Experiences with Linux (Part 2)
As I promised in my last post this is the second post in the Experiences with Linux series.
In this post I will be talking about the various Linux distros I have used so far and what I’m currently using.
Ubuntu
I will start off with my most used Linux distro. I have been using Ubuntu since 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) all up to the latest beta of 10.04 (Lucid Lynx).
The best thing about Ubuntu is it’s hardware support. Most of my hardware, including my printer and webcam were recognized instantly and I was asked to install additional drivers to improve functionality.
Even though it is touted as the most ‘noob-friendly’ distro out there are some things are really strange and should not be missing. For example, the MP3 codec/plugin. Yes, I just said that Ubuntu does not come with the MP3 codec. It has to be installed separately as a separate package. This is because the MP3 codec and many other codecs are considered “restricted” extras. In this case the word ‘restricted’ just refers to the fact that most of these codecs are not open source i.e they are proprietary .
This brings us to a variant of Ubuntu called Linux Mint This variant is almost the same as Ubuntu except for it’s color scheme (kind of obvious what that would be) and the fact that it comes included with the “restricted” extras that I mentioned in the last paragraph.
Last and definitely least (Nice one eh?) is Kubuntu. Kubuntu uses (as the first letter suggests) KDE an alternate to the ever-more popular GNOME used in Ubuntu. As soon as I booted into Kubuntu, I disliked the GUI immediately. I really don’t know why but KDE is really not my thing. Kubuntu lasted for about an hour on my system.
Also I would like to mention that Ubuntu and it’s variants are basically Debian clones and use the DEB packaging system. Think of DEB files as your EXE setup files and your DMGs.
Fedora
This is the distro that I’m currently running on my PC. Fedora is an RPM (another packaging system) based Linux distro.
This distro is definitely less user friendly than Ubuntu as a lot of the user-friendly stuff was developed for Ubuntu and some of the stuff you take for granted in Ubuntu are harder to do in Fedora.
This is shown by the fact that Fedora does not ask for you to install graphics drivers, instead it installs a built-in driver called Nouveau and offers users no choice. Some people see as this as a good thing but I think that Fedora should allow us to choose if we want to install a proprietary driver or not. It’s is possible to install NVIDIA drivers on Fedora with a little bit of Terminal work (not that hard).
Other things that I like about Fedora is the color scheme (I love blue xD). The blue also makes the the system look more professional.
The reason I decided to try Fedora is because of this YouTube channel that I subscribe to called ThisWeekInLinux, he mentioned Fedora a bunch of times and how great it was so I decided to try it out. You should definitely subscribe to him if you are interested in what’s happening in the Linux world.
Knoppix
A very light LiveCD only operating system. LiveCD only means that you can only run the OS off the disc and cannot install it. Knoppix is very useful in school environments where PCs are often very slow and take a long time to boot up and login. This distro will save you time if you just need to do some basic web browsing and other menial tasks but don’t want to wait for the long time it’s gonna take to boot into Windows.
There’s an interesting personal story pertaining to this distro but that’s for my next post in this series.
Distros I plan to try
That’s all this post!
Please leave your comments below. Talk about your experiences with various Linux distros and what you love/hate about them.
