[ale] thinking about switching away from ubuntu

[Jim Kinney]

Welcome to world of distro switching!

Of all of the distro's I've used over the past 15 years, at some point they
_ALL_ get crunchy, un-smooth. It's a by-product of the bazaar development
process. Another way to describe it is "too many cooks spoil the soup".

What to do:

1. Nothing! Sit tight, tweak your system ('cause you can!)  and send in the
bug notices and let the distro devels do their job. This is probably your
best choice as your main environment will stay in place and your
understanding of it will deepen.

2. Experiment with other distros. Other than the time and bandwidth to
download, this is a no-cost-to-you approach. You might find another one you
really like. Start with the major players latest and greatest releases and
work your way through the chain through some of the smaller ones. You'll
likely find that a major format change from Debian apt-get and config file
structure to something else like RedHat/CentOS/Fedora yum/rpm and
/etc/sysconfig to be a challenge. This process will be a challenge but very
rewarding as well. You'll get the chance to see different ways to do
installations (anaconda and kickstart are nice ways to fully automate things
in the RedHat world when you have a zillion boxes to run) but you'll fight
the new systems due to nonfamiliarity of their locations and procedures. The
current distro world is a lot like the old *NIX land of 15 years ago -
everyone has their own "flavor" and that mkes for their own idiosyncrasies.

3. Pick a new distro from the major players, install it and refuse to go
back. This isn't as bad as it sounds. By committing to learning the new
system, you will become a very capable systeadmin for that system. Granted
_most_ people don't want to be a sysadmin. (Apple as an app for that - plop
down your wallet and soul and they will take care of you) If you go this
route, really plan on sticking with the major players for this.

I use Fedora for desktops and CEntOS for servers. Is it perfect? Nope.
Fedora experiments with some cool tech that causes problems sometimes. So I
find those and remove them when I can. I'm pretty comfy with the yum process
and know the tricks to multi-media happiness in a patent-crippled world. But
I've also learned to give a new Fedora release about 2 weeks before I get it
and to do a full update before I even try and use the sytem. For the most
part, Fedora's updates have not broken my desktop(s) since about Fedora 9 or
so. Even then, the breakage lasted about a day and a fix was out (except for
the bone-headed break that putzed the yum tool! That took about 3 days
before it was fixed and it required a commandline download of the new
yum.rpm and a manual install - not hard at all but for a newbie fedora user
it would be intimidating).

To quote the SuSE distro, "Have a lot of fun!".

On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 10:58 PM, adam <prozaconstilts at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi-o,
>
> Over the past year or so, I have started to notice that I'm having to
> tweak, fix, or otherwise finnagle my ubuntu desktop more and more into
> working properly every time a new release comes out.
>
> For 9.04, pulse audio drove me nuts. For 9.10 usplash was a disaster.
> I've had recurring samba problems via gnome's vfs and nautilus systems.
> X with multiple monitors is nerve-wracking (damn mouse pointer bug).
> It's never been a problem I couldn't tackle, it's always just been a
> minor annoyance...but the annoyances are starting to stack up.
>
> I've read a blog post here and there calling for uber bug fix
> releases[1], and I tend to agree. "Linux for humans" has gotten tougher
> and tougher for me to believe in regards to ubuntu.
>
> I feel like giving 10.04 a shot (LTS is supposed to mean a more stable
> release), and if it fails for me, I think I might try to look for
> greener pastures.
>
> Has anyone else felt the same at some time or another, and have you
> looked for a similar solution? Any luck? Also, I've only ever used
> ubuntu, but none of the other variants produced by canonical. I'm open
> to try another 'buntu if it's worth it.
>
> Adam
>
>
>
> [1] http://www.tannerhelland.com/commentary/ubuntu-linux/ubuntu-1004/
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness
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