Linux Desktop Distro Shootout

An anonymous reader writes "InfoWeek has posted an open-source OS comparison. Linux Shootout: 7 Desktop Distros Compared pits openSUSE, Ubuntu 8.4, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva Linux One, Fedora, SimplyMEPIS, and CentOS 5.1 against each other. And the winner is ... Ubuntu. Author Serdar Yegulalp writes: 'Ubuntu 8.4 remains one of the best desktop distributions for many good reasons: it works with almost any hardware you throw at it, and has tons of features for both existing Linux users and prospective converts from Windows.' He also gave openSUSE points for ease of use on the desktop, and Mandriva kudos for ease of administration."

Comments

8.4?

[Anonymous Coward]

8.04.

Re:8.4?

[doti]

Isn't it unfair to compare Ubuntu 8.04 to Fedora 8?

Fedora 9 will be launched soon, they could have used the beta.

Fedora 8 could be compared to Ubuntu 7.10

Re:8.4?

[timeOday]

If they had tested a beta and encountered hiccups, people would have complained that evaluating a beta against a production release isn't fair. And between 7 distros, I'd guess at least one has an upcoming release at any given time.

Re:8.4?

[aaronmarks]

With that logic though, they shouldn't have tested Ubuntu 8.04 because they apparently tested that as well while it was still in beta.

Re:8.4?

[jonas_jonas]

Wouldn't it be fairer to compare openSUSE 8, Ubuntu 8, PCLinuxOS 8, Mandriva Linux 8, Fedora 8, SimplyMEPIS 8, CentOS 8, Mac OS 8 and Windows 8?
*cough*

Re:8.4?

[Stormwatch]

And Mac OS 8 would STILL have the best interface.

why CentOS?

[trybywrench]

Isn't CentOS the free version of Redhat Enterprise Linux? Why is it in a desktop linux shootout?

Re:why CentOS?

[lgarner]

It includes elements from all RHEL packages: RHES, RHAS and RHED.

Re:why CentOS?

[AndGodSed]

I'd Replace CentOS with Linux Mint. There are only two Deb based distros in this lineup (kick me if I am wrong...) and no Debian?

If they include CentOS and RHEL, surely Debian could have made a bow... or is that too advanced for your average Linux Desktop?

Re:why CentOS?

[TheRaven64]

If you read that section, it refers to setting up the local MTA to relay send mail. If you are using a mail client that relies on an external MTA, and you already have an external MTA set up (e.g. by your ISP or company) then you can skip it.

Re:why CentOS?

[gfxguy]

You loathe Ubuntu? Loathe What the hell does that mean? It's a Linux distribution. It's like saying "I like Coca Cola, but I loathe Pepsi." I mean, sure they're different, but they are so close as to be nearly indistinguishable.

What about it do you loathe? I've been using Linux off and on since pre 1.0 slackware, and pretty much constantly for the past five years; Ubuntu's the easiest to install and use out of the box that I've seen.

Granted, I've been only using Ubuntu for the last year, but 8.04 was the first version of any Linux distribution that recognized every single piece of hardware on my laptop during the install, I didn't have to configure a damn thing.

Now, I'm not trying to be a fanboy... I've used Mandrake (before it was Mandriva), Red Hat, slackware, CentOS (Maya won't run on Ubuntu, so I need to use CentOS at work). I just can't say that I've "loathed" any of them. Even when I had to install slackware with like 60 floppy disks.

Add free version.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here

Re:Add free version.

[ajs]

Summary: Each of the distributions had their strengths and weaknesses when it came to hardware, but beyond that were essentially competing on common ground.

That said, Fedora 8 was tested, and the beta for Fedora 9 is currently in full-swing and will be released in 8 days, so the comparison is slightly weighted (as all Linux desktop distribution comparisons tend to be) to the most recent release: Ubuntu in this case.

Re:Add free version.

[s4nt]

Well yes and no. Just the other day on /. everybody was complaining that an early adoption of an Ubuntu release was fraught with problems, my first week with Ubuntu confirmed that for me... So this comparitive test does not really lend Ubuntu an unfair advantage, if it were done with Hardy a bit matured one would be able to say that... same thing with suse and mandriva... to be fair with the other distros, he should have reviewed suse 11 (soon to be released) and mandriva 2008.1 (released last month)

Re:Add free version.

