OpenSUSE or something else???

C

Carisma

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 28, 2007
Messages
109
Hello guys!

This is my first official post I think. I am new to Linux (currently only have a couple days experience

I was wondering based off of your guys experience which would be better suited for me.

My rig:

E2140
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS4 Rev. 2.0
XFX PVT84JUDD3 GeForce 8600GT XXX 256M
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB
Seagate Barracuda 250GB x3

Okay, let me start off saying that I installed Ubuntu 7.10 and it was booting up slow and it ran slow once logged in. I tried every fix posted on the internet and nothing worked. I am running wireless (PCI type) and I think that was my issue but I tried the fixes for that and it didn't work. Don't get me wrong I loved it when it would run but it just wasn't very compatible with anything on my current rig.

So I am asking you guys, what would be the next distro you try? I am thinking OpenSUSE (KDE desktop) next.

Thanks in advance.
 
SuSE's not too bad, but I found it to be the slowest distribution I've ever used. If you've still got Ubuntu on there, it might be worth having a look in the System Monitor to see which process is killing it. You may find (as I did) that trackerd (the full-text indexing service) was sucking up most of your CPU and all of the disk I/O - a simple

Code: 
killall trackerd
sudo apt-get remove trackerd

...should fix that. Alternatively, fire up Synaptic and remove the tracker package.

Other than that, your options are Debian (pretty much the same as Ubuntu for the new user, but less user-friendly), Fedora (never liked it myself, mostly because it seemed really unstable - however, lots of people do seem to like it), Mandriva (pretty, relatively user-friendly but I've never tried using a stable release properly) and PCLinuxOS (again, user friendly but I've never tried it).

One other thing - KDE 3.5 seems a bit slower than Gnome and XFCE to me, so if you're after a snappy desktop you might want to consider alternatives. KDE 4.0 is a bit of a bag of nails at the moment, especially if you use 2 monitors (it simply has no graceful way of handling it). It does, on the other hand, work faster.

As you might be able to tell, I prefer the Ubuntu/Debian based distributions - one you might want to try is Linux Mint - it's based on Ubuntu, but looks/feels nicer and has a lot of the media codecs right out of the box (as well as a much better main menu than most of the other distributions). It's definitely worth looking at - I'm using it on my work laptop as we speak, and it's by far the best I've tried so far. The only reason I don't use it on my main desktop is because they don't do a 64-bit version, and that machine really does need the whole 4GB RAM.
 
:LJ: said:
SuSE's not too bad, but I found it to be the slowest distribution I've ever used. If you've still got Ubuntu on there, it might be worth having a look in the System Monitor to see which process is killing it. You may find (as I did) that trackerd (the full-text indexing service) was sucking up most of your CPU and all of the disk I/O - a simple

Code: 
killall trackerd
sudo apt-get remove trackerd
...should fix that. Alternatively, fire up Synaptic and remove the tracker package.
Click to expand...
I will try that and hopefully it works. Thanks for the tip.
:LJ: said:
Other than that, your options are Debian (pretty much the same as Ubuntu for the new user, but less user-friendly), Fedora (never liked it myself, mostly because it seemed really unstable - however, lots of people do seem to like it), Mandriva (pretty, relatively user-friendly but I've never tried using a stable release properly) and PCLinuxOS (again, user friendly but I've never tried it).
Click to expand...
I was thinking of getting SUSE, Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Mint on CDs since I have 4 left and trying them all out to see which one works best for me.
:LJ: said:
One other thing - KDE 3.5 seems a bit slower than Gnome and XFCE to me, so if you're after a snappy desktop you might want to consider alternatives. KDE 4.0 is a bit of a bag of nails at the moment, especially if you use 2 monitors (it simply has no graceful way of handling it). It does, on the other hand, work faster.
Click to expand...
I don't have two monitors currently but I am working on getting two soon. I have been hearing alot that Gnome is starting to get bloated and that if you can get something do it. What distros use XFCE?
:LJ: said:
As you might be able to tell, I prefer the Ubuntu/Debian based distributions - one you might want to try is Linux Mint - it's based on Ubuntu, but looks/feels nicer and has a lot of the media codecs right out of the box (as well as a much better main menu than most of the other distributions). It's definitely worth looking at - I'm using it on my work laptop as we speak, and it's by far the best I've tried so far. The only reason I don't use it on my main desktop is because they don't do a 64-bit version, and that machine really does need the whole 4GB RAM.
Click to expand...
I don't use a 64-bit version on anything because it doesn't matter to me. I am going to upgrade to more RAM here soon. Adding another 2GBs and maybe changing it to G. Skill instead of Corsair. I wish I could find a distro that supported my wireless card out of the box since I think that was giving me my biggest issue.
 
