Hardy Arrives But Will I Install It?
April 24 is upon us and the official release of Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) will be available for download. I installed the release candidate a week ago on my desktop computer and have kept up with daily updates that number over 100. Yes, I'll wait a day or two for the rush to be over and then download a copy for archive and training purposes. The desktop will forever be Ubuntu and , by the way, I prefer GNOME over KDE.
On to the laptop. As much as I dislike Vista, Windows does come in handy now and then. At the moment it is dual booting the beta of Hardy using the wubi method of installation. This was intended to be temporary from the start and very little software has been installed in the last month. The wubi installation will not tolerate a distribution upgrade. A lot of blogs fail to point this out. It is intended to be a trial. The installation will now be removed leaving at least 30GB for a permanent dual boot system.
Should it be Hardy? Well, it might be. Ubuntu appears to be winning the distro "wars", if you want to call them that, and I think that in the next couple of years it will dominate the Linux world, but it's not the only game in town. I tried some other distros on the laptop. PCLinuxOS did not impress me and Fedora did not configure my sound card. I had the same problem with Ubuntu 7.04 but that was a whole year ago!
I read some favorable reviews of Mandriva and decided to give this a try. I had a little difficulty locating the correct image and incorrectly downloaded the six month old release before finding the new one. Sometimes one needs an old release, but this is not usually the case, and I think that institutions that volunteer to be repositories should take on the responsibilty of keeping them up to date!
Other than the usual choice of KDE or GNOME desktops, Mandriva comes in three versions... FREE, ONE and PowerPack. This confused me at first until I read on. The FREE version is like Ubuntu. There are no propietary drivers in the package. It is FOSS all the way. The ONE version does contain some propritary drivers for which there is no charge. The PowerPack has a huge amount of software some of which cost real money and some support is provided. I opted for the ONE version and soon had a CD that my laptop could boot.
Mandriva 2008.1 configured my sound card, my video card and even offered to implement Compiz. A brief tour of the menus showed that this was something I could easily live with. Google for "Perfect Desktop" and you'll get a preview of the install process. You will also get the author's advice on some individual programs that may not be appropriate... you decide.
Now I don't use the laptop very much, except when I travel, and when the old desktop finally goes to computer heaven I will replace it. I might use the laptop more if there was something to play with.
Ubuntu or Mandriva?
On to the laptop. As much as I dislike Vista, Windows does come in handy now and then. At the moment it is dual booting the beta of Hardy using the wubi method of installation. This was intended to be temporary from the start and very little software has been installed in the last month. The wubi installation will not tolerate a distribution upgrade. A lot of blogs fail to point this out. It is intended to be a trial. The installation will now be removed leaving at least 30GB for a permanent dual boot system.
Should it be Hardy? Well, it might be. Ubuntu appears to be winning the distro "wars", if you want to call them that, and I think that in the next couple of years it will dominate the Linux world, but it's not the only game in town. I tried some other distros on the laptop. PCLinuxOS did not impress me and Fedora did not configure my sound card. I had the same problem with Ubuntu 7.04 but that was a whole year ago!
I read some favorable reviews of Mandriva and decided to give this a try. I had a little difficulty locating the correct image and incorrectly downloaded the six month old release before finding the new one. Sometimes one needs an old release, but this is not usually the case, and I think that institutions that volunteer to be repositories should take on the responsibilty of keeping them up to date!
Other than the usual choice of KDE or GNOME desktops, Mandriva comes in three versions... FREE, ONE and PowerPack. This confused me at first until I read on. The FREE version is like Ubuntu. There are no propietary drivers in the package. It is FOSS all the way. The ONE version does contain some propritary drivers for which there is no charge. The PowerPack has a huge amount of software some of which cost real money and some support is provided. I opted for the ONE version and soon had a CD that my laptop could boot.
Mandriva 2008.1 configured my sound card, my video card and even offered to implement Compiz. A brief tour of the menus showed that this was something I could easily live with. Google for "Perfect Desktop" and you'll get a preview of the install process. You will also get the author's advice on some individual programs that may not be appropriate... you decide.
Now I don't use the laptop very much, except when I travel, and when the old desktop finally goes to computer heaven I will replace it. I might use the laptop more if there was something to play with.
Ubuntu or Mandriva?
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