[pthisis]

"couldn't care less" not "could,"

And "begs the question" doesn't mean "raises the question" or "ducks the issue". It refers to a specific form of argument which _does_, in fact, attempt to answer the question--but does so by assuming the conclusion in one of the premises. Specifically it's an argument of the form

p implies q
suppose p
-> q

Where "suppose p" really is "suppose my side of what we're arguing about is true".

Better methods of statistical comparison.

[Thanshin]

1 - Make a live disk of each.
2 - Build many identical robots.
3 - The round starts upon insertion of the disk.

Last standing robot wins.

THUNDERDOME!!!

Hey!!!

[morgan_greywolf]

No fair! Who gave OpenSUSE that AK47?!

Ubuntu 8.04

[SkankinMonkey]

I'm quickly finding that I prefer 7.10 to 8.04. The overall system seems a lot more bogged down, lots of freezes with programs that never occurred in earlier versions. I do like a lot of the new functionality but I hope that they iron out some of the outstanding issues (especially considering it's supposed to be a LTR).

Re:Ubuntu 8.04

[Anonymous Coward]

Feel free to file a bug: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug

Re:Ubuntu 8.04

[SkankinMonkey]

I've submitted almost all of my crash reports to them, and all the crashes I've experienced are known bugs (and had multiple page threads on their forums during alpha/beta testing). That being said, I think they should have held off a bit on a final release and squashed a few more bugs that were pretty proliferate and user inhibiting.

Re:Ubuntu 8.04

[TheLink]

I heard the freezes are due to some scheduler thing they did - rather than all processes competing equally, you have some weird situation where programs that have root and user instances have problems with one starving out the other.

Re:Ubuntu 8.04

[Dystopian Rebel]

There was a decision to use the old scheduler on the Desktop version of Heron. It is causing problems. Try the Server version.

I find that it's as wise to wait for stability in an Ubuntu release as it is with an MS Windows release. The difference is that stability comes to Ubuntu faster. (o:

I will give Heron a month or two to settle down and then switch.

Ubuntu does more right than any other Linux distribution ever has.

Re:Ubuntu 8.04

[prestomation]

I had a serial-to-USB adapter that didn't have drivers in the kernel pre-.24, but they are in Hardy, so I upgraded during the beta. Also, the new kernel has b44 native drivers for my broadcom wireless..no more ndiswrapper for me!

Re:Ubuntu 8.04

[Hatta]

That's what happens when you release on schedule, and not when it's ready. That's one of the reasons I like Debian Sid so much. Bugs crop up from time to time, but usually they're fixed within a day or two of me noticing them. If it's not, I can always apt-pin a working version until it is fixed.

Re:Ubuntu 8.04

[hey!]

well, on the plus side, the intel sound card on my laptop works under hardy. on the minus side, i have had issues with the keyboard driver under gnome 9illustrated by this post0. this same bug with modifier keys also seems to lead to program crashes. running the keyboard prefs app fixes the problem when it crops up.

overall, hardy feels very rough, and the upgrade process is even rougher. the upgrade removes the network manager applet, so i had to configure wi-fi from hand and sudo apt-get install network-manager-gnome.

all the problems i've run into have been reported, with the exception of an acpi related boot issue 9e.g., laptop won't boot when running from battery0. i'm going to check my laptop initramfs before looking into that one. i have various acpi related problems including the inability to resume from suspend that may be bios specific.

i'd recommend looking upon hardy as a 'beta' release. it's promising, but not something you want to install on your non-linux friends' machines yet. i've been using it for some months now starting with the beta release, and it's still seems to be in the fix two bugs, create one new bug phase. if feisty doesn't have any obvious hardware problems on your setup, i'd stick with that for a few months yet. i really missed having sound though. the new sound architecture is interesting and has features that might prove useful to some people.

overall, i'm ok with hardy; i can deal with its oddities. i'm a little happier running under xfce, which also leaves me more room to run virtual machines. bottom line -- a few people will be somewhat happier with hardy, many will be considerably happier with feisty, at least for a few months yet.

Re:Ubuntu 8.04

[DanielJosphXhan]

Same here. Mostly due to the new X server and its dependence on xrandr. In 8.04 the devs decided that single and dual screens were the most common use cases for xrandr (still in relative infancy, as well). As such, 8.04 doesn't support more than two monitors and more than one graphics card, not to mention s-video output (in my experience). That's not so bad... typically with my setup I install the NVidia binary drivers and use nvidia-settings to generate an xorg.conf.

