FreeBSD

Try another distro, or a cousin for that matter!

FreeBSD - I had the disks for 6.2 from a while back. That time, I had little anxious luck with post-install config and just decided to let it go for awhile. Last weekend I sat through the installation. The quirky things were mouse and NIC setup. Both worked out ok, but definitely different from Linux; they all have weird names, not tied to a functional use but a physical or even "firm" layer... my nVidia NIC is called nve0 rather than eth0; my mouse is called ums0 rather than /dev/mouse or input0 or even BSD's sysmouse

Of course, you don't get graphical out of the box, and I even had to download my beloved vim. I am in the process of compiling KDE after about 6 hours... the ports system is really a masterpiece, though. It downloads the source, configures it, builds it, resolving dependencies along the way. You can fully customize things, and it will prompt with text-based menus for optional components or add-ons. If the download fails, or your connection times out, just kill the process and begin again - it will zoom ahead to where you were, and even resume your download from precisely where you left off. Nice stats are given, such as percentage complete, file size, speed, and estimated time remaining, so that you can determine exactly what is going on.

I was able to install fluxbox and run my X server, so the graphical side works fine. I will attempt to bring this BSD to the state of productivity of my Slackware box, eventually. It was awesome to compile the BSD kernel... I had my dual-core system compiling the kernel and building a port. Another virtual terminal ran the top monitoring program and I perused some docs on a fourth! A lovely afternoon

Registered Linux User #370740 (http://counter.li.org)

Ubuntu: Login as root

Many may say that one cannot login as root on Ubuntu. Maybe these have not used Slackware before. Simply run
[user@ubuntu:~]$ sudo passwd
to set a password for root, the super user. Then use that password to login as root:
[user@ubuntu:~]$ su root
and then enter the password you created. It's as simple as that!

Registered Linux User #370740 (http://counter.li.org)

Ubuntu again!

Same box, same disc, but different results!

Last night I successfully installed Ubuntu Feisty Fawn on my Athlon 64 X2 4200+ system. The grub bootloader did not function, so I went in and found the kernel settings to load it and added those to the LILO entry that I loaded from my Slackware "home" distro. Ubuntu booted beautifully and has been functioning pretty; much as expected thus far. The desktop effects in gnome with compiz are quite nice and add a bit of a sparkle to the desktop.

As far as hardware support, multimedia looks great and networking is up to par. I was prompted to install 72 odd updates, some of which failed the first time around, but it remembered that and left them in queue after the first batch was completed. With Desktop Effects enabled, the workspace switcher seemed to lag a bit and not show all of the panels, but that's no big deal. Adding packages certainly is a "set it and forget it" process, simply select the package and add it. Dependencies are resolved automatically and any other additional packages are installed as well.

I apologize for any Ubuntu fans out there who may have been offended by my previous posts regarding this distribution; I have now had some success and learned a bunch, and once again witness the ingenuity and productivity of the open source community.

Penguins 'R' Us!

Registered Linux User #370740 (http://counter.li.org)