Linux Distro suggestions

**mockingbird** · 05-15-2011, 10:55 PM

Re: Linux Distro suggestions

I have a friend who loves Linux Mint

I typing this from Kubuntu Natty Narwhal x64 right now, and aside from a few glitches here and there, I am amazed at how much progress they have made. It is the most fantastic release to date.

**ratdude747** · 05-15-2011, 11:00 PM

Re: Linux Distro suggestions

i forgot to mention, linux mint is staying with gnome 2.x for now... I never really liked mint anyway.

kubuntu is KDE, so nope.

**mockingbird** · 05-16-2011, 12:00 AM

Re: Linux Distro suggestions

You're going to have to learn to get your hands dirty a little...

ubuntu- slow, no gnome shell, going in the worng direction

Get rid of Unity and you can use Gnome. I'm not sure how to do this, but it wouldn't be too difficult to find out how.

fedora (using now)- Blacklisted my GPU (intel i855), most network things don't work even after using every trick in the book (firewall mods, etc). Too much security junk.

Fedora is junk. Stay away. As for blacklisting, just find the file that has all the blacklisted modules and unblacklist it. When I booted Kubuntu, they had a version of my wireless drivers that weren't too great. I blacklisted it and compiled the RTL8185 drivers straight from Realtek's site.

SUSE- I hated yast... a solution in search of a problem.

Agree.

Mandriva- dumping gnome in the 2011 release...
debian- gnome 3 support only in experimental; no mouse pointer bug persists in testing/unstable/experimental.

Mandriva impressed me the last time I used their LiveCD (years ago) and as for Debian, I have an older version installed on my Laptop which I sometimes boot up I don't like using Debian Unstable to get new stuff when I can use Stable Kubuntu and have the same stuff. Debian 6.0 is really getting long in the tooth now.

**ratdude747** · 05-16-2011, 12:08 AM

Re: Linux Distro suggestions

ubuntu was just a broken system overall... they were pushing a swiss army knife with 20 tools that don't fully work when they need to be pushing a swiss army knife with 10 tools that fully work. if it was just gnome, it would have been a no brainer. instead, it appears as their bug fixing team is a no brainer

fedora 14 worked great... but the version of the shell was old and klunky, 15 i have rigged into getting the shell to work despite the blacklist, but it is still klunky... if i found fedora without the security junk, i'd be in buisness.

debian would be great if they made gnome 3 in the testing and fixed the pointer issue... it runs great on my headless server (squeeze).

**mockingbird** · 05-16-2011, 12:24 AM

Re: Linux Distro suggestions

Can you elaborate more on your problems with Ubuntu? I mean, Kubuntu is really similar, just a different front-end, and I find everything just works great out of the box. There's a few minor issues with KDE (Actually, you reminded me, I have to go on IRC and mention this to them), but if you persevere a little bit, the reward will be great. Nothing comes as you want it out of the box.

Like GRUB for instance wouldn't work for me. I filed a bug report and one of the developers fixed it for me literally overnight. Recompiled from trunk, and it works great. Really a no-brainer. Try the Ubuntu Forums. The IRC channel is full of idiots, you might get arbitrarily heckled or banned from there for no good reason.

**digge** · 05-16-2011, 12:46 AM

Re: Linux Distro suggestions

Imo there is no really great dists atm that is all that you want to have with no tinkering needed. If you want most things done for you i think your best bet would still be ubuntu and then change it to what you want, or maybe debian with some tinkering.

I would however suggest you try out Archlinux. I have only used it for quite short periods but the advantage is that its a rolling release which should be good for a desktop system. And i think you can have any gui you want, think they distribute both kde and gnome in their repos. I know its not apt/yum based and all that but from the tests i ran using it on a vps it was the most smooth experience of the ones i tried.

Good luck finding a dist suitable for you, let us know how it goes.

**mockingbird** · 05-16-2011, 01:10 AM

Re: Linux Distro suggestions

I though about mentioning arch, but like you said, it's not APT or RPM.

If you want most things done for you i think your best bet would still be Windows

**ratdude747** · 05-16-2011, 01:38 AM

Re: Linux Distro suggestions

what all went wrong in ubuntu (from earliest to latest bugs)

1. network printing (samba) never worked. network anything else worked at first but it became flakeier)
2. my laptop's wireless (broadcom) became harder and harder to work (drivers app was useless, I had to use old precomplied shit)
3. my laptop's graphics became buggy and the higher ups acted as my model was to become unsupported.
4. Gnome shell (old versions at this point) are dead on all of my units. at this time it becomes a mac clone theme (Icons and button placement), further pissing me off
5. (at this point I was on fedora) i notice how slow ubuntu was compared to fedora. I now consider ubuntu bloatware.
6. I hear about unity. I then realize ubuntu is not for me as my needs are too advanced for ubuntu's feature set.

Ubuntu forums was helpful at first but it was too big of a forum... to get stuff done it required lots of bumping. bug reporting was useless as most bugs were left unfixed since all of the effort was in the new feature department.

my main reason for wanting rpms or debs is google chrome and brother printer support...

No to windows, I have my laptop dualbooted, and windows xp is just to crappy for me to use all the time (it is used for robotics related junk). Vista sucks worse, and I do not want to give $ to m$ for 7.

A little bit of tweaking is ok but the degree of hell everything I have tried is pissing me off... tweaking and it works is one thing, tweaking and it only half working is another.

If only kde (and it's programs) didn't suck so bad...

**ratdude747** · 05-16-2011, 01:56 AM

Re: Linux Distro suggestions

I found the issue... the i8xx thing is gnome wide... and they hve no plans to fix it.

i guess i need another laptop I can't afford... this sucks. bad. Why do I have to have this sh!tty of luck... I had just gotten everything working on it. perhaps i need to hackintosh it...