The problem is that I can't use my old xorg.conf. xrandr has deprecated most of its functionality. But there's no way to remove xrandr or downgrade to the previous version of X. There's no information about this in the 8.04 release notes. There was no information period, except for a well-buried Ubuntu wiki page.

My bug report was thankfully triaged almost immediately (probably because Bryce recognised the problem from the heading) and I understand why they did it. But the lack of information is what bothered me most. I wouldn't have upgraded till 8.10 (when the functionality for more than two screens and more than one graphics card is supposed to be introduced into xrandr) if I had known my setup would break, or that there would be this amount of functional regression. And I'm fairly involved in the community (not the xrandr dev side of things of course). I had no idea.

Also PulseAudio has been no end of trouble for me. If I have to install nswrapper just to get sound with Flash, I consider that a major show-stopper.

That said, I'm not leaving Ubuntu. I am downgrading to 7.10 again (again!), and I'll be rather more careful about upgrading in the future.

Re:Ubuntu 8.04

[twistedsymphony]

Release Schedules are nice and all but what's the point of bundling up a "stable release" if it's not actually stable?

If you want to download the latest SVN snapshot every 6 months that should be your prerogative but I've been burned too many times by "stable release"s that weren't actually as advertised simply because someone said "it's release day... SHIP IT!".

I always do some form of testing but it's a lot of wasted effort if you're installing something that you assume is already as clean as it can be, and it's really not.

Re:Ubuntu 8.04

[nine-times]

I guess I just figure that a lot of "stable" software won't really have all the kinks ironed out until after release. When something is released, it's probably going to put onto hardware that no one was testing on, and it's probably going to be used in ways that it wasn't used during testing.

I agree that if there are known major bugs that will be extremely common, or bugs that are show-stoppers (e.g. cause significant data loss), then release should be pushed back. But if you want something extremely stable, then you might consider holding back your upgrade for a little while.

But I'm not making an argument from principle. I'm just saying that, from experience, I've never seen anyone get something 100% bug-free. Even Debian stable can have some quirks. So I'd rather have a regular release schedule than have progress on Ubuntu held back until every little bug can be worked out.

Re:Ubuntu 8.04

[j79zlr]

It is a kernel option called fair group scheduling. If you could recompile your kernel you can change that. I know I had huge issues with this where any disk intensive operation would slow the machine to a halt. That said, the last time I used Ubuntu was years ago and the developers on the forum told me I should never compile my own kernel on Ubuntu, maybe that has changed by now, but it was easy on Gentoo to fix.

And the winner is .....

[Taco Cowboy]

No matter which distro takes the #1 spot, the real grand prize winner is ....

                                                              THE USER !!!!

Re:And the winner is .....

[DaveV1.0]

Having more choices is not necessarily a good thing.

Fedora

[BountyX]

Fedora 9 comes out 8 days 3

Re:Fedora

[pavon]

Fedora 9 comes out 8 days <3 Fixed that for you.

"Almost any hardware you throw at it"

[loteck]

I sincerely enjoy the Linux experience and appreciate the community, but this statement is positively absurd. Ubuntu's own help files contain extensive lists of wireless cards that have a big fat "No" listed under the "Works out of the box" column. And that's just wireless cards.

One of the primary reasons that the average person abandons Linux is the frustration caused by these types of misleading claims. Somebody says, "Hey, virtually everything works out of the box!" and they think... wow, well, I buy my stuff at top retailers from top brands, surely then my stuff is supported.

Unfortunately for them, their stuff may not work at all, or may work partially. Lots of gotchas for Video cards, scanners.. the list goes on and on. Nobody is well served by making statements that indicate anything except that hardware support is still a major obstacle for the adoption of Linux on the desktop.

Re:"Almost any hardware you throw at it"

[Waffle Iron]

In keeping with industry practices, maybe they should have rephrased the claim to say: Almost any random hardware is "Ubuntu Capable".

Re:"Almost any hardware you throw at it"

[mark72005]

I tried many different Linux distros about 6 months ago, and could not find anything that worked out of the box. I couldn't get all my hardware working even on Ubuntu, the most hardware-friendly (for me) distro that I tried.

The average user has enough trouble keeping his machine from being hijacked and free of viruses and malware. If Linux is ever going to be the OS of choice for a consumer desktop, it has to be something a consumer can get running just by popping in the CD.

