Hello, The Ubuntu 10.04 32 bit installation in my system works fine except for one basic flaw that the display crashes on any higher load, like opening many applications etc. The crash requires the system to be forced shut down and restarted. It happens suddenly in the middle of some work. There is no xorg.conf in the X11 directory and on the net many others too have reported facing this problem with older 845 mobos. There is no text based or gui control to adjust display related settings like refresh rate etc. As with other modern distros before it, it appears that slowly Linux is going the Windows way where the simple text file configuration is being replaced by system automated processes and the user is loosing control of his system unless he/she is an advanced expert. At least in Windows there are GUIs for hardware setups to replace or update drivers.
Ubuntu appears to be too interested in racing ahead of other distros even at the cost of stability. This makes the Ubuntu system good for Beta testers and as a latest toy but not good for serious users. There should be some automated benchmarking software that tests their distros on various machines and reports problems, in simulated conditions. That way they don't have to depend only on filed bug reports to correct problems. For a change, I downloaded the Fedora 12 live + install CD and it looks quite good. Ubuntu 10.04 uses the 2.6.32 kernel and Fedora 12 uses 2.6.31, very close. The live CD boots fine with 512 MB RAM. Its installation was the fastest I've seen as it simply copies the entire cd image to the hard disk, reboots and then adds new users. This live CD installs only on Ext4 partitions. It comes with gnome and has no OpenOffice. I took the opportunity to download Oxygen Office 3 and installed its rpms. OxygenOffice has better compatibility with Office2007 files. http://linux.softpedia.com/progDownload/OxygenOffice-Professional-Download-33199.html After un-taring the folder, simply go to the RPMS folder and run 'rpm -i *.rpm' (as root) to install everything. Then go to the menus subfolder in RPMS and install the Red Hat rpm, to create the menu icons. In both the distros Google Earth crashes in my Intel 845 mobo with a requirement for a forced restart. In Fedora12, the display goes not get garbled, it simply freezes. However Google earth works fine in my Acer Laptop with 915 chipset and Lenny. However due to its 256 MB RAM, its painfully slow. Like Vista and Windows 7, it looks like those who want to use the latest Linux distros will have to upgrade their systems for better stability and display support. Regards, Rony. -- Regards, Rony. GNU/Linux ! No Viruses No Spyware Only Freedom. -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
