Linux

So I've tried a few distros recently. I have two active laptops: one older Compaq Presario, and a 3 year old HP Pavillion. The Compaq had Debian on it. I believe it was Etch. Really, it didn't have any issues, and I probably should have left well enough alone. But fiddle I must, and fiddle I did. This machine has pretty limited resources -- which is why I had Deb on there to begin with -- so I went with a Ubuntu Gutsy disc I had lying around from a Linux Format mag.

I've tried Gutsy before. It was my first and only Ubuntu experience. I didn't really go for it the last time because I new it to be the "user-friendly" (i.e. non-nerdy) version, and was turned off by the concept. This time I'm giving it the real go. And, I hate it. From the beginning. The install pissed me off because it didn't give me many (read: any really) options. Just click on the install thing. That may be great for some people, but I'd rather select the stuff I know I want from the get-go. I hate having to go in later and find the stuff I really wanted.

There's something else weird going on here. I thought this was a Gnome install. Why are almost all of the apps KDE then? Where's Epiphany for example? Interesting that Gnome is the preferred window manager, but a large percentage of the apps are KDE.

Next thing that bugs is the start-up. No news is good news I guess. I can't tell what's going on. I'm just staring at a blank screen waiting for the thing to come up. My personal preference is to watch the startup process from start to finish to see what it's doing. If you want to be Windows-ish and hide all of that from the user, well, be my guest. But, count me out as a user.

The only thing positive I have to say is the wireless worked without any monkeying around with ndiswrapper or fwcutter or anything. Needless to say, I won't be trying Heron on this machine. As soon as I find the time, it's back to Debian it goes.

On my HP machine, I wanted to give the new openSuse (11) a go. I've been going the cheap route and not burning discs. I have a partition set aside just to avoid it. I've so far managed to find what I need to either boot from ISOs or from copying the files to a partition. This time I failed. So I burned a disc.

The install was nice. Quite lovely and not a hitch through the whole process. I've had issues in the past with changing the default config, but no probs this time. It went very well. But then I started the OS. It bombed on me. It was very buggy. I had issues getting my Broadcom working. Ok, so I've always had issues with my Broadcom, but this was a pain in the ass. Once I got it going, I downloaded Fedora 9 to my install partition, and dumped openSuse like a bad habit.

I did get it working, but after like an hour fiddling with it to get rid of the slab menu and to make it more Fedora-like, I thought to myself: "why make this like what I prefer?" I figured it was better to go with what I prefer. I started out on RedHat, and I've always been a fan.

I had tried the 64bit version of FC9 before and it didn't work out well. The install was bombing on me. I've come to realize that I'm just not meant for 64bit yet. The 32bit version is working quite well and I'm very comfortable with it. No slab. No attempt to hide away the startup process. It doesn't try to be like Windoze. It's just good software, and I like it.