Over the weekend I had the chance to get hold of Ubuntu as well as the
15 CD set of Debian Sarge. Ubuntu is basically a Debian based
distribution which concentrates on the desktop. An 'apt' description of
Ubuntu would be Mandrake:RedHat::Ubuntu:Debian. Those who still need to
be told more, read on.
I have been running Mdk 10 on my Dell Inspiron 1150. I chose Mandrake
because that was the one that I expected to give the least trouble. In
the default Mandrake install, X did not work. This was a known issue
with all Linux distributions on this particular model, so I had prepared
myself by searching for a workaround that fools the BIOS. However, with
kernel 2.6 on Mandrake, ACPI did not work, the mouse (touchpad) did not
work correctly (I could not tap on it to click) and I had to revert back
to kernel 2.4 (whose sources are not present in the Mdk 10 four CD set).
So I was a bit apprehensive when I decided to wipe out Mdk 10 completely
and install Ubuntu, which I had never seen before (yeah, do such every
now and then).
The installation was pretty smooth. I did the custom disk partitioning,
used the existing Mdk partition and the installation proceeded in
typical Debian style. After everything was setup, I was ready to apply
the workaround to get X working, when X just ... worked (to my utter
surprise). When I logged in, I got a nice looking Gnome desktop. I saw
the ACPI battery monitor (ACPI worked) and I could tap on the touchpad
to do left mouse-button click (the touchpad worked). It showed me that
my wireless network card had not found any network (so the wireless card
worked out of the box!). Other things like sound, etc. that you expect
to work anyway also worked. I haven't tried out the internal modem yet.
The package selection too is really fantastic. Finally, I have seen some
common sense in this matter. Firefox is the default browser, Thunderbird
is an optional mail client (the default is Evolution). All the packages
that you would expect for desktop use are already there. And speaking of
packages, its got 'apt' :). For people who don't want to use the command
line, there is a nice GUI frontend to apt called synaptic. Much better
than what you have to put up with in Mandrake. Thats enough for anything
and everything under the sun. I also happened to get my hands on a 15 CD
set of Debian Sarge. After repeating 'apt-cdrom add' 15 times, I'm
living in a state of utopia.
So it's a definite thumbs up for Ubuntu.
Bottom line is -- 'It's Debian, it works'.
15 CD set of Debian Sarge. Ubuntu is basically a Debian based
distribution which concentrates on the desktop. An 'apt' description of
Ubuntu would be Mandrake:RedHat::Ubuntu:Debian. Those who still need to
be told more, read on.
I have been running Mdk 10 on my Dell Inspiron 1150. I chose Mandrake
because that was the one that I expected to give the least trouble. In
the default Mandrake install, X did not work. This was a known issue
with all Linux distributions on this particular model, so I had prepared
myself by searching for a workaround that fools the BIOS. However, with
kernel 2.6 on Mandrake, ACPI did not work, the mouse (touchpad) did not
work correctly (I could not tap on it to click) and I had to revert back
to kernel 2.4 (whose sources are not present in the Mdk 10 four CD set).
So I was a bit apprehensive when I decided to wipe out Mdk 10 completely
and install Ubuntu, which I had never seen before (yeah, do such every
now and then).
The installation was pretty smooth. I did the custom disk partitioning,
used the existing Mdk partition and the installation proceeded in
typical Debian style. After everything was setup, I was ready to apply
the workaround to get X working, when X just ... worked (to my utter
surprise). When I logged in, I got a nice looking Gnome desktop. I saw
the ACPI battery monitor (ACPI worked) and I could tap on the touchpad
to do left mouse-button click (the touchpad worked). It showed me that
my wireless network card had not found any network (so the wireless card
worked out of the box!). Other things like sound, etc. that you expect
to work anyway also worked. I haven't tried out the internal modem yet.
The package selection too is really fantastic. Finally, I have seen some
common sense in this matter. Firefox is the default browser, Thunderbird
is an optional mail client (the default is Evolution). All the packages
that you would expect for desktop use are already there. And speaking of
packages, its got 'apt' :). For people who don't want to use the command
line, there is a nice GUI frontend to apt called synaptic. Much better
than what you have to put up with in Mandrake. Thats enough for anything
and everything under the sun. I also happened to get my hands on a 15 CD
set of Debian Sarge. After repeating 'apt-cdrom add' 15 times, I'm
living in a state of utopia.
So it's a definite thumbs up for Ubuntu.
Bottom line is -- 'It's Debian, it works'.
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