So there I was, happily using PCLinusOS 2008 MiniMe edition. It is a one damn fine distribution, that is stable, has rolling update strategy and light weight. It happened however that the instant messaging network ICQ started blocking my version of Pidgin with a message that the client should be updated to regain access to their network. In the world of Windows this would have been a no-brainer, simply a matter of visiting Pidgin website, but for some reason or another PCLOS had not received an update for some time. This was problematic as I often work on Linux, but I have some key contacts in ICQ, which I was not able to reach using Pidgin. Of course I could have recompiled my own packages, or used another IM client, but those alternatives were not my piece of cake. I want to use Pidgin and I like that things “just work”. What ever the reason was, there was a slight pause in releasing updates for PCLOS and it was hurting my work.

From that I got the idea that I should give Ubuntu’s rather new Hardy Heron 8.04.1 a whirl. It was supposed to be stable, even stable enough for corporate usage and as a Long Term Support version it would receive patches for years to come. So I went on installing Hardy and using it for some days, and I was actually quite happy about it – it is a rather simplistic desktop environment and most things just work…until I started having issues with the WLAN of my IBM Thinkpad T41. After couple days of usage I noticed that WLAN was very unreliable. I would have to tinker with Network Manager a number of times, or perform several reboots in order to get a network connection up.

I started Googling around and discovered that Ubuntu had switched from Intel originated Pro Wireless drivers to a 100% FOSS alternative, and the new drivers were buggy as hell. There was some flaky workaround in Network Manager in attempt in order to “fix” the issue, but the fact is that a lot of people are now having WLAN issues with their Ubuntu setups – issues that were not present in previous releases. The Intel Pro Wireless series of chipsets can be found in  IBM/Lenovo, Dell and many other major label laptops, and the user base of such laptops must be counted in millions. What kind of an idiot includes buggy drivers to a most common PC component in a LTS release, which many Ubuntu fans have been waiting for to install? And all this after successfully shipping the Intel’s “ipw” driver for several releases. As a software industry professional, I just can’t understand who would make such a choice, just to get a pure FOSS driver to the release. I wandered to Ubuntu’s IRC channel to talk about it, but only got an arrogant moderator on my face, so it was time to dump Ubuntu again and look for better alternatives. What a shame.

My next pick was openSUSE 11.0, which I already was somewhat familiar with. It is a very nicely productized desktop environment and has some nice repositories available for backports. After installing and fine-tuning everything in place, I went on to watch a video in YouTube that a friend has sent me – Firefox crashed. Restarted it and tried a couple more videos, and got just as many crashes. YouTube is roughly the 3rd most popular website in the world, and openSUSE has managed break that in their production release (at least after some updates pulled from the repos). How on earth can that happen? Does anyone actually perform any testing on these things? Another example of an issue that would never occur in the commercial software world – no one in their right mind would ship a browser product that would crash on YouTube if they were doing it for business. And believe I know what I am talking about, as I work in the field of software development involving web browsers.

So now my hope is on the Mandriva 2008.1. I am bit sceptic about their short release life cycles, and how well will there be any backport updates available to the key applications. After all, I can never know when some IM network decides to block some Pidgin version again. I have to give Mandriva some credit though on their 2008.x releases, as they are very well productized and user friendly. Let’s just wait and see what is software component going to fall apart next time….

If you are a new reader of BitBurners.com, be sure to check out our Mythbusting Linux articles too.

As before our focus is on typical desktop and Internet usage, seeking an open-source alternative to Windows. We value a good out-of-the-box experience, polished desktop design and usability over other features.

The winner: openSUSE 11.0

openSUSE 11.0 is now at release candidate phase, with final version just around the corner, but it is already safe to say that this is THE distribution for the year 2008. openSUSE has put a lot of effort to KDE v4 implementation, but unfortunately the next generation KDE still feels premature and doesn’t seem to offer real additional value to for the end-user. I always prefer KDE over Gnome, so it was kind of a disappointment. Luckily openSUSE has the best implementation of Gnome, and the familiar KDE v3.5 is also available on the DVD.

