I don't have much bad to say about Ubuntu, don't get me wrong. They are innovative in all of the right ways: personal cloud storage that's accessible through Windows; pushing the limits of UI design; keeping timely software updates coming.
There were, however, two hurdles for me. The first I can't complain too vigorously about: WiFi. Due to differences in the wireless chipsets, 802.11 has always been a bit of a boogeyman for Linux. In my case, it was a regression with the Atheros 5000-series kernel driver... my wireless stopped working outside of 15 feet from the router, sometimes less.
The other, and quite frankly the dealbreaker for me, was a performance hit. I have an older laptop, a TravelMate 2420 that I've maxed the memory on. I don't know if it was the Unity desktop or the CouchDB backend they used for their UbuntuOne cloud service, but as soon as I installed 11.04, I began experiencing periodic stalling, CPU spikes and network traffic (which is why I point to the UbuntuOne).
As for the much debated Unity desktop; I was pretty indifferent to it. For the most part, it did its job. My biggest problem with it is probably its biggest feature. I'm not the biggest fan of "quick-launch bars" in general, and by default Unity puts a great big one down the side of the screen unless you have a window maximized. I've said before, this is a great idea for touchscreen interfaces where menu navigation could be a little tricky, but for my preferred method of keyboard and mouse, it feels redundant. It works, but I wasn't a fan.
I chose Fedora because of Gnome 3. The Gnome 3 desktop is similar to Unity in quite a few ways; not surprising, since Unity is built on many of the same libraries. I chose Fedora over OpenSUSE (the other major distro offering the Gnome 3 as a default) because of familiarity: one of my first Intro to Linux books dealt with Red Hat Linux; so I at was a little familiar with the RPM system. When you boil it down, the difference between the majority of Linux distributions is how software is delivered, and what software is easily available. Most up-to-date Linux distros share the same kernel.
Wait, you say. Hold up. Didn't you say that a kernel bug was screwing with your WiFi? If everybody is using the same kernel, wouldn't the bug be present on all of them?
Yes, I did. And yes, it was; which was why I said I couldn't complain about it too much. The biggest difference was where I was trying to install it. When I tried to install Ubuntu, I was at home; where I had wireless access and -- because the Debian/Ubuntu installer has wireless support built-in -- I was going to use it during setup. Except 11.04 shipped with a kernel version that had the bug. Which meant the install failed where I was until I fished out an ethernet cable. When I installed Fedora, I didn't have access to a wireless network, so I didn't notice it right off. And I was able to update to a kernel release that worked with my wireless -- before I got home and back to my network. Serendipitous, yes; but it is one of those things that is offputting.
And when I say that they share the same kernel, I'm generalizing a bit. Not every distro is going to release every point release (i.e. one distro might not release 2.8.24.36, choosing to wait and test 2.8.24.37 instead, or simply patching and releasing a custom 2.8.24.36_custom): it's the end of July and there have been nearly a dozen since April: they will be doing some testing before releasing it into the wild.
But, I've made my choice, at least until... October. Both Fedora and Ubuntu are on a 6-month (April/October) release schedule. And really, outside of disk space, there's nothing stopping me from installing both (after a thorough backup, of course). This laptop is a testing rig, for all intents and purposes. Besides, this is Linux. It's not about brand loyalty, it's not about being afraid to change. It's about figuring out what works best for you and improving the experience for everybody.
Now, since I've grabbed a copy of NetBeans; I think I'll try and teach myself some JAVA.
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