[Novalug] Ubuntu, SuSE installations and old gear

Clif Flynt clif@cflynt.com
Tue Aug 21 09:45:01 EDT 2007


On Tue, Aug 21, 2007 at 09:23:41AM -0400, Robert W. Rowe wrote:
> ...
> So, is SuSE a more mature distribution or is Ubuntu/Kubuntu geared toward
> newer hardware with SATA in the BIOS and all that? Or was SATA even the
> problem?
> 

  SuSE is a more mature package, as is RedHat/Fedora.  The trick is in
the final packaging, what drivers are included, the hardware
identification and installation scripts.
  
  My observation is that with fairly common hardware, all distros work.
When you start to get very new, very old, or very unsupported, life
gets a bit silly with some distros while others just work.

  On my old 1G P4 motherboard with the cheapo Adaptec PCI SATA
controller, Ubuntu was the only distro that would load and run. Fedora
5 and 6, OpenSuse 9-10.2, and a few others failed to install.  I was
getting pretty frustrated by the time I tried Ubuntu.

  I run OpenSuse on my laptop, but have to do extra steps to install
drivers for my Atheros based PCMCIA network card.

  With various single-board CPU systems, I have removeable disk drives,
and run anything from RedHat 6 to Debian as necessary.  All distros
seem to grok the cheap end of things just fine.

  Clif

-- 
.... Clif Flynt ... http://www.cflynt.com ... clif@cflynt.com ...
.. Tcl/Tk: A Developer's Guide (2nd edition) - Morgan Kauffman ..
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