Two Linux Distros To Avoid
I used to be an Amiga user. Then Comodore went under and my old Amiga A1200/B1260 slowly got older and older. It couldn't be upgraded as vendors went under or turned to other platforms. At last I got an old PC, installed Ubuntu and I've been a Linux fan ever since. I was happy for a long time with Ubuntu's performance using KDE as my window manager. Then Canonical came up with Unity and stopped supporting KDE, CDE, XFCE or even Gnome, (which had been their standard.) So I backed-up my home directory, (and some other directories I though I might need), and installed another distro that used XFCE instead, (since my desktop was a little underpowered by this point.) From there I went from distro to distro for a while, trying this window manager and that. Then a friend gave me his old computer, which was not as powerful as he wanted, but more than good enough for writing stories and watching Youtube. He'd loaded Linux Mint 16 on my new machine to start it with. I made the mistake of not replacing it.
I've never had trouble with Linux crashing randomly until Mint 16. It didn't matter what app I was using. (It was usually Firefox, but that's the app I use the most.) Every-so-often the system would freeze and a minute later the loader screen would come up. It would progress through shutdown stuff and then restart. I'd have to hope whatever I'd been working on had saved recently when I got control back. I put up with it for a while, but last Tuesday I got sick and tired of it.
So I copied my home directory, (and a few other directories that I thought I might need later), to an external HD that I used for back-ups.
Then I installed Fedora 20 over it. It works, but it's restrictive in ways I didn't even know an OS had! For instance, I had to tell it my admin account is eligible to override permissions, (ie. sudo.) It flatly refuses to read standard .mp3 files, even to convert them to something else. There seems to be a way of installing codecs, but not the few that everybody uses! And even after installing a flash player, Firefox can't play flash files. It won't let me install new software or even run a terminal window! I've lost all respect for Red Hat Linux, Fedora is an almighty pain in the butt!
Later today or tomorrow I'm backing up my home directory again. Once I've zipped the whole home directory to a file and uploaded it to Dropbox, so I have an extra back-up, and saved my bookmarks to an email or two, (just in case), I'm going to reformat my HD and install Ubuntu. I'm not terribly fond of Unity, but at least I know I can work with it! Or install Gnome or KDE beside it.
BTW, I'm having even more trouble with the change-over than that, but it's not Fedora's fault, I think. When I went to copy my old home directory back, my external HD had a corrupted partition. A million thanks to shiver_raccoon for all the help he's been trying to rescue my data. I hope you at least learn something new from this by the time you're through, one way or another. You're a wonderful friend to this little otter.
PS. Nobody even suggest that I switch to Windoze. I don't care what you think of 'Doze or M$ or Linux or me, it ain't gonna happen! I didn't go to 'Doze from Amiga because I did not want the kind of performance I got from Mint. And don't tell about Mac, either; if I could've afforded Apple anything, that's where I'd've gone.
I've never had trouble with Linux crashing randomly until Mint 16. It didn't matter what app I was using. (It was usually Firefox, but that's the app I use the most.) Every-so-often the system would freeze and a minute later the loader screen would come up. It would progress through shutdown stuff and then restart. I'd have to hope whatever I'd been working on had saved recently when I got control back. I put up with it for a while, but last Tuesday I got sick and tired of it.
So I copied my home directory, (and a few other directories that I thought I might need later), to an external HD that I used for back-ups.
Then I installed Fedora 20 over it. It works, but it's restrictive in ways I didn't even know an OS had! For instance, I had to tell it my admin account is eligible to override permissions, (ie. sudo.) It flatly refuses to read standard .mp3 files, even to convert them to something else. There seems to be a way of installing codecs, but not the few that everybody uses! And even after installing a flash player, Firefox can't play flash files. It won't let me install new software or even run a terminal window! I've lost all respect for Red Hat Linux, Fedora is an almighty pain in the butt!
Later today or tomorrow I'm backing up my home directory again. Once I've zipped the whole home directory to a file and uploaded it to Dropbox, so I have an extra back-up, and saved my bookmarks to an email or two, (just in case), I'm going to reformat my HD and install Ubuntu. I'm not terribly fond of Unity, but at least I know I can work with it! Or install Gnome or KDE beside it.
BTW, I'm having even more trouble with the change-over than that, but it's not Fedora's fault, I think. When I went to copy my old home directory back, my external HD had a corrupted partition. A million thanks to shiver_raccoon for all the help he's been trying to rescue my data. I hope you at least learn something new from this by the time you're through, one way or another. You're a wonderful friend to this little otter.
PS. Nobody even suggest that I switch to Windoze. I don't care what you think of 'Doze or M$ or Linux or me, it ain't gonna happen! I didn't go to 'Doze from Amiga because I did not want the kind of performance I got from Mint. And don't tell about Mac, either; if I could've afforded Apple anything, that's where I'd've gone.