Ubuntu 7.10
Monday, 17. December 2007, 15:00:55
I've been an ubuntu whore for a litle while now and have watched the software grow from just another player in the bloated Linux market to probably the best "entry level" distro available. And then they released Gutsy.....
Several problems right off the bat. First, changes were made in the default gnome release to include compiz and enhanced window decoration effects. While this is an awesome idea -- and compiz is extremely cool-- it caused some disturbing slowdown in firefox and other modules. Disabling compiz and tweaking a few other settings fixed this, but I was disappointed to load an ubuntu release which didn't "just work." Another change that directly affected me was the power-saving features built into the new kernel. My battery life has increased (slightly), but I am harassed by messages during boot: "Cannot allocate resource region 7..." "cannot allocate resource region 8..." Some googling confirmed that these were harmless (and somewhat common) but it's annoying because my boot process with the 7.04 kernel was so nice. Granted, these are hardware-specific issues, but I'd like to see a middle-of-road release like I've been receiving. People switch over to linux for stability and security, not cute guis. That's what macs are for.
And while we're on the boot subject, what the heck happened to the splash screen i went to so much trouble customizing? I get the login manager, a blank beige screen and then *bing* the system is loaded. It's little more than eye candy, but it was a nice change from the arduously long boot sequence with that old "legacy" OS I grew up on. The boot is still fairly quick but this new release just seems to lack the snappiness I've come to expect from ubuntu. It's even locked up on me a few times since the change from 7.04. WTF?!?! I have never experienced as much as a hang with prior ubuntu releases, and it still comes as a total shock when it happens.
So I'm soliciting suggestions. Which distro should I go with now that I've become disillusioned with ubuntu? I want something heavily reliant on source (becuase I love to compile!) but easy to install, (because I don't like it THAT much!) stable, and highly customizable when it comes to graphic options. Gentoo? Slackware?
Maybe I should just revert to a true Debian? I've used knoppix and dreamlinux as well, but Ubuntu has been my primary OS for a while now, and I don't know where to go from here.
Several problems right off the bat. First, changes were made in the default gnome release to include compiz and enhanced window decoration effects. While this is an awesome idea -- and compiz is extremely cool-- it caused some disturbing slowdown in firefox and other modules. Disabling compiz and tweaking a few other settings fixed this, but I was disappointed to load an ubuntu release which didn't "just work." Another change that directly affected me was the power-saving features built into the new kernel. My battery life has increased (slightly), but I am harassed by messages during boot: "Cannot allocate resource region 7..." "cannot allocate resource region 8..." Some googling confirmed that these were harmless (and somewhat common) but it's annoying because my boot process with the 7.04 kernel was so nice. Granted, these are hardware-specific issues, but I'd like to see a middle-of-road release like I've been receiving. People switch over to linux for stability and security, not cute guis. That's what macs are for.
And while we're on the boot subject, what the heck happened to the splash screen i went to so much trouble customizing? I get the login manager, a blank beige screen and then *bing* the system is loaded. It's little more than eye candy, but it was a nice change from the arduously long boot sequence with that old "legacy" OS I grew up on. The boot is still fairly quick but this new release just seems to lack the snappiness I've come to expect from ubuntu. It's even locked up on me a few times since the change from 7.04. WTF?!?! I have never experienced as much as a hang with prior ubuntu releases, and it still comes as a total shock when it happens.
So I'm soliciting suggestions. Which distro should I go with now that I've become disillusioned with ubuntu? I want something heavily reliant on source (becuase I love to compile!) but easy to install, (because I don't like it THAT much!) stable, and highly customizable when it comes to graphic options. Gentoo? Slackware?
Maybe I should just revert to a true Debian? I've used knoppix and dreamlinux as well, but Ubuntu has been my primary OS for a while now, and I don't know where to go from here.
