[CS-FSLUG] Karmic Koala

[Ed Hurst]

I suppose my hardware is precisely the wrong thing for some distros. Or  
maybe I'm asking too much.

On openSUSE 11.2 (64-bit) -- After a week of KDE 4.3, I found it not quite  
so useful as the 3.x versions. Too many config items were removed, but it  
was fun watching the Compiz effects. Stability was good. However, there  
were plenty of little niggling things I just didn't like. The bundled  
Opera browser kept freezing. When I replaced it with the more generic  
(Qt3) version from Opera itself, it worked much better. Another problem  
was sound related. When I plugged in my headphones, I still got sound  
through the speakers. Google indicated a half-dozen completely different  
"fixes" and none helped me. Best I could tell, it was something in how  
SUSE (Alsa) detected the hardware, but I figured it might be something in  
KDE.

So I tried the GNOME desktop. No help on the sound issue. Worse, the  
64-bit Adobe Flashplayer quit working in all but Seamonkey. I had been  
testing it in Opera and Firefox, but it refused to run under GNOME; worked  
okay in KDE. I dunno, but it seems to me Novell invests an awful lot in  
repackaging stuff with lots of SUSE-specific enhancements, and it breaks  
stuff. Lots of little stuff on the edge of notice just didn't work right,  
didn't feel right. Totally subjective, so I can't really judge. Yes, I  
know it's not yet a full release, but 11.1 felt exactly the same. I'm  
inclined to think SUSE is moving somewhere I just don't want to go.

With all the hoopla over Ubuntu Karmic, I gave it a test run. Nice.  
Everything worked cleanly. And for once, something Debian-based got the  
fonts right! I've long noticed no matter how I configured it, Debian-based  
systems always did something to the font rendering which made it fuzzy  
compared to RPM-based systems and BSD. Maybe I'm the only one, but I could  
always tell the difference. Not any more. This one was sharp and smooth at  
the same time.

So I installed it. I'm hoping I don't get the X server lockups I had with  
the previous release. I'd like for something to just work and let me keep  
it.

-- 
Ed Hurst
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