Ubuntu
Ok, so I got tired of running my bunch of Debians, and decided to try running a bunch of Debian-based not-Debians.
My choice was Ubuntu Linux because I was curious of the artwork, concept, and when I noticed that the current Ubuntu unstable "Hoary" has the X.org X server, which means transparency and window shadows for those not in the know. I could have installed those .debs on my Debian sids, but I decided to go all the way and switch.
Knoppix install #1
Ok, so my first install was a debootstrap from KNOPPIX. I got a Hoary. After
some extra work I managed to start X -- but it just got broken in unstable, so
I discovered package called xserver-xorg-dbg that still worked. Don't try
transparency at home, kids, unless you have ATI or Nvidia proprietary
drivers running.
Real installs #1, #2, #3 (which took 5 retries)
But I liked it anyway, so I thought I'll try the stable which is called "Warty". It seemed to work best with my oldish Thinkpad laptop. No troubles worth mentioning. In fact, it seemed to have preconfigured the system perfectly.
My two other boxes didn't go so well, however. So here are its warts:
using md and XFS together seems to break XFS. I had RAID1 root and XFS crashed at least 3 times for me, in extremely similar ways, somewhere around the time I had booted up from harddisk for the first time. Using ext3 on md worked without a trouble, so my root fs is now ext3.
the partition editor crashed one of the W2ks. Started saying that couldn't find ntloader or something such.
the installed system does not give you root password. Use
sudoinstead. The evil line in/etc/sudoers:foo ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL.no mp3 support. It's hidden somewhere in
gstreamerplugins. Hell, just install all of them:apt-get install gstreamer0.8-plugins.rhythmbox interface is still as bad as it were in gnome 2.6. You can't pin a point in the mp3 universe, then switch the visible artists, albums, or sorting order, and resume browsing in the new universe.
gnome-terminal is still an appalling resource hog.
libdvdcss2 for DVD needs the by-now-familiar ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ line in sources.list.
mplayer can't be installed from nerim.net's unstable. Might work from the stable or testing branch. Didn't test. I don't use mplayer because of its awful CLI and because xine seems to play the same stuff just as well with
w32codecs.gstreamer can't handle almost any files yet. Don't want to install
totem-xineyet. Might try to update gstreamer from hoary. However, gstremer is still almost usable.you want command expansion: add
source /etc/bash_completioninto your.bashrcafter the point it tests for PS1 to see if we are interactive.you want pictures of the naked ladies so install ubuntu-calendar. They are tasteful and not the least bit irritating.
Other packages of interest in the universe:
apt-file -- search the archives for package that will produce the file you are looking for
deborphan -- eliminate old debs that have no excuse to being on your system.
feta -- the simpler frontend to apt.
resolvconf -- for keeping extra "search" entries in resolv.conf despite what DHCP server says.
ifplugd -- for starting wlan automatically when card inserted. (I see that there's also some gnome wireless stuff installed so it might be the official way to use that instead. Dunno, don't care.)
Conclusion
This distribution has a pretty good out-of-the-box experience. Where it fails is mostly due to strangeness of my setups, like having both VGA and DVI connected to the same TFT. You have to tune X configs manually in order to use DVI-D. I turn on TwinView with orientation clone. That seems to do the trick. It's as if the DVI output wasn't the primary display, which I find distasteful.
Another such peculiarity is software-RAIDed system disks. It can't install grub for you, because grub doesn't know how to install itself on RAID. Well, that is primarily a fault of grub that doesn't handle a situation that would have a reasonable strategy.
First it should check the RAID level of the target array and in case of 1, just pick the first drive (from BIOS's viewpoint) and install on that. Then write an identical copy on the second harddrive. So in case the first drive crashes, second is a perfect substitute for the system drive -- or in case the second crashes, you can still boot with the primary.
The fatal error is destroying the W2k. Had I known that, I'd have never touched the damn distribution. :-( Before I worked out what has happened, I had already fucked the distribution up from w2k install cd rescue attempts and therefore I deemed clean reinstall best.