Estragon was giving me a hard time earlier about how I haven’t posted for a month.  Well, I’ve been a bit busy.  It seems as though I’ve come down with a disease which forces me to download every Linux distribution available and give it a try on my desktop.  Why?

Well, here’s the thing.  I’m burnt out on Windows.   Now, don’t get me wrong, Windows and I have been good.  We’ve been real good.  But, well, I get a little tired of the random crashes and constant reboots.  What do I really want?  A Mac.  Yes, I know, they’re closed source Unix, basically, but I’m ok with that.   My only complaint with the Mac is how expensive they are.

So–one day a couple of weeks ago, Vista crashed on me for the last time.  Fed up, I downloaded Ubuntu 8.10 and gave it a go.  It didn’t work.  Oh, sure, I could get it up and running, but once I installed the updates for it, it wouldn’t reboot.  It’s not good to have an OS running that won’t let you reboot.

So for a week or so I was running openSUSE 11.  It was OK, but my major complaint with it was that getting software installed on it was difficult.  Sure, I could get things installed, but then I would have conflicting libraries that wouldn’t work well with one another.  I imagined it was one of those scenarios where, if I knew what I was doing, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal.  Unfortunately, as is painfully obvious to me now, I am not nearly as computer literate as I once thought.

So, about a week in to running openSUSE, I decided to give Kubuntu another go.  So I had that up and running for a bit, until I decided that I didn’t like the KDE desktop.  Yes, it was beautiful, but it hogged my system resources.  My ATI card wouldn’t work with Ubuntu, so I didn’t really have a muscular graphics card that could handle the setup.  Also, for whatever reason, it didn’t like handling large files.  So–Kubuntu got kicked to the curb.

What else, then?

Fedora 10–couldn’t get the LiveCD to work.

openGEU–same problem.

Mandriva 2009 wouldn’t recognize my ethernet card right out of the box, which didn’t bode well for me.

As I sit here waiting for the Fedora 11 preview LiveCD to load, I can pretty much guarantee that I’m going to stick with Ubuntu 9.04.

Here’s my thoughts:

*  All of these distributions that I’ve tried are basically the same.  The GNOME desktop looks the same from system to system, and most of the reviews that I’ve read online basically talk about the themes that each one comes with.  Now, I’ve never stuck to a standard Windows theme (who has?), and the desktop background is usually the first thing to go.  So–you can take your flavor: GNOME, KDE, Xcfe, Enlghtenment–they all act more or less the same from distro to distro.

* Package managers.  The community for Ubuntu is huge, and the software available for them corresponds to the size of the community.  Debian packages seem easier to come by and the Ubuntu software update seems to work better as far as keeping the background libraries consistent.  This is important for a newbie to Linux like myself, who really doesn’t think the fun of Linux should be spent in memorizing release codes for various libraries.

* codecs.  Now, I realize some people care about FOSS.  I’m not one of them.  I’m of the mindset that if I doubleclick a MP3 file, it should play.  Same with if I put a DVD in my disc drive.  A lot of these distros don’t come out of the box that way.  Linux Mint and SuperOS (or SuperUbuntu) do.  Unfortunately, I only found out about them after I already got Ubuntu 9.04 up and running on my system.  And once you’ve got the codecs installed for MP3, Flash, DVD, etc., then there’s no real point in going to those distros, as they’re just going to offer you what you’ve already got set up.  And really, getting the MP3, etc. working in Ubuntu wasn’t difficult at all.

* hardware issues.  Now, Vista sucked, don’t get me wrong.  But I could burn CDs/DVDs.  For whatever reason, Ubuntu won’t let me.  Not a big deal.  I’ve got a machine that still works for burning, and I really don’t do much burning these days anyway (really it seems the only thing I’ve been burning have been Linux distros.  I really should have spent more time effing around with a Virtual machine, but, meh, the CDs were cheap and sitting around).   So–my CD drives won’t burn.  Also, all of the Linux distros I tried hated my video card.  And I had to swap out my motherboard’s ethernet for a separate ethernet card, since Ubuntu didn’t seem to like the onboard one, either.  I suppose it’s like anything PC related.  Trying to get X number of manufacturer’s cards/drives/etc. to work is difficult.  That is the advantage of having a Mac which comes standard with all of its hardware.

* wine.  There seem to be a couple schools of thought on this.  Some people like WINE (the Windows emulator for Linux/Macs), other people don’t.  I think it’s sort of a last resort, where if you liked a piece of Windows software and can’t find something that exists natively that suits your needs, then you should go ahead and use the old Windows software.  There’s no shame in it.  Computers should exist to fit your needs, not the other way around.

So what have I learned?  Ubuntu is a lot stabler than Vista, in my experience.  Once I got everything up and running, it’s been running like a charm.  It does everything I want it to, with the exception of burning CDs and communicating with my iPod.  And, well, frankly, it just feels good not having to futz with Microsoft.  I’d want to get a Mac at some point in the future, but for now, this setup is doing ok for me.

Fedora’s LiveCD won’t work, so I’m giving up on it.

So:

Fedora 10/11 - couldn’t get to work

Mandriva - couldn’t get ethernet to work

openGEU - didn’t load quickly enough for me to try out on the LiveCD

Kubuntu - ate up too many system resources, was slow

Linux Mint - a very nice distro, good looking, with things working out of the box.  Would have chosen this if I hadn’t already gotten Ubuntu to a stable point

Ubuntu 9 - works fine and is stable once I got it up and running

So–Ubuntu for now, until I get fed up and try something else.  Oh, did I mention it boots up in like 30 seconds?  Pretty sweet.

I’m pretty sure I’d still be staring at a BSOD if I hadn’t switched over.  Or the random reboots.

So, in closing, see ya, Vista.