Thread: Desktop Linux Shootout :-)

Right now I'm posting from Fedora 7(Just didn't have any other distro ATM, I'm going to download it now.) Can anybody help me? I can't even find a package manager here! The default installer is yum, right?

ok, posting this from pclinuxos live session under vmware. getting to the point: it does not deserve to be #1 , not more than #3 on distrowatch and no way in hell is it "granny friendly" as sneezymelon mentioned earlier

the bootup screen shows the motto/slogan/tagline as "radically simple" but IMO it does not beat ubuntu for sure.

the live cd bootup is dumb, it does not go straight to the desktop, it asks a bunch of configuration questions as if the installation was started! then instead of going straight to the desktop it gives a login screen with options to login as guest or root, with the passwords displayed on the top-left dumb like fedora 8

after going into the live cd session, i can see the software collection is pretty good, as good as opensuse, its a kde based desktop. the default theme is like winxp which sucks. plus it might not be as radically simple as it claims, for example, there are 2 control panel icons, one for kde and one for pclinuxos

of course, it has stuff like flash, multimedia etc installed by default and a flash site and AAC audio stream worked from the live session.

i think pclinuxos is number 1 on distrowatch because it uses kde and has a winxp theme and mainly because it has codecs/flash installed by default, which is a good combination for their "radically simple" theme

but after trying it out, i still think ubuntu is #1 for me, followed by opensuse/kde

i would rank pclinuxos as #3 or #4 at the same level as fedora 8

hmm, slashdork says mandriva 2008 is out, got to try that as well now

good info in the release notes Releases/Mandriva/2008.0/Notes - Mandriva Community Wiki

I agree here with you, Ubuntu does seem to be simplest...
but a couple of issues i had completely drove me away from ubuntu , opensuse etc...
I use internet which has pppoe , and in none of the distros except fedora has pppoe worked out of the box , without twaeking. Even now my brother installed opensuse 10.3 , reading its good reviews and he told me that getting pppoe working thru Yast is hell!!!

system-config-network in fedora gets the pppoe up and running in a jiffy. since the days of fedora core 3!! Thats the reason why I have still stuck to fedora. And as I speak now, on my new dell vostro laptop I could not getsound working on Sabayon, Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10beta. It only works on fedora 7 .

I dont criticise any distro here, just a pointer for people who use pppoe based internet thru the cablewallas! and those with exotic soundcards like me !!

yup, i think you definitely need to test some distros on your own to decide which you prefer especially for stuff (pppoe, desktop effects, sound etc) that might work only on a particular distro...

that reminds me, i need to re-test these 5 distros on a laptop and tablet and re-rank them on these platforms im especially interested in trying opensuse's fingerprint reader and touchscreen modules on a tablet...

the 5 distros of interest to me are ubuntu, opensuse, mandriva, pclinuxos and fedora.

@aniketvb: you mean even steps like these dont work as advertised for dialling? Broadband Howto - Ubuntu India

Well , the issue is that there is no gui for pppoe config. Then there is a pppoeconf ncurses type gui , and there is no way a user would know that such a utility exists!!

Ok, after we invoke the pppoeconf utility, it asks all sorts of questions like a wizard which is good, but it doesnt ask one important thing, "servicename" field for pppoe provider. So if we have multiple acces providers on our LAN, pppoe doesnt work!! Hell I found a way to bypass that by entering the pppoe config values in a conf file , and service name can be given , so ok..but this I could do only after extensive searching on the net.....


After it is configured , there is no gui way to start the connection!! So again go to command line and do "sudo pon "conn_name""



In opensuse , I still havent got net connection working, it always gives me pap auth error
(and the passwd is correct btw!! ) . Yast wont let me edit conf files by hand!!I mean the changes arent preserved if I edit config by hand....

As opposed to all this , in fedora simply start system-config-network, click on new connection, select XDsl from type , enter username , password , servicename fields, clik on save. Then from system-control-network , just select the new connection and click on activate !! tats it...it just works...no hacking and searching needed!!!

As for my sound card , it needs an option passed while loading the kernel module snd-hda-intel . In fedora I just added the option in /etc/modprobe.conf and did service alsasound restart , and sound stated right away. In other distros even after adding this option and rebooting the sound refuses to work :-(

So as far I have seen from my experience with different distros...( I have tried all sorts of ..from arklinux , sabayonetc to standard ones like fedora,ubuntu,suse)
The hardware detecion is best in fedora if you have somewhat exotic hardware...

Sorry to the guys whom I promised reviews, I'm not testing any distros anymore. This is primarily because I lost all my data in installing SAM Linux, without any fault of mine.

I now know that to test distros and post reviews, you need at least decent hardware. Until I get a hardware upgrade, I'm off the testing thing. And even if I do, I'd rather test things in VMware first and then move on to them as a complete system.

I'm back on PCLOS and happier than ever. I've now become an expert on configuring PCLOS and now I have a separate /home partition too.

http://broadbandforum.in/software-di.../9/#post120310

having a seperate home partition is great. i realized when i had to format the root partition to install the beta ubuntu. all my configs were restored! that was awesome.