Hey all. I finally snapped today after running Fedora Core 2, then 3, and now 4. I've also tried Mandrake, and the earlier Red Hat variants. I am using it on an older laptop and the problem is the driver support for DRI and 3d acceleration was non existent. SO, after searching for more time than I would have ever put into a solution for a Windows problem, I gave up. I am in the middle of installing Ubuntu and was wondering what the general opinions are? As far as I can tell it is Debian based so I am not familiar with the innerworkings of that part yet. Tried it because the forums show promise of an answer for my video problem. Well that is enough rambling. Is Ubuntu a solid distro? (mainly to use for internet/email/development) Thanks for any replies.

I installed Ubuntu a few weeks ago, and I'm extremely happy with it. I've been a big Debian fan for a while-- my only complaint was that it takes (or at least it would take me) more than a decent amount of time to set everything up the way I like it.

With Ubuntu, the installer basically took care of everything, customization was nice and easy afterwards, and I still get to whore the hell out of apt when it's all over. Brilliant.

[edit]On that note, Ubuntu's apt archives are not quite as... developed as Debian's. On occasion I have to go surfing around and compile from source where I usually didn't have to (mplayer, for instance). It's not really a big deal, but something I'm not totally accustomed to. D;

[edit again]Oh, and I've been developing OpenGL apps on this laptop without any problems so far. Just grabbed the mesa libraries and everything's been great since.

YES! Finally I have 3d acceleration on Linux. Still a lot of work but a hell of a lot easier than with the other distro's I tried. Ubuntu has a new fan [cool]

I'm on ubuntu right now on my laptop and I love it. My only problem is that I chowned /etc by accident. So if anyone is on ubuntu right now and could provide me with the correct chmod and owns dump I'd be greatly happy. PM it to me.

For what it's worth I switched from Suse to Ubuntu and definitely prefer it.

Now if only I could figure out how to turn off the *loud and long* startup sound... The obvious thing didn't work. I don't have that machine in front of me so I can't say what I thought the obvious thing was.

Quote: Now if only I could figure out how to turn off the *loud and long* startup sound... The obvious thing didn't work. I don't have that machine in front of me so I can't say what I thought the obvious thing was.

At a guess: Go to System->Preferences->Sound
Look under the "Sound Events" tab for the "Log in" event. If that don't work, file a bug

Quote: On that note, Ubuntu's apt archives are not quite as... developed as Debian's. On occasion I have to go surfing around and compile from source where I usually didn't have to (mplayer, for instance). It's not really a big deal, but something I'm not totally accustomed to. D;

Try enabling the Universe repositories (either in Synaptic or by adding the lines:
deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary universe
deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary universe
to your /etc/apt/sources.list file. iirc, these lines should already be there but commented out). Definitely got mplayer (3 different versions!) and a load of other "non-core" packages.