Sabayon 5.1 : Another good KDE distribution

We all know KDE4.3 rocks! It is the greatest release from KDE developers that really just works. After switching my laptop to KDE from Gnome (thanks to great OpenSUSE 11.2 release) all of my hate for KDE4 has gone.

Now it’s time to move on … because in Linux world you simply can’t stop your progress. OpenSUSE 11.2 was great and I don’t put any doubt on it but it’s time to try another different distribution for me. This time it’s ‘Sabayon Linux 5.1‘.

Thanks to distrowatch, I was promptly notified that a new version of Sabayon is available and I downloaded it promptly. At boot prompt I got plenty of choices but I was on course to install it – so I didn’t care about other options. Installation was bit lengthy for me. General setup related questions were there but actual installation procedure took longer than OpenSUSE 11.2. Maybe because it installed more packages than OpenSUSE. Nonetheless in about 20 minutes I could do first boot to new Sabayon installation.

Default desktop was sleek, default font-size was exactly what I always use. Flash, multimedia audio and video codecs were pre-installed. I can start watching youtube videos right away. Another great news for me, xbmc comes pre-installed with Sabