Roller Coaster Linux

Boy o boy... my journey with linux has been a total roller coaster of a ride. I have installed, overwritten, crashed and re-installed 5 different distros around 15-20 times over the last 2 months. I seriously believe that linux is not compatible with my PC configuration at all. I have an AMD Athlon XP(K7) on a SiS chipset based ECS mobo with a Creative EMU101k sound card and GeForce 6200 card and I am sure the linux kernels dont even have a clue what these hardware can do together.

For every installation crashes the filesystem within a month of installing. After a lot of initial trials that you can read in my previous posts, I had finally settled on openSUSE with KDE4 and I was using it for about 2-3 weeks without any problems. But then one day I booted into it and boom... X didnt even start up.

I tried recovering the installation multiple times through the boot cd and I fscked it a few times but to no avail. The X never started up. I had to back up my productive data and documents and do a re-installation. Of course, I did lose some documents and I have no clue what I had in them.

Anyway, I decided that I had enough with these unstable distros and I decided to install Debian. I had a copy of Etch, which is the latest stable release and I installed. The text based installation was so easy on the eyes and I enjoyed it. After installation and during the upgrades, I realised that this was the only installation that installed packages for K7 architecture. Undoubtedly this would be the most stable distro that I had ever installed. But then the thing about debian was that the packages were stable but always outdated. It had Firefox 2 and that too renamed for debian as Iceweasel. That was the straw. Browsing on primitive browser technology was totally not on and I could standing looking for Iceweasel in the programs list instead of firefox. But Debian was really a treat to the eye. Clean and fast and very professional. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who doesnt mind an 'old' set of packages but wants a really stable system.

Immediately decided to switch and this time decided to go give Fedora another try. Fedora had impressed me the last time and I had removed it only because I wasnt able to install mono correctly. Anyway, this time the install was smooth and the box was set up quickly and easily. I am having this for about 3 days now and I have again upgraded to the latest packages and repositories after controlling myself for 1 day. :)

I need to use the livna repository to get the latest nvidia drivers and the rest of the repos and packages followed. Anyway, I am not going to play it safe and I am going to go all out programs and eyecandy with this install. Lets see how it holds out.

Information Dilution

...Taking off from http://blogs.prashu.com/personal/2008/10/information-dilution.php

This was my theory on why the internet is not newbie-friendly anymore.

The worst part is related to linux. When I want to search how to install, say, the lastest nvidia driver.

I google for 'nvidia driver install linux'. And I get loads and loads of crap.
Next I search for 'nvidia driver install linux fedora 9'. I get results for all versions of fedora and all version of nvidia and somewhere there is a 9 in the results.

Anyway, I might find some information. But now to install it. I have various methods, in fedora itself, in yum, rpm, sources etc... So then I google to find out what is the package name that I have to download. Again I get a gazillion results.

Finaly after multiple tries and if I have not crashed the system, I execute the correct command. But now I get a new dependency error.

And the wild goose chase starts all over again.

Doing administrative tasks

Normally when you are logged in as a regular user, you don't have permissions to do administrative tasks, especially things such as moving files, deleting files and even say, software installs and updates.

You need to do this as a superuser. Obviously it is not recommended to log in as root everytime, but to give root permission when executing a task that requires them.

There are 2 ways of doing this. One is to use the command 'su'

$ su

enter the root password at the prompt and subsequently you can do all the tasks as the root user.

Another option used more frequently is to provide a regular user, the superuser permissions. To do this, one has to add the user to the sudoers list. This is list of all users that has superuser permissions. The first task is to obviously get in as root. Use the 'su' command as above to do this. Once you are there, execute this command.

# echo ' ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL' >> /etc/sudoers

This addes the user name specified as to the sudoers list. Also the modifier NOPASSWD doesnt prompt for a password. To have some extra security, one can remove this so that it prompts for a password each time.
Eg:

# echo ' ALL=(ALL) ALL' >> /etc/sudoers

To run the commands with superuser permissions now, once has to use 'sudo' before executing the command.

$ sudo rm filename.ext

Upgraded Firefox from 3.0 b5 to 3.0.2

FF 3.0 beta5 went down on Saturday and never came back up. OpenSUSE had a backup browser installed on KDE(I dont remember on Gnome, as FF never went down) and hence I never faced such a problem.

However on Fedora, FF went down and I had no back up browser. My software update was acting crazy and I figured that was the problem as FF went down while the software update was running.

Now I thought I had to update FF and that would bring it back up, but how do I do that? I needed FF to google up on how to upgrade it and I was totally stuck and lost without it. So I took a chance with yum.

First thing to do was to figure out how to use yum. So, I just ran it.

# yum

Now I got a list of the options to use with yum. I figured out that I needed update or upgrade. I choose the former as I usually associate upgrade with hardware and update with software. I also needed to update the firefox package, and so on a whim I did this.

