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.

New kernel for suse 10.2

I recently upgraded my suse kernel to suse to the one available in the update source that yast automatically adds. It fixed among other things the spdif out that my head phones jack into. Previously it didn't work although sound did and it played through the speaker built into my laptop.

It seams to be more responsive as well in gnome. If their are any other big changes I notice I will post about them as well.

Operating Systems and A new computer

I recently got an new Acer travelmate 5623, as my previous HP nx9110 stoped working. According to HP it stoped working because of mother board ware and tear. Which would cost R 5000 to replace.

My new Acer came with vista as it was a R 1000 cheaper to go with vista over XP. Apparently Acer is not shipping their products with system disks. So I had to use my DVD writer to create an image of my system for back and install purposes. Good thing to, with in 2 days I had to reinstall vista to get around an annoying error message that kept coming up. It had to to with user profiles and the folders linked to them.

Vista gave me the a real shock when I saw that the system was using 600MB of ram from start up. So I set about changing some of the services and performance setting to see if I could change that. I prefer to at least 80 % of my ram free. I was only able to free up 200MB. So 40% of my ram is dedicated to just ruining my system.

I have had one trouble of another since I got vista. Their program compatibility system kinda works as I was able to install and use open office and FireFox. I could get it to work with PDFcreator, it just wouldn't let me install it.

Vista is a bit easier to use but that dose not account for more then half my ram disappearing. Gnome is just as easy use if not more and it only requires along with the Linux system about 220 MB on start up. Which is why I am now switching to opensuse 10.1.

I hope to do every thing this semester in Linux, and after trying out opensuse 10.1 on one of my external drives I have to say Linux is really impressing me. Novel has really done some thing impressive with suse. It is almost an replacement for Windows in terms of productivity and easy of use.

Almost a replacement but not quite. I have to manually install my Realtech 8111 network card and my Intel pro 3945 doesn't work probably. Linuxes big problem is still hard ware compatibility. Hardware manufactures are sticking to where the money is and at the moment that is with windows. The just don't put in the same effort to make hardware work with Linux.

Their are still solutions to all these problems but they are some times very complex. For instance to update the driver for my wireless card I have to download and separately install 5 different packages to get around the dependency hell in the Linux system.

I still plan to move to the more stable and efficient suse 10 .1 with Gnome as my desktop because I can Google my Linux problems and find a solution, but with windows I have to wait till some lackey at Microsoft puts out a security up date to fix my vista problems. I will and suggest any one wanting to go the vista route wait till SP1.