I will say this. My friend has a Sony Vaio laptop, a simple mobile intel chipset maybe 1.8 ghz with 512 mb. I tried Ubuntu on it, 8.04. It failed to use the on board wireless properly. Also it ran slow and kept crashing while running package updates. After each crash the EXT3 file system would go into maintenance mode with read only. I tried running ctrl+d to repair but it kept failing. It was not just his computer though.
The same thing happened with the 64 bit version of 8.04 on my home desktop pc. I shut it down, file system went into maintenance mode read only. Admittedly, that particular desktop has had some odd motherboard issues though nothing serious. Still the fact that the same problem with the same version of Ubuntu occurred twice on two different machines put me off. Its not that I’m new to Ubuntu either. I used version 8.04 on an old mini tower and it ran great for the longest time until I sold it to a friend and he started messing with it.
Anyway back to my friends Sony Vaio. I have a copy of the boxed version of OpenSUSE11.0 which I had already installed to a 64 bit AMD x2 compaq which I was very happy with. I put it on his Sony Vaio. A half a day later it was done! Everything recognized correctly the first time! Wireless worked as well as it did with win xp, video chip worked great, booted very quickly and ran well. I used GNOME desktop for it. It actually ran significantly faster than Ubuntu 8.04 on the same machine and Mandriva power pack spring 2008.1 release. Ubuntu nor Mandriva could properly configure all drivers properly. Mandriva could not get the sound to work even with pulse audio turned off and it could only achieve 5-6 kb a second max with the on bard wireless. Ubuntu recognized the sound but could not get a connection at all with the on board wireless. OpenSUSE11 had NONE of these problems! It just works! Admittedly I had some problems with codecs and such like playing encrypted dvds. I did not give it much time to properly troubleshoot that issue though.
Nor is OpenSUSE perfect. On my compaq which has the AMD dual core, I also have a PCIE Radeon 3400HD 512mb video card. It took me two days fighting with SAX2 to get it to recognize the 3d! I had to do a good amount of post-op config from init 3 to get it to work.However thanks to the community’s great support, I was able to fix it with relative ease! So I am a SUSE fan! Novel and the Germans know how to build a good O/S.
Hi there! I’m a Linux newbie in South Africa looking for a fairly advanced distro to settle on. What with slow download speeds, the only way I can taste the flavours is by means of the Linux Format magazine cover disk.
These are merely try-outs, obviously, and so can’t work with existing hardware. I have to purchase the full disks.
Hmmm. Therein lies the rub. The Open Suse 11 boxed set would cost me a quarter of my monthly salary, and I still don’t know if my hardware would work with it.
So, yes, Linux is lovely, but a bit beyond my reach!
Thanks: I’ve ordered several distros from Foss CD’s, the latest being Ubuntu Ultimate, thinking that with the wealth of software included I would finally be able to connect to the net via bluetooth modem, but sadly, as with most other distros, except Fedora 9, no way! If a drivers disk were packaged with the OS dvd, and some software, it would be great. Bluetooth software & phone management programs is essential for me & I can’t seem to find any on the repositories I’ve tracked down. Maybe I’m just dumb?
Hi
If your bluetooth is working and you can pair your phone ok, then it’s
only a matter of enabling the rfcomm service and setting up a dialup
connection.
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.0 x86 Kernel 2.6.25.18-0.2-default
up 17:57, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.03, 0.07
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 177.80
