My Ubuntu installation from last fall had gotten a bit dodgy: some of the programs were slow, there was a certain amount of cruft that I'd allowed to develop by doing upgrades instead of clean installs for the last couple-three versions, and so on. About ten days before the new version was to come out yesterday, my software-updater-and-installer jammed. I posted a bug, and got little response (I'm sure all the guru staff were workin' their little tushies off gettin' the new version together), so I decided to go with a new install of the Ubuntu 11.4 version, code-names "Natty Narwhal.
It was a failure on my system:
- The new Unity interface simply didn't work for me: it was slow and unresponsive, and the "upper left of the window icons" where you're supposed to be able to click to get the menu items only worked in the two programs I did NOT get from the Ubuntu repositories: Google Chrome and Opera.
- I use Gnucash to keep track of my finances, and the windows would not refresh correctly. Sometimes the numbers would not appear at all.
- Video, whether Flash, DVD, or other format, was choppy and unreliable. Sound and video were poorly synchronized.
- The OS was slow to load...
- ... and when it DID load, my monitor would not respond during the boot process (I got the monitor's message that it was not getting signal from the computer), although when the splash screen started, that appeared so I could log in.
Disappointing, although I got it to work well enough to do my daily finances, and back up my documents. I decided this would not do, and after a quick web search, I decided to try the Fedora Project OS today.
My first Linux experience was with Red Hat, probably seven or eight years ago, before they split off Red hat Enterprise from the Fedora Project free-software OS. I liked it then, but when I decided to go with a HP laptop (the dreaded Pavilion, with all the heat problems - my wife and I each had one, and they both died at about the same time; I'm still angry that HP knew about the problem and did nothing; see the post on my other blog). So, in a sense, I was going back where I started.
I'm writing this at 7:00 pm. I had gotten the ,iso file early this morning and burned it, so I started installing the system at about 3:00 pm (today was an early day at work). Here it is, about four hours later, and, after taking time out to grill and cook dinner and wash dishes, I'm doing useful(?) work on the computer; Flash, Java, .MP3's, and Video all run (there's an "official/unofficial" page to teach you how), my Winprinter is going (no small feat in itself; much of the software to run this kind of printer is bundled with Windows; they should not even come out of the box under Linux), my favorite software is all installed, and I didn't even lose too many of my emails between one install and the other.
This install was a pleasure. With the Ubuntu disks, it took me an average of three tries to get one that was correct: this Fedora disk was correct on the first try. It booted right up on my system. There are many similarities between Ubuntu and Fedora, and many of the differences are minor (such as the way the user obtains permissions to adjust system properties: if you can sudo, you can learn su... and apt-get and yum are so similar, that the hardest part is learning the minuscule differences between them),
For my purposes, I think Ubuntu is trying to do too much. I'm running 2 GB of RAM and a dual-core Athlon processor; with my NVidia GeForce video, there should be plenty of power here (and with Fedora, there is: no boot-screen problems, smooth video playback...). And I'm not an OS groupie: I don't spend a lot of time looking at my screen backdrop - I'm most interested in what the computer will do. I just want an OS that will do the stuff I want. (Well, that's not really true; I also want an OS I can play with, tweak, and get in and out of trouble with - but I don't really give a hoot abut the eye candy).
(As I was writing this post, I went back to see my reactions to my install a year ago - and I had had problems with that, as well.)
Fedora. It's fittin' me.
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