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vakkotaurI'm still considering what to replace Fedora Core with. There is the new Fedora which supposedly is a bit more usable, but likely still has the silly codec issues. And there is Ubuntu which has a very good ease of use, overall. There is Freespire which is now Ubuntu based and supposedly has no codec problems. There is also Wolvix, which is a customized version of Slackware.
I had a chance to test drive FreeSpire and I found I really didn't like it. Freespire is meant to be a Windows replacement, so it's set up to look like Windows. I understand the reason for that, but it made me cringe. The silly 'My Computer' icon, the oversimplified menu, and I'm not sure what all else. It might well be Ubuntu underneath, but I suspect I'd spend a lot of time de-stupiding it. Why bother? If it's Ubuntu, just run Ubuntu. Oh, yeah, the codecs. Well, that might not be an issue.
Ubuntu does have a great ease of use. There is a little bit to get used to. Using sudo instead of su jars me, but that can be dealt with and that's likely a fairly simple thing if I want to change it. Installs on Ubuntu are trivial, even for things not handled by the Synaptic package manager. I did run into one exception, or perhaps ran out of patience first.
Wolvix takes the Slackware approach and makes "getting under the hood" easier. Ubuntu tries to hide that, and generally does it well. Wolvix lets you tinker. Or sometime it requires it. There is GSlapt which does for Slackware what Synaptic does for Ubuntu. Installation on Wolvix can be a bit more involved than Ubuntu if it's not something GSlapt handles.
A few days ago I was using GIMP to edit photos and when I tried to load a photo ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jmaynard took with his new camera, GIMP said it couldn't load it. Nor any of the others he took. Other programs could load and display them. And save them, but one would crash and another would re-compress the images throwing away megabytes of information. Neither was good workaround. I updated GIMP to no avail. A web search revealed that there was a problem with GIMP and libexif and it fixed in the most recent version of libexif. I tried to update libexif and was told was running the most recent version. It was only the last version released for the (now rather old) version of Fedora Core I am running. Fine, I'd update it manually. There was no recent libexif package for my version of Fedora Core.
Not wanting to do a complete update to more recent version of Fedora (and spend a lot of time, and break who knows what else) I gave Xubuntu a try. Same problem with GIMP and libexif. Synaptic didn't know of the latest version of libexif. I found what was supposed to be the latest libexif package for Ubuntu, but couldn't install it. So I went to Wolvix, which also had the GIMP and libexif problem. But I found a Slackware package of libexif and could install it with installpkg. Things started working.
Now I'm torn. I want to like Ubuntu, and I'm leery of running a Slackware based distribution as my main system. Yet it seems that if something needs to work, Wolvix lets me get the job done and Ubuntu... seems to get in the way. Now, it may be I was rushing and just wanted the problem fixed NOW and didn't use some Debianesque tool that would have taken care of things as I've avoided Debian style systems until Ubuntu. Of course, I could run Ubuntu and still have Wolvix around as I have two computers in the office. I have both now, but it's dual-boot so I can use one or the other at any given time. Decisive, aren't I?
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Date: 15 Jun 2007 03:26 (UTC)even still 9 times out of 10, I use apt-get to handle my installations...and feisty so far has met my needs 10000 times better than any of the earlier versions did. If I was pleasantly surprised before, imagine how tickled I am now *laugh*.
I'm used to sudo now...enough that sometimes it trips me up at work because I don't have it there.
As far as the codec issues *shrug* just because they don't ship with the repositories in your sources list, doesn't mean it has to remain outside of your sources list. DVDs and mp3s play *very* nicely with kaffeine and amarok...I was even surprised to see wma support.
So...now that I've played with Ubuntu for 2 years (running Dapper Drake currently on my laptop, and have used it from Hoary Hedgehog through Breezy Badger to said Drake), and have now been using Feisty whatever the heck it is on my Kubuntu desktop system, I definitely prefer Kubuntu. I'm going to move to Xubuntu on the laptop simply because of system resources and lack of space since Xubuntu has a smaller footprint than the gnome based Ubuntu does :)
no subject
Date: 15 Jun 2007 04:07 (UTC)Is Feisty using libexif 0.6.15? Or is there an easy way to get that version of libexif into place?
I've been running Xubuntu on one of the desktop machines (933 Mhz) and overall I like it. I know Kubuntu would be a bit heavier, but then it'd be on the faster Athlon box. I haven't tried to tweak XFCE so that text entry form spaces (like the Google search box) are gray and not white, which is the one thing I find I don't like about XFCE. I put up with that on the laptop (Wolvix) as the laptop doesn't have many cycles to spare.
Hrm, one other thing. Have you gotten WPA to work on your laptop? That's something I have not managed and would really like to.
no subject
Date: 15 Jun 2007 04:48 (UTC)For example - I like Beryl, however the Beryl that's packaged and in the Ubuntu repositories is older than what's currently out there - so rather than deal with the older version, I have the official beryl repositories listed in my sources, and just grab it from there.
For your third question. We don't use WPA here - we use WEP, but absolutely yes - I <3 my wireless laptop...it was a little painful simply because I was using a really new card on a really old laptop so the drivers and the hardware, they did not want to go together...but we did eventually get it working.
no subject
Date: 15 Jun 2007 03:36 (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 Jun 2007 03:47 (UTC)I'd rather not try anything with Vista.
The nuclear option, perhaps...
Date: 15 Jun 2007 05:41 (UTC)* Create a personal repository in /usr/src/debs
- add this line to /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb file:/usr/src debs/
* Make a new deb from the source (here's how) except took the following deviations:
- got the source for the current version first:
mkdir /tmp/libexif_ubuntu
cd !$
apt-get source libexif12
- got the target version I wanted to build, and extracted it; run dh_make from the top level of the new source
What I did was, after executing dh_make on the new source, I copied the debian/rules and debian/control files out of the current source to the debian directory in the new source tree. Why? This is where all the maintainer, dependency and configure options are.
- build the package with dpkg-buildpackage
If you get dependency errors building the new package, you'll have to "apt-get install" the missing dependencies.
- copy the new .deb files to /usr/src/debs
- rebuild the package index for the local repository:
cd /usr/src
dpkg-scanpackages debs /dev/null | gzip > debs/Packages.gz
- refresh repo lists and upgrade outstanding packages
apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
You'll get a BIG FAT WARNING on your locally-built deb file because it wasn't signed, but you know it's safe to say yes because you built it.
It's a bit of work to upgrade beyond what's official and still keep the package manager happy, but it does work.
Of course, if there are alternate repos for the software you want, you can stuff those in /etc/apt/sources.list (or use your favorite package manager front-end).
no subject
Date: 15 Jun 2007 05:45 (UTC)You just supply your user password, and you get root's environment (but not root's $HOME for some odd reason; the HOME is that of the user you "sudo -s"'d from).