Ubuntu 6.06 (dapper) on my Toshiba L100-181
categories:
- Linux
- Red Hat/CentOS
I really needed VMware Workstation (VMW) to work on my laptop. Basically, that would be my main activity on the laptop, the underlying OS would only help in surfing the web, checking my mails and SSH’ing into servers.
I tried hard to run VMW under Fedora Core 5 but always failed with kernel issues. (see http://blog.wains.be/?p=122) I had read VMW was supporting Ubuntu 6.06 which I installed.
Indeed, latest version of VMW is working great with no headache. Furthermore, Ubuntu fixed a few stuff I was having under FC5
- sound issue resolved. Sound was playing very low under FC5 and I wasn’t the only one unable to fix it.
- my ipw3945 wireless adapter working out of the box, no need to add some extra packages to get it running
- hibernation works
Despite being based on Debian, I would have to say Ubuntu 6.06 is the best distro for desktop use as of today.
- faster booting (a lot faster actually, I was counting in minutes under FC5, in seconds now)
- translation is far better (installed it in french and I only noticed a FEW squirks, translation is far from being perfect under FC5 which I was installing in english (Firefox and Thunderbird in english by default despite installing in french))
- the overall system is faster (Fedora still requires a lot of work in removing useless stuff)
- better hardware support (larger user base helps I guess)
I’m not a Debian boy, I’m still having a hard time with packet management and deb CLI management.. I kinda miss yum and rpm at this stage, but that’s the only drawback I found in using Ubuntu as a desktop system.
Yeah, me, the Red Hat boy, is actually enjoying using Ubuntu ! I can’t wait to test RHEL5 and Ubuntu 6.10, which I’ll test under a virtual machine on my Ubuntu 6.06 system :)