[SWLUG] Re: Starting with Linux

[Steve Anderson]

Adam Rykala wrote:

> Xandros and Linspire are largely 
> one click, I've heard glowing respect for Ubuntu and Knoppis as well, 
> particularly with hardware detection....

Ubuntu is excellent in that respect. Everything just worked. What it 
doesn't do though is install the servers you'd expect (if you've been 
through it all before) so you get no WWW, FTP, SSH or SMB out the 
proverbial box.

Also, my cautionary tale. The standard Ubuntu APT repository hasn't got 
nearly as much as the Debian one - they take a snap of it every six 
months and support that as well, so the versions go out of sync. I found 
myself needing something that I knew was in Debian's APT (having 
installed it at work) so I added the repository to sources.list and 
retrieved and installed it, and all was good. Then I forgot about it. 
When I thought, "Oooh, I should do a dist-upgrade" the Debian source was 
still there and it got masses of stuff from that, all of which was out 
of step with the Ubuntu install... cue dependency hell on a scale unlike 
any other. I eventually battled through it, but now have a bizarre 
hybrid Ubuntu/Debian system that works just enough for me to burn Fedora 
Core 3 CDs to try before deciding whether to go back to Debian properly 
again.

Um, that's it.

Steve