What distros have you installed lately?
Submitted by Scott Dowdle on Mon, 2007-03-05 10:52.
Fedora | RHEL | Scientific Linux
No, this isn't a repeat blog posting... as I continually download and install various distros. Since I'm very Red Hat centric, I'm all excited about the upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 release... that is coming out... maybe in March?!?
[Update: Looks like next week... March 14th.]
Fedora 7 Beta 2
Fedora 7 betaDownloaded and installed Fedora 7 Test 2. Notice that Core is no longer part of the name because Core and Extras are in the process of being merged. I downloaded the LiveCD and it worked great. I was very impressed by the artwork. I did an install from the LiveCD and it worked well... and seemed faster than the boot-install method. The only things broken that I noticed were some warning messages during shutdown after doing the install... about not being able to unmount something... but it was of no consequence... and a few of the desktop apps didn't work... like Abiword for example. Other than that, it recognized the onboard Intel video chipset of my wife's Gateway branded box and worked with accelerated video... rotating cube and all.
For the rest of the story, click on the read more link below...
Scientific Linux
CentOS hasn't publicly released a beta for the upcoming CentOS 5 yet... so I settled for Scientific Linux 5 alpha on LiveDVD. My DVD drive was pretty slow compared to my CD drive so the distro took a while to boot and load apps but generally, it worked well... and yes, the accelerated desktop was there with the rotating cube, etc. RHEL 4 is based on Fedora Core 3... whereas RHEL 5 (from which these things all are derived) is/will be based on Fedora Core 6 so there is quite a bit of difference in version numbers.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
I actually installed RHEL 5 beta 2 on a computer at work and it looked and worked pretty well... but of course I didn't try out any of the new, compelling features (Xen, etc).
Speaking of RHEL, supposedly Red Hat has released a beta version of RHEL 4 Update 5 that includes Xen support BUT the focus on the Xen support is to make it easier to migrate RHEL 4 machines into Xen virtual machines running under RHEL 5.
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Just Debian
Submitted by GeekGirl on Mon, 2007-03-05 21:17.
Just debian here, but I've only lately been using Linux to play with as a server OS. I may duel-boot my desktop or laptop with something-or-other - I haven't had time to see what's cool out there lately.
-- Christine
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What time frame are we
Submitted by fj40dan on Mon, 2007-03-05 18:58.
What time frame are we talkin here?
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Recent Install
Submitted by cheesyone on Mon, 2007-03-05 15:05.
I just downloaded and installed the new Kubuntu 6.10. It's great and am using it right now. But, as I am still your basic "newbie", I could use some help in setting up my Nvidia 6800GT to get the proper performance out of it. I tried installing the drivers listed with the Automatix package manager, but wound up worse off than before. I need some hand holding to help me walk through the steps to install Nvidias latest drivers. Other than that I really like the new Kubuntu. Everything else works perfectly, and for a "windows addict" that's important. Most of us know only about using apps, and tweaking anything is generally beyond our experience.
However, I AM running 4 different distros on my 'puter; Xandros (I love their bootloader), SuSe 10.2 (think I'll go back to 10.0), Kubuntu, and Mepis 6.0. That's all on my first HD, with Windoze XP on my other drive. Yew, I still use XP, but only because there is some software that I still like better than the Linux counterpart. Once all those apps have Linux matches that work the way I like, there will be no more windows at all for me. I already use Linux for almost all my computing needs.
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The drivers that come in
Submitted by fj40dan on Mon, 2007-03-05 18:45.
The drivers that come in with automatix are not the newest drivers. I think they are similar to the "legacy" drivers for windows. I'm not sure that they support 6800. Uninstall them from automatix, then install from nvidia drivers from this howto:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=52924
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Installing nVidia drivers?
Submitted by Scott Dowdle on Mon, 2007-03-05 15:54.
I do end up installing the proprietary nVidia and ATI drivers on machines that have those video cards... although I have started liking the Intel onboard chipsets that seem to do accellerated video with the stock Xorg drivers.
Main problem with the proprietary drivers (other than the fact that they are closed source) is that they have to be re-installed whenever the kernel changes or Xorg gets updated... which can be a pain.
On the distros I use (Fedora and CentOS) either I install the driver as released on the video card maker's drivers page... or I use one of the repositories that build driver rpms in sync with kernel releases.
Given the fact that Ubuntu has some good forums and FAQ/wiki pages, I'd recommend you hunt down info there rather than listen to me. :)
--
TYL, Scott Dowdle
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Ubuntu Feisty-Fawn Herd5
The new Ubuntu looks very promising and has nice new features!