Jacking in Jaunty

theheyes

theheyes

theheyes

Soldato
Joined
17 Jan 2007
Posts
8,944
Location
Manchester
Hi there folks,

Over the past few weeks I've finally ended many years of dipping my toe into Linux by diving straight in and forcing myself to use it as my main operating system. Truth be told, it's been a mixed bag. The good news is there have been many, many more positives than negatives. The bad news is the negatives have been critical. For an OS that prides itself on stability last night was a total system freeze too far. There is a part of me that would like to get to the bottom of the problem, but a larger part that wants an easier life.

So, I'd like some recommendations for an alternative to Ubuntu Jaunty. I use my PC mainly for web browsing, listening to music, watching videos and word processing. I have an 8800GT but I'm not a gamer. However I do like the fancy desktop effects and watch HD video, so I'd like to use a decent driver.

The number 1 priority is stability, I don't want to be on the bleeding edge. In fact I've been looking at the Ubuntu LTS release. So far I've been looking at:

  • Ubuntu 8.04
  • Debian
  • OpenSUSE
  • CentOS
  • Fedora 10 (soon to be 11)
  • Linux Mint

Could anyone offer any insight or suggestions on where to start? I'm going to buy a new hard drive this weekend so I can multiple boot a couple and try them out properly. A live cd is great but a far cry from actually living with it.

Cheers guys, I know it's basically just another "which distro" thread but I'd like to hear what you think.
 
theheyes said:
However I do like the fancy desktop effects and watch HD video, so I'd like to use a decent driver.
Click to expand...
What do you mean? The nVidia driver (download from their website) works fine with any distribution you listed there - you should have no problems?
 
Jaunty is flaky. Ubuntu 8.04 and Debian 5 are better.

At the end of the day if you don't have the inclination or time to work out what went wrong, stick with Windows. Yes, Linux is great and all that but there are reasons it's only a niche on the desktop. When your hardware is supported and some idiot doesn't commit fatal bugs into the kernel version you're using then it's all fine.

However, there is no easy life until you have gained a rough knowledge of how it works and what you need to do to make it work.
This takes time or a lot of leaning on people to help you out.

If you do want to stick at it then try a distribution that is indeed stable if that's your main priority. 'The latest and greatest' of anything is rarely the most stable.
 
Last edited:
For sheer stability, Debian is the way. The release cycle really is poor, though, but if it seriously is nothing more than basic tasks you're doing, I can't say it'll be *that much* of an issue.

Fedora is also very solid, but I personally don't like RPMs.
 
yashiro said:
At the end of the day if you don't have the inclination or time to work out what went wrong, stick with Windows.
Click to expand...

This is absolute rubbish. You're making Linux sound elitist, when it's not.

I use both Windows and Linux every day. For the past few days my Windows box has been fatally crashing - does that mean I should give it up completely because I'm not in a position to reverse engineer the C to find out what went wrong? Of course not.

The fact that with Linux you do have the opportunity to look at the source, to work out what went wrong if you're so inclined, is one of Linux's strengths.

Thousands of people who use Linux have never heard of the kernel, don't know what X window manager they're using, have no understanding of the open source structure - but they still get on perfectly well with Linux.

yashiro said:
However, there is no easy life until you have gained a rough knowledge of how it works and what you need to do to make it work.
This takes time or a lot of leaning on people to help you out.
Click to expand...

Again, way to make it sound like an eternal struggle using Linux. You gain a rough knowledge of Linux within a week or so, the same as if somebody was introduced to Windows for the first time.

And a lot of leaning on people? Yes, you could put a horses head in their bed. Alternatively, you could just ask nicely on any number of forums and have a fix within the day in most cases.
 
It's not rubbish at all, for some people Linux is just too much hassle and they don't wish to learn or adapt. There's no shame in not using Linux if it doesn't work on your machine and you don't have the will to resolve it.

Like I said, if the OP wishes to change and wants stability then try Debian, or even CentOS as someone else mentioned. Although Ubuntu 8.04 might be worth a try first so you're on the same distro as most of today's Linux fans.
 
try them all.
Click to expand...

I probably will eventually, but with many distros out there I just wanted to narrow down the shortlist a little. 9.04 took a few days to eventually bum out after running fine so it could be a lengthy process.

with jaunty did you use ext4?
Click to expand...

Nope, ext3. I figured it had been around long enough to be a safe bet. People on the Ubuntu forums were pointing at ext4 and dodgy network and video drivers as possible causes of freezing.

What do you mean? The nVidia driver (download from their website) works fine with any distribution you listed there - you should have no problems?
Click to expand...

That's good to know - I just added that so I didn't get recommended a distro that shied away from proprietary drivers - still a newbie!

