Paranoid Marvin Posted August 31, 2008 Share Posted August 31, 2008 I've been spending quite a bit of time recently trying out various distros on my Powerbook. I guess the possibitly of Apple dropping PPC support has driven me on, as well as the fact that Leopard is as slow as molasses at times... I've tried many distros: OpenSuse, (X/K)Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva. They all have their upsides, but quite a few are worse than they are good The biggest problem I found was lack of support and optimisation for the PPC platform. OpenSuse is packed full of features, but very slow, takes a lot of work out of the box,and KDE 4 has some strange graphics glitches and refuses to update to 4.1. Ubuntu is great - everything worked fine, hardware wise, but it is slow, and KDE implementation is shoddy. Fedora and Mandriva were awful - there is nothing good to say about them. I am suprised it took me this long to think of Debian, but I have finally tried it. It's more difficult to get on than the others, and hardware and software takes a little more tinkering, but it is fast and very reliable!! It's also the only distro that has given me the full potential of my battery life (nearly 2hrs as opposed to the 35mins that Ubuntu would give me) Admittedly, KDE 3 is as ugly as sin, and KDE 4 is proving to be a stubborn upgrade.... But I think this will be the Linux distro I'll be sticking with for a while Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BBrown Posted August 31, 2008 Share Posted August 31, 2008 Since Ubuntu is based on Debian archtecture with additional fine tuning and tweaking, I am surprised that you had problems with Ubuntu. Ubuntu Linux is to Debian what Mac 0sx is to BSD, the only difference is the fine tuning and tweaking of those. That fine tuning and tweaking is supposed to make the final product, Mac Osx or really glorified BSD and Ubuntu Linux more user friendly for the masses than the original architectures they were based on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paranoid Marvin Posted August 31, 2008 Author Share Posted August 31, 2008 Since Ubuntu is based on Debian archtecture with additional fine tuning and tweaking, I am surprised that you had problems with Ubuntu. Ubuntu Linux is to Debian what Mac 0sx is to BSD, the only difference is the fine tuning and tweaking of those. That fine tuning and tweaking is supposed to make the final product, Mac Osx or really glorified BSD and Ubuntu Linux more user friendly for the masses than the original architectures they were based on. The problem that I had was that Ubuntu seemed completely slow and bloated. Also, KDE implementation was shoddy. Battery life/power management was also rubbish Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alessandro17 Posted August 31, 2008 Share Posted August 31, 2008 Since Ubuntu is based on Debian archtecture with additional fine tuning and tweaking, I am surprised that you had problems with Ubuntu. It has been underlined so many times by so many people that Ubuntu is not Debian. Once you fork a distro, you have something new and different. I am suprised it took me this long to think of Debian, but I have finally tried it. It's more difficult to get on than the others, and hardware and software takes a little more tinkering, but it is fast and very reliable!!It's also the only distro that has given me the full potential of my battery life (nearly 2hrs as opposed to the 35mins that Ubuntu would give me) Admittedly, KDE 3 is as ugly as sin, and KDE 4 is proving to be a stubborn upgrade.... But I think this will be the Linux distro I'll be sticking with for a while Yeah, Debian is great. That is why it has always been one of my 2 top favourites. Only recently I rediscovered Mandriva (but how old is their PPC edition?) I don't quite understand why you find KDE 3 so ugly. It has been my fav DE since it exists. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BBrown Posted August 31, 2008 Share Posted August 31, 2008 It has been underlined so many times by so many people that Ubuntu is not Debian. Once you fork a distro, you have something new and different. Yeah, Debian is great. That is why it has always been one of my 2 top favourites. Only recently I rediscovered Mandriva (but how old is their PPC edition?) I don't quite understand why you find KDE 3 so ugly. It has been my fav DE since it exists. Lol, like Mac OSX is not really BSD, but a BSD Whore. Anyway, I like Gnome 100% over KDE. I can understand why the guy would have so many problems with KDE, he is not alone. Gnome is just more intuitive. It is like comparing the GUI of Windows XP and Leopard OSX. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alessandro17 Posted September 1, 2008 Share Posted September 1, 2008 Lol, like Mac OSX is not really BSD, but a BSD Whore. You see, you got my point perfectly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~pcwiz Posted September 1, 2008 Share Posted September 1, 2008 Debian Etch is fantastic, I personally don't have much to say about Ubuntu. I've tried versions from 5.04 to 8.04 and I find it neither good nor bad. But I did not find good for daily use. I haven't really gotten much into Ubuntu which is why I'm still undecided. I haven't tinkered with drivers and configuration much, all I've done really is install a few packages using Snyaptic and try out Beryl-Compiz. I have heard that Gentoo Linux works good on PPC, so if you get tired of Debian you can try that. As far as DE's go, I prefer GNOME as its simple and easy, while KDE is sorta a unnaturally toy like version of the Windows UI. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kane Adams Posted September 1, 2008 Share Posted September 1, 2008 I use apt-get as I don't trust Snyaptic. I've have things break with Snyaptic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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