[Lancaster] Observations on Installing and setting up Debian, Ubuntu, and SUSE on a Thinkpad T21:

[Ken Hough]

Following on from some comments that I made earlier:

Debian Etch also turned out to be a problem on my laptop! Exactly the
same hangup occured during bootup as with Debian Lenny. That jogged my
memory.

When I first installed Ubuntu v 7.04 on my Thinkpad T21 laptop, I got
unpredictable behaviour during bootup, sometimes hanging up. A look
around the Internet showed that this was a known problem with some
laptop PCs, including the Thinkpad T21. The reason is that the graphics
card doesn't fully anounce it's hardware spec. The solution is to hack
the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and add the missing details, which I had to
do back when I was using Ubuntu v7.04.

I haven't confirmed this, but I bet it's the same problem with Debian
Etch and Debian Lenny. Ubuntu v8.04 seems to be OK in this respect.

After these hangups and the failure of Debian Lenny to find and
configure my sound card, I've decided not to bother any more with
Debian. As I mentioned at the Pub on Monday, I found Ubuntu to exhibit a
few 'wobblies' as well, so I'm not going to continue with Ubuntu.

I've gone back to SUSE. In fact to SUSE v10.3 which I've used previously
on this laptop and have found to be rock solid. Compared with Debian and
Ubuntu, installation was a breeze. Unlike with Debian, the installer
isn't from the stone age (I mean the GUI!), and it works well. The
partitioning stage is far neater on SUSE, and so far everything works
without having to hack anything, including the sound system! I'm playing
a CD on it presently.

I understand that guys who are content to have to hack a system to make
it work properly (real Man's work  :-) ), might like Debian. I believe
that if a distro sets out to install Linux, then by now one should be
able to expect it to do the job properly. For me Debian doesn't seem to
have anything to offer that SUSE can't provide.

I've often heard the argument that Debian installs a smaller system than
other distros. Well, during an attempt to install Debian, I noted that
817 packages (I think that's correct) were to be installed. SUSE
installed 840 something packages. Not an enormous difference!

I guess this will get the Debian hacks going, but I thought that these
observations might be of general interest.

Ken Hough


Ken Hough wrote:
>David Smith wrote:
>  
>>Ken,
>>
>>Sounds like fun!
>>    
>
>Umm! In a masochistic sort of way.  :-)
>
>I've just hit a wall with Debian Lenny. I couldn't get sound to work.
>Judging by various postings, I'm not alone. Also after allowing updates
>to be installed, the system hung up during booting with no info on screen.
>
>As a result, I'm presently installing Debian Etch (supposedly stable).
>
>  
>>Have to admit I don't think it will be too long before I take Ubuntu
>>off the laptop I had with me yesterday and just stick Debian on it -
>>as mentioned yesterday, I stuck straight Ubuntu on it in the meantime
>>for ease of use but, although it's working fine so far, I've got a
>>feeling it will get slow pretty quick if I'm not careful... we'll see
>>how it goes though!
>>
>>I know what you mean about the graphical installer though... whilst
>>it's a huge leap forward for Debian, it's still a lot behind the
>>'standard' of Graphical Installer offered by the other distros out
>>there atm, such as SuSE and Mandriva etc. Guess it will stay that way
>>for a while though!
>>    
>
>I've met quite a few Debian users who seem to believe that this hair
>shirt stuff is something to admire.  ;-)
>
>  
>>Hope it works out better than Ubuntu!
>>    
>
>I hope. Well, I can aslways go back to SUSE.   :-)
>
>
>Ken
>  
>>    
>>>David Smith wrote:
>>>      
>>>>Thanks for that Ken - interesting stuff!
>>>>
>>>>I'm pretty sure when I got the package I have now that it was just a
>>>>*.tar.gz and then a case of running the shell script to start it all
>>>>up. If you want me to repackage what I have here for you to try out
>>>>(without the demo time limitations) then no problem - it may be that
>>>>it's functional enough at an earlier version stage for you!
>>>>
>>>>Best,
>>>>
>>>>Dave
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>Thanks for kind the offer Dave, but I'll stick with what is likely to be
>>>an ongoing option.
>>>
>>>I said last night that I was going to take Ubuntu/Kubuntu off my
>>>Thinkpad. Well I've done it, but before installing SUSE 11, I thought
>>>that I'd give Debian 5.0 (Lenny) a run. It installed OK and I'm
>>>presently downloading/installing KDE. No problems so far.
>>>
>>>I did find the graphic installation interface rather primitive in
>>>comparison to what I'm used to. The partitioner interface was
>>>particularly so. I use a non-standard HD partitioning so as to avoid
>>>possible problems on a dual booting system with Microsoft OSes, so had
>>>to set this up manually. All did eventually seem to go OK.
>>>
>>>Watch this space.
>>>
>>>Ken Hough
>>>
>>> 
>>>      
>>    
>
>
>