For the past week or so I've been trying to brush up on my Linux skills and refresh myself on a few things. To be honest, I'd forgotten how much I used to enjoy using Linux and most of the time it's been great.
But my word, is the general desktop experience really this bad, or is it just me?
I'm using Ubuntu (because it's the obvious friendly choice) and the 12.04 LTS release because I don't need or want anything fancy. I just want it to work. So far, I've been disappointed.
This is a fresh, fully patched 12.04 install with only the odd bit of software installed from the Ubuntu repo. I didn't like gnome 3 so I switched to v2, and then eventually xfce because it runs better on the laptop I'm using. That's the most drastic change I've made to put my usage into context.
As part of the work I'm doing I need to hop on the web and take some notes in a word processor, but I'm increasingly finding even this basic scenario a chore.
For starters, the WiFi is flaky and keeps dropping out. Now I know this and wireless networking in general used to be a nightmare. Believe me, I've been there replacing network adapters with ones that are known to be supported. I'm slightly disappointed it still seems to be an issue but to be honest I'm just glad it's sort of working. I can live with keep reconnecting.
What I can't live with are applications crashing and taking my work with them. Abiword for example decided to quit randomly last night and I lost about half a page of notes. I wasn't about to be caught with my pants down again so I reduced the auto save interval down to 1 minute. Lo and behold it crashed again later on.
So I ended up switching to Libre office which, touch wood, hasn't crashed on me so far. But the spell checker doesn't work. And that's kind of the crux of my point; there's always SOMETHING.
Now I know what you might be thinking - hardware, right? Disk comes up clean and the memory completes multiple memtest passes. I've even run debsums to check the package integrity. All fine.
I guess my question is, is this normal? Because I can't bring myself to believe that somebody using Linux as their day-to-day OS would put up with this. I know some will suffer for their cause but this would surely test the patience of even the biggest advocate.
Am I alone in this? Was my logic flawed and I chose the wrong distro?
But my word, is the general desktop experience really this bad, or is it just me?
I'm using Ubuntu (because it's the obvious friendly choice) and the 12.04 LTS release because I don't need or want anything fancy. I just want it to work. So far, I've been disappointed.
This is a fresh, fully patched 12.04 install with only the odd bit of software installed from the Ubuntu repo. I didn't like gnome 3 so I switched to v2, and then eventually xfce because it runs better on the laptop I'm using. That's the most drastic change I've made to put my usage into context.
As part of the work I'm doing I need to hop on the web and take some notes in a word processor, but I'm increasingly finding even this basic scenario a chore.
For starters, the WiFi is flaky and keeps dropping out. Now I know this and wireless networking in general used to be a nightmare. Believe me, I've been there replacing network adapters with ones that are known to be supported. I'm slightly disappointed it still seems to be an issue but to be honest I'm just glad it's sort of working. I can live with keep reconnecting.
What I can't live with are applications crashing and taking my work with them. Abiword for example decided to quit randomly last night and I lost about half a page of notes. I wasn't about to be caught with my pants down again so I reduced the auto save interval down to 1 minute. Lo and behold it crashed again later on.
So I ended up switching to Libre office which, touch wood, hasn't crashed on me so far. But the spell checker doesn't work. And that's kind of the crux of my point; there's always SOMETHING.
Now I know what you might be thinking - hardware, right? Disk comes up clean and the memory completes multiple memtest passes. I've even run debsums to check the package integrity. All fine.
I guess my question is, is this normal? Because I can't bring myself to believe that somebody using Linux as their day-to-day OS would put up with this. I know some will suffer for their cause but this would surely test the patience of even the biggest advocate.
Am I alone in this? Was my logic flawed and I chose the wrong distro?
- and he's not managed to break it yet, despite quite a lot of trying...
)