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November 23, 2005
But I liked the Mac...
Recently, my office has decided to move away from a mixed Macintosh/PC environment to a solely PC based environment. Whilst I welcome this from an administrative perspective, it means that my trusty Apple PowerBook is about to retire.
I like my Macintosh. Its not because I'm a "trend whore". Its not because Spotlight searches are infinitely better than the useless Windows find utility (I use Copernic Desktop search on Windows). Its not that I dislike Windows (despite what the flame warriors say, it is possible to like both systems concomitantly). Its because lurking under the desktop is a tweaked BSD Unix environment that lets me get into the shell and do the things I can only do there. It is also the system I use to develop for the mud. The Xcode IDE suits my purposes and has quite a few handy additions for performance testing and debugging.
As part of an appeasement package, I've been given a hand-me-down laptop (which is actually a very neat machine, a Toshiba R100, weighing in under 2lbs). Its not fast and it was until recently a strictly Windows machine.
I thought it was time to give Linux/Unix another run on the desktop, so for the past two weeks, I've sunk many, many hours into downloading, installing, tweaking and otherwise hair tearing with various distributions.
There are some catches. The unit doesn't have an internal CD drive, so the distribution must be bootable from a USB CD or some other medium. It has a weird graphics chip that linux loves to hate. It also crashes with some linux kernel configurations. Many distributions will start to boot from the CD, but have aggressive boot times and demand the install CD be ready before the USB autodetections complete - which simply means they don't work, or workarounds must be developed.
I am not a Linux guru. I have administered a unix system or two in the past (good old System V), so I can find my way about the shell readily enough. I haven't looked too far into compiling a kernel. It seems an interesting project, but I don't feel a burning need to do it. I just want this thing to work with a KDE and Kdevelop.
SUSE, the Novell branded system (eventually) won. I downloaded the Open Source (free) version. The installation (5cds) was fast, graphical and simply worked. Post installation was painless, it correctly detected and configured my network cards (wired and wireless), the video chip, sound and suspend options. Definitely my best experience with a linux install on this machine. Its also quite sprightly, seeming much more responsive than Kubuntu.
(various notes on linuxes follow follow)
Please note that even where it says "Doesn't boot", this is not a condemnation of the distribution. These are simply my notes about this particular laptop with them. I was curious to try them all, and many 'unique' factors of the laptop I was installing on conspired to defeat them. This doesn't mean they're bad or that I wouldn't try installing them on a different computer. Or simply: Your milage may vary.
Puppy Linux: One of my all time favourites. It is a great emergency system that can be installed, and one I have used on a Sony Vaio with great success after a hard drive failure (booting from CD, saving to USB memory stick). It includes most of what you need on an amazingly small (50mb) bootable CD. Its also incredibly quick once booted as it runs from RAM. Unfortunately, its one of those that just doesn't run on this particular laptop. Still, if you want to check out Linux without installing it, this is the one I'd recomend (even if the webpage is ugly).
Knoppix: Another emergency system, based on Debian. Runs, but it hates the video card without tweaking and even then isn't 100% happy. Power management doesn't work without a lot of work.
Debian: As Knoppix. I also didn't like the install program. A lot of trouble recognising the USB CD drive at boot.
Kubuntu/Ubuntu: Another Debian based system. After some config tweaking I solved the video and suspend issues. In fact, after two days of tweaking, I thought I'd found a winner. Then I installed a compiler with the package management system. Here, I had issues with the package system. Its meant to be like the Debain one. The compiler, which was missing libraries, didn't work (time.h missing after installing GCC 3.3.1 and 4? How does that happen?). So I thought I'd uninstall and reinstall them. This was aparently a bad move, as without warning, it then proceeded to uninstall the entire desktop system and many of the command line tools (like apt-get). Go figure.
Fedora Core 4: The text installer was very nice (the graphical installer does not work with the graphics chip in the laptop). After the install, much tweaking required for suspend and graphics. Not entirely satisfied.
Mepis: Looked very interesting on another PC. Unfortunately, as with Puppy, it crashed before completing the boot process.
Gentoo: Very appealing system, however, after a full day of configuring options, its profoundly annoying to realise I missed something somewhere and it doesn't boot.
Damn Small Linux: Didn't boot.
ArkLinux: Didn't boot.
Zenwalk: A very interesting looking slackware based distribution. Again, locked up during the boot process.
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at November 23, 2005 12:10 PM
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