Since the version 10.3 openSUSE has updated and improved the applications, now ships in installable live CDs and has dramatically improved the package management – both backend and the GUI. In all desktop versions everything looks very professional, and well laid out. Compiz 3D-desktop now works out-of-the-box in most configurations and overall the performance seems to be top notch. openSUSE 11 has everything that an average desktop users needs, outstanding configuration tools in YaST and plenty of features for office or corporate networks. OpenSUSE community offers one-click solutions for proprietary formats. The  community is very strong in every way, and the availability of packages and backports is excellent, so this distro has a pretty long life cycle. openSUSE is totally desktop ready and actully quite far ahead of the competition in many ways.

The 2nd: PCLinuxOS 2008 MiniMe

Some may see PCLOS as a strange selection for the 2nd place, but after plenty of consideration and using it trough the winter I just have to give it a lot of credit. PCLOS 2008 MiniMe is sort of a prologue for the upcoming full 2008 edition. It ships with a bare bone KDE v3.5 installation, with no additional applications – the user pulls the needed apps (Mozilla, OpenOffice and so on) from the repos using the familiar Synaptic package management. As a result the user has a very streamlined desktop system only with apps that he wants or needs. As such the MiniMe might not be the best choice if you are looking for your very first Linux as one has to understand the basics of Linux package management, even though it is a very simple process.

What makes PCLOS stand out is the stability and longevity. For me this has been the most realiable Linux distribution. It uses a rolling release strategy, so you do not have to upgrade or reinstall every six months, as the system stays always current just by applying the updates using Synaptic. PCLOS is somewhat conservative in updates, so the stability has remained good. On the other hand it seems that PCLOS is slightly lagging behind in Linux development and cannot me considered as a bleeding edge distro. The key applications are up-to-date but for example the kernel is typically couple of version behind. PCLOS is forked from Mandriva, but they have not systematically synchronized with Mandriva releases since their departure.

The 3rd: Mandriva One 2008.1 Spring

If you know absolutely nothing about Linux, but you wish to try the better operating system, then Mandriva’s latest is a top contender. It comes with excellent hardware support (best in my experience), beautifully designed desktop and easy to use Windows-like configuration tools. Mandriva is a KDE v3.5 oriented distro, but the Gnome implementation is decent as well. The downside of Mandriva is that the life cycle of the releases seem pretty short, and in my opinion the community is not very strong compared to Suse or Ubuntu. It is kind of a shame that Mandriva doesn’t get the attention it deserves, since in many ways it is a better system for the Windows refugees than the over hyped Ubuntu.

The 4th: Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

To me the Ubuntu just continues not to impress. As usual it comes with the ugly brown looks and quite spartan Gnome desktop. Also my subjective opinion is that the quality and stability of Ubuntu releases has decreased in the past two or three generations. I think the decision to ship an updated 8.04.1 version later this year, which should be “enterprise quality”, is a clear indication that this release has some rough edges.

So why is Ubuntu high on the 4th place then? First of all it is still a decent distribution, that is quite easy to use and supports a lot of hardware, even though it is not worth the hype and is showcases nothing exceptional. The Hardy Heron release has some serious edge over the competition: It is a so called LTS (Long Term Support) release with 3 years of updates for the desktop edition and 5 years for the server! This offer is simply unmatched by any recent desktop distribution. The LTS status of this release will also guarantee that there will be many Ubuntu Hardy based distributions on the market, most notable perhaps being the Linux Mint which corrects many of the faults complained here regarding the look and feel of the desktop. Besides the long life-cycle, the popularity and media attention of Ubuntu has made it very popular, which means that it has the strongest community, with user groups in many countries. In the non-commercial software world, the support of a local community is priceless.

Final words

That wraps it up for the spring of 2008 – openSUSE wins, second time in a row. Obviously there are many other potential distributions out there and actually the amount of choice is almost overwhelming. We try to help the people that are looking for an alternative to Windows, and in our opinion these are the most potential choices for that purpose. They all have their higlights and weaknesses, but overall the offering of openSUSE seems most complete.