[sclug] Alternative to Ubuntu

[Alex Butcher]

On Sun, 4 Oct 2009, Neil Haughton wrote:

> I was wondering if anyone has a personal recommendation for an alternative
> to Ubuntu for a desktop OS. I'm currently using Jaunty (9.04) and it is
> beset with niggling problems, viz
>
> My CD writer isn't recognised.

Very surprising. When you say "isn't recognised", do you mean it doesn't
show up in the system at all, or it's not recognised as a write-capable
device?

What does

 	ls -Al /dev/sr? /dev/cd*

show?

> The printer doesn't start until I reboot, and then after clearing the print
> queue it stops again. Result = I have to reboot every time I want to print
> something (all these reboots - is Ubuntu trying to be Windows, or what? :-)
> )
> 5 times out of 10 it won't do a clean shutdown.

Pass; I'm not a Debian/Ubuntu user and their default printing setup seems to
be built and configured quite differently to the Red Hat/Fedora style.

As for F11 features:

> Anyway, what I want is a nice (pref. Gnome based) distro that doesn't have
> the above issues. Someone said Fedora 11, but I am open to suggestions. I do
> a lot of photography so any distro I use must support the nvidia proprietary
> drivers

# rpm -qa \*nvidia\*
kmod-nvidia-2.6.30.5-43.fc11.x86_64-185.18.36-1.fc11.1.x86_64
kmod-nvidia-185.18.36-1.fc11.2.x86_64
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-185.18.36-1.fc11.x86_64
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs-185.18.36-1.fc11.x86_64
kmod-nvidia-2.6.29.6-217.2.8.fc11.x86_64-185.18.31-1.fc11.5.ajb1.x86_64
kmod-nvidia-2.6.30.8-64.fc11.x86_64-185.18.36-1.fc11.2.x86_64
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs-185.18.36-1.fc11.i586

>From the 'RPM Fusion' repo.

>, the usual browser

# rpm -qa chromium\* opera\* firefox\*
firefox-3.5.3-1.fc11.x86_64
chromium-4.0.220.0-0.1.20090930svn27599.fc11.x86_64
opera-10.00-4402.gcc4.shared.qt3.x86_64

> and other codecs

# rpm -qa xmms-mp3
xmms-mp3-1.2.11-3.20071117cvs.fc11.x86_64

Again, from RPM Fusion. Proprietary Windows codecs (e.g. for mplayer) are a
manual install.

>, offer decent audio rip and play
> apps

# rpm -qa banshee rhythmbox xmms sound-juicer grip morituri
rhythmbox-0.12.3-1.fc11.x86_64
xmms-1.2.11-7.20071117cvs.fc11.x86_64
sound-juicer-2.26.1-4.fc11.x86_64
grip-3.3.1-1.fc11.ajb1.x86_64
morituri-0.1.0-1.fc11.noarch
banshee-1.4.3-3.fc11.x86_64

> plus dcraw, UFRaw

# rpm -qa ufraw\* dcraw\*
ufraw-cinepaint-0.15-2.fc11.x86_64
ufraw-gimp-0.15-2.fc11.x86_64
ufraw-common-0.15-2.fc11.x86_64
ufraw-0.15-2.fc11.x86_64
dcraw-8.96-1.fc11.x86_64

> and Gimp 2.6

# rpm -qa gimp
gimp-2.6.7-2.fc11.x86_64

> in the repositories, and do a good job

Bleh! If you insist...

> with wireless networking (using ndiswrapper).

# yum list available \*ndis\*
[...]
Available Packages
akmod-ndiswrapper.x86_64          1.54-4.fc11.8           rpmfusion-free 
kmod-ndiswrapper.x86_64           1.54-4.fc11.18
rpmfusion-free-updates
kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.29.4-167.fc11.x86_64.x86_64
                                   1.54-4.fc11.8           rpmfusion-free 
kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.29.5-191.fc11.x86_64.x86_64
                                   1.54-4.fc11.9
rpmfusion-free-updates
kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.29.6-213.fc11.x86_64.x86_64
                                   1.54-4.fc11.10
rpmfusion-free-updates
kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.29.6-217.2.16.fc11.x86_64.x86_64
                                   1.54-4.fc11.16
rpmfusion-free-updates
kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.29.6-217.2.3.fc11.x86_64.x86_64
                                   1.54-4.fc11.11
rpmfusion-free-updates
kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.29.6-217.2.6.fc11.x86_64.x86_64
                                   1.54-4.fc11.12
rpmfusion-free-updates
kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.29.6-217.2.7.fc11.x86_64.x86_64
                                   1.54-4.fc11.13
rpmfusion-free-updates
kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.29.6-217.2.8.fc11.x86_64.x86_64
                                   1.54-4.fc11.14
rpmfusion-free-updates
kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.30.5-32.fc11.x86_64.x86_64
                                   1.54-4.fc11.15
rpmfusion-free-updates
kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.30.5-43.fc11.x86_64.x86_64
                                   1.54-4.fc11.17
rpmfusion-free-updates
kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.30.8-64.fc11.x86_64.x86_64
                                   1.54-4.fc11.18
rpmfusion-free-updates
ndiswrapper.x86_64                1.54-2.fc11             rpmfusion-free

> Can anyone show me the way forward?
> TIA
> Neil.

Best Regards,
Alex

P.S. please trim what you quote to the bits that are relevant. Ta!