My old desktop computer gao-2001, which I passed on to my daughter who renamed it hal-2001, developed a problem (spontaneous reboot) recently. So I ordered a new box from a trusty local store (whose radio ad featured "Dad, I spilled milk into my keyboard. Is that bad?")
So here's what gao-2006, your basic developer desktop computer circa December 2005 (compare with one circa 1993), looks like (gao-2004 will be passed on):
ASUS Extreme N6200TC PCI-x16 (GeForce 6200, 64MB) video card
16X DVD±R/±RW drive
For the operating system, I decided that I'm going to experiment a little. On good recommendations from Jonathan and a whole lot of other people who blogged about it, I downloaded Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger.) It's a Debian based Linux distribution with a recent kernel and GNOME desktop.
The system arrived Friday. I played with Ubuntu 5.10 on it whole day Saturday. Here's my first impressions:
The first thing I noticed is that the Ubuntu 5.10 download is only one CD, instead of the six CDs for the latest Fedora Core 4. This make sense because for most of the Fedora Core installations, and I've done lots of them, the first thing I do after the CD install is to hook up with the updates repository and usually most packages are out of date.
Ubuntu 5.10 has a character based installation system. The installation process is streamlined and easy to follow except for the part where I have to partition the drive. The options there are confusing.
All the hardware are recognized and worked. I only have to enter a username and password during the installation process. The network is automatically configured using DHCP.
Once the basic install is completed, I went to the Synaptic Package Manager to install some of the things that I know I will need but was not installed (such as gcc, emacs, etc., boring stuff.) The package manager has a basic mode and an advanced mode. The basic mode is designed for the occasional addition of a package from a specific category. The advanced mode is, well, more advanced. Of course, I didn't know about this. So I did the elementary thing, opening each tree node, and check the packages I wanted to install one by one. I didn't see any gcc package there. However when I applied the changes, after much downloading, I ended up with gcc installed. To this day I don't know how that happened. It must be the dependency of one of the things that I checked.
I did find emacs in the advanced mode of the package manager. However when I applied that change, the post installation script threw and error of some sort, (cedet and speedbar had some unsatisfied dependencies.) This error would persist. Every time I ran an install, at the end it would report to me "Your installation has errors, blah blah blah." even though whatever I was installing did indeed get installed.
Then something bad happened. My display was all garbled up as I was browsing the web. When you use Linux, you can expect to have bad video hardware support for new chips. So I googled and found the binary driver from nVidia. Downloaded it it. Tried to install it. It complained "You can't do this while running X." So I tried to get out of X by issuing the "sudo init 3" command. It didn't work. I googled again, and found out that I can use the package manager to install the driver, as long as I enable the Universe and Multiverse repositories. It turns out that they are already enabled out of the box. So I installed the driver and the problem went away.
In Ubuntu 5.10, at least after the default install, I can't simply do an "su -" and work as root. Everything rootish has to be done with "sudo" command.
At this time, I recognized that Ubuntu 5.10, in its effort to make the Debian distribution more accessible to the general users, has hidden certain details from me. This made me uncomfortable because whatever I may want to do, such as setting up the network configuration my way, will require me to learn a new set of things, things that I already know how to do in my old Fedora Core environment.
At that point, I decided to go back to my old distribution, Fedora Core 4, where I already know how things work.
So what's my impression of Ubuntu? I'm very impressed. It's easy. It looked slick. And it presents Linux in a form that I'm comfortable with. However, It's not meant for me, a ten-year Red Hat user who are not about to learn some new ways of doing old things.
I guess my feeling is not unlike that of a Windows user who were told "you should use Linux," or the Microsoft Outlook user who were told "you should use Thunderbird," or the Java programmer who were told "you should program in Ruby," or the C++ programmer who were told "you should program in Java."
"Why," we ask, "should we throw away the knowledge we have accumulated over the last ten years and go with the new trend?"
"It is easier," we were told.
"But it's not hard if I already know how to do it," is my reply, high cool factor of the shiny new thing notwithstandings.
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