jallison's Journal: Time to punt

Fourth and long. I'm punting. The Mandrake experiment had mixed results. On the plus side, the install is easy, the partition manager is a nice touch, and the wired network worked. On the minus side, I could never get wireless working, if I booted up with my USB key plugged in the CPU pegged, and Thunderbird looked like crap under Mankdrake/KDE.

If I wanted to set up a server box, Linux is a pretty clear winner. For a desktop workstation it's mixed -- I wouldn't worry about the wireless, but what about the USB key? And why does Tbird look so crappy? For a laptop I have to stick with Windows. Why have a laptop if it doesn't have wireless? Other people have made my Broadcom card work with ndiswrapper, but I haven't been able to. I suppose it's possible, but I just don't feel like battling through all the problems when it just works with Windows. Lazy? Yes, but it's all about results.

fedora core 3

[nizo]

I just installed fedora core 3 on one of our workstations today and it recognized the USB key right away when I plugged it in, which is cool new behaviour. Also here we tend to use the gnome desktop (mostly because I just hate the way kde looks). Don't despair, whatever you find missing now will eventually end up in linux :-)

Re:fedora core 3

[jallison]

Interestingly, the USB key is recognized if I plug it in after the system is up and running. At that point I can access it via /mnt/removable. The problem occurs when the key is in at boot time, which causes the CPU to peg and the system to get really hot.

I agree that things will be added to the various Linux distros. I was pretty impressed with what was there already.