Several distro tests, till 11.2 comes out (if it will work)

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As I wrote in this post Advice needed for openSUSE version - openSUSE Forums where I asked for advice of a version, I had troubles recently with openSUSE.
Using it since 9.2, and last operational was 11.0, until some unfortunate upgrade where everything gone down the hill.

My laptop is no linux lover (Asus ProVL50), so everything comes with more work than it should… but OK, I got used to it.
I was forced to install something else.

  1. reinstallation of 11.0, several times (today was the last attempt), gave me serious KDE4 update problems. I especially hate openSUSE-branding packages. That ones make mess. Since it’s serious outdated, and problems of upgrading to KDE 4.2, atheros thing, and other things, I gave up.

  2. 11.1 just doesn’t work on my laptop. Whatever I touch, it breaks. Maybe bad luck, but I lost patience.

(now I must mention that I have serious dislike towards debian way of things, especially kernel compiling, repackaging etc)

  1. Kubuntu 9.04
    Oh, that one is nice. The best KDE 4.2 implementation that I have seen. However, hot-heads from Canonical decided to put untested xserver 1.6 and there was no chance to make ATI fglrx driver work. OK, I could get over it, but skype (the app I use almost more than firefox) started to lock up, locking up most of the sound and “kill” could not kill process. I had to find something else.
    What I like about this distro is KDE4 implementation and boot speed (19 seconds on Ext4)

  2. Fedora 11
    Someone said this one is bleeding edge. Nooooo… its pool of blood. Beside it’s record boot time (14 sec, ext4), everything else is very, very unstable. Especially bad is pulse/sound implementation. That one just wasn’t worth. I kept it for a week, just made me frustrated.

  3. Sabayon 4.2
    This one is nice. I still had fglrx problem but everything else worked. However, distro is not polished at all (in my opinion). Also, it started to stray from gentoo philosophy a lot. I am fine with that, but there are some glitches here and there.

  4. Mint 6 KDE4
    This one seems like best quality/usability ratio on my laptop. Even if based on older intrepid, works surpirsingly nice. KDE is at 4.2 and fairly good. Automatic update is one of the best I have seen ever. Since I am not purist, I am totally OK with all proprietary stuff that comes with it.
    ATI works ok, because it is xserver 1.5 on it. What I was surprised is that Atheros proprietary is enabled by default, and even if kernel is 2.6.27 (faulty ath5k), it worked out of the box. Actually, everything worked out of the box.
    Had a little trouble to install amarok 1.4 (as I think 2.0 is total crap), but it worked at the end.
    I am missing ext4, but what the hell…

I think I am staying on this one until 11.2 comes out, and if it works with my ATI, sound and laptop on the whole.

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  1. Kubuntu 9.04
    Oh, that one is nice. The best KDE 4.2 implementation that I have seen. However, hot-heads from Canonical decided to put untested xserver 1.6 and there was no chance to make ATI fglrx driver work. OK, I could get over it, but skype (the app I use almost more than firefox) started to lock up, locking up most of the sound and “kill” could not kill process. I had to find something else.
    What I like about this distro is KDE4 implementation and boot speed (19 seconds on Ext4)

Agreed, It is very nice. My main is 11.1, so it’s multibooted. Did a full version upgrade from running system 8.04, missed out 8.10, with synaptic (iirc just pressed one button). No issues with it. Internet streaming video rock solid (on 11.1, unstable and choppy, same H/W, same driver release level).

Differences to your’s are it’s a desktop, ext3, and no skype. It’s a good-to-have-around distro, and I need the video streaming for BBC iPlayer and their catch-up UK TV service (at bbc.co.uk).

It didn’t however persuade me to replace opeSUSE. There would have to be more critical applications at issue to do that, given the high quality now of 11.1 with rock solid KDE 3.5.10 :).

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Unfortunately, I had to find alternatives. OpenSUSE is my beloved distro, but both 11.0 (after some updates) and 11.1 does not work properly for my laptop.
I really hope 11.2 will be OK so I can get back on it. I learnt suse way, I got used to it, and it is really hard to get on to something else.

However, I must give all compliments to Mint team. Their distro really rocks.