For years I was a huge RedHat / Fedora Core / Fedora proponent since the RedHat 5.x versions. I tend to run older hardware with lower specs, but love to tinker with new things. I loved Fedora because it was always at the bleeding edge of development. That did occasionally lead to frustration where an update might break something, but usually Fedora’s bleeding edge stance allowed for greater operational ability. I ran Fedora on my laptop, desktop and netbook (in recent times).
That all changed with Fedora 11. Sound was broken. None of the ‘fixes’ worked. Sound worked in Fedora 10, but no longer in 11. For work, I can deal with no sound… not a huge deal… but tell my daughter that the desktop has no sound… the world might as well have ended. YouTube with no sound… The horror!
Six months pass and Fedora 12 is released. My salvation… Sound works! nVidia drivers do not. Crap… I’m not doing this again. I gave it a month, no fix was forthcoming. Time to move on. Fedora, you’ve been my friend… but we’ve grown apart.
Introducing my new friend…. Ubuntu.
Honestly, I was hesitant to use it. I was used to the Fedora way of doing things. Ubuntu is different. I downloaded Ubuntu 9.10. I was worried because it fit on a CD, instead of filling a DVD. How much good stuff could there be? The answer is… a lot. There is a lot to love about Ubuntu.
Installation was straight forward, it found drivers for everything including my sata raid card, tv tuner cards, web cams, etc. Get this… I had both sound and crisp video right from the CD. I know, crazy…
Desktop – Switched
Laptop – Switched
Netbook… well lets chat
I have an Acer Aspire One 110. Great little netbook. I did a little reading… Ubuntu has a ‘Netbook Remix’. I was worried about this at first. My netbook had Fedora 10 on it. Everything worked (more or less).
I was in the process of upgrading my netbook (Bigger SSD, more memory and adding an internal Bluetooth chip… that’s another article, I promise). I figured… lets try the remix.
All I can say is wow. Not only is the Ubuntu Netbook remix well thought out and well implemented, but everything works. The newly added bluetooth chip was able to pair with my phone and bluetooth dialup networking just plain works.
I can honestly say that Ubuntu is my new favorite desktop Linux Distro. Wanna try it… you can… download it from http://www.ubuntu.com. You can boot right from the CD to test drive it without changing your current operating system.
Leave a Reply