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george parker wrote:
I had a computer go down recently so managed to get planning permission for new bits. I got an Athlon II 3600 with DDR3 RAM, new mother board and a nice big disc. I had some minor problems (only 1 ps2 socket so had to buy a USB mouse) but then came the hard work. I installed my usual Mepis distro.... which didn't work! I tried PCLinuxOS, and Linux Mint, all of which didn't work, which in the end turned out to be a problem with the distros handling the Raydeon ATA graphics embedded in the motherboard. I installed a spare Nvidea graphics card and my problems were over. I guess I knew about ATA problems before but I didn't give it a thought as they hadn't been my problems. I think there is going to be support for Raydeon in version 30 of the kernel and I will give it another try then meanwhile a couple of things from this excercise may be useful.Members different experience of distros are very variable and I guess it must be down to hardware. I find PCLinuxOS, Mandriva and SUSE the most trouble free but, have problems with Ubuntu / derivatives, particularly for getting my wifi working and screen resolution issues. We use all laptops (Toshiba and IBM), wifi and HP Printers. On the other hand, Rob's experiences are the complete opposite. He get's on better with Ubuntu.The Mepis distro is essentially a 1 man band, a guy called Warren Woodford. It has given me good service over the years but he now seems to be more interested in turning the distro into a business and with the result that service for personnal use is getting decidedly flakey. I have been contemplating a move for a while.I couldn't get the Mint distro to find my ethernet connection. It seems to hide the basic workings in the gui and I couldn't be bothered to hunt them down. I also am not an admirer of Ubuntu as a user (but contrarily an admirer of Mark Shuttleworth). (Mint is Ubuntu derivative)I've installed PCLinuxOS for a friend and she's had it running happily for a couple of years so I went with this. Everything went smoothly and I was able to setup my network easily from the gui (fixed addresses for my 2 computers networked on NFS) so I may stick with it. I'll see how Unison and Virtual Box goes.If I hadn't had 2 computers so that I could get info I would have been stuffed. Don't knock it when some poor sod with Windows on his only computer can't get Linux working.OK, OK, I could have installed Debian and closeted myself away for a month to get it working, but perhaps next week, eh?George
Perhaps there is no point asking people what they think about different distros because our views are based on which distros we can get to work with the least problems (well, in my case, anyway). After that, I find I get familiar with the distros I am using and prefer them because I know them well - for me, 'familiarity DOES NOT breed contempt' when it comes to using Linux.
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