[ale] Building the perfect Linux end-user systems.

[Michael B. Trausch]

Dan Lambert wrote:
>
> I have to agree with you, Mike. I am running Ubuntu on an IBM laptop, 
> and everything worked fine for me first time out. I did have to reload 
> the wifi drivers, but that was partially my fault, I think.
> 
> At any rate, I've never had any distribution before I found Ubuntu 
> Breezy that would load on my laptop and just work. I have loaded and 
> used a variety of Linux distributions over the last 10 years (including 
> the first Linux distro I ever found that loaded from (if memory serves 
> me) four floppies). I went through all of the previous "premier" 
> distributions from Red Hat to SUSe, and from Mandrake to Xandros.
> 

I tried Slackware first, and stuck with that until I found Ubuntu.
Along the way, I had tried Red Hat's various distributions, Fedora,
Mandrake, Xandros, SuSE, Linspire, Zenwalk, and probably more along the
years...

>
> All of the were good, but none was at a point where i could do real 
> world, day-to-day work on them, and allow me to have only one 
> distribution to work with. I have a network in my home that always has 
> at least 8 computers on it, and usually I'm working 10-12 boxes. I had 
> no less that 5 Windoze computers on that network due to the fact than 
> many of the services that were required weren't convenient or even 
> available on a Linux box. (Think Windoze specific applications.)
> 

Yeah, those are a real PITA (the Windows-specific apps, that is).  If
more companies would use wxWidgets as the framework for their
applications... :-)

>
> I had real problems with all of the RPM based distros, and never was 
> really happy with Yast. When I first discovered Debian, I really liked 
> the apt utility, and was very comfortable with it. I just needed a 
> usable user interface.
> 

Yeah; I lost faith in RPM years ago, and recently I went to fix up
somoene's system who needed to be updated, and noticed that the problems
were *still* there -- the same flaws from years ago.  I am not an RPM
expert and I don't intend on becoming one; RPM is to Linux what Windows
is to the world, IMHO.

>
> When I discovered Ubuntu (Breezy), I felt like this distro had real 
> possibilities, and when Dapper was released, I felt like I could make a 
> real world use of the interface, and the OS. About this time, Windoze 
> totally crashed on my laptop, and after doing a restore and reloading 
> everything, two weeks later it did the same thing. I'd had it!
> 
> Dapper was loaded as the only OS on my laptop, and I haven't looked 
> back. At this point in time, I have one Windows server that I have to 
> keep running for company compatibility, One XP box that I have to use 
> for the company's interface, my wife's XP desktop (I haven't convinced 
> her to come away from the dark side yet), and everything else on my 
> network is an Ubuntu box.
> 

I got my women to switch by simply telling them that I would not support
their Windows troubles.  :)  If something broke under Windows, for the
most part, I left it alone.  That got them to switch pretty quickly.  ;-)

>
> The ONLY thing I've had any issue with getting to work right out of the 
> box is the wifi on my laptop, which I had to reload once to make it 
> work. Otherwise, I'm now at 11 for 11 installs with no issues.
> 

Yeah, I can't count how many installs of Ubuntu I have done -- but they
are all happy.  :)

	-- Mike

-- 
Michael B. Trausch <fd0man at gmail.com> - Jabber: fd0man at livejournal.com

Demand freedom: Use open and free protocols, standards, and software.

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