Linux distribution choices and an image editing issue
I'm still considering what to replace Fedora Core with. There is the new Fedora which supposedly is a bit more usable, but likely still has the silly codec issues. And there is Ubuntu which has a very good ease of use, overall. There is Freespire which is now Ubuntu based and supposedly has no codec problems. There is also Wolvix, which is a customized version of Slackware.
I had a chance to test drive FreeSpire and I found I really didn't like it. Freespire is meant to be a Windows replacement, so it's set up to look like Windows. I understand the reason for that, but it made me cringe. The silly 'My Computer' icon, the oversimplified menu, and I'm not sure what all else. It might well be Ubuntu underneath, but I suspect I'd spend a lot of time de-stupiding it. Why bother? If it's Ubuntu, just run Ubuntu. Oh, yeah, the codecs. Well, that might not be an issue.
Ubuntu does have a great ease of use. There is a little bit to get used to. Using sudo instead of su jars me, but that can be dealt with and that's likely a fairly simple thing if I want to change it. Installs on Ubuntu are trivial, even for things not handled by the Synaptic package manager. I did run into one exception, or perhaps ran out of patience first.
Wolvix takes the Slackware approach and makes "getting under the hood" easier. Ubuntu tries to hide that, and generally does it well. Wolvix lets you tinker. Or sometime it requires it. There is GSlapt which does for Slackware what Synaptic does for Ubuntu. Installation on Wolvix can be a bit more involved than Ubuntu if it's not something GSlapt handles.
A few days ago I was using GIMP to edit photos and when I tried to load a photo jmaynard took with his new camera, GIMP said it couldn't load it. Nor any of the others he took. Other programs could load and display them. And save them, but one would crash and another would re-compress the images throwing away megabytes of information. Neither was good workaround. I updated GIMP to no avail. A web search revealed that there was a problem with GIMP and libexif and it fixed in the most recent version of libexif. I tried to update libexif and was told was running the most recent version. It was only the last version released for the (now rather old) version of Fedora Core I am running. Fine, I'd update it manually. There was no recent libexif package for my version of Fedora Core.
Not wanting to do a complete update to more recent version of Fedora (and spend a lot of time, and break who knows what else) I gave Xubuntu a try. Same problem with GIMP and libexif. Synaptic didn't know of the latest version of libexif. I found what was supposed to be the latest libexif package for Ubuntu, but couldn't install it. So I went to Wolvix, which also had the GIMP and libexif problem. But I found a Slackware package of libexif and could install it with installpkg. Things started working.
Now I'm torn. I want to like Ubuntu, and I'm leery of running a Slackware based distribution as my main system. Yet it seems that if something needs to work, Wolvix lets me get the job done and Ubuntu... seems to get in the way. Now, it may be I was rushing and just wanted the problem fixed NOW and didn't use some Debianesque tool that would have taken care of things as I've avoided Debian style systems until Ubuntu. Of course, I could run Ubuntu and still have Wolvix around as I have two computers in the office. I have both now, but it's dual-boot so I can use one or the other at any given time. Decisive, aren't I?