Updated Linux...am impressed...and not so impressed

**Bren** · 15th September 2008, 19:59

this post is for all those that run Linux on this forum.

Well today I took the leap and reinstalled Linux. The distro I was on previously was Ubuntu which I find is a very good distro, and very reliable. It worked well for me over the last three years, and I hardly ever had a problem. The last version I was running was 8.04.
Now I am running Suse 10.3. So the question remains as why did I change flavours when Ubuntu was working so well. As they say if it aint broke don't fix it. A one word answer to that question is "Boredom". I was getting bored with Ubuntu and was hankering to play with something else.

So far so good. 10.3 seems to be pretty good with it's native gnome desktop. The only niggle I had with it was the start menu was not to my liking. It seemed to also be a bit heavy on resources locking up a lot of ram. Now to try KDE. KDE4 did not want to perform at all, and was constantly freezing on me, and the older stable KDE did not want to display my resolution correctly. There was a lot of blank real estate on the wide screen. This did not seem an easy fix to me (who is after all not too clued up being a bit of a redneck), but eventually after going through the control panel whatzit or whatever it is and going online I found the piece of code I needed to put into my startup config thingee. KDE was still a bit slow...I get the feeling Suse is starting to get a bit bloated these days so I started to think about finding a lightweight distro to try out.

I came across a link today also for installing LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Enviroment) on Suse, and have now installed it....Now the PC is responsive, and fast...It does not seem bloated now and I have all the KDE and Gnome bells and whistles at my disposal...All in all am quite happy with what I have at the moment....and everything is working...eg Java Shockwave MP3s etc...the only problem now is a keyboard that is a bit funny....giving £ instead of hash and @ instead of "....I will sort that out tonight!!!!

**pete376403** · 15th September 2008, 21:10

I'd say you have your keyboard set to "UK", not "US"

I tried Suse 10.1 and I found it was great, would be using it now but this is a work PC and policy is we use proper Microsoft products, not something from those godless communists

**CookMySock** · 15th September 2008, 21:11

yeah that is the only problem with Linux, once it is going theres nothing to fix. Eight Linux systems here, and one winbox with the GST on it (gets booted up once every two months.)

It looks like it uses a lot of RAM, but remember the kernel uses all available RAM to cache everything, so in effect you never have any free RAM. Rest assured, if some application wants some RAM, it will boot some unused junk out of the cache. Its silly to run any modernish system with less than a gig of RAM in it anyway - its so cheap and makes so much difference.

Yeah KDE was always known to be heavier than gnome. If you have the spare horsepower, go KDE for sure.

Most modern distro's will let you run any window manager you like.

Good to see you having fun with Linux. It is amazing what "just works" with it now.

Steve

**Mental Trousers** · 15th September 2008, 21:35

Shit, I never know what I'm using hour to hour. Home has Ubuntu and Slackware, work is CentOS and OSX and probably an Open Solaris based distro on a test machine. Makes little difference from the command line eh.

**batesclan** · 15th September 2008, 21:43

Just installed LXDE on my Kubuntu machine. much quicker....still playing.
Running kubuntu on this for about a year and wont break, same with boys computer. Still keeping up my IT skills by fixing Windoze Laptop (Daughters) which keeps breakin....surprise surprise

**NordieBoy** · 15th September 2008, 22:03

Slackware here with KDE 3.
No problems at all.
Been a Slacker since I downloaded it onto floppies off a local bbs quite some time ago.

**dhunt** · 15th September 2008, 22:17

Originally Posted by NordieBoy

Slackware here with KDE 3.
No problems at all.
Been a Slacker since I downloaded it onto floppies off a local bbs quite some time ago.

Yeah I remember installing slackware years ago. Had to make a boot disk then a ram disk before I could install from my cd. Running a 1.2.13 kernel.

Since then I've moved from Slackware to RedHat to Mandrake and SuSE to gentoo. Been running that for about 4 or 5 years. Haven't looked back since.

**Mental Trousers** · 15th September 2008, 22:45

Slackware to Red Hat?? From 1 extreme to another.
Slackware = about as close as you can get to the mythical pure linux
Red Hat = nothing like the mythical pure linux

**Bren** · 15th September 2008, 22:46

Nice to see a few people using Linux....real nice....we will take it over one PC at a time...!!!

Originally Posted by pete376403

I'd say you have your keyboard set to "UK", not "US"

Yup, just aint got around to changing it yet.....too frikkin lazy!

Originally Posted by batesclan

Just installed LXDE on my Kubuntu machine. much quicker....still playing.
Running kubuntu on this for about a year and wont break, same with boys computer. Still keeping up my IT skills by fixing Windoze Laptop (Daughters) which keeps breakin....surprise surprise

Did ya install LXDE tonight? I like it....really I do....nice and simple and fast....

....Did i mention fast?

Originally Posted by dhunt

Yeah I remember installing slackware years ago. Had to make a boot disk then a ram disk before I could install from my cd. Running a 1.2.13 kernel.

Since then I've moved from Slackware to RedHat to Mandrake and SuSE to gentoo. Been running that for about 4 or 5 years. Haven't looked back since.

With me it was Fedora to Ubuntu to Suse to Centos to Ubuntu and now Suse again...maybe one day I will settle with one distro...then get bored again!

**batesclan** · 15th September 2008, 23:07

Yep, installed tonight and lookin at it as I type lol. all good so far

**The Pastor** · 15th September 2008, 23:08

I dont know why people think windows breaks alot.. ive never really had any problems - got a virius once from a dodgy download and I overclocked one pc to death - both were my fault.

Other than those 2 times, ive been playing GAMES.

Suckers. Have fun word processing. With out word.

HAHAHA

**batesclan** · 15th September 2008, 23:10

you ever heard of openoffice ? free and opens and saves as word

**mister.koz** · 15th September 2008, 23:17

I quite like gentoo running xfce, everything should be compiled from source with the right use flags. It takes forever to get the system with all your basic programs running but once its done, the speed and stability is insane.

Its always going to be faster using a source based distribution than a binary one.

Only downside to linux is not being able to play games that well. Lots of people say it does and all but i have never seen it.

Solution to those annoying programs like word and quickbooks is run a virtualbox with a seamless desktop, you can throw beryl at it and make everything quite pretty.

**phaedrus** · 15th September 2008, 23:53

games... linux has heaps of games... like the configure your system properly game, and the figure out why some thing's not working game. (usually a result of losing in the first game)

but seriously, there are a few good linux games and i find it easier to make the system do what i want.

Windows works for some, just not for me.