I was fed up with Windows and I couldn't get Ubuntu usable (to my satisfaction) even after spending several days on it. Result? Apple sold me a laptop.

I'm a supporter of Linux in all its flavors but getting it set up is, for the vast majority of people, still going to be a huge problem.

It's a mistake to act like it isn't an issue, because every person who pretends it isn't an issue pushes further out the date when it will no longer be.

Re:"Almost any hardware you throw at it"

[strabes]

I feel like everyone on slashdot should know this, but I'll repeat it once again. Not having support for various wireless/video/etc cards is not the fault of linux or the kernel developers. It is the fault of the vendors for not providing proper drivers and/or documentation. This will only improve with time as the popularity of linux grows and greater pressure is put on vendors to provide the aforementioned drivers & documentation.

Re:"Almost any hardware you throw at it"

[Hatta]

What kind of weird ass hardware are you using? The reason most people say that most hardware is well supported on linux is because it's the truth. If you're that unlucky that you bought oddball hardware, that's too bad and it does need to be fixed. But it really does work with almost all hardware you throw at it. Emphasis on the almost.

And I'll point out that OS X works with even less hardware than Ubuntu does. That didn't stop you from choosing it. Why should hardware support stop anyone from choosing Ubuntu?

Re:"Almost any hardware you throw at it"

[Kaitnieks]

I recently installed Ubuntu on laptop (my 1st linux) and had problems with wireless as well. Thing is, the wireless card problem can be easily fixed, but for some strange all tutorials, manuals and forum posts offer long, non-working instruction lists, that involve "wget" and "make". It's like asking - please, go away. The real solution was to open synaptic package manager, configure it to use 3rd party repository and install ndiswrapper. That's it! Ndiswrapper found and downloaded the drivers automatically and everything was bright and sunny again. Why isn't ndiswrapper in standard installation I have no idea.

Re:"Almost any hardware you throw at it"

[shutdown -p now]

I feel like everyone on slashdot should know this, but I'll repeat it once again. Not having support for various wireless/video/etc cards is not the fault of linux or the kernel developers. It is the fault of the vendors for not providing proper drivers and/or documentation.

I feel like everyone on Slashdot should know this, but I'll repeat it once again. Users, for the most part, don't care why something is not supported - if it isn't, they are simply not going to bother with that particular distro/OS. Blaming vendors (even when fair) does not achieve anything - they just shrug and say, "what do we care about your niche geek OS?", and users get even stronger impression that they should stay away from that weird Linux thingy.

And, no, I don't know a solution to this short of waiting and hoping for the better. But we certainly shouldn't be telling people that "most hardware works in Linux" - because that is outright lie.

Re:"Almost any hardware you throw at it"

[smellsofbikes]

I've had really mixed experiences with hardware on both sides. I'm using a mix of Win2K, XP, SimplyMepis6.5, and Ubuntu7.10.
*Webcam: old Philips. 2K/XP doesn't work at all, no drivers exist. Mepis can be coerced to work without much trouble.
*NI PCI GPIB controller card: 2K doesn't work at all, XP works great once I install the official drivers off the disc (although the downloaded ones don't work.) Mepis can be coerced to work with lots of trouble.
*USB PIC microcontroller programmer: 2K doesn't work at all. XP used to work but suddenly stopped. Mepis doesn't work at all.
*Canon LiDE flatbed scanner: 2K works when drivers loaded. XP works when drivers loaded. Mepis and Ubuntu work flawlessly right out of the box.
*Olympus digital cameras 380, 420, 4040: XP works when drivers loaded from original CD but not with downloaded drivers, Mepis works right out of the box.
*Creative Zen MP3 player: XP works when drivers loaded, Mepis works right out of the box.
*iPOD -- as above.
*Homebrew OBDII interface: XP sort of works, Mepis works well.
*Linkskey 802.11g: XP claims to work when I load the drivers but the card can't actually connect. Mepis and Ubuntu both fail completely.
*Microchip PIC programmer: XP works with the drivers on the original CD but not at all with downloaded drivers. Mepis and Ubuntu work perfectly out of the box.

