Time for a change?

[chuggly]

Good morning all. It's Sunday and in Scotland it is p*****g down.

This is my first post on this forum, so a little info.

I am the much hated 4x4 driver, but I do run on LPG.
I have been using Linux on and off since Red Hat 5.2 (I think).
Mad Python fan and think Milligoon was a much troubled genius.
Jazz to classical to heavy rock with a body swerve round (c)RAP

So, I now have an ACER ASPIRE 9301WSMI with NVIDIA graphics, ATHEROS wifi and BISON webcam.

I last used SuSE years ago at vers. 8.2 and was generally pleased with it, but drifted away via various other flavours of Linux.

I now dual boot Vista/Ubuntu. I use Vista to sync with my PDA running windows mobile 5 because Ubuntu doesn't see it. The latest release of UBUNTU as far as I am concerned is a disaster. I installed it and had no end of hassle. The HDD was chattering away for hours, then when it stopped, so did the laptop. Eventually, I re installed the previous version, fine, but I think it is time for a change.

I would like to know if SUSE 10.3 or 11.0 will support the above out of the box and will it support my Hauppauge wintv nova-t usb stick.

I would rather not have to do a shed load of configuration, but I will give it a "bash" if required. (please tell me someone laughed)

Regards to all and thanks

Tim

[Valour]

If Ubuntu supported it, openSUSE 11 should. You'll probably have to add the Atheros and Nvidia repositories to the package manager in openSUSE to get drivers, but that's not really a big deal.

I agree that Ubuntu 8.04 was a disaster. The installer can't resize NTFS partitions (7.10 can), it doesn't work at all on some systems with newer video cards (7.10 does), and you can't connect to a Samba server due to an authentication bug that was known at the time of release but STILL not fixed as of this writing (7.10 doesn't have that problem). So yeah, 8.04 blows, and it should not have been chosen for long-term support status. The somewhat good news is that you can install 7.10, then use the updater to upgrade to 8.04 a little more gracefully.

In terms of Linux distributions for desktop computing, openSUSE and Ubuntu are always the top recommendations. However, there are others you can try:

Mandriva PowerPack
Freespire (or Linspire)
PCLinuxOS
Linux Mint

All or nearly all of them have live CDs you can boot from to try out the OS before you install it. Among them, the only commercial offering is Mandriva PowerPack Edition. I used that as my desktop OS for a few years. All I can say about Mandriva is that it's a great OS when it works, but the releases are inconsistent -- some are good, some are terribly bug-ridden. Couldn't tell you much about the most recent release because I haven't used it.

[J.F.]

Uh... it doesn't matter HOW many bugs are in the initial release of an LTS version, you're going to have YEARS of support anyway. In fact, maybe that's why it wasn't as "polished" as some of the others - the devs knew they'd have this one around for several years, so the pressure to fix every last bug before release isn't as great. Generally, wait for the first "point" release on Ubuntu if you want the "polished" version. That's due in July.

[Valour]

Originally Posted by J.F.

Uh... it doesn't matter HOW many bugs are in the initial release of an LTS version, you're going to have YEARS of support anyway. In fact, maybe that's why it wasn't as "polished" as some of the others - the devs knew they'd have this one around for several years, so the pressure to fix every last bug before release isn't as great. Generally, wait for the first "point" release on Ubuntu if you want the "polished" version. That's due in July.

The idea behind LTS is that it's enterprise-friendly because of a longer support cycle. Not only is a bug-ridden release less enterprise-friendly, but the Samba server bug is a huge enterprise-specific issue. It's a showstopper for Ubuntu use in any IT-centric business.

It wasn't as polished, probably, because the bugs were "upstream" issues in Parted and GNOME. Still, that shouldn't have stopped someone at Canonical from fixing them, or perhaps just reverting to an older, working version (like the ones that were in 7.10).

[chuggly]

Thanks for the help.
I will see what is available on the magazine stalls over the next couple of months.

Regards

Tim