So I have this laptop, y’see… AMD Turion 64 bit processor, currently running XP Home. I find myself filled with ennui nearly to the point of nausea contemplating installing (I refuse to dignify this by using the term “upgrading”) VISTA!!! (erp–I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.) I also have two versions of Linux 64 bit OSs sitting around the house and I’m debating between them–Suse and Ubuntu. Could those of you with experience in these and heck, with other Linux 64 bit OS for that matter, give me your opinions, pointers and first hand impressions? I’m a pretty sophisticated power user with really impeccable hardware/software backup in my SO, who teethed on a Trash 80 back in the day and who lives and breathes this stuff, so ease of installation/maintenance is not a huge consideration. I’m more interested in the front end, tweakability, compatibility, hardware management, speed, etc. I’m not afraid of command line and care less about form than function. Making a file doesn’t scare me. It doesn’t have to be pretty and shiny… although that’s nice too!
I plan on just getting a whole 'nother HDD to install the new OS on, so I can switch back and forth easily if I need to. Yeah, it’s a slutty way of doing things, but the 40GB the lappie shipped with just isn’t big enough for me–I’m SUCH a size queen…
I’ve been happy with my install of Fedora Core 5 at home. It’s nice & shiny (I use Gnome) and works great for the ususals of surfing the web, the occasional office doc, and ripping CDs / listening to music. I just downloaded gnuitar & some drum program that I can’t remember the name of & plan to try those out. All in all, it hasn’t let me down.
I tried ubuntu, but didn’t like it too well. The whole “no user / give the root password when you want to do something” didn’t sit well with me. I admit I only had it installed for a few days.
I’ve also got a Suse Linux Enterprise Server 9 install lying around somewhere, and I can’t say as I’ve noticed a significant difference between the Suse & Fedora for everyday tasks.
I used to be a Redhat guy, these days I’m a Gentoo guy. One of my favorite things about Gentoo is that it’s built around Portage, a lovely little package manager that handles dependencies so much better than I was ever able to with Redhat. I believe Ubuntu also uses Portage, so I’d recommend that. I’ve heard good things about Ubuntu in general – I’ve considered installing it on an extra hard drive sometime just to play around with it.
Also, from your OP it sounds like you think the 64-bit AMD cpu needs to run a 64-bit OS. It really doesn’t, unless you plan to do hard-core number crunching or use more than (I believe) 4 gigs of memory.
I have Suse 10.1 installed on my 64 bit machine at home, and on my lap top at work. I find Suse easier to install than Windows. The most disappointing aspect of Suse 10.1 is that the update installer is busted. Use Smart Package Manager instead.
The drawbacks to Suse tend to be: they emasculate things like:
DvD playback because of legal fears, but you can get around that easily enough
Playing things like *.wmv files is problematic, but you can also get around that.
Your 3D card may require you go to the manufactures site for a good driver.
I think it is relatively slow. But, I install a lot of software, because I use it professionally, my kids use it educationally and for games, and my wife uses it as a card deck.
I’ve never spent much time trying to get my USB scanner working on it, but the fact that I have to try says that it is harder than it should be.
They haven’t updated GnuCash in quite a while. Suse is on 1.8, the project is on 2.x
On the plus side:
Suse provides an incredible amount of software for the price, so you don’t have to hunt around for it.
It is very stable, and the software on it is very stable. (I’m sure that is true of any Linux distro.) I actually have crashed Konqueror somehow, but it much more seldom than Explorer and the like crashing on Windows.
Whichever package manager you use, you will get updates to all of your software. You don’t have to seperately set up all your software to check for updates.
I find there is a difference in speed of some software. Some things are network/internet connection limited, some things are disk access limited, but some software just runs faster.
Giraffe: I know it doesn’t strictly NEED a 64 bit OS–that’s pretty clear since I’m running XP and have been for some time. It’s just that A) I’ve never had a 64 bit machine before and I want to see what it can do, and B) I don’t tend to run a lot of third party apps, but I do keep the thing busy with system tasks a lot. It’s not unusual for me to have 7-8 tabs open in Firefox, with Azureus running in the background, while playing random shuffle through my music library through headphones, converting several video files and streaming a video over the network to play on the TV for someone else. My style of use tends to tax the shit out of the OS and running on 64 bit vs. 32, not to mention doubling up my bus width to 800 will probably facilitate the ridiculous number of tasks I expect this poor little thing to handle all at once. And since I was planning to get into Linux soon anyway, might as well go whole hog and do the 64 bit thang at the same time, since VISTA!!! is looking more and more like a retarded eye candy piece of crap every time I catch a glimpse of it…
Thanks for the feedback, I think I’m leaning toward Suse just for the sheer job lots of apps out there for it… I might even partition and try a couple different ones turn and turn about until I decide for sure. Why not–it works a whole lot better than trying a WinBloze/Linux partition, by which I mean it works…
Not that I have a 64-bit machine, but let me cast my vote for Ubuntu anyway. I’ve been running it for about 4 months on this box, and even though this is one of the slowest PCs I own, it’s rapidly becoming my primary box. I haven’t figured everything out about it yet, but it’s definately stable and predictable, which one can’t say about Windoze.