So, *my* experience is that if you have the official, proprietary drivers in hand, XP does better than linux, but if you don't, linux consistently does better with 'any hardware you throw at it' -- and in many cases, it's hard or impossible to download functional drivers.
Which is to restate what has been said many times: if it's brand-new hardware, Windows will probably be better, but if it's older hardware, linux will probably be better.
Given that most customers will be using late-model hardware, since they've bought into the whole buy-a-new-one-every-two-years model, they'll be better served by Windows, but most geeks are, through a combination of cheapness and knowledge that it doesn't HAVE to be this way, keeping ancient hardware alive, they'll be better served by linux.

Re:"Almost any hardware you throw at it"

[Necreia]

The "Average User" doesn't install their OS. It comes preloaded and configured from Walmart / Dell / etc.

Re:"Almost any hardware you throw at it"

[Salamander]

Oddball hardware? Like a millions-of-units Dell E1505, on which the Broadcom wireless doesn't work out of the box and one of the most popular video-card upgrades doesn't either? What percentage of the common hardware out there have you used? 0.01% maybe? Don't overgeneralize from your own experience, whether it's good or bad. Look at actual statistics about actual hardware used by actual people before you try to make the "oddball hardware" excuse. You've been fortunate. Leave it at that.

Re:"Almost any hardware you throw at it"

[pembo13]

It's not a lie that most hardware works in Linux. I would guess (without evidence) that more currently existing hardware works on Linux than Windows. And the fact that people don't care about the why doesn't make the why irrelevant or untrue.

Re:"Almost any hardware you throw at it"

[init100]

Users, for the most part, don't care why something is not supported - if it isn't, they are simply not going to bother with that particular distro/OS.

Sure, and that is also why the reception of Windows Vista among ordinary users has been so lukewarm. They have a working system (Windows XP), so why switch to a system with widely reported incompatibility problems and driver issues?

they just shrug and say, "what do we care about your niche geek OS?"

Just like they'll say, "What do we care about your craptastic Windows downgrade? I'll stay with XP, thank you.". As you can see, this isn't only a problem with "geek OSes", but also a problem with OSes developed by multi-billion-dollar corporations.

How many of those distros

[pembo13]

even claim to be a desktop distro? I use Fedora on my desktop, but I don't think they claim it to be a desktop distro.

Why Mandriva One?

[CastrTroy]

Why did they opt to use Mandriva One, over Mandriva Free? Mandriva Free is a bigger download, but comes with a lot more software on the disk. It also seems more suited to an actual install, whereas Mandriva One is more of a Live CD.

Re:Why Mandriva One?

[coats]

Should have been Mandriva PowerPack. That's what's on my various desks -- all 4 of them.

Lastest Ubuntu, Older other distros

[vossman77]

Fedora 9 comes out in two weeks, but we are comparing the nw born Ubuntu to 6 month old distros. Ugh. Let's compare apples to apples people!

Re:Lastest Ubuntu, Older other distros

[Fri13]

That's right! I got feeling that editor actually planned this so Ubuntu would get better functionality. I use Mandriva myself and I get everything what Ubuntu does, even it was 2 weeks earlier and lacks 5 years support. Should do after 3 years new comparision with Mandriva 2011.1 and Ubuntu 8.04?

Editor should wait few weeks to get a hands those OpenSUSE and Fedora distributions. It would be fair.

Recent Linux convert from Windows

[goltzc]

I need to start out by saying that I am a web developer and other than very basic work deploying code to HPUX boxes at work I have had 0 exposure and no formal training with *nix Operating systems. I started playing around with Ubuntu during the Feisty release on my windows desktop with Wubi. Once I saw that I could get all my work done reliably and how stable Ubuntu was I knew that It would be my main operating system... someday. When I purchased a laptop with Vista preloaded on it I realized that Ubuntu was going to have to come to the rescue sooner than I was planning. Right about the time gutsy came out I put in on my no frills middle of the road laptop and haven't looked back. I had my fair share of issues and there was a learning curve for the administrative stuff but the. For day to day uses Its a rock and couldn't be more intuitive. My girlfriend who is not tech savy thought it was the neatest thing and demanded that I put it on her aging 6 year old laptop that came with Windows ME but had been limping along on Windows XP with a slim 128 megs of ram. Xubuntu loaded even easier on the old lappy and everything worked out of the box including a pcmcia wifi card. It brought new life to a machine that had been used mostly as a coaster for the past couple years. Then came the big upgrade to Hungry Hippo I mean Hardy Heron there were some hiccups but I reminded myself that windows has a similar trouble shooting learning curve that I had 10+ years vested in. The fact that I was able to upgrade to a new version of the OS with such few issues and trouble shoot the ones I had in a couple hours is really a testament to how Robust and friendly Ubuntu and the Ubuntu community has already become. Not only is Ubuntu becoming easier to use but with another few years of experience under my belt I'm sure that fixing the rare problems will be a snap.

