[ltp] Beginner: best starter config

[Charles E. "Rick" Taylor, IV]

On Tue, 2005-07-12 at 13:30 -0400, jgidi@umd.umich.edu wrote:
> I'll add another voice to the chorus for Ubuntu. It's free/Free, very stable,
> easy to use, and has a great community surrounding it. You're almost sure to
> have everything working perfectly right off the bat, with the possible
> (probable?) exception of power management. You'll probably want to disable ACPI
> and use APM for power management. In my experience on my former T20, ACPI never
> quite worked right, but APM was flawless.
> 

On vintage Thinkpads, APM usually works well.  I've seen problems with
APM vs. the 2.6.x series kernels in Ubuntu, though - specifically on my
old 570E.  ACPI *almost* worked, though. :)

There's also an issue with the ltmodem drivers provided on the CD not
working with the default kernel, but there's a quick solution for this
(google ltmodem and Ubuntu.  I *think* it works if you pass
"pci=routeirq" to the kernel at boot time.  The problem would show as
the modem never being able to actually dial out, even though it was
recognized.

Ubuntu supports software suspend out-of-box, though, so it's definitely
a good choice if you want to use hibernate without a hibernation
partition.  You will probably have to toy with it to get it working
reliably, though.  Some modules just do not like hibernation.

Right now, I'm using Fedora Core 3 on all my laptops (Thinkpad and non-
Thinkpad alike) because I already have the software I need compiled for
Redhat-based systems, plus I know how to actually set up printing and
networking the way I want it with Fedora.  If I were starting from
scratch, though, I'd probably use Ubuntu.

(Why not Fedora Core 4?  The words "broken" and "unstable" come to
mind.)

The GUI tools for setting up networks and printers don't seem quite as
robust for Ubuntu as they do for Fedora, but that might at least
partially be because I am more familiar with Fedora's tools than with
Ubuntu's.

> I've also used Fedora 2 and 3, haven't tried 4 yet. The installer is
> nicer/prettier than Ubuntu's, but I experienced more flakiness and overall it
> was a heavier/slower distro than Ubuntu. Fedora comes on 4 CDs or one DVD,
> while Ubuntu fits on one CD. 

As I've been repeatedly told on the Fedora list, you need only two of
those CDs for a "desktop" install.  Realistically, you need three of
them, since you will probably want developer tools around even if you
aren't a developer - since you can only get some programs as source.

For Ubuntu, do not install unless you are near a fast Internet
connection.  You will probably want to do some heavy downloading after
the base install.  (This is only a *little( less true for Fedora.)

Having said that, Ubuntu's one-CD install is pretty much as useful as
FC's two-CD install.

-- 
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*  Charles E. "Rick" Taylor, IV <tomalek@mindspring.com>
*  Chemistry instructor / Mad scientist / Linux enthusiast!
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*  Web: http://home.mindspring.com/~charletiv/
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