**mockingbird** · 05-16-2011, 02:01 AM

Re: Linux Distro suggestions

1) Will investigate this for you with 11.04. I have a Canon printer on my network and I had no problem printing to it with p910nd and OpenWRT, so it *should* work through Samba...
2) Broadcom has two drivers. b43 and b43legacy. Both are closed source binaries IIRC. They're widely used, and the support has gone better and better. I don't know if there's anything to compile here, but I'll look into it.
3) i855 is supported just fine. It's been written about extensively at ubuntuforums. Chances are you will have to pull the source and compile it yourself. You're going to have to experiment. I've compiled Intel GFX drivers before, you just have to check the Xorg logs afterwards to make sure it 'took'.
4) What do you mean by Gnome Shell? You mean Gnome GUI?
5) The only thing I've noticed is slow OpenGL in Firefox with Geforce + latest nVidia driver vs Windows XP. 9 vs 14 fps on the Firefox HW Acceleration test, but I'm sure I'll figure that out one of these days.
6) Ubuntu is just a distro, a face if you will. If you want a distro with great support, use it. Fedora is garbage and you will be back here in a year saying the same things about Fedora as you were saying about Ubuntu.

I agree. Most bugtrackers are dysfunctional.

You're just spoiled and lazy. Ask the elders here what we had to do back in the MS-DOS days. If you're not comfortable opening a shell and working with syntax, then you should just run Windows like I said and maybe put Virtualbox and run some slimmed down distro for your robotics stuff. Linux is not for you.

i guess i need another laptop I can't afford... this sucks. bad. Why do I have to have this sh!tty of luck... I had just gotten everything working on it. perhaps i need to hackintosh it...

Macintosh runs on top of Unix FYI. It's worse than garbage. It should be hauled away as garbage.

**ratdude747** · 05-16-2011, 02:13 AM

Re: Linux Distro suggestions

i forgot that hackintoshing would force a redo of the windows side of the laptop...

i can open a shell and use syntax. it is not a can't do, but a "if I do, it better work" type thing... If hacking it only half fixes it, its still broken .

gnome shell is the newer gnome 3... not fallback legacy mode. i855 is only supported in fallback mode, as the shell renders 1/3 of the text as blocks.

suppossedly there was a patch but my research shows that it likely was a hoax... what most of what I have found says is that the i8xx platform is too anemic to run things right... so the only fix is a laptop with better graphics (I have one but its dead).

**NxB** · 05-16-2011, 08:24 AM

Re: Linux Distro suggestions

Try Xubuntu? It is lighter. I don't think you're going to get anything good with gnome3 as they are fucking things up just like ubuntu. Gnome is who they are at "war" with.

I like mint and they now have a rolling debian based distro. Knoppix?

... or how about this... stay with the older version that works? Anything in the new distros that you actually want besides a prettier gui?

**Wizard** · 05-16-2011, 08:25 AM

Re: Linux Distro suggestions

Your notebook is D420? Should be had been sweet and nice on XP Professional as long as memory is reliable/quality brand like Mushkin, Kingston etc, and maxed out, also try changing the wireless module for Intel Pro 2200 for better support instead of broadcom.

You have to replace the printer eventually with used one, try Samsung (linux support is good on many models). I do *not* like Brother printers at all, especially Brother is famous for need to replace drum once worn out (over $200).

On next notebook in the future: D610 or IBM thinkpad R52. Replace CPU for 2GHz, 533 FSB CPU, D610 comes with either Intel GMA or ATi x300 while R52 either have Intel GMA or ATi x300/x600. IBM model is easier to decode to see which have ATi video chipset (preferred) while D610 is bit harder to do. Keep in mind R52 is slight more fussy with hardware especially hard drive (I plan to implement a modification to convert to SATA instead of PATA)
and picky about wireless module. D610 does not care what hard drive and wireless goes in.

Cheers, Wizard

**ratdude747** · 05-16-2011, 12:14 PM

Re: Linux Distro suggestions

i have a d400... the broadcom chip works fine, thank you.

it runs xp ok, i just don't like windows.
i think i will hang on to fedora since it does gnome 3 the best out of what i have... the other issues i will work with when i have time.

**Wizard** · 05-16-2011, 12:45 PM

Re: Linux Distro suggestions

No problem.

Cheers, Wizard

**mockingbird** · 05-16-2011, 12:59 PM

Re: Linux Distro suggestions

I looked at your thread at the Fedora forums, and then I looked into the i8xx graphics a bit more... It seems like you're right, that there's definitely an issue with it. But then why would you want Gnome 3 specifically? It's like running Windows Visa with a Rage128? Why not settle for an earlier version of Gnome?

In KDE, there's an option to disable all desktop effects, so it *should* work with even older graphics chips. (In fact, you have to meet certain prerequisites to even be allowed to enable the effects).

**ratdude747** · 05-16-2011, 01:16 PM

Re: Linux Distro suggestions

because gnome 3 has a completely different interface... I really like it. it me do stuff faster. gnome 2 was ok but the shell is good. the fallback mode that i8xx uses by default is a combo of gnome 2 and 3... if you like gnome 2, its good...

the issues seem to be more of a code issue than a performance issue... it is plenty fast. think bad driver as opposed to slow chip.

**mockingbird** · 05-16-2011, 01:44 PM

Re: Linux Distro suggestions

I have some old 855 laptops I can test this on. I'll try and play around with it.

**ratdude747** · 05-16-2011, 02:39 PM

Re: Linux Distro suggestions

make sure they use intel graphics... not just an intel chipset. usually found in subcompacts like my d400.

Linux Distro suggestions

Linux Distro suggestions

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