Re:Recent Linux convert from Windows

[initdeep]

can you be a recent convert to formatting now? :D

Debian

[name*censored*]

I'd be interested to know why debian was left out - it's widely used, and it's different enough from Ubuntu (despite Ubuntu being a fork of debian).

Re:Debian

[adlucem]

Simply because the guy doesn't know what he's talking about. MEPIS based on Mandriva? lol. Desktop-centric paper, what need is there to include CentOS (esp. if you already have Fedora)? etc.

Poor research

[Spy der Mann]

The guy simply didn't do his homework. For starters, he thinks MEPIS is based on Mandriva - but it's based on Debian. Then, uses the latest beta of Ubuntu to compete with older distros. Finally, there is NO COMPARISON CHART.

What kind of research is that? He just shows a separate review of each distro, to finally announce "and the winner is...". I call this bull. Much more informative is the "girlfriend linux test" article.

Mod article down.

Ubuntu 8.4?

[X.25]

I'd like to order 1 copy of Ubuntu 8.4.

Thank you.

Re:Ubuntu 8.4?

[Culture20]

No problem, it will be shipped in the 40th month of 2008.

Speeds & Feeds Perils

[mpapet]

These kinds of articles harm practically everyone. They eliminate variety and here's how.

1. Focusing on a couple of winners. In Ubuntu's case they've got PR hucksters doing the shouting for them
2. Eliminating new features. These shootouts leave no room for testing new features, programs, etc. It's yay or nay and the nay's always win when something is -really- new.

3. There are a number of "What about distro X, Y or Z?" comments and they are, for the most part legitimate questions. Most of those non-chosen distros simply haven't made a good enough impression in media circles. Those aforementioned "good impressions" usually cost some money.

4. Eliminating new distros. There are -lots- of other linux distros who's first purpose is _not_ a desktop. The problem I'm pointing out is multifaceted and troubling. To boil it down: "Everyone knows that Linux is that other computer system they buy for less and put their stolen XP OS on."

My 2 cents: Debian Testing -still- manages to be completely ignored when it's a good apples-to-apples comparison to whatever new version Ubuntu puts out.

Re:Speeds & Feeds Perils

[discogravy]

as other comments have mentioned w/r/t Debian Testing, it's not a good comparison to Ubuntu; it's central idea is different, which is really what the other replies have been about. Deb Testing is about getting Debian new software and making everything new work well enough that bugs can be squashed. Ubuntu's raison d'etre is about making debian usable for everyday use without making users spend a day looking up config details for their hardware or what chipset their cards are using and what drivers go with what. Testing's cool, but testing's not for desktop users. It can be /used/ for that, but then again, you can also drive cross country on a unicycle, if you're dedicated enough.

Re:Xandros - shot up in popularity

[British]

I actually like the Xandros included on the EEE PC more than Ubuntu. There's a few things here and there that are more Windows-like and just simply easier to use. The only downside is that the software repositories. For the Xandros repos, there's only a handful available, but with Ubuntu, there's quite a bit more. Eh, maybe I'm nitpicking.

Relatively worthless, even harmful, comparison

[MaulerOfEmotards]

This review/comparison is posted May 4th or 5th, when the distros out there are Ubuntu 8.04 release (not beta, and featuring FF 3b5, not b4); Mandriva 2008.1; openSUSE 11.0 beta; and Fedora 9 preview. Thus, the selection of distros compared is outdated already at the time of review, and worse, unfair between distros (bias?). Compounding this, there are factual errors and lack of in-depth coverage.

This review sais very little about the current state of affairs and is of minimal real benefit to anyone not already initad in the Linux world. It might even do a misfavour to newbies wanting to take the plunge.

Admittably, it takes some time testing seven distros on five platforms, but that doesn't change the fact that it fails to represent the actual state of LinuxLand and the distros pitted against each other.

Almost Any Hardware...?

[RobDude]

I want to be a 'Linux Guy' - I downloaded the Ubuntu ISO yesterday and I'm ready to do it. Only problem is I can't get online.

