In my quest to get the new Dell up and running with Linux, I downloaded a lot of iso’s this past weekend. I initially planned to run Fedora Core 3, but getting everything to work perfectly prompted me to try out other distro’s. However I kept coming back to Fedora.
Here’s the list of distro’s I tried this past weekend:
- FC3 – Great, except for sound issues. Will discuss in a separate post
- Ubuntu 5.04 Hoary Preview Release – Actually really good. Cons: sound issues(again), and it’s beta.
- FC4 – Test 1 – Way too many issues to list! But hey it’s a first release. Not meant for a computer that you want to have stable.
- ArkLinux – Wouldn’t install. Don’t think it recognized the serial drive
- Linspire Five-0 – Found a torrent and downloaded it. Was quickly impressed by this distro. Out of the box everything worked. I had sound from Flash and java worked instantly. I was so impressed that I signed up for a free trial of their CNR service(otherwise known as their software repositories). Unfortunately thats where the fun ended. I went ahead and installed some software. But much to my surprise a couple of the programs I installed would not launch when clicked on. Ouch. I have no intentions of troubleshooting that and quickly went back to FC3
- Arch Linux – I’ve used it in the past and was impressed by it. Install didn’t go to smooth and I didn’t feel like spending a lot of time reading on how to get X working. Doesn’t mean I won’t in the future, I just want easy for this computer.
Here’s a list of distros that I’ve downloaded but didn’t have time to try:
- Mandrake 10.2 RC2 – Even though I said I would never, ever download Mandrake again I’ve gone ahead and downloaded their latest test release. The reason why is because I’ve never tried to use Linux in a desktop environment before. So maybe, just maybe, I will find it works well in that role.
Update: It installed but would never boot. Just froze during bootup every time. I have no intenetions on troubleshooting.
- SimplyMepis – I don’t know anything about this distro, but it seems to be fairly popular. I will try it out and see how it goes.
Update: This live CD would not boot up ino X. Gave the ol ‘no screens found’ error. What a load!
So as of last night, the machine is running FC3, again and everything is working well. At least well enough for another week!