Has Ubuntu Replaced Windows on Your Box?

[Charles E "RIck" Taylor IV]

On Fri, 2006-01-06 at 15:36 -0400, Derek Broughton wrote:
> Charles E "RIck" Taylor IV wrote:

> > I think Ubuntu's weak points are networking and printing, myself.
> > Networking's much easier to configure for my home and work networks on
> > my laptop under Fedora than it is here in Ubuntu.

> It just works for me...  but networking is always highly dependent on your
> topography.

I had a problem with resolv.conf not getting updated when switching
network interfaces (one interface with dhcp and the other static ip).
This "just worked" with Fedora - but required some command-line tweaking
in Ubuntu.

> > Printing was just ... 
> > broken ... on my Samsung ML-1430 (graphics were garbled).  

> I confess I've never got printing working well - I tend to print to pdf and
> print the PDF off a windows box (but then, I do so little printing that the
> last time my ink cartridges dried up, I refused to replace them) and just
> print the odd page when I'm at work.

I don't think my wife would approve of printing to PDF and then finding
a Windows box to print.  My Ubuntu printing troubles at home were
actually caused by a buggy/broken ppd file shipped with Breezy.  I
didn't see an obvious/easy way to configure a machine as a print server
in the GUI tools either, so I left my home server running Fedora (setup
was trivial using their tool).  No trouble with the Laserjet at work
over JetDirect, thankfully.

> > And Windows?  XP Pro's fine as long as I don't want to suspend the
> > machine.  It crashed on resume every other time, and didn't seem
> > fixable.
 
> Which just highlights the similarities - other people have no end of trouble
> with hibernate in various linux distros, and I otoh have both my XP pro and
> my Ubuntu systems hibernating perfectly.

Admittedly, I have a strange laptop - JVC MP-XV841.  Came with XP Pro,
but didn't seem to like it very much.  Everything except the SD card
slot works more reliably with Linux.

My main reason for switching to Ubuntu was laptop support, though.
Unless you're willing to patch/recompile your kernel, you miss a lot of
the laptop stuff with Fedora - especially if your notebook has an Intel
video chipset.  I've had to patch/recompile a couple of packages for
Breezy (ffmpeg, for instance, to make it generate video files compatible
with my Sony PSP), but I haven't had to rebuild the kernel and X just to
get hibernate working.

-- 
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*  Charles E. "Rick" Taylor, IV <rick at rickandpatty.com>
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*  Web: http://www.rickandpatty.com
* Blog: http://shrimpandgrits.rickandpatty.com
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