I'm going to go to BestBuy *TODAY*. Can anyone here tell me which wireless network adapter will work 100% out of the box. I'd like for it to support WPA and WEP and not require any WINDOWS DRIVERS or any of that crap.

If someone could please provide a link to a wireless network adapter from the www.BestBuy.com website; I'll go and buy it and use Linux and tell everyone how great Linux is.

Since Linux is ready for the desktop and all that jazz, I'm sure this is an incredibly easy question, but I haven't found a simple concrete answer yet.

I'd seriously be very grateful to anyone who can help me.

Re:Almost Any Hardware...?

[businessnerd]

I won't do all of your homework for you, but here's a start. It looks like, based on Best Buy's offerings, you are best going with a card that uses the Atheros chipset. I have a D-Link in my desktop computer that uses this chipset and Linux support is very good. However, every model (even by the same manufacturer) is different. There are only 11 desktop cards and 18 laptop cards carried by best buy. If one of those cards is on this list then that is the card for you. Install the card, install Ubuntu (but keep a wire connected for now). You will then need to enable the "universe" repositories in Synaptic that include non-free software. Install the "madwifi" driver and you should be good to go. The only wireless cards I've used that have worked out of the box, with no extra drivers to install and no windows drivers to install with ndiswrapper or the like is Intel wireless cards. Doesn't look like Best Buy has any though, so your easiest bet is using a MadWiFI compatible card. If you are truly new to Linux and Ubuntu, then I would consult http://ubuntuforums.org/ for setting up Synaptic and getting the driver installed. This is an extremely common topic and is well documented.

On a side note, I would try to get away from buying computer parts from Best Buy. The options are limited, the prices high, and you always have some deusche salesmen trying to talk you into the more expensive card "cause it's teh r0x0rz!" even though it's completely wrong for your needs. I would drop by Newegg.com for great price, great shipping service, and huge selection.

Re:Almost Any Hardware...?

[BadHaggis]

Not Best Buy, but here is the link you asked for. Best Buy may have them on the shelf but not available online.

PCMCIA - Laptop (ATH0 drivers)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16839127003

PCI - Desktop (ATH0 drivers)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833127075

I have systems running these cards and just about every linux distro I tried found and configured them with no issues.

Re:Almost Any Hardware...?

[Dr. Manhattan]

I dunno about Best Buy, I check the circulars and look for deals when I need hardware. You don't say what kind of card you're looking for. If you're looking for a notebook adapter, I've had good results with two different Trendnet TEW-441PC Cardbus cards and Ubuntu - WPA & WEP, etc., works "out of the box". If you're looking for a desktop PCI card, well, Trendnet has a page telling which ones work with Linux. (I think the TEW-443PI has the same chipset as the Cardbus card I have; it's not listed as supported at Trendnet, but then again, neither is mine. But the TEW-441PC works anyway.)

I picked them up from an InkStop store, they usually have some in stock, at least here in Michigan.

It's not as easy to answer your question as it should be, because manufacturers sometimes change chipsets but don't change model numbers. For example, I have a desktop card, a DLink DWL-G520 (rev B), works fine with Linux. But the (rev B) is important - the (rev A) version has a totally different chipset.

Sadly I've given up

[rAiNsT0rm]

I've been a Linux guy since 1995 and as much as I hate to say it, I have given up. There needs to be a singular distro at the heart of it all which is steered by either Linus or a committee that focuses on one vision and goal. Chaos is great for creating a million cool bits, but not for organizing them into one unified, cohesive unit.

Let's finally get over the aversion to one main distro, or one of each tool and app. No one cares about choice when all it means is 40 buggy half-assed apps and no single solid one. It is a lot of wasted talent, time, and effort. With some direction and drive Linux could surpass anything out there.

Until people begin to wake up, I'll keep it for servers only. Oh, and I'd personally like to thank the genius who decided to go with a beta version of Firefox for a long-term support version of an OS... now THAT is how to FAIL.

Re:Sadly I've given up

[tuffy]

How do you propose removing the freedom of developers to work on things outside of the One True Distro?

Re:Sadly I've given up

[HalAtWork]

It's funny because above, someone was claiming that variety was being eliminated. People generally use the same software together across all distributions, the distros just tie the software all together into repositories with maybe some unique administrative tools, a unique theme, and their own configuration of kernel options and patches. But people use the same software to get work done, and work is focused on them to make them better. The apps on my linux desktop work great together because they don't exclude from each other support for file formats and the same libraries can be used across different programs that don't hide their secrets from each other, so actually I find everything a lot more cohesive on Linux generally. Apps don't try and trample on each other with their settings and tray monitoring applications and that sort of thing as well, and I don't need to update to the premium version for needed functionality.