At the end of the day if you don't have the inclination or time to work out what went wrong, stick with Windows...

However, there is no easy life until you have gained a rough knowledge of how it works and what you need to do to make it work. This takes time or a lot of leaning on people to help you out.
Click to expand...

I've been working with Windows and OSX for years, and now I'd like to explore Linux a little. I do like to tinker and get to the bottom of problems in Windows and OSX, but with Linux I'd like to try and get used to it and comfortable first - without it crashing most days. Once I've worked with it for a while, then I'll be more inclined to get stuck in. Most people would say you learn through fixing things, and I agree, but an all-out lock up that no one seems to be able to get to the bottom of is a bit more than I can chew at this precise moment in time. :o

Thanks for all your input. I'm not too bothered about release cycles so long as I get security updates. I might give Debian and 8.04 a go over the weekend if I get my new hard drive.

Cheers. :)
 
I upgraded to 9.04 from 8.10 on my old laptop and it kept freezing/crashing etc, I've got back down to ubuntu 8.04 and it's working brilliant
 
theheyes said:
So, I'd like some recommendations for an alternative to Ubuntu Jaunty. I use my PC mainly for web browsing, listening to music, watching videos and word processing. I have an 8800GT but I'm not a gamer. However I do like the fancy desktop effects and watch HD video, so I'd like to use a decent driver.
Click to expand...

Linux-Mint 6 which is based Ubuntu 8.10 (aka Intrepid) is a nice alternative to Jaunty. It is slightly less hassle than Ubuntu for the newer Linux user as you don't have to fart about so much with Codec install.

Jaunty worked really well (I mean really well!!) for me on my sister's laptop (Nvidia 9500M GPU) but on my desktop the dropping for ATI support for cards <2xxx is already causing headaches... I installed the newest (at the time) ATI driver, via Envy, for my X1950 Pro (512) and got X crash on reboot (due I believe to the X-server 1.6 in Jaunty being incompatible with the older 8.xx series Catalyst versions).

Don't forget Jaunty is bleeding edge and the proprietary drivers are still being tweaked for it.

I generally use the package "Envy" to pull in proprietary drivers for both Nvidia and ATI cards and it does a good job of this. Did a spiffing job for that 9500M card. I had HL2 working, via Wine, with full HDR DX9.0c on the Jaunty beta!

I believe that desk-top effects (which access the GPU e.g. Compiz Fusion) can sometimes interfere with video playback if you are trying to use GPU accelerated video. But usually this just manifests as stuttering and dropped frames..

SMplayer seems to do a good job of HD video playback - and actually has a half decent interface compared to most GNU media players!!

Also I do tend to try out distros now in a virtual machine before actually installing them for real. Might help you out in your search. (OK you can't test HD playback, etc.)

Bob
 
To be honest I didn't find the codec installs too bad in Ubuntu - in most cases they were automatically suggested and ready to download which was great.

I had a similar problem with ati drivers on another PC I was trying Jaunty on with a 4850 - that was a nice introduction to using the recovery console ;)

I think my first mistake was not considering Jaunty 'bleeding edge'. I thought it would be a safe bet regardless (Ubuntu > newbies) when perhaps I should have gone with a more mature release to start with.

I will look into Envy. I've also downloaded VirtualBox (which is really nice actually) so I can check out the other distros but the proof really is in the pudding. I've had things working fine in VMs and Live CDs that seems to break when on bare metal.

Cheers.
 
I'm having similar problems to the OP now, my Jaunty install has been crashing on me frequently enough to force me back to Vista :O

Anyone used Sabayon? Saw it a while back and it looked nice, but not sure whether to give it a go, or just switch to good old Mint...
 
Are there issues with Jaunty? I've installed it on four machines now, and with the exception of one, in which the soundcard wasn't detected correctly, they've all upgraded flawlessly and have been completely stable. Not a single crash in fact.

However, if it's not working for you, then you may as well try a previous release in which more bugs will have been squashed, or go for LTS. I've got Debian Lenny on another machine, which is also very good and have recently installed an OpenSuse VM which was not bad.
 
It actually was working until recently; I'm tempted to try a clean install of it rather than going down another route.

That said I've stuck Crunchbang on my Eee recently and it's ace, so I may go with that...
 
Well, I'm on 8.10. I was going to go with 8.04 but I burned the wrong image to my last disc. :o:D Oh well its still got life in it.

Fingers crossed for this coming week. Been ok so far although unfortunately I've had to disable the compiz effects. With them enabled, even the medium setting, video suffered with really bad tearing which is weird. Disappointing but I can live with it. :rolleyes:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom