The Ubuntu Plunge – Day 4: A Small Detour

Those of you who have been following my exploration of Ubuntu as a Windows Vista replacement will note that I’ve become quite enamored of my newly adopted environment. The ability to “skin” almost every aspect of the UI – combined with the simplicity of the package management system (application “tire kicking” is now a pleasurable experience) – makes it ridiculously easy to explore the wide world of FOSS.

However, they say the “grass is always greener” somewhere else, and I couldn’t help but admire the snazzy looking screen shots of openSUSE 10.3. The “SLED” menu system, in particular, attracted me if for no other reason than it reminded me of Vista’s Start menu. And since I was planning to take the next step in my exploration – wiping Vista from my primary internal disk and installing Linux directly as my sole boot option – I decided to take a side trip into SUSE-land to see what all the fuss was about.

It was a short trip.

First-off, the installation process is far more involved than Ubuntu. I used the single CD installation method for the Gnome-based version. It’s not a “Live CD” so you can’t run utilities or browse the web while it’s installing. It’s also not very well thought out – the installation program wanted to connect to the web to download updates, however, when I tried to get it configure my wireless adapter to access my Linksys router it failed to provide any option for configuring the WEP passkey. Naturally, the attempts to grab a DHCP lease failed and I had to proceed without network updates – annoying (someone should have seen this coming) but forgivable.

What I found to be unforgivable was the convoluted way that SUSE handles nVidia drivers. When I first booted into openSUSE, I found that none off the UI 3D effects were enabled. Attempting to turn them on via SAX2 resulted in a complaint that my video card didn’t support 3D. Poking around the web led me to the famous “1-click” installer for the proprietary nVidia driver. However, for whatever reason, the installation didn’t take – I’d get the nVidia “splash screen” during X startup, however, SAX2 still refused to accept the card as 3D-capable.

Some more digging led me to a series of terminal commands that forced SAX2 to accept the new driver. However, when I took the next step and tried to enable Compiz I ended up with a UI that had no window frame borders (the title bars, scrollbars, etc., all just disappeared). More hunting and clicking led me to the infamous “white screen of death” (no way to ALT-Fn or CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE your way out of this one). Two or three times down this road and I was done with openSUSE.

I’m now back on Ubuntu, with “Gutsy” x64 taking the place of Vista x64 as my sole boot option. And now I must make a confession: The only reason I decided to nuke Vista completely was because I knew that I could restore the entire configuration in less than an hour thanks to the Windows Image Backup utility. So call me “chicken” if you want – I just feel better knowing that I can go back if/when I hit a brick wall with Ubuntu.

Fortunately, the walls I have encountered so far have been paper thin and easily surmounted. In fact, I’m surprised at how quickly I’ve been able to get up to speed with the whole Linux way of doing things. I’ve “modprobed” my kernel. I’ve downloaded and compiled themes and utilities. I even re-skinned Firefox to make ti compatible with my chosen GTK and Compiz/Emerald selections.

Overall, it’s been an easy ride – but not a flawless one. Some of the outstanding issues I’ve yet to resolve:

1. ACPI Suspend/Resume is a bit twitchy. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, I’m forced to hit the BRS and cold boot my Dell XPS M1710. Tweaking the acpi-support file (I added “nm-applet” to the ”STOP_SERVICES” list – it seemed to help somewhat) has become a new hobby, and I hope to eventually achieve a reliable configuration. Given that it took Microsoft nearly 10 years to get it right with Windows (despite being a major driver behind the standard), I’m hopeful that I’ll accomplish my goal before my kids are in college.

2. My Ricoh SD card reader has become picky. It’ll read and even auto-mount plain vanilla SD cards, however, it won’t touch a Memory Stick Pro Duo via the stick’s included adapter. I found this out the hard way when my daughter pestered me for some new music for her Playstation Portable. Annoying, but not a show stopper.

3. OpenOffice is still buggy as hell. The latest installment: Writer hangs solid if you try to access certain functions while displaying one of the alternate GTK themes (e.g. Crux). I found this one out the hard way when I lost a half-hour’s work to a Writer crash (I was browsing through the various options, looking for a way to turn of the annoying “auto complete” mechanism, when boom!). I’m not sure how this one slipped past Canonical’s QA process, but the good news is that the bug is already well documented and that a small armada of open source hackers are frantically working to fix it – one more example of how the “community” aspect of Linux can be a positive force despite its sometimes ugly public disposition.

So, at the end of my first week running Ubuntu I’ve managed to carve out a very functional, and highly personalized, workspace. I’ve overcome some initial configuration and hardware support headaches, and I’m now systematically squashing the few remaining annoyances. In fact, things are going so well that I’ve dumped Vista entirely and have committed to making Ubuntu work for me as my sole OS environment.

I’ll continue to post updates here throughout the next few weeks. My goal is to completely master Ubuntu and to reach a point where, at the end of my 30 day odyssey, I not only no longer need to go back to Windows, but I don’t want to, either. And from where I’m standing, that goal looks to be well within reach.