Teleidoscope

Wed, Oct 18, 2006

Linux Distributions

Posted at 8:58 pm MDT to Technology

I now have 5 operating systems loaded on my laptop, and thanks to the wonders of VMWare I can run them in various combinations.

My host system is SuSE 10.0 with KDE upgraded to 3.5

I have a Windows XP Pro installation that I need for work. I don't let it talk to the network directly, and don't boot it very often. I let it do one round of security updates when I first set it up, and I should probably figure out how to download Microsoft upgrades using Linux and safe browsers. So I can keep it isolated.

I have a live-disk image of hikarunix, which is a little Linux distribution devoted to the game of Go.

I have just loaded Fedora Core 5 and the current Kubuntu from the live CD. Fedora is familiar and sort of comfortable to administer -- I used Fedora 4 on my previous laptop. But it looks like they have removed even more of the good KDE stuff, and I think SuSE has spoiled me

I don't think I'm the target market for Kubuntu: I was trained on UNIX internals and the C programming language in AT&T inhouse training classes in the late 80s. A UNIX-ish install that doesn't require creating a root password is just perverse. And the current installation feels sort of light-weight and Microsofty. I'm downloading the DVD distribution now, to see if I can spec a more solid-feeling configuration.

I hope openSuSE keeps solid KDE support, and fixes the admin problems from 10.1. I think I've gotten spoiled. It would be nice if it turned out like the early Star Trek movies, where the even numbered ones were the good ones.

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