Re:Sadly I've given up

[grumbel]

Oh, and I'd personally like to thank the genius who decided to go with a beta version of Firefox for a long-term support version of an OS... now THAT is how to FAIL. Having a beta in a stable LTS release might seems a bit stupid at first, but the reason the beta is in there is exactly because it is a LTS release. Would they have gone with Firefox2 they would have been stuck with that for many years to come, going with Firefox3-Beta allows them to upgrade to Firefox3 once it comes out (i.e. very soon), so they don't have to worry about supporting obsolete Firefox2 down the road.

That aside, I agree. I would much prefer if all those distros out there would just die or merge together. Luckily that is already slowly happening. A lot of distros these days are Debian based, instead of being just hacked up from scratch.

And the winner is...

[Brandybuck]

And the winner is... the distro most like Windows!

Unfair comparison?

[trollebolle]

A shootout between desktop distros days after the new Ubuntu is out seems to be in favor of Ubuntu. As others have mentioned, Fedora 9 is imminent. It's also worth mentioning that RHEL5.2 will be released soon (in a month or so), and will sport Firefox 3 along with new versions of Openoffice (2.3), Thunderbird (2.0) and Evolution. CentOS follows RHEL closely, so CentOS 5.2 won't be far behind.

Ubuntu rocks, except for...

[pinkfloydhomer]

suspend to ram, suspend to disk, suspend, sleep, hibernate, whatever you wanna call these features.
On most hardware, this doesn't work as flawless as on Windows, if at all.

I use these features all the time on Windows. When I press my power button, my computer suspends to RAM. Takes a split second. When I press power again, the computer is up and working again in another split second. In the meantime, the computer says nothing. All fans and harddrives are turned off.

This is the feature that always makes me go back from any Linux distro :(

So 2 versions of RH and no SLACKWARE!?!

[arfonrg]

So, basically, two versions of RedHat were included and no Slackware?

I guess they were scared of Slackware's awesomeness!

You don't sound like a "Linux guy".

[srobert]

"I've been a Linux guy since 1995 and as much as I hate to say it, I have given up. There needs to be a singular distro at the heart of it all which is steered by either Linus or a committee that focuses on one vision and goal. Chaos is great for creating a million cool bits, but not for organizing them into one unified, cohesive unit."

You don't sound like a Linux guy to me. You sound like a BSD guy.

Good on Fedora

[vga_init]

This review is rather good on Fedora; I'm actually rather relieved to see that it doesn't mention very much about it. As a Fedora advocate, I like to think that Fedora makes an excellent, high quality general-purpose system, and part of fulfilling that role is not getting in the way of the user; the user shouldn't really have anything to complain about, and conversely doesn't necessarily need to find anything noteworthy about the system. Also I hate to see nit-picky analysts pit one distro against one another (eg Ubuntu vs Fedora) for silly reasons. Not that it's bad to compare systems, but if you spend enough time on the Linux desktop you realize that all distros are the same--same kernel, same libraries, same programs. The only difference really is the presentation (including administrative tools). Can't wait for Fedora 9, by the way... only a few days left to go. :-)

No mention of Yast

[cbhacking]

All jokes aside, I'd say the biggest screw-up in this article (from the personal perspective of a openSuse user) is no mention, whatsoever, of Suse's truly fantastic configuration tool Yast. There's a lot of good stuff in Suse, but I'd go so far as to say Yast is *the* reason I use it. Everything from server configuration to driver management to partition/mounting management to package management to X configuration all in one place, with excellent help tools and generally fully as much control as one could get by editing the config files manually (some of them, like the bootloader config, actually allow this - with helpful information and comments). Add the ability to run it in a console using a very well-done ncurses interface, and you have the perfect tool for administration via SSH or fixing an xorg.conf SNAFU.

What is really odd is that considerable mention was made of a few other distros' config tools, and while I can't claim to have used all of the reviewed distros, I would state that Yast blows away the config tools of, for example, SimplyMEPIS (which was promoted largely on the basis of such tools, and which I'll admit are good - but hardly as comprehensive or permitting so much control).