I tried out the ubuntu live cd to assess if it would work okay with my laptop before doing anything drastic like wiping out the computer. I'm assuming that because it's just running in memory, only 250 Mb at that, it's having too hard a time. To say that it wasn't too responsive is an understatement. I tried to open the "Network" app so that I could try and configure wireless. At not seeing the clock change for 10 minutes on my computer, I rebooted it.
I did a disk check, and that reported the cd I burned is okay. I did a memory check and let that run for 15 minutes, and that didn't find any problems my my ram. *sigh*
Either way I think that I am going to wipe my laptop. Either windows is going to be reinstalled or some flavour of linux. I just can't stand it any more. I'm planning to make sure that all my external drives are read / writable from linux before moving on, then make sure that I can use my scanner / camera with linux and upload the pics to flickr. If I have too much trouble, then it'll be XP going onto my laptop, not linux.
Oh, if a non-techy person asks what you mean by a "flavour of linux", tell them that you are trying to decide between "salty-sweet" and "chocolate". Those are the popular flavours.
Mandriva also has a live CD (or 6) you might want to try out. They just release mandriva 2007 spring, and it looks pretty spiffy. Getting wireless cards to work in Linux can be quite complicated. At least from what I've heard.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you like Mandriva? What's different?
ReplyDeleteI like Fedora Core (Red Hat) ... the updating and package management is especially easy.
ReplyDeleteHere's why I like.
ReplyDeleteUsing EasyURPMI (Google It), I can install almost any piece of software with a couple clicks of a mouse.
I've found that over the years, they've had some of the best hardware support with many things working where other distros have failed me.
The administration tools are very good making dropping to shell to make configuration changes almost completely unnecessary.
Things like Samba (windows file shares) just work, without having to spend hours configuring them.
It's very stable.
The software available for it is up to date.
Mostly I just find it very user friendly, and that it doesn't require too much configuration to get it working.
Thanks guys. I'll look into those a bit more. ;-)
ReplyDeleteSome of the guys that I work with swear by ubuntu for the desktop. I'm impressed when I read reviews like this:
http://www.octonary.com/blog/?p=32
My next post is going to be about update managers...