Random Thoughts

Almost a year ago now I switched my now dead Acer laptop from Ubuntu to PCLinux because I couldn’t get some things to work properly in Ubuntu. And several months later I made the switch on my old Compaq, too. Well, lately, a lot of things were going flaky with this, now my only computer. Last night I finally put Ubuntu back on it — erasing my Windows partition in the process. I had kept that partition because there were a few things that I felt I needed it for, but now it has been more than a year since I have even looked at it. So I decided it was time to wipe the slate clean.

So far am happy to be back with Ubuntu. 8.10 sure installs easily. And everything works — my wireless card, my reluctant printer, everything. So I will stay with Ubuntu until something goes wrong and I decide to switch — or until I get a little netbook with some other variety of Linux on it!

Miguel asked how many machines we have running PCLinux 2007 now. It is up to 4, but my husband is having some trouble with his. He was running PCLinux and everything was fine. He went to bed the other night after being online on the laptop and woke up with no internet access on it at all. I wouldn’t connect wirelessly or even wired! He is trying to download PCLinux Gnome now to see if he can get it working that way. (He is more attached to Gnome than I am.) If he can’t, he may switch to something else. He told me the other day that he misses the Ubuntu documentation, so he may head back there. We’ll see.

My laptop came back from the repair shop, so I am back on PCLinux. I had been using my other computer with Ubuntu on it in the meantime. It is going to take a little while to get back in the swing of things here, I think, but it is nice to be back.

Today was spent helping my daughter get her computer up and running again. She had wanted to install Ubuntu until she saw Linux Mint. Then she wanted Mint. She installed it and was happy — until she tried to connect to the Internet. See, she has the infamous Broadcom 4318 chipset in her Linksys wireless card. Now, I have the same chipset in my Compaq, on which I am currently running Ubuntu Gutsy. It was a hassle to get the wireless to work, but I have done it a couple times. I have the drivers. I put them on my daughter’s machine, to no avail. I tried with Mint and later with Gutsy. No luck either way. Then I tried PCLinux, used the same drivers I had tried with Ubuntu and Mint. Aside from telling the computer which .inf file I wanted it to use, I had no trouble at all connecting her to the Internet. Needless to say, we installed PCLinux on her machine. She is happy, and so am I. Now, if she could just figure out how to use gnucash…

I received a comment asking what laptop wouldn’t run Ubuntu. I have to say that I ran Ubuntu on that laptop for almost a year. It was fine. It was only after an upgrade to Gutsy that things started not working. It is an Acer Aspire 5100. And, as another comment indicated, I think it has to do with the 64-bit thing.

As for PCLinux, so far I am happy. Except I had a Skype conference call this morning that didn’t go well; I couldn’t hear them at all. Was it PCLinux? Probably not. But it is curious that it happened now. I was very happy to see that Flash works perfectly, though. I didn’t have to log in to Windows to check the latest updates to the course materials.

We’ll see what I think in a week or two or a month or two. I still have Ubuntu Gutsy on my other machine, so I don’t feel totally disloyal!

My husband has been at it for some time now, but it wasn’t until Miguel talked about it that I was ready to give it a try. PCLinuxOS 2007, that is. I finally switched from Ubuntu to PCLinux on one of my laptops.

Ever since I upgraded to Gutsy Gibbon, I have had trouble getting it to read my flash drives, and Flash wouldn’t work right. It was a major pain because of the course development I am doing that is produced in Flash. I had to log into my Windows partition to edit it. (That is all I ever use Windows for anymore!).

So today I backed up everything on my Linux partition and tried live CDs of Linux Mint and PCLinux 2007. I really wanted Mint to work, but it wouldn’t find my wireless card. PCLinux found it right out of the box. So I got everything running the way I wanted with the Live CD and then installed it. It was so easy. Everything was exactly the way I wanted it as soon as the installation was finished.

I am sorry to leave Ubuntu, but I need for things to work. For me on this machine, PCLinux is it. I am still running Ubuntu on my other laptop. Everything works much better there. So for now, I am content to leave it that way. But if I have trouble in the future, you can be sure I will try PCLinux on it, too.