[lug] Initial impressions of Kubuntu

[Daniel Webb]

On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 11:08:35PM -0700, Sean Reifschneider wrote:

> >their energy into the installer and not much QA into the boot menu.  I'll fix
> 
> Did you submit a bug on the boot menu?

I didn't, and I decided to go with Debian Etch so if any of you Ubuntu users
want to report those problems you're welcome to.

The only problem I had with the Etch RC1 installer was that a mirror
(ftp.us.debian.org) hung on me!  Arghgh!  What is it with Debian and package
mirrors!?  Other than that I'd say it was better than the Ubuntu installer,
just not as pretty.  

For example, when I forgot to plug in my network card, the Ubuntu installer
just commented out all the apt sources lines and went on!  Then once it was
started the "Install programs" program didn't work right because of that
(duh).  What would a normal user have done there?  

The etch installer caught that the network wasn't working and walked me
through it (my AP has a WEP key).  It was very easy.  I now have a system that
does everything I want (X11, ratpoison, Firefox, vnc viewer) on 1.2G space.
I'm happy, and I won't be looking at distros again for 2 years.  :)
 
Also, the etch installer had *way* more features easily available, although
I'm not sure if all of them are stable.  For example, LVM was a partition
option that worked perfectly, and they have an encrypted partition option that
I was too scared to try based on the release notes.

Ubuntu may still be the best option for users with basic needs, but I consider
OpenVPN an essential package, and I had the nagging feeling that there would
be other packages I consider essential that were not covered by the security
updates.  

Etch has certainly been an improvement over Sarge so far, the autodetection
for everything was the same as Ubuntu and Knoppix as far as I could tell.  The
only thing that was difficult this time is the sound, and that doesn't
autodetect for any current Linux distro that I've heard of (stupid ISA sound
chips, what the heck was IBM thinking?).

So in short: I think Debian still rules the roost.