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Desktop Linux 2

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by xstep

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I have been a fan of Red Hat for a long time and went on to use Ferdora. I also have countless hours on BSD/OpenBsd. So to make a long story short I haven't used every Linux distro on the planet. However I have tried a few and always stuck to what I was used to.

I had a chance to spend a little time with a few distro's lately. I just laied out a few boxes (and a laptop or two) and went at it. Open Suse 10.1 is the nicest Operating system I have ever seen! It installs like a dream, boots fast, and has just about everything you could ask for in a desktop or a server. Yast just works! and works well! All the fetures of this product blow everything out of the water!

To help me understand just how far Linux and open source have come. Was the experiance I had installing Puppy Linux live. It booted FAST! only asked a few questions and gave two graphics options. Bottom line is the fact that an OS with all kinds of applications is loaded in 64megs of memory! No hard drive! Linux is a powerful thin client that needs little power to operate.

Everyone can have their own choice. But think about it. What do you get with XP? What do you get with Suse? Oh I understand Gaming and hardware and some other applications. But in the long run what are you getting? Partnerships have been growing and although we can't play all those games and photo shop, we still have a very stable OS loaded with applications.

Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Xubuntu are very nice and I like what Ubuntu is doing. And what's really great about all of these distro's is the fact that you can try them for free on LIVE CD. Grab an old 486 and put two nic's in it and drop in a CD. Instant free firewall! Sure.. scan for viruses too at the Gateway before it gets to that beloved XP box. It's anyones choice but don't let anyone say (or any sheep) that Linux is not ready for the desktop.

Happy computing!
X

13 replies

by jaqui

Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Suse are not aimed at the desktop, they are targeted for home multimedia systems.

there is a huge difference in desirable functionality between desktop and home systems, unless it is a home office.

by jaggernaught

Ubuntu isn't just aiming for home multimedia systems but (on Dapper Drakes case) are aiming for servers *LAMP integration and a 5 year support* and desktops *support for 3 years, Vmware, Compiz and Sun's Java jre and sdk just to name a few, are available in repositories* and support on Sun's "Niagra" CoolThreads processor is already on beta and soon to have certifications for it...

by jaqui

they removed 75% of the multimedia garbage that is not required for desktop usage?

I don't think so.

all the features that Ubuntu is so proud of is exactly why I say it is designed for the home user.

including the security screwup of disabling the root account and using sudo for all admin tasks.

I really doubt they would be smart enough to not start the xserver and the worst gui [ gnome ] since they seem to love the bloated thing.

by rknrlkid

that someone else discovered Puppy Linux!

I've tried many different distros too, and Puppy is one of the few I've used that is "newbie friendly" and has some advanced features. For strictly home use of a novice, its lean and clean, and does the job. And like you said, runs under a number of different older systems.

I'm still evaluating, but I do like Puppy.

by xstep

I would say that "some distro" should stick to crafting the development of the linux desktop. Xubuntu is lite,cool and quick. We have a laptop running Kubuntu and it seems to be quick and stable. The Sun Niagra thing was a shock to me but hey more power to them!

I use Fedora but it needs to be tweeked to get a fully functional desktop. Suse just blows me away everything is laid out nicely. Great documintation and help.

by jaqui

with the bloat inherent in the Ubuntu philosphy?
impossible

remove smbclient, bluez-utils, laptop power management and all of a sudden you have un-installed the entire os.

since I tested Ubuntu on a desktop, with no wireless devices, no windows servers to connect to, all three of those are bloat.

by rknrlkid

This problem may be one of distributions, which is the same problem Windows has. In order to be everything possible to anyone, all sorts of stuff has to be included.

I'm using Mepis at home on my desktop, btw. I am fairly happy with it. But it has the majority of stuff that Ubuntu has (I've installed that too). What I really like is Sante Fe Linux, but they haven't updated their distro for a while. I went to Mepis and Ubuntu because I wanted Open Office 2.0. Sante Fe still has 1.1.x (forgot which version).

A home desktop/laptop version has to be different from a server version. Why do I need to install a mail server on my home computer? Some distros force you to install everything, even what you don't need. If you could make a "home" specific version, then maybe the distro can get down to a reasonable size, instead of almost 700MB.

by jaqui

is LFS, compiling everything from sources.
no pre built distro collection.

I have found that every pre built distro has added requirements to software that really don't exist. That to me is bloat.

Debian has 90% of KDE required, including kdeedu [ educational games for kde ] that is bloat on the part of Debian.

LFS, full sane build environment cd with base system source tarballs and the lfs book [ instal manual ], is under 500 mb.

by apotheon

Debian doesn't require ANY of KDE. I don't have a single KDE library on any of my machines, and they all run Debian.

by jaqui

base kde, it all of a sudden requires 90% of what's available for kde as addons.

that is what I said, Debian added requires to kde that DO NOT EXIST in the source, that is bloat.

by apotheon

You installed KDE, and now you complain about bloat?! That's like shooting yourself in the leg and complaining that it hurts too much!

Sheesh.

by jaqui

base kde is far less bloat than base gnome.
after all kde doesn't REQUIRE by defulat that you have support to connect to windows servers like gnome does.

and gnome is the default bloatware gui for debian.

you know darned well I like enlightenment window manger for my desktop, none of the bloat in any of the desktop environments then.

by apotheon

KDE and GNOME are both bloated. Why use either one? As I said, I don't have a single KDE library on any of my systems. Problem solved.

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