A bad day with Linux is better than a good day with Windows

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Back in late October I ranted about the state of Linux and how it didn't operate to my satisfaction on europa, especially with the new ATI graphics card. Pulling away for a while gave me an opportunity to stand back and gain a better perspective of my problems. During that period I re-installed openSUSE 10.3 until I'd had a chance to evaluate a number of issues. Then I made the decision tonight to re-install Ubuntu 7.10.


The biggest change I made in my installation proceedure was to rename my crufty old home directory from /home/wbeebe to /home/wbeebe.old during live CD operation before I installed Ubuntu. After installation I got a brand new home directory without all the cruft from (literally) years of operation under various releases of Suse. With a new home directory I noticed that a number of problems I'd been complaining about magically cleared up. I then carefully moved certain folders from my older home directory to my new one.

Right now I have the restricted ATI drivers installed and hardware acceleration is enabled with the ATI 1950 Pro. I've got Compiz running with custom effects (cube, flipping, etc). I've also noticed that video plays back correctly. The only issues I still have are with some OpenGL features and the fact that K3B won't rip DVDs. This current (re)installation isn't perfect, but it's usable. And I feel comfortably distanced from Novell and Microsoft.

Sooner or later I'll have enough time to get all the issues wrung out and have it all set up to my satisfaction. I went through this same process with Suse. I can certainly do it with Ubuntu.

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