found in either suse or Ubuntu. I think any one who uses fedora just cause of it's relation to Red Hat should consider moving to suse or Ubuntu. I have only used these distros for desktop productivity, programing and web development. So as far as running a server is concerned I can't cant say which one is better.

I have used suse 9.2, 10, 10.1 and finally moved over to a complete Linux system one my acer travelmate 5623 with 10.2. I have to say that suse with yast make Life very easy. The GUI based install can be done buy any one and it is rpm based so all the red hat packages tend to be compatible. I have found it to be a little slow, and it has crashed on me relating to X windows problems. I have used the 3D desktop across two screens on suse with out much problems, although I prefer to use it with out desktop effects as it works better because Lap top and 19" dont have the same resolutions. Over all I am very happy with novels suse product. In terms of usability I have to say it is one of the easiest I have used.

I have installed Debian on an old Pentium 1 I had lying around. It was a pain, never got X to work so I never used the Gui. It was a pain to install, but then they aren't aim at making it easy to use they are aiming at making it stable so if X cant figure out what settings it is meant to have then it is doing what it was created to do be stable.

Now I have moved completely to Ubuntu. I was able to get a friend to download the dvd of 7.04 and this has so far been what I am looking for. I have struggled with X. Similar problems to that of Debian, the auto config is that automatic and requires some expert knowledge on how to set it up. But in general after googleing a bit I found the solutions I needed. For X and some other commonly tried advanced configurations such as visualization go to librenix. I also found that nvidia has made a graphical tool called nvidia-settings to solve most problems I will put my solution in a new post to make it easy to Google.

Ubuntu is faster then suse probably cause their generic kernel is using more i686 code and take better advantage of my SMP (symmetric muilt-processors, dual core). I have been playing with beryl and it is definitely hands down the best desktop effects product out there. More settings better features every thing is better. I still need to do some development on Ubuntu to get a better feel for it but so far it is exactly what I am looking for a LAMP system.

I understand them not including Java, adobe, and some other free but proprietary licensed software but once every thing is up and running all you need to do is enable the relevant repos through synaptic and you can easily download them. Synaptic comes close to yasts in that it allows you to add cd and dvd repos which make life a breeze. Synaptic though is not an all in one control panel like tool which is what yast is. I will stick with the way Ubuntu is laid out for the moment, though I might try to install yast a little later.