The distro hopper article

As promised, here is the full writeup about my experiences in testing the current top Linux distros on my ThinkPad T61:

http://temporaryland.wordpress.com/2007/11/23/finding-the-right-distro-for-my-thinkpad-t61-part1/

Please let me know what you think. (But, do try to be kind please.)

 

Wow, props to you for actually writing them all out. I'm distro hopping myself, and I may just end up with Linux Mint, if only I could get wireless working. Frugalware detects my network, and it's the only distro that I've tried so far that actually detects my network when I do a "iwlist scan" in the terminal. Since my DVD burner doesn't play well with Grub, and now that I have Lilo installed, I don't know what to do. Maybe I'll triple boot with Frugalware, I don't know. I don't like how Frugalware looks - that's for sure.

Nice job, rm2.

 

Good work!

 

Thank you guys. I'm hopping that it helps some people to not be afraid of trying Linux. And also, I hope that some distro maintainers get some ideas on how to improve their offerings. Of course, every hardware is different and what works on my laptop may not work on other's . But, some things do apply across the board. So, I am happy with it. But, yes, it was quite a bit of work putting it all together. I'm glad its done and over now.

 

Nice article, thanks for the detailed post on your user experience.

Q1: Did ypu use the free version of mandriva or the professional version ?
Q2: You said (I think) you enjoy tinkering with linux. Why did you not try debian (on which ubuntu/kubuntu/mint are based) ?

Here is nice debian review:
http://adventuresinopensource.blogspot.com/2007/10/another-day-another-distro-part-5.html

 

The free one. On the article I mentioned in passing that 'even if I had the prowerpack version ...'.

Yes, I said I like tinkering, but I also said i don't really have time for it. But, since you ask, I actually did try Debian. I had heard so many good things about it that I was planning on install Debian on a small partition for the simple purpose of serving as a fallback and to allow it to manage the gub menu list. Unfortunately, I had a terrible experience with it. I couldn't get it installed. Now, to be fair, I didn't do much online research to try to resolve or overcome the problem, which I can't remember what it was about, sorry (but I did find several posts from people with the same error). What I do remember is that after the failed install Ubuntu and Mint would pause their boot sequence due to a file system error and required my input to get around it. I eventually reinstalled Mint on top of Ubuntu and deleted the original Mint partition. So, the problem was resolved. But, I am not planing on trying Debian again, at least not on this laptop. I didn't mention it on my article because I didn't think that it was fair for Debian.

Thanks. I'll take a look at it.

 

Nice article and very entretaining to read.

I like PclinuxOs. It has been in my old laptop for more than a year. Recently I bought a new laptop and the first thing I made was to install Pclinux and to my surprise it did not boot... I tried everything I knew to no avail... Nobody in the forums could help me for my laptop needs a new kernel and Textar is working on it. So I just have to wait for the next realease...

I did not liked GNOME so I did not liked UBUNTU (prejudgements). Not been able to install PCLINUX I decide to give UBUNTU a chance and test my new laptop. I had some problems, not with Ubuntu, but with VISTA and it's new Bootloader. I tested UBUNTU 32 and 64. Finally I installed the 64 version and with a few clicks I had the Nvida, Compiz, codecs, everything that I need working. Man this laptop is fricking fast with ubuntu 64. I noted that mp3 and video decoding is done in less time than the 32 version. So I will stay with Ubuntu 64. I was force into installing UBUNTU and now I'm glad I did it, after all I have a 64 bits laptop and it needs a 64 bits operating system.

You know something man... I think Gnome is better and faster than KDE more intuitive and better configured, simpler... after a month of working in this interface I think I will stay with Gnome.

I tried Mandriva and I could not install the NVIDIA driver... the oneclick function did not work, I spended many hours researching the net without results, finally I gave up with mandriva.

As you said Ubuntu 32 and 64 worked in my hardware I don't know if it will work in yours.

 

I am a distro hopper as well. And the distro hopping is one of the best thing of Linux!

Surprisingly(considering I didn't like their older versions at all), I ended up choosing OpenSUSE, as I am fairly impressed with the newest version. I was using Arch, and while I liked it, I wanted to give Vista partition more space for its games, and I didn't like the iea of setting up everything again, which can be quite time consuming with Arch. I also have a prejudice towards gnome (I prefer KDE or XFCE), and Mandriva liveCD refused to boot. I did try Ubuntu/Fedora but didn't like them much...

Oh well, I am sure my distro will change once KDE4 is out and stable!

 

Several people asked me to do a follow up on this writeup. Well, here it is:

http://temporaryland.wordpress.com/2007/12/06/finding-the-right-distro-for-my-thinkpad-followup/