Comments on: I might use Linux, but I wouldn’t recommend it

By: hari

hari — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:31:21 +0000

Glad you found your Linux of choice. Ubuntu is usually a good choice for new users. But personally I’ve been using Debian using 2003-04 and I’ve not had to reinstall it once (well, I did install it on my laptop and desktop separately but you get my point).

Using the Debian “testing” repository is a great way to keep a stable, yet up-to-date system. Give it a go when you’re more comfortable with Linux.

Also many people swear by Slackware, but it requires a lot of manual configuration and doesn’t have too many GUI system admin tools so you’ll have to edit config files by hand. But it does give you a fairly good idea of the ways of classic Unix.

By: Marc

Marc — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 06:11:52 +0000

Well, I’m not going to resist the GNOME-based Ubuntu any more. Yesterday I rsync’ed my home folder to an external USB drive and clonezilla’d the entire disk for good measure. After one more rsync, this drive is getting formatted!

I installed the 64-bit version of Ubuntu onto a spare 10GB partition I was saving for just such an occasion and just about anything I had previously noticed to be broken in my various KDE4 experiences was working fine. CD audio, no problem. Disk access, much faster than openSUSE (and silent!). Rythmbox even has an option to browse by genre/artist/album now, which is good. So, Ubuntu here I come. Wish me luck.

By: chi

chi — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 18:49:01 +0000

sorry to hear that you’re having so many issues with linux, but good jobs trying to work things through. like some people have said before, i think that kde 4 is not exactly the best choice right now and it might be the cause of a few of your problems. in my opinion, kde 4 is not exactly as solid as kde 3.5 or gnome.

i think ubuntu would be a good choice, its a very robust distro and works well for both linux pros and amateurs. so if you’re willing to put the time in, i’d say try it out!

best of luck to you!

By: MikelAngelo

MikelAngelo — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 06:50:14 +0000

Try Linux Mint.

By: Marc

Marc — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:56:47 +0000

Nick: triple booting to work around a few dumb “features” isn’t really a recipe for long-term sanity. Apple should really be adding some kind of preference pane to enable non-Apple keyboard shortcuts and other conveniences to encourage more users. I’d be more likely to buy a Mac if I didn’t have to use the mouse or some annoying keyboard shortcut to get to the end of the line all the time (and coding anything means you’ll be moving that cursor around a lot!)

JD: I have been avoiding Ubuntu because I haven’t liked GNOME, but I’m slowly beginning to think that if everything else works fine, and my only problem is a GUI file manager that insults my intelligence, then that might be a deal worth making. I think it’s high time operating systems went 64-bit, so I’m going to give that version of Ubuntu a try. Surely it’s got to be up-to-scratch if Canonical are willing to support it?