SmartAleq, I hear you. Although you sounded rather savvy in your OP, I just wanted to make sure you didn’t think a 64-bit OS was required. It was a fairly common misconception when 64-bit cpus first started appearing.
Okay, buddy, you just earned yourself fifty lashes! Now where did I put that wet noodle?
Man, every time I see anything having to do with that bloated toilet floater excuse for an OS I just see tiny red spots all over my field of vision–it looks like a very bad excuse for “ooh, shiny” being marketed to r-tards of every stripe and description. The whole “lookee, the windows are SIDEWAYS, ooooh! And TRANSPARENT!” just makes me wanna heave green chunks in the general direction of Redmond, and considering I live in Portland I think I have a pretty good chance of hitting it–such is the velocity I contemplate demonstrating with my stomach muscles…
And the whole “voice recognition” fiasco made me laugh until tears poured down my face–my SO built a box for a friend, old dual processor server board running two PIII 500s and Dragon Naturally speaking that not only dusts VISTA!!! handily on every front, it’s doing it with a guy who has a pretty significant speech deficiency and who’s half deaf too! Fuck MicroSlave with a rusty chainsaw, I just hate those arrogant, incompetent fucktards… The only thing they’re good at is obstructionism, unfair marketing practices and lawsuits, and their shit is so full of bloat and redundancy it’s no wonder they won’t let the source code out–the gales of laughter from REAL programmers would possibly start a global hurricane that could be catastrophic…
Maybe I just LIKE the idea of an OS that can be installed and run off a jump drive–try THAT, MicroDroop! Or it could be that the monstrous hubris of a company that’s so frantically involved in preventing others from pirating its products that it’s completely forgotten how it got the DOS kernel in the first place that really pisses me off… Never forget, never surrender!
To be fair Giraffe, read the Op. He is trying Linux because he doesn’t like Vista. I haven’t installed it, but if you want a 3D desktop in Linux, you can do that. I’m sure the novelty would wear off, but if you don’t mind the performance hit, knock yourself out. I use transparent cmd windows in Linux, mostly because I have some backgrounds featuring spectacularly beautiful women.
SmartAleq, Windows does have some advantages. No matter what hardware you buy, they have written a Windows driver for it. That is not true with Linux. I think everyone finds some piece of software for which he needs Windows. For me, it is my Garmin GPS watch download software. For my kids, it is Empire Earth. So, I keep my system dual boot. Finally, I think the rendering software in Vista is supposed to be a notch above everything else, except maybe the Mac OS.
**SMT:**I’m not overly worried about the driver issue, as I say the SO is my local HW/SW geek/guru/wizard and he assures me there won’t be a problem for anything I’m running now–all needed drivers are all ready to install. One of the advantages of a laptop hardware-wise is that it’s all there already, and since AMD tends to favor compatibility with Linux I’m not forseeing any real issues. There’s always a workaround, and if necessary the SO can cobble together drivers for anything that does give me fits. Besides, since I’m planning on getting a completely separate HDD for the new OS if I need WinBloze I just bung the old drive in and Bob’s yer Uncle!
Since most everything I do constantly is native system tasks with very little third party software I’m the perfect candidate for Linux–especially since I care zippo/squat about eye candy. I started out on a box running the 8080 processor (for which I learned assembly language–didn’t THAT turn out to be useful!) and to some extent I still prefer command line to GUI environments–I’m a little sick that way. Whenever I’ve used other people’s Linux boxes they’ve been fairly astounded at the fact that I don’t boggle over needing to operate at command line and since I learned DOS first the syntax of Linux isn’t all that different from what my first exposure to computers consisted of.
Oh, and just for the record, I’m a girl type person…
I knew that, “size queen”, when I made my first post. I just converted your name to “SmartAlex” in my head when I started typing. Doh! Now, I’ll have to add something to that misconstruing a Doper name thread.
Well, the original “size queens” are all boys, so…
It’s my fault, I’ve been using the nom de 'net of Aleq since the early '90s–it’s an elision of my SCA name and I’ve always kinda liked the fact that it’s gender ambivalent–lets me keep my anonymity just by letting people assume what they like about my sex…
But please do feel free to add to that other thread, a girl likes to be recognized! blink, blink
Ubuntu uses Synaptic Package Manager (a front end for Apt-Get), or best of all, Aptitude(from the command line). I’ve installed SLES 9, toyed with Redhat and a few other distributions, but Ubuntu is by far the friendliest and easiest to use, IMO.
In terms of support, it seems to be among the best; many Linux-themed online communities treat newbies extremely harshly - and for no obvious reason - but Ubuntu has a community support board that is the friendliest I’ve seen.
See, now you guys come along and muddy the waters! I’ll be that proverbial donkey–if you need me, I’ll be the really skinny one between the two piles of hay over there…
I rely on LinuxQuestions.org when I need help. They have a community for every flavor of Linux. Their reviews are worth, um, reviewing, also.
btw, the Smart Package Manager works pretty well. It also resolves all dependencies, etc. You can set it up to automatically look for updates, etc. I’m not sure how much easier it gets.