Tracker and trackerd are great! I use them to keep track of my media, I love that PDF ebooks are text-searchable - I just wish that they would add support for CHM files. Anyhow, if you want to keep this process, just make sure you configure it so that it doesn't constantly index your entire system or whatever the default it.
 
Carisma said:
I will try that and hopefully it works. Thanks for the tip.I was thinking of getting SUSE, Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Mint on CDs since I have 4 left and trying them all out to see which one works best for me.I don't have two monitors currently but I am working on getting two soon. I have been hearing alot that Gnome is starting to get bloated and that if you can get something do it. What distros use XFCE?I don't use a 64-bit version on anything because it doesn't matter to me. I am going to upgrade to more RAM here soon. Adding another 2GBs and maybe changing it to G. Skill instead of Corsair. I wish I could find a distro that supported my wireless card out of the box since I think that was giving me my biggest issue.
Click to expand...

On a machine like yours, Gnome will be absolutely fine. However, if you're dead set on using XFCE, don't bother downloading an entire CD for it. Just install Ubuntu, then:

Code: 
sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

Similarly, you can:

Code: 
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

...'cos Ubuntu made it easy by putting all their packages in the same repositories.

Oh, and wireless drivers are a big sticking point in Linux, because of the need to reverse-engineer stuff that the manufacturers will never release. If you take my advice, you'll just nip on eBay and grab yourself a wireless-ethernet bridge for about £25 (a lot of access points do it too - the Speedtouch 180 is what I use, and I wouldn't swap it for anything), which means you can just use your ethernet port. It also results in less CPU usage and less for your machine to deal with.

Good luck - it's worth sticking with, really. I dumped Windows and everything it brings with it just over 18 months ago, and I haven't looked back since.
 
:LJ: said:
Good luck - it's worth sticking with, really. I dumped Windows and everything it brings with it just over 18 months ago, and I haven't looked back since.
Click to expand...

Totally agreed - ever since I installed linux five weeks ago I can't imagine what I have missed all those years using windows - I have not looked back and I will never ever look back now. Linux is where it's at.
 
:LJ: said:
On a machine like yours, Gnome will be absolutely fine. However, if you're dead set on using XFCE, don't bother downloading an entire CD for it. Just install Ubuntu, then:

Code: 
sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop
Similarly, you can:

Code: 
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
...'cos Ubuntu made it easy by putting all their packages in the same repositories.

Oh, and wireless drivers are a big sticking point in Linux, because of the need to reverse-engineer stuff that the manufacturers will never release. If you take my advice, you'll just nip on eBay and grab yourself a wireless-ethernet bridge for about £25 (a lot of access points do it too - the Speedtouch 180 is what I use, and I wouldn't swap it for anything), which means you can just use your ethernet port. It also results in less CPU usage and less for your machine to deal with.

Good luck - it's worth sticking with, really. I dumped Windows and everything it brings with it just over 18 months ago, and I haven't looked back since.
Click to expand...
Thanks man I think I found a good wireless bridge to use from Dlink (we don't have stormtech over here in the states). I just ordered it and I am thinking about doing a fresh install on a spare 40gb first to see how it performs.

I would like the XFCE interface if it is better than Gnome. I have been hearing that Gnome is starting to get bloated.
 
try out using Debian instead of Ubuntu for your first install. Ubuntu really teaches you nothing about what goes on underneath.... debian is very similar, but at least the user has to do *some* manual setup by themselves, and if anything, even this slight amount of experience will help ease them into using the command line and various unix tools.

i'm pretty familiar with linux these days... and I started with ubuntu around mid 2006.... its really not the best for someone looking to stay in a linux world... maybe you can transition to it after you've done some time on other distros, but you gotta get your hands dirty first. debian is a step... gentoo is a journey...

my journey ended up being FreeBSD, and I couldnt be happier.... if you want to get good, i'd say to read the FreeBSD/Gentoo/Slackware handbooks back to back a few times
 
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