I can’t decide
I’ve been installing linux on several different machines lately. Just for the practice and because I can.
And I can’t decide which desktop distro I like best.
Ubuntu comes with support for Norwegian! That’s got to be good for granny! And the installation is relatively painless. It should be possible to do a manual for granny, to allow her to do a clean install herself, don’t you think? The install takes forever, though, so she better be patient (doing it right now, on an older machine).
SimplyMepis is just sooo elegant, and it’s logical to get around and configure stuff once it’s installed. I installed my USB printer yesterday. It was AS easy as windows, just a different way of doing things. It would have been a very good computing session, if I hadn’t reversed the plugs for keyboard and mouse by accident… I don’t know if it was that or it falling off the computer several times that did it - some keys didn’t want to work. I got hold of another keyboard today… Oh, and the USB mouse worked hot plugged - no installation. I plugged it in before I realized I’d reversed the other plugs… I’m still a bit rusty on Linux keyboard shortcuts. I can get around in Windows without a mouse, but it’s not quite that easy (for me) in Linux.
Ubuntu uses Gnome, and SimplyMepis uses KDE. Different windows for linux versions. Each have their fans.
And Skolelinux is the ugly duckling that should work on way older machines than the others (most of the heavier desktops prefer 256 mb RAM).
And don’t talk to me about Damn Small Linux. I don’t think granny would appreciate those ugly colors. Maybe if that’s all her machine will run, but she’ll keep complaining about those colors (I don’t know, 16 or 256? Hey, I even remember when machines had that few colors! 256 colors was a miracle!). Damn Small Linux is wonderful for it’s purpose (think rescue disk), but I wouldn’t want that as my desktop OS if I could help it.
I think one key factor is to have a good look at your machine. And not put the network cable into the second card like I did, and expect it to work without fiddling. Desktop or Live CD linux is funny that way. Go with the first network card if you can. Some distros are picky about graphics card. I’ve got one machine that won’t run Knoppix. Try another distro. SimplyMepis works well on that machine. Find out how much firepower the machine has, and pick the distro according to that. I mean, I’ve heard of people installing windows XP on machines that originally came with windows 98. And then start complaining once the machines start acting up… Windows XP uses more than 256 mb RAM, which means you should have AT LEAST 512 mb RAM, right?
Oh, and I guess if you’re really worried something might break, boot from a CD every time? Just remember you won’t have your bookmarks in your browser. Or, if a friend needs to loan your computer for something, a live CD would be really good, maybe Knoppix.
Sorry, I’m rambling. Ubuntu is finally done, and I need to see if I remembered to set the root password… - yep, I did…
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Update: Skolelinux barfed on an install today. It was an old machine, so I don’t know for sure it wasn’t malfunctioning. At any rate, it stopped long enough for me to assume it was stuck.
The Ubuntu that worked so well yesterday no longer works. Reason? I assume it’s because I changed locations. Ubuntu gets the DNS servers from the router, and you have to remove those when you change locations. But even so I haven’t figured out how to get it to work. There are major bugs in Ubuntu’s network configuration, and lots of people are having problems. I guess I’ll reinstall in the new location. Bummer too, because I was looking forward to giving this one away to someone fairly clueless…
Second Update: SimplyMepis (live CD) refused to activate the network card at all. I suspect the router in this location is finicky. So I’m yanking out a faster network card from another old machine to see if that’ll do the trick, then reinstalling SimplyMepis. The CD-ROM on this machine is hinky too, so I’ll have some fun trying to make the whole package work.
Third update:
I tried Damn Small Linux again on another machine, and this time I didn’t see those dreadful colors. I suppose that’s due to hardware compatibility.
On one machine I tried SimplyMepis, the machine failed to find a system disk when I rebooted. That doesn’t happen on every machine. But when it happens, simply reboot from the live CD, start Qtparted and make the first partition active, then reboot from the hard drive.
I tried Ubuntu, Breezy version on a Celeron 600 MHz machine, and the install took forever. Snazzy desktop, though.
October 21st, 2005 at 4:30 pm
Sorry, if this should turn out to be a silly suggestion and it has already been considered by you, but Fedora has, as I recall, support for Bokmål and Nynorsk (at least both locales are available with Gnome). The installer is quite user friendly and so are the configuration tools in user space and the network configuration works quite reliable. Additionally you have a vast pool of rpm packages available by 3rd parties suitable for Fedora, so there’s a lot of choice for tailoring a system that suits your needs most. Quite helpful as well: The unofficial Fedora FAQ. You may have to trim down the installation a bit and shutdown some services but then Fedora combined with Gnome should work pretty fluent even one weaker machines.
October 22nd, 2005 at 5:46 am
I was struggling with an old Red Hat installation recently. I couldn’t figure out the RPM. I’m sure I could learn it easily. BUT, Debian was much easier to figure out. For the time being I’ll stick with that. But I’m sure I’ll try out more distros in time. My first systems were Red Hat, including the first I installed myself. A 100 MHz with about 40 MB RAM. It wasn’t that bad back then, but I’m not sure I even used X windows on it. I remember it’s main use was to crunch my site logs. I’d installed a specific statistics package (PERL based) on my webhost, but it made the server crash so I had to find an alternative. Still love those statistics, BTW. Maybe I should install it again on a zippier machine?
October 22nd, 2005 at 9:42 am
Well, old Red Hat and recent Fedora can’t exactly be compared with each other, because since then a lot of things have improved, updated and added. Debian isn’t a bad choice either, of course and has a similiar well working hardware support as recent Fedora versions, so it’s up to your personal taste which format you prefer. I wasn’t mentioning it because I thought the focus would lie on being easy to install even for rather unexperienced people. But of course you could install fedora via command line as well, and actually that’s what I prefer to do.
In regard to your low level machine:
If the stats package takes up a whole lot of memory for parsing logfiles and it doesn’t get what it needs the machine will be forced to use the swapfile even for essential system operations, which practically means the server will hang more or less. The only alternative, if increasing memory is out of question, would be using something different which gets along with less memory. Of course, using a diffent machine with more memory should work around the issue as well.
The mainboard’s chipset may be the most limiting factor here:
Intel’s 430 FX, VX and TX are limited to a max of 64mb, but should the mainboard be a 430 HX and you happen to have a suitable TAG RAM at hand you could stock up the memory to a max of 512 mb. Via Apollo Chipsets also support up to 512 mb, so the only hindrance could be insufficient spare parts
October 24th, 2005 at 2:14 pm
G’day.
If you have CPU cycles to burn, try VMWare under Windows. Also see the recently released VMWare Player.