Tried it...doesn't work well

Story: Foresight Desktop Linux, now cooler looking!Total Replies: 10
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devnet

Apr 28, 2005
8:29 AM EDT
I have an old PII 350 that I like to test things out with. If it passes the test of installation on this puppy...then I migrate it over to a better machine with an AMD 3200 on it.

Everything 'seemed' to work fine...install went ok. But then on reboot, it hung during the init process. So I have to give this two thumbs down...it's the first distro to hang on this machine since 2001 (out of probably 50+ I've tested). I will say that Fedora Core 4 Test 1 also hung quite horribly on it as well despite the fact that it has 512MB of memory. Oh well...maybe it's an anaconda installer thing.
SFN

Apr 28, 2005
9:30 AM EDT
Oooh! You got me!

I've got access to a bunch of PII 350s and would be very interested in knowing which distros did well on that machine. Not which ones were usable but which ones really kicked some butt.
helios

Apr 28, 2005
9:41 AM EDT
Hey...I don't think its anaconda. I have a 1.8 gig soyo with 1gig ram - Nothing on the board...all agp/pci and foresight froze like a deer in the headlights (oh thats frickin' original helios). I tried it on two different drives and both no go. shame too cause it looks like it has potential.

h
salparadise

Apr 28, 2005
11:29 AM EDT
Tried it last night. Was unimpressed. Ubuntu does it all far far better. (Though I realise there maybe an app or two available on Foresight that Ubuntu lacks).
devnet

Apr 28, 2005
7:01 PM EDT
actually sal, foresight is much better than Ubuntu...when it's done right it is as powerful as gentoo. Anyone arguing that Ubuntu is better for a computer than gentoo needs their head examined.

As far as distros that did good on the PII 350...there is only one I reserve for it...and that is SimplyMEPIS 3.3...runs like a top with only 128MB of RAM (upgraded it to 512 though). It's the smoothest running on that machine by far...Ubuntu didn't detect all the hardware :p

A close second for that machine is Vector Linux. That made everything run super fast on it....but I am just used to Debian so I put SimplyMEPIS back on there after about 2 months of having vector. Those are the only two worth noting. The rest were rather sluggish (well, except slackware...but I run my server on that :p)
salparadise

Apr 28, 2005
8:38 PM EDT
foresight is much better than Ubuntu

based on what?
SFN

Apr 29, 2005
5:58 AM EDT
devnet,

Thanks for the info. I've only tried ProMepis. In genereal, I liked what I saw but Pro had some hardware issues with the machine in whch I tried it (not the PII's). I'll be trying out Simply 3.3.

Koriel

Apr 29, 2005
7:36 AM EDT
Slackfan here but have just tried PCLinuxOS NV81a Live iso from texstar over at http://www.pclinuxonline.com on my machine at the office and im quite impressed by it. It through a few wobblies when i did the hard disk install nothing i couldn't fix without a quick visit to the forums but it can be forgiven for this as its still beta software.

Tried installing it on my home machine but unfortunately it couldnt detect my nvidia pci-e ge6800 correctly because it shipped with an older NVIDIA driver. It also kept trying to load the agp module which is not required for this card but cant fault it for that as Slackware did the same thing and i just disabled the agp hotplug support for it which solved that prob. I could solve these problems as the solutions are the same ones i implement for my Slack installs but i truly can't be bothered and will wait for the next version.

But overrall im very impressed with it, its a leaner and meaner version of Mandrake which its based on. It may even supplant slackware on my desktop come version 9, but no fear slack stays on the server.

devnet

Apr 29, 2005
5:23 PM EDT
sal,

ubuntu is plain hype to me...I've been using Linux since 1995 and it's just Debian with gnome to me. It had hardware problems with the motherboard on my PII and it runs wayy slow on it...even slower than SimplyMEPIS w/ KDE. I put Ubuntu on my AMD 3200 machine and it runs fine but I got bored with it in a matter of days. It's just so plain and feels exactly like Debian. So I just went back to Debian on my AMD3200...might as well have the real deal instead of the over hyped new kid on the block.

Ubuntu to me is nothing that special. I think PCLinuxOS is probably the best Desktop distro on the market...and that's a lot coming from me because I love debian...and despise rpm...but that distro is friggen awesome...even for new users. But for my PII...nothing works better than SimplyMEPIS 3.3....and I just upgraded via apt to 3.3.1...very simple to upgrade to new versions since we do it all through apt.
salparadise

Apr 29, 2005
11:00 PM EDT
A fair enough answer. I was curious as whether it was a technical issue/s or more a matter of taste. Ubuntu for me is a first taste of debian, and while I appreciate the remark about boredom - no other distro has worked so well so much of the time for me, which leads to a lack of problems and problems cause me to learn, for a home distro it does everything I need. So for me, Ubuntu is special. And I love the users forum, it's by far the most friendly I've encountered thus far.

devnet

Apr 30, 2005
8:01 AM EDT
sal...I'll have to agree with you...ubuntu is a very professional and nice distro. It has a great community behind it also.

However, I'm one for getting new users involved with Linux...newbies to the core. So for me, PCLOS and SimplyMEPIS are the two best for those new users to get spun up on. I've converted close to 10 people where I work just using SimplyMEPIS. I highly doubt they would have been able to install Ubuntu. Until Ubuntu get's an installer...I'm afraid I'll not support it for new users.

That's why I like the other two because they install great and from a LiveCD...fantastic. And they also have enough for me as an advanced user to mess around with...so I'm never bored. In fact, we've begun releasing advanced kernels and software made for MEPIS through http://dotmepis.org so things are progressing nicely.

But...Ubuntu is very nice...I just hate the fact that everyone is on that bandwagon. While I think it is nice...I don't think it is up to par with where Linux needs to be.

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