It's Karmic Koala, After All
Sunday, 1. November 2009, 03:51:46
On my Inspiron 545 MT, I never got CentOS 5 to recognize the harddrives. I never got Debian Lenny to recognize the ethernet port. I never got openSUSE 11.1 or 11.2 to behave properly. Lots and lots of little glitches which probably won't ever be fixed. I had trouble with Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope -- the entire I/O would lock up randomly while typing. It usually did this while I was writing something important and I would lose my work having to reboot.
So I decided it wouldn't hurt to try Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10). Aside from everything working quite well, as you would expect, there were a couple of small issues. For now, I can't get the display to power down after the idle time I set. The other problem was audio: The sound quality was just a bit off, and when I plugged in the headphones, the main speakers didn't cut off. I had that in openSUSE, too, but I never could find instructions from them. There was a diagnostic provided by the Ubuntu community, and I was able to fix the audio.
I still prefer CentOS, but it until 6.0 comes out in the spring, I have no hope there. I can tolerate Ubuntu and Debian, but SUSE has had too many chances and failed me. Novell has really messed it up, and it won't ever recover, in my opinion.
Meanwhile, as I understand it, 9.10 is just one release away from an "LTS" release (Long Term Support) which means that release will be good for three years. I really do hate jumping from one Linux to the next, but sometimes you have to work at it. Maybe I won't have any lock-ups, and I'm still working on fixing the screensaver/power-down bug.
Update: Fixed the screensaver issue. Turn off the Gnome Screensaver app, and install the old Xscreensaver. It works, and offers more options for power management on the display.
So I decided it wouldn't hurt to try Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10). Aside from everything working quite well, as you would expect, there were a couple of small issues. For now, I can't get the display to power down after the idle time I set. The other problem was audio: The sound quality was just a bit off, and when I plugged in the headphones, the main speakers didn't cut off. I had that in openSUSE, too, but I never could find instructions from them. There was a diagnostic provided by the Ubuntu community, and I was able to fix the audio.
I still prefer CentOS, but it until 6.0 comes out in the spring, I have no hope there. I can tolerate Ubuntu and Debian, but SUSE has had too many chances and failed me. Novell has really messed it up, and it won't ever recover, in my opinion.
Meanwhile, as I understand it, 9.10 is just one release away from an "LTS" release (Long Term Support) which means that release will be good for three years. I really do hate jumping from one Linux to the next, but sometimes you have to work at it. Maybe I won't have any lock-ups, and I'm still working on fixing the screensaver/power-down bug.
Update: Fixed the screensaver issue. Turn off the Gnome Screensaver app, and install the old Xscreensaver. It works, and offers more options for power management on the display.
WIDGETIZE