round and round the Linux box .. The circle is not square.
6 Jan 10
These past couple weeks I have been exploring alternate linux distros. I have been using Ubuntu for several years now after leaving the MSturkeyboxWindoesn’t cold in the dust. So now having some familiarity in the Ubuntu world, I decided to try some other versions.
The first one I tried was LinuxMint. It installed simply enough, though because it is built on Ubuntu, i had the same issues setting up my wifi card. I liked the looks of mint and the help pages were especially good. I used this for awhile but really did not care for the menu layouts and arrangement of the desktop navigation. Nice but not for me.
Next up were Fedora and Mandriva. I will lump them together here, probably unfairly, only because of how I used them. I did not install either of these, but ran only the LiveCD. I should have been able to tell from their sites before I downloaded them, but did not care for either of them on pure aesthetics .. both blue, kinda blocky, poor layout (for me) — too much like the turkeyThing above – ick.
Lastly, I tried openSUSE. I ran the liveCD and then tried to install it .. six times .. then I went to bed. Maybe it’s a mercury retrograde thing, maybe a bad download (though the checksums added up), maybe a bad burn, maybe suse just didn’t like my hardware, maybe suse just isn’t put together all that well yet. In any case, i had already mucked around with it too much and I had to put it down.
So in the end I come back full circle to the new Ubuntu Lucid Lynx I have running. It installs well, looks nice, and works, and no viruses – no malware – no security issues. I’m certain others will criticize it for the same reasons I am a critic of the others – the nature of having preferences. Lucid 10.04 is not due for finished release until April2010, but if you want to try it, get the liveCD now and start playing with it. Good luck ..
