Right, Ive tried and tested three desktops now, here are my conclusions:

Mandriva: Works out of the box, all multimedia plugins work with almost no tweaking

KDE 3.5 ok.

Uninstalled because of a few quirkies, and WPA din't work on the wireless

Opensuse 11.0:

Sexy as hell, with KDE4.0, The setup tool YAST is very good. But a few quirkies here too, I'd wait for 11.1 is out.

You have to manually add repositories to get the good stuff...

Kubuntu 8.04:

KDE3.5 works like a fucking charm, the most stable system of the three. A little bit tricky to set up the plugins for webtv - I'll get around to that sometime I'm really bored.

Had to add the Medibuntu repositories in command line, other than that piss easy

Whereas all distros have good package management and update systems, I'd give Ubuntu the prize for the best one, and it seems to be the most widely supported package system after RedHat.

With the compiz effects on the desktop, this is one sexy system.

Forgot to mention. Ubuntu was the best system for visual on my laptop. All fonts antialiased perfectly without any tweaking (especially unlike mandriva)

Since Sniser mentioned KDE4.1 desktop is out, I decided to upgrade my kubuntu. In the process, I got rid of the XP partition entirely. Its very pretty and the file manager (Dolphin) is the best Ive seen.

Only: things seem slower than in KDE3.5, for instance: it takes much longer to search for files and it also takes much longer for the file manager to generate thumbnails in picture folder. Hope this will be fixed in the next release.

Still, sticking with this one.

A screenshot for you:

Click to view attachment

If I use the desktop effects, it reminds me of Mac OSX. Only, it slows everything down, better just turn it on when showing off to friends.

Back to KDE3.5 again, the 4.1 is just too unstable to use for work. Got sexyness through the compiz visual effects package instead. Still: kubuntu 8.04 is the best configured distro Ive ever seen.

What I like most is that everything is in place, the laptop buttons work - the power manager works and is very configurable - the network manager just plain works (unlike the mandriva).

Now the wlan stopped working. not even a fresh install works. FCCUKKK!!

The installation program still asks me about installing the hax0red firmware for the bc4318 card, but in the menus its listed as "not found"

or "device not present"

Did the hax0red driver kill my WLAN? anyways I refuse to give up: a new miniPCI MSI WLAN card is in the mail. Stay tuned.

This just in: my fucking bastard friend had messed with my wlan switch during our friday night pissup. Everything works fine... Ah well, the MSI card was cheap at least...

Running a week with no significant problems. Opera hangs every now and again, but can be killed from terminal. This is Opera's problem, the x86-64 version is not as finished. Sadly, this is the case for many 3rd party suppliers: I mean whats the fucking point of having marketed 64bit systems and noone can get their fingers out of their assholes and develop for that platform?

At least linux developers are better in that respect.

Ive had the computer freeze completely during shutdown - it was probably confused when i closed the lid, opened it again and pressed the power button before KDE had time to react. A swedish reboot was needed.


Other than that, Im well pleased. This distro is staying on my laptop until KDE4 is stable.

ciao
db

I can see myself in that cartoon.... Spent most of monday night putting it together and it was a work night... At least my exuse for being tired was original enough to be accepted. What can I say, as long as I dont have any women to distract my attention away from what is essensial in life (computers, beer, pr0n and fishing) - I'd say this is time well spent. Highly educational and work related. My dream is to take open source into the national school system.

And its better than smoking crack


'

A linux system safe for your mum is only a couple of years away. Besides, if you plan the hardware before you install, there will be no probs. Im setting this shit up on a 2 year old laptop designed for XP.