Because this machine is so new, I realize it will take awhile for my favorite Linux distro to catch up (CentOS). So I use what does work, and it gives me a chance to review other stuff I might not normally touch.
I just finished a couple of weeks with Ubuntu 9.04. It works okay, and there are some nifty tricks, and all. It did install pretty nicely. Still, at times I would get an unexplained X-server lockup. I thought it was caused by Opera, but when I quit using Opera altogether, I still got the freeze. I’d be typing and suddenly the whole thing would freeze up totally — no keyboard, no mouse, nothing. I’d have to do a hard reboot because there was no other access to the system. I can’t have that sort of thing happen just because I’m typing. Since it didn’t happen under other distros, I concluded it’s something in the way Ubuntu implements the drivers and such.
So right now I’m testing openSUSE 11.2-RC1. It’s a good bit better than 11.1, but right now the repos are in flux, so updates and just finding extra packages is a pain. It’s tolerable, but things could be better. I’m waiting for stuff to finalize in two weeks, and I’ll probably keep it. So long as there aren’t any major show-stoppers like that X-server freeze business.
Frankly, I don’t like jumping around from distro to distro. I’m not a hobbyist. I just want to get my work done.
