[Lancaster] Freespire impressions

[Ken Walton]

On 9/2/06, John Scott <john at raystorm.co.uk> wrote:
> That is interesting. I am running an IBM T22 notebook, and I got a
> decent X server first time around, also it correctly configured my dual
> boot. The only issue I had when installing, was a known problem with
> partitioning some disks, where the partitioner would not let me resize
> my disk. I used a suse install disk in rescue mode to do the
> partitioning, and everything else was cool. I am not using wifi yet, so
> will feed back on that when I try it.

Well, I had the xserver problem in Ubuntu too (though not in
FreeSpire). My PCs a HP Brio, but it's got a Matrox card in out of a
very old IBM tower system, because it was better than the inbuilt
card.

Wifi seems to be better than it used to be, with more drivers
available. But USB wifi sticks still seem to be a major stumbling
block. If you're getting wifi for your laptop, and it isn't built in,
go for a PCMCIA card. Edimax seem to be a good brand for Linux
compatibility. The problem I always have is that I'm on a house
network set up by my landlady, and I have to use WEP key 2; and linux
designers just don't seem to think people do such a thing, so I
usually end up having to edit the config files manually.

The next biggie to test with Mepis is setting up a VPN. It's nice to
be able to connect to the university network from home, but it was a
steep learning curve. In Ubuntu, and SUSE 9, I had to install all the
software myself, persuade it to run, and work out the settings. This
seems a bit extreme, since its a standard feature in Windows.
FreeSpire had VPN setup built in, which was a nice surprise.
>
> My personal preference is Suse, but on this hardware, it just doesnt run
> well. When I get more memory, the first thing I am going to do is
> install Suse 10.1 (or 10.2 if its released by then) as my primary
> operating system.

Yes, I found it too slow when I had a Thinkpad T21. Ubuntu runs lovely
on my laptop, though it's screen died, so nowadays it's just used with
a big monitor as a DVD player.

I'll play with Mepis for a week or two, see what I think, and maybe
write a little report on that too! :-)

-- 
Ken Walton