My ageing Acer laptop was behaving strangely since lastweek. Windows would have nearly 100% kernel usage making it completely unusable for anything. It got so bad I couldn't get past the login screen without it locking up. System restore nor uninstalling new apps would fix this problem. Since I thought everything was lost I booted into safe mode and was able to work on the computer from there. But safe mode is not a longterm solution. Fearing the hard drive failing I ran every test I could think of to make sure. And nothing was reported out of the ordinary. As a last resort I did a reinstall of XP and after installing all the necessary drivers (sound, wifi, m/b, and graphics) the problem persisted. I tried this twice and would still end up with the same 100% kernel lockup. That's when I decided to take another look at linux.
I previously had experience with it in university when a neighbor (yay newman hall) gave me a Redhat CD. I've used it on and off since then but exclusively for servers. I tried Ubuntu but found the default interface to be really garish (okay, yucky background and the buttons are cartoonish) and the screenshots of fedora looked really slick. So I popped in the installer DVD and bang nothing happens. It hangs at the /usr/sbin load and just sits there. After 30 minutes the installer resumes but fails after writing the files to the hard drive. Not one to give up I use the live installer CD. Boots up right away and no problems this time. The wifi works and besides the lag of the CD drive spooling up everytime I use the menu it looks really put together. So using this guide I was able to get it working right away.
One thing I can say about Fedora is it doesn't have the ease of Ubuntu. I had to massage the system a little to get it working smoothly. But this can be expected on a laptop where a lot of the hardware is custom designed and poorly documented. I had to tighten down the font size and install the Webcore package from Microsoft. The default fonts are really ugly on my laptop for some reason. I'm still erked about the button arrangements. Some applications use huge icon sets for no reason. I'm sure the icons were designed by computer users who have vision problems. But on a laptop, where real estate is a premium it would be nice if the proportions were better. I like the well designed iTunes interface, Rhythmbox and Banshee are no iTunes is my conclusion. As a developer of web applications, some of the UI "features" are quirky. Gnome doesn't test to see if it has a good connection to a windows share until after you click on the icon. Shouldn't there be some testing done before it commits an object to the desktop. When I see "Joe's Work share" I assume the connection went through.
It's been installed for 4 days and I'm getting the hang of it. It brings back a lot of old memories of hacking an old alpha to run NetBSD (a server this weblog was hosted on ages ago, and a really useful foot warmer for those cold Virginia winters). It will be interesting to see how this side of the world lives.
Posted by yardie at January 24, 2008 1:02 AM | TrackBack