This post is going to ramble all over the place because I don't have the time to edit it to try to bring some kind of order to this chaos. Sorry about that. But it's either this or nothing at all.
So, my experiments with SUSE 10.1 came to an end over the weekend. Although I really wanted to like this distribution, and I have used it in the past, 10.1 just doesn't seem to work with my system.
For example. using YAST to update my base system was hit or miss. Mostly miss. Updates were very sssssllllooooowwwwww. If they worked at all. YAST would lock up seemingly at random times. In fact, the system became corrupted several times, probably because of the problems with YAST.
Then there's the speed, or lack of same. On the system being used, which to be honest is an Intel P3-933 with 512MB of RAM, everything ran so slowly I had to wonder if something was wrong with the hardware. But as events would show, this was not true.
In any case, things got so bad that I decided to try something else. So I downloaded the ISO for Kubuntu 5.1 and Debian "testing" (also known as "Etch").
I should note that I was using SUSE 10.1 and K3B to burn the ISOs to CDs but I could not get K3B to work. I kept getting errors saying it couldn't flush the buffer or some such. So I ended up using my laptop (which uses Windows XP), re-downloaded the ISOs, and burned them there. Talk about irony.I decided to try Debian first. The install ran fine but I had forgotten that true blue Debian uses Gnome because, as I understand it, KDE uses some commercial utilities to create its environment. Although Gnome is okay, I'm not very familiar with it. But I decided to give it a try anyway just to see what it was about.
Unfortunately, the learning curve from KDE to Gnome was just too great. I couldn't find stuff as easily as I could in KDE. To be sure, this is not necessarily a knock on Gnome so much as I am just more experienced in KDE. YMMV. Choose the tool that works best for you. But I just didn't have the time to learn Gnome.
In any case, the default install of Debian is rather stark. That is, if you want to use Debian as a desktop as well as being able to compile programs, you will probably have to add stuff. This is not unique to Debian as other distributions also require you to add packages to create an environment that works for you. In addition, stuff like Adobe Acrobat, the Flash plug-in, MP3/ACC/DVD movies support, etc, etc also has to be added in. Again, this is not unique to Debian. But it does get tiring.
On the upside, using apt-get (or one of the front ends) really is the best that can be had in the Linux world. I have a lot less problems using deb files then RPMs. That's not to say apt-get doesn't have it's own problems. For example, if you add or delete a package using apt-get, you *MUST* check which other packages will be added or deleted. For example, removing one small package can, for example *cough*, delete almost all of KDE. So, be careful when using apt-get.
After trying Debian for awhile, I decided to switch to Kubuntu. Since Kubuntu is based on Debian, much of what I said regarding Debian applies to Kubuntu. The main difference is that Kubuntu uses KDE.
I haven't spent much time in Kubuntu so I can't say much about it right now. More when I know more.
