I’ve gone through a stack of linux OSes since last writing about the lack of chrome; two days later, a chrome alpha appeared. Given that chrome is on the horizon, I decided to take a look at linux again in earnest. The distros I tried are: arch, vector linux, ubuntu 9.04, xubuntu 9.04 and debian lenny 5.01.
I was pleasantly surprised by Debian, and I’m going to stick with it. Debian is the most commonly used linux distro; it’s also one of the most esoteric if only because of their unfailing principles when it comes to upholding GNU (the licensing agreement of linux / open source). One big sticking point is not allowing software that isn’t explicitly free (as in beer and thought). So, no flash, no libdvdcss, and especially no Firefox.
Interesting, that battle: firefox is opensource, but the icons were not. Mozilla, for whatever reason, didn’t license the icons properly so for Debian users, they get ‘iceweasel’. It’s the same source code, but different name and icons.
Anyway, the out of box experience is nowhere near Ubuntu at all (by the way, if you’re looking to not use Windows, I can’t recommend it any higher. I’m installing a second HD in my desktop computer for Ubuntu). I’ve spent the last two days researching and installing various firmwares and what not.
The end result: a surprisingly well designed OS that caters explicitly to me. Debian devs made no choices for me, so I had to push through and figure out what I wanted in a system. And I have it. And there’s no overhead, so the fans stay silent.
That was the big thing with the other distros: they worked fine, but they made the fan turn on constantly. The same with windows, but thanks to nLite and speedswitchxp, that’s problem is manageable.
I’m using the LXDE window manager. It’s quite pretty, also very fast. Xfce is installed as well, just because I’m familiar with it.
I’m glad I gave Debian a go. I was planning to end my searches after vector linux’s failings – it is an amazing distro based on slackware, the oldest and absolute purest distro, but slackware / vector really require an understanding of linux that I simply don’t have. That’s not to say I won’t someday – that’s part of the whole basement remodeling.
Anyway, back to that project, unfortunately.
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