Later, Ubuntu

So I whiped Ubuntu and had a crack at some other linux versions.

Simply MEPIS

There's a lot to like about this distribution. The unique installation system is quite well thought out. Basically, it loads the entire operating system from a live CD and allows you to play around with all the features, straight from the disc. If you like it, you double click an 'install me' icon on the desktop, which installs the operating system to the hard disk.

What I like most about this approach is the ability to use the computer whilst I install. For me this meant the ability to write a university paper whilst the files were copying over - a big improvement on distributions like Suse which leave my computer out of order for an hour (but more on Suse later).

But by far the stand out feature was a desktop sync feature. It allows you to sync your linux and windows operating systems together, so that when you restart into windows you can easily carry over settings such as your Firefox bookmarks. Now, the actual implementation of this idea has a long way to go before it's really user friendly, but it at least shows that there's people out there thinking about these sorts of problems. I eagerly await future versions!


Mandriva 2006

The installation programme was quite user friendly - much easier than Fedora and Suse. The distribution itself, well, give me a break. In an effort to configure my pppoe connection, I rendered the system unbootable. Yeah, top design that. NEXT...

Suse 10.1

After a rocky start, things are really on the improve. The installation programme was fairly friendly, although at some points I wanted to put my computer through a wall. Take for instance partitioning. The auto partition system divided my hard drive up beautifully - but half way through copying files over it told me the partition wasn't big enough. Gee, thanks. This forced me to use the expert partitioning tool, and quite frankly as a newbie it scared the shit out of me. I never really bothered with backing up hard drives until I encountered linux installation programmes.

There's some real positives with Suse. It's pretty. Multi monitor support is almost newbie friendly. There's a graphical dialogue available, and it works. Almost. Like Ubuntu, Suse has this fascination with setting my external CRT monitor as the primary display. Which is a problem for me, because my laptop LCD is what I use for my work. The CRT is located 1 metre behind me at the foot of my bed. Well, I guess I can curl up in bed every time I want to use the taskbar. Or programme I just loaded. Or desktop icons. Urgh. I found no feature allowing me to make my laptop's LCD the primary display... gimme a break...

Finally on Suse, this trend for not including 'non free' software is giving me the shits. I want to play mp3s. I want to use the wireless card I paid 50 bucks for. If the distribution does not support them, that's two bloody massive reasons to go back to windows.