Watch out harddrive, I'm bored and annoyed...

[techieMoe]

When I get bored and/or annoyed with an OS my computers get tinkered with. Today I'm both annoyed and bored with Ubuntu 8.04. The last straw I think was today when my wired internet connection here at work refused to function, despite it working just fine yesterday (and just fine today, in Windows XP).

I decided to back everything up using Gnome's default burning tool. It refused to burn. The little burning dialog popped up for half a second and then went away no matter how many times I tried it. I ended up using Brasero.

Since my options are wide open, I'm going to start with a distribution I downloaded recently on a lark: BlueWhite64. It's basically a straight 64-bit port of Slackware. Let's just say I doubt I'll be using it long.

I also have Damn Small 4.3 handy as well as a clean install of Ubuntu 8.04. I'll post back my experiences during the day. I might do a rant on BlueWhite, but if it's pretty much a straight port (as its creator says) then I don't see it turning out much different than Slack 12.1.

If nothing else, at the end of the day I'll just do a fresh install of Hardy and see if I have the same annoyances.

[netstrider]

Ubuntu for me has been so very disappointing since 6.06 LTS really I can't describe it. I've made three attempts at installing two other distro's (Mandriva 2008, openSUSE 10.3 and Sabayon miniEd 3.4 and they all fail before I can install them, each giving a different error.

openSUSE's installation decided to come to a halt when probing for hard disk controllers. I waited around 20 - 30 odd minutes with no success. It also failed to even reach that far on VirtualBox.

Sabayon had an error enabling my swap device sdb1 "Invalid Argument" which is according to the error message most likely because the swap partition has not been initialized. However this is the same swap I'm currently using on this very Debian system.

Mandriva (like Fedora in the past) has always posed a problem because it for some reason mixes up my whole HDD layout and mentions all sorts of jargon of my raid settings and I'm not even running any form of RAID.

It is partly my fault that I didn't do research on these issues, but until something can just install fine it seems I'll be stuck with Debian. Which is fair, I like Debian but it seems the more I want to try something else the more I encounter problems and the more Debian seems to be my OS of choice.

I could perhaps reformat sda and sdb but they are all partitioned and I have 80GB of music which I have no place to temporarily dump...

[techieMoe]

I got BlueWhite64 installed. Several things had to be tweaked from the start. My media buttons on front didn't work, the Nvidia driver would only install if I told it *not* to install 32-bit compatibility libraries (probably because BW64 claims to be all-64 so the files it was trying to replace didn't exist). My wireless wasn't detected either.

It was an interesting experiment, but I'm not going to take the time to get everything working.

[hazel]

Ubuntu for me has been so very disappointing since 6.06 LTS really I can't describe it.

I'm still using this release but I have this kind of guilty feeling that I'm really expected to upgrade at least as far as Feisty Fawn. Are you saying that what I've got is actually the best Ubuntu going and I should stick with it?

[elija]

Well I decided to try Ubuntu 8.04 with some trepidation as
I wasn't that impressed with 7.10. So far it has been completely
smooth sailing.

I don't have Wireless on this machine so I can't comment
on how it will handle that.

As I always say, your mileage may vary.

[techieMoe]

The clean install of Ubuntu 8.04 went smoothly. Sound and wireless worked from the start. Having properly-configured sound is a step up from 7.10, so Hardy will probably replace Gutsy in my laptop bag as my "emergency distro."

[netstrider]

hazel,

I wouldn't say that just because in my opinion 6.06 LTS is the best I've seen from Ubuntu so far that it actually is. 8.04 is also good though, it is after all the second LTS version of Ubuntu (Long-Term Support)

[lucho]

Since my options are wide open, I'm going to start with a distribution I downloaded recently on a lark: BlueWhite64. It's basically a straight 64-bit port of Slackware. Let's just say I doubt I'll be using it long.

I got BlueWhite64 installed. Several things had to be tweaked from the start. My media buttons on front didn't work, the Nvidia driver would only install if I told it *not* to install 32-bit compatibility libraries (probably because BW64 claims to be all-64 so the files it was trying to replace didn't exist). My wireless wasn't detected either.
It was an interesting experiment, but I'm not going to take the time to get everything working.

Too bad I saw this topic after posting my own experience with BW64.
You can read it to get my opinion, but I thought the tweaking was part of the
Slackware experience ( I'm accustomed to Debian). About Nvidia: I had said
no to the 32-bit compatibility libraries out of habit so I didn't know that it
could cause problems. Likewise, I have very run-of-the-mill hardware- and
nothing wireless, bluetooth, or funky stuff like that- so I didn't have
any hardware issues.

I actually like BlueWhite64, but not enough to migrate from Debian.
Guess I'm just not a Slacker

[techieMoe]

This weekend I got annoyed with Ubuntu 8.04 again. Not only did the updates I installed (none of which included a new kernel) force me to re-install my Nvidia drivers twice, but I discovered much to my dismay that the ability to control my touchpad on the laptop has disappeared from the "Mouse" menu completely. I'm sure there are applications I could install to fix this, but in 7.10 the problem didn't exist to begin with!

I've also run into strange behavior on the desktop when copying files to and from windows in Nautilus. If I drag a file from my Desktop to a Nautilus window or vice-versa sometimes (just sometimes) it will hang and then tell me an error occurred and make me drag the file again. This is another bug that didn't exist in 7.10.

Thus, I'm once again experimenting with the laptop looking for a new Linux home, if only until Ubuntu 8.10 comes out and hopefully fixes some things. This weekend I downloaded several distributions, and I'll also be considering any others I have in my CD case. Any suggestions?

[techieMoe]

Here's an update on what I've tried so far this morning. Mandriva 2008 "One" booted up but I noticed a strange static noise coming from my speakers. When I tried to insert headphones I got a noise out of my speakers that sounded like... I guess the best way to describe it was "fingernails on a chalkboard amplified and sped up to the point where it sort of resembled a hyperactive screech owl." I decided not to use it any further.

Fedora 9 started to install and gave me a "please insert disc 1" dialog. Problem is I was using the DVD. I reinserted the DVD and it said "this is the wrong disc." Now I'm trying plain vanilla Debian 4.0r3, with the ultimate goal of running the latest test release of Lenny on it. (I'm guessing that means the current "Sid" unstable.)