Friday, October 10, 2014

Landmark on my Linux Trek: Ubuntu Trusty Tahr is trustworthy

Short note to a friend:

I despaired, and as usual, when I suffer GNU/Linux despair, I reached for Ubuntu, copied an iso to a flashdrive using "dd" and had the system installed in excellent time.

The experience has been wonderful.  I had just recently installed Debian, but my experience was pretty frustrating.  I am a mere mortal, I fear.  When I posted a question on the Debian mailing list, I got an answer something like "you have to be tech saavy."  There are a lot of bad vibes on some lists.  Only Gentoo---long ago---was 100% nice.

YMMV, but I am extremely happy with how it's going with Ubuntu.  I will probably update, but maybe not for a while.  I've gone and compiled emacs and a few other items on my own. 

I am eating many words about Ubuntu from past times.  No GNU/Linux install is going to go perfectly, but this has been fantastic.

  • Most packages are in the repositories and  up to date
  • The developers have taken great pains to ensure that all components work together nicely.  (It's all seamless).
  • I am getting used to Unity
  • The PPAs are well documented, pretty much.  
  • The freezeups I was getting using Fedora are not happening, so far (Knock On Wood)
  • Plugging in a flash drive or a USB HDD goes well and easy.
  • Even for a Brother DCP-7020, which works well but was painful to install using the OEM's detailed instructions, the printer was working instantaneously, after running the CUPS interface on "localhost:631" in the URL bar of my browser.
HOWEVER:
  • On the install,   I got stuck on a step or two.  I can't rememer which steps now. 
  •  
I would also like to point out that I have carelessly installed several distros, and each time, Grub finds the other OSs on the HDD and puts them in the menu.  

I have installed Xubuntu on my other machine, and had good luck.  My only unfavorable impression is the Xubuntu developers have mangled XFCE4 a bit much.  It all works nicely.  The desktop's appearance and icons, etc., were not expecially endearing. 

It is FAST and nice.


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