# yum update firefox

At first it complained that some other process was using yum, so I forced a cancel of the GUI software update tool and then...
Just Beautiful. It simply worked. It calculated all the dependencies and download all the FF packages. It went ahead and installed all the packages and now I have a worked FF. A 'dot release' behind the latest version on windows, but a stable one on Linux I suppose.

The only thing is that it went ahead and installed around 20 unnecessary language packs and I have to figure out, firstly, how to remove those, and secondly, how do I prevent such things from happening in any of the future software updates that I might do.

Fedora is Fun. :)

Compare Ubuntu vs openSUSE vs Fedora

Ok... This has been a record of sorts set by me. I have tried 2 different distros in a single day and 3 distros in 2 weeks.

I've been taking linux distro choice quizzes after quizzes to determine which linux distro I should stick to. I always ended up getting Ubuntu and openSUSE. The last time(about a year back), I had taken to Ubuntu. So this time I decided to go for openSUSE. Since the past couple of days, my openSUSE had some problems and I felt that it was the correct time for me to try Ubuntu again. Had some problems there and then decided to hit Fedora. I am on that now and hopefully for some time.

Mind you, I have used the LiveDVD or the DVD installer version for all 3 and this comparision is based on that fact. A CD might have installed faster but might have had less apps. The DVD has all the apps that one would ever want and I have stopped just short of installing everything on the distros that allowed me package selection. So lets now see how the 3 distros stack up against each other.


Pre-Installation

openSUSE: I would rate this as having the best look among the 3. Stunning and still simplistic. Quite fast in bringing up the installation screen.
Ubuntu: Not bad but still cannot match up to the sophistication of SUSE. More low-res graphics when compared to SUSE. Extremely slow installation loader and makes you wonder if anything is happening at all.
Fedora: Starts on a bad note with a totally text based media check up utility, but once you get past that the intaller is neat and clean. Loads up pretty quickly too and could well be the fastest pre-install loader among the three


Installer

openSUSE: Easily the best installer for my taste. Extremely detailed and lets you choose each and every deatil of that installation that you want, or if you dont want to bother yourself with that then let the installer choose what it wants and go ahead with the install. Simply great and can cater to all levels of geeks. The only thing irritating is that, all information that can be customized shows up at once, and hence everytime you make a change by scrolling up and down the huge list, the list needs to refresh itself with the latest changes and this takes more than a few seconds. Otherwise a brilliant installer.
Ubuntu: Extremely boring installer. I was fed up by the time the installer even showed up on the screen. Required a very few manual steps before the installation starts and then on it takes almost over an hour to complete the installation. Since it never gave me a choice anywhere to choose my installation details, I assume that it will anyway take this long on all machines. In which case, it could be considered as the slowest installer among the three. Since if I had chosen a minimal install on the other 2, it would have completed in 30mins easily. A total newbie who is not bothered about what will be installed on the system would prefer this, as would system builders who want to load systems with an OS without requiring any manual interference.
Fedora: Very nice and minimalistic installer. Breaks things into steps and lets you do things one at a time. Looks a little outdated when compared to the cool and powerful installer of openSUSE, but does its job effectively.

Installation

openSUSE: Pretty robust installer. Requires a reboot in between. Very good hardware detection. Extremely verbose and keep you informed on what is happening.
Ubuntu: Nothing... Just a progress bar and you can keep starting at the screen till you get bored or wait till the CD pops out and asks you to reboot the system.
Fedora: Cant compare to openSUSE, but not bad in itself. Quite verbose and tells you what is happening and what packages are being installed.

Overall... all 3 installers took almost the same time when I went for a full bloated installation. But if you customized and choose a minimal installation, then Ubuntu would have come in last, since you cannot choose the packages while installing. If there is indeed such an option on the LiveDVD and I missed it, I am really sorry to the Ubuntu community, but I would advise you to put it in a place that people can see easily.


First Boot

OpenSUSE: Of course, when this first rebooted, it was a part of the installation and did the hardware profiling. But after all installations when the first boot happened, this was one of the best GRUB screens that I have ever seen. Other than that, the startup screen was also beautiful, but I think it has one of the slowest startup times among the three.
Ubuntu: What to say about this one? Drab text based boot loader. Took its own sweet time to load up but might have been marginally faster than openSUSE but much less pretty. And they have this fetish for that progress bar with no information shown(soooo windows like). No more comments.
Fedora: Nicer looking, no-nonsense, but still pretty boot screen when compared to Ubuntu. Startup was easily the quickest among the three.


Up and Running

openSUSE: Once it was running it was treat to the eyes. Nice icons and beautiful arrangement of the menus(once you get used to it, if you are coming from another OS/distro). The rendering was a little slow especially when you scroll through the browser windows. Lots of eye-candy should you choose to enable them and still quite fast on a half-decent system. Brilliant system configuration tool called YaST. I hated it initially, but after trying out the other two, I fell in love with it. Lets you do anything and everything that you need to do with the system without ever opening up the terminal. From hardware setup to configuring the software repositories, to even installing/upgrading the packages, YaST takes care of it all.
Ubuntu: Not much to say about this. It was very buggy after the install. The apps menu didnt load properly. Maybe it would have worked after a re-install, but I was too disappointed with it by that time.
Fedora: Extremely fast and extremely responsive. Has the usual Gnome application bar instead of any customized one and you can find all required application there. I felt that the application collection was a little less than openSUSE, but thats ok. If I need anything I will just download and install that. The good thing for the geeky types is that this doesnt have a control-it-all tool like YaST, so you have to actually(or it would be fun, in my parlance) edit some config files and tweak the system. This lets you learn about linux and is something that I like.

Final Impressions

Ubuntu: Left me totally disappointed. In fact I have never been disappointed with anything as much as this. About 1.5 years back when I tried Ubuntu, I fell in love it with. Such an uncomplicated distro that still lets you tweak it how you want it. Now its been over simplified to the point of boring. Thumbs down.

openSUSE: Amazing distro. As much as I was apprehensive before installation, I have falling in love with it. Will cater to the newest of linux users as well as the most seasoned one. Has everything that you would ever need. Comes with a complete list of development tools and languages and libraries.

Fedora: A no-nonsense distro. Has almost everything that you would want. Easy to use and very fast. Also, lets you bring out the geek in you by allowing you to work with 'linux'. A little hard for the newbie as they might have to fiddle around with the scripts to get certain things to work.

So... To sum things up... let me look at the role of the prospective user and give a recommendation based on that. I think that will help a lot of people than giving a very objective comparision.

Gamer: Windows.
Don't even think about linux.

Desktop User, ex-Windows User: openSUSE.
Nothing to worry about. Very simple installer. Lots of eye candy to keep the windows users happy. Extremely configurable if you want to play around.

Developer: openSUSE.
No doubts about that. Amazing set of development tools including binaries, libraries, IDEs and what not. From C, to PHP, to Ruby-on-Rails, to .NET(mono). Is there anything that this distro has left out?

Wish to learn Linux user and little bit of everything else: Fedora.
Fedora is still linux. Thats what I feel at the end of it. It has everything that one needs. Though it is not as advanced as openSUSE, it still does do its job effectively. And the most important part is that it has retained the flavour and experience of linux that the other distros seem to have masked.

So if you are really interested in learning Linux, then go for Fedora and you wont be disappointed. For everything else, its openSUSE all the way. The only drawback in openSUSE, is you need a little modern system(less than 2 years old) to be safe as it is quite heavy on the system resources.

As for me, I am in the 'wish to learn linux' category and I have decided to stick to Fedora. Though the next time I am forced to repair or re-install my distro for any reason, I am going back to openSUSE and cocooning up myself in that without a care.

Hopefully all is final

Now I am on Fedora 9. I am liking this a little bit and I think I am going to stick to this distro. Until the distro doesnt fail me. Maybe I will do a small compare of the 3 distros that I had tried.

Darn it... I hate linux

Why oh why does there have to be choice? Its good to have a choice... Its bad to be bombarded by a flurry of choices where I dont know what the hell to do?

So... I am trying to get my priorities right.

Why do I need linux?
I need it so that I can use free software instead of pirating costly stuff that I am not going to buy for sure.
I need it so that I can do my development and concentrate on development without worrying about the intricacies of the distro.
I would like to learn about linux itself and getting my hands dirty with configurations and stuff, but that is certainly not my priority at this moment. I dont intend to become a linux administrator or anything like that and I just need a distro that works. Nothing more.

I am interested in speed and performance. But then, if to get a few milli-seconds of performance, I have to wait while the damn system compiles packages after packages for hours together, then no sir, I am not interested in performance. I would rather let my system be a few seconds slower than spend 1 hour sitting in front of the comp wondering whether the stupid thing will compile successfully after all that text garbage that it has thrown up on the screen.

So... while I am interested in running Gentoo and while I still think Slackware is the most stable distro, I think I will give it a pass.

Leaving me with openSUSE, Ubuntu and Fedora. Fedora is industry standard and the other two have good community support and are unique in their own rights. Now comes the interesting part - Package Mangement. Ubuntu clearly rocks with its dependency controlling package management tool. OpenSUSE is pretty good from that I have experienced of it. I dont know much about Fedora, but RPM sucks. Supposedly there is a new tool called YUM which streamlines package management but I gotta try that to belive it.

I hate continuous updates of software. People think windows keeps releasing security fixes. Wait till you see Linux. Its a positive nightmare to log in to your system and each time you do that you have a popup waiting for you to tell that these many 100's of packages are in need of urgent upgrades.

Ok... I am at the end of my wits here and I think this time I am going with the blue pill. Fedora. I've tried the other two supposedly user friendly distros and I am not really satisfied with them, so I hope Fedora has something good in store for me. In the meantime, I have to get into my Home directory and get some stuff out of there so that I can do a full clean install on my second HDD.