I've overall had a good experience, although I finally bit the bullet and did a clean install of Karmic on my desktop, which fixed all my gstreamer issues (which had been a problem since at least Hardy). I like it very much -- it's been quite impressive. The "New Wave" theme is one of my faves now, and I use it on both my desktop and laptop. So yeah, I've had a good experience in general.

This is basically my only Linux story until I installed Ubuntu in 2007 (try #2). I installed Slackware in 1996 or so after painstakingly downloading and copying it onto at least ten floppies, and all was well for awhile.

Until I tried to repartition my drive and failed miserably at it, nuking my DOS partition. As this was the family computer, my parents were none too happy. My dad complained for a long time afterwards about LILO coming up at boot when Linux was no longer there, and I don't remember how I eventually fixed it, but yeah...

Thus it took me about ten years to get back to Linux again after that disaster, but I have Ubuntu now and haven't looked back to XP after I replaced it.

Don't forget China, apparently.

You've a good point there. It's not so much of an issue for me since I'm pretty experienced with computers, but for the "grandma" Linux adoptions it's more of an issue. Unless, of course, you have your whiz kid grandson around to clean up the mess, which is generally an unrealistic expectation.

Or you could go to GetDeb and download their cutting-edge VLC packages, which haven't caused any problems for me at least.

Try Deluge. I've been using it on Linux, so I don't know how it works on Windows, but it's worth a try. Many have said it's the "uTorrent for Linux," but it's pretty lean and mean overall.

I used an excellent tutorial for setting up VNC over SSH. It's for Ubuntu, but the basic concepts should be the same for Fedora. It's been extremely helpful when I've been away from home and need to check up on things on the desktop.

And besides, the alien seemed to me to be a Lovecraft reference (Cthulhu anyone?) -- which, if you've read any of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Alan Moore is fond of. I was a bit annoyed that they changed the ending for that reason, but oh well. It worked as well as it could have. I loved the movie personally.

The rt2x00 project has to a certain degree solved Ralink chipset problems. I access the internet with a Linksys WUSB54GC USB adaptor which runs the RT73 chipset, and I use rt2x00's legacy rt73 driver since rt73usb in the mainline kernel is 1) lacking in features and 2) not as stable IMHO.

That said, I don't know how Ralink's chipsets work on netbooks. I have a Dell Inspiron 1525n with that Intel wireless chipset mentioned above (no problems there, either). If you're having problems with the Ralink drivers on a netbook such as the Eee PC, though, I'd look into the rt2x00 project for some possible answers.

Well, if you want to know the real reason, it goes back to Latin.

concilium is a public meeting or gathering, or a council.
consilium (note the s) is a plan, advice, policy, or ... you guessed it, counsel.

Wow... maybe that was too much even for Slashdot? Oh well. My point was that the British (and us Americans in turn) inherited that small distinction directly from the Romans.

Slackware in 1996 for me was my first experience. Tried dual-booting with Windows 95, but managed to nuke the DOS partition with some careless use of fdisk whilst in Slack. No more Linux for me...

...until I started using Ubuntu in Sep 2007. Installed it after I backed up and wiped my XP installation; I'm quite happy with it and have no regrets.

Apparently there was a grow op going on in my parents' neighbourhood last year or so. They said they heard the SWAT teams going in at 6am one morning and arresting people right and left. Now the issue of the criminality of marijuana is a different one entirely, but yeah...

As an AT&T subscriber, this makes me rather annoyed with them, that they would capitulate to such thugs as the RIAA. We left Comcast, among other things, since AT&T had better service and didn't act like bastards... but it looks like that's changing.

Oh well, guess I'd better be more careful with my torrent activity.

I used to be one of those people who never turned off my computer, and had to have it on. Now I just shutdown every night and restart in the morning. It took a little getting used to, but it's worked out well -- for my desktop at least. Certainly cuts down on the noise at night if nothing else. My laptop is always in hibernate when I'm not using it, until I need to reboot it.

This sounds like a good idea... every little bit helps, or every watt, in this case.

I'm sure Slackware is better these days, but I had no fucking idea what I was doing, so I suppose it served me right. Try explaining to parents barely used to DOS and Windows that all their files are gone, and oh, what's this "LILO" on boot, they asked?

Didn't touch Linux for about eleven years after that as I said, but thankfully Ubuntu's been a much better experience thus far. I'm sure the other distros are great too, lest anyone call me a Ubuntu fanboy -- but this works for me and that's what matters really.

Surprisingly, my Dell Inspiron 1525n works perfectly with suspend/hibernate and resume with no issues on 8.10. Not so on 8.04 -- I had to shutdown and restart the computer all the time -- but once 8.10 was installed, I haven't had any problems at all with it.

It's getting better on the desktop; it's certainly not perfect but getting better. It's a far cry from my wide-eyed and naive attempt to dual-boot Slackware and Windows in 1996, which worked for awhile -- until I managed to destroy the DOS partition by misusing fdisk on the Slackware side.

I hope Obama embraces OSS, though. It would certainly help visibility if nothing else, and it might even save some money.