vakkotaur: (computer)


I'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.

Musings and such )



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?

vakkotaur: (computer)


A couple things are of interest to me in this week's DistroWatch Weekly. The first is open source advocate Eric S. Raymond switching to Ubuntu after over a decade of using RedHat/Fedora. I know where ESR is coming from on at least part of things. Fedora is a pain to set up to use the media codecs that people actually use. Ogg Vorbis might be be a great idea, but people actually use mp3. Ogg Theora might be a great idea, but people actually use .mov, .mpg, and .avi.

ESR has his detractors about this, but I see it as two camps. One, the one Fedora and Debian purists follow, is a nigh-on religious instance avoiding any and all formats even hinting of being proprietary. It's a nice idea, but it's not practical for most. Most people, as ESR realizes, just want things to work. This is the other camp, where practicality is a primary consideration.

People want the file(s) to play, not throw up error messages - and if they get an error message, they want to get it fixed. They do not want a sanctimonious lecture about how fixing it is evil.

Right now I am using Fedora myself. That's how I know how much 'fun' it is to get Fedora fully functional. Because I know that pain, I'm a version or two behind. I do not want to have to do all that work over again. I won't be jumping to Ubuntu right off, but I likely will give it or one of its derivatives (Kubuntu, or the newly Ubuntu-based Freespire when it is released) a try and see how things go.




While Fedora is my primary Linux distribution, I use another, lighter, distribution for older equipment, including the laptop. For a while this was Ultima Linux. When the Ultima site went away for several weeks (it's back now) I eventually switched to Wolvix.

When I noticed that the Ultima site was back, I suggested that the developer have a look at Wolvix as both are Slackware descendants and Wolvix had some good ideas worth adopting. The result of that also made it into this week's DistroWatch weekly with the news that Ultima and Wolvix have "joined forces." This doesn't mean that there will be just one (Ultima or Wolvix), but means that both distributions will benefit together.

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Vakkotaur

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