Fedora 8 vs. Ubuntu 8

I had the bad idea of trying (K)ubuntu 8.04 on my home computer. It worked for a few days, but as Ubuntu 8 is still in alpha, changes tend to break everything easily. At one point Wine stopped working, then the DVD, then the sound. I had crashes with USB plug/unplug. It was time to go back to a stable distro. I went back to Fedora 8.

I found out that I had missed some positive sides of Fedora 8 before. It compares quite well with the future Ubuntu 8. Both include pulseaudio. Pulseaudio in Fedora 8 is very well integrated, works well by default. I had to manually tweak things with Ubuntu, probably because it is an alpha.
Both have a relatively new kernel (2.6.23 for Fedora 8, 2.6.24 for Ubuntu 8).
Packages I use everyday are as new in both Fedora 8 and Ubuntu 8.

Fedora 8 is also more stable than it used to be on my machine. Fedora people do their job very well at fixing various bugs after a release.

2 drawbacks of Fedora:

• the package management. I know by experience that rpm+yum is more problematic with dependencies than apt.
  
• Sun Java not installed by default (IcedTea instead). Being a Java developer, the reference is Sun JDK. Plus Sun JDK is open enough for me.
  

Other than that, Fedora 8 is excellent. I feel it has more features than Ubuntu: pulseaudio already well integrated, SELinux, Firewall by default.

Don't make the same mistake, don't install an alpha linux distro. It used to work without problems back in the days. I have used Gentoo, Slackware with custom kernel without troubles. Nowadays it seems quite risky to go without a distro that has not been well tested.

Fedora 8 vs. Ubuntu 8

I had the bad idea of trying (K)ubuntu 8.04 on my home computer. It worked for a few days, but as Ubuntu 8 is still in alpha, changes tend to break everything easily. At one point Wine stopped working, then the DVD, then the sound. I had crashes with USB plug/unplug. It was time to go back to a stable distro. I went back to Fedora 8.

I found out that I had missed some positive sides of Fedora 8 before. It compares quite well with the future Ubuntu 8. Both include pulseaudio. Pulseaudio in Fedora 8 is very well integrated, works well by default. I had to manually tweak things with Ubuntu, probably because it is an alpha.
Both have a relatively new kernel (2.6.23 for Fedora 8, 2.6.24 for Ubuntu 8).
Packages I use everyday are as new in both Fedora 8 and Ubuntu 8.

Fedora 8 is also more stable than it used to be on my machine. Fedora people do their job very well at fixing various bugs after a release.

2 drawbacks of Fedora:

• the package management. I know by experience that rpm+yum is more problematic with dependencies than apt.
  
• Sun Java not installed by default (IcedTea instead). Being a Java developer, the reference is Sun JDK. Plus Sun JDK is open enough for me.
  

Other than that, Fedora 8 is excellent. I feel it has more features than Ubuntu: pulseaudio already well integrated, SELinux, Firewall by default.

Don't make the same mistake, don't install an alpha linux distro. It used to work without problems back in the days. I have used Gentoo, Slackware with custom kernel without troubles. Nowadays it seems quite risky to go without a distro that has not been well tested.

Windows Vista Is Crap!

It has been already 1 year since Windows Vista is out. In my new company, I had a new computer with Vista on it. I quickly installed Ubuntu in dual boot. I was happy with Ubuntu for my work, until I received many Excel files OpenOffice was not able to read properly. I decided to give a try to Vista. My first impression of it when I had the computer was quite negative. I was not able to find things that used to be easy to find. It seemed slow and not very interesting.

As I thought I had to use it, I managed to make it a bit more pleasant by adopting the old Windows 95 style instead of the default colors and effects everywhere. I dislike the standard effects because it seems that they are only there to distract you from what you want to do with the computer, and don't help you to do things. I have used Windows a long time before, and installing Total Commander and Opera made Vista a bit more responsive for some tasks. Explorer is really slow and bloated.

Still on the big Java project we are working with, it took 14 minutes to (clean and) build the first time. I struggle to find out why it was so slow. Under Ubuntu, the same command took 5 minutes. As I thought it was swapping to disk, I decided to order more RAM so that I have 3GB (the build process takes around 1GB). If I build it many times in a row, because of the file cache, I can have the build in 4.30 min but it never happens in real life. In real cases it always takes at least 14 minutes, event with 3GB. And it still seems to swap !?! Now I am not even sure of anything, the fact is I did not manage to make it faster. I tried messing with various registry parameters for the cache/memory with no success. This article is completely wrong about Vista memory being much better managed. It is really awfully managed. That frustrated me how a new OS can be 3x slower, until I heard about gnumeric. Gnumeric is able to read all kinds of difficult Excel formulas, and all my Excel documents worked under Ubuntu.

So after 2 weeks of experiencing the slowness of Vista, and the first blue screen (BSODs are back with Vista), I switched back to Ubuntu. Other than being  awfully slow, Vista does not have that many drawbacks, but it does not have anything compelling either when compared to XP (except a maybe better security system).

Windows Vista Is Crap!

It has been already 1 year since Windows Vista is out. In my new company, I had a new computer with Vista on it. I quickly installed Ubuntu in dual boot. I was happy with Ubuntu for my work, until I received many Excel files OpenOffice was not able to read properly. I decided to give a try to Vista. My first impression of it when I had the computer was quite negative. I was not able to find things that used to be easy to find. It seemed slow and not very interesting.

As I thought I had to use it, I managed to make it a bit more pleasant by adopting the old Windows 95 style instead of the default colors and effects everywhere. I dislike the standard effects because it seems that they are only there to distract you from what you want to do with the computer, and don't help you to do things. I have used Windows a long time before, and installing Total Commander and Opera made Vista a bit more responsive for some tasks. Explorer is really slow and bloated.

Still on the big Java project we are working with, it took 14 minutes to (clean and) build the first time. I struggle to find out why it was so slow. Under Ubuntu, the same command took 5 minutes. As I thought it was swapping to disk, I decided to order more RAM so that I have 3GB (the build process takes around 1GB). If I build it many times in a row, because of the file cache, I can have the build in 4.30 min but it never happens in real life. In real cases it always takes at least 14 minutes, event with 3GB. And it still seems to swap !?! Now I am not even sure of anything, the fact is I did not manage to make it faster. I tried messing with various registry parameters for the cache/memory with no success. This article is completely wrong about Vista memory being much better managed. It is really awfully managed. That frustrated me how a new OS can be 3x slower, until I heard about gnumeric. Gnumeric is able to read all kinds of difficult Excel formulas, and all my Excel documents worked under Ubuntu.

So after 2 weeks of experiencing the slowness of Vista, and the first blue screen (BSODs are back with Vista), I switched back to Ubuntu. Other than being  awfully slow, Vista does not have that many drawbacks, but it does not have anything compelling either when compared to XP (except a maybe better security system).