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Thursday, September 11, 2008

Ubuntu Linux is starting to piss me off

Ubuntu linuxI have been a Linux user for years. For the most part I used Suse Linux for work and at home. Around six months ago I decided to use Ubuntu Linux at work, which is gaining the momentum these days, after a short period of using it at home. The reason for this was that Suse version I was using then (10.2) was really pissing me off with how fat and heavy it felt (and was) and its really awful update system that rarely worked. In order to install a single small packet I had to wait for many minutes in order to find the mirrors resolve dependencies, crash the system, kill the xserver, and so on. I had used, briefly, a debian-based distro, in the past and was very impressed by its excellent update system. Thus since Ubnutu had the reputation of being very friendly with less hassle and was debian-based I gave it a try.

I started with a prior to 8.04 version and the updated after a month or so to the current version (8.04). Trouble was ahead since they changed the whole sound system and I had to fiddle around with the sound settings for a great long in order to get everything with the sound working. Then the updates started. Since the Suse update system rarely worked I was happy during the first few days to receive daily updates. The version was just released and many updates seemed logical. After six months of use though I still have an average of 25-30 MB of updates daily. I mean what is up with that? It is really annoying and the worst part is that some of these updates broke the xserver and then broke the alsa sound system and I had to fiddle with them again. Installing a package is a breeze though....That is something. In addition some of the tools simply don't work. For example I want to change the class of device for my bluetooth dongle and Ubuntu just refuses to do that. I gead down to hcidconf file to do manually and refusSuse linuxes to take that into consideration. I figured out later after days of trial and error that it disregards the universal to every Linux distro hcidconf and uses other settings for that. Go figure....

These days I have started thinking about going back to Suse. I don't know. I 've read they have fixed their update system and thats good, but on the other hand I read that for every new Suse version and its never fixed. I miss Yast and the many ready-made scripts for controlling everything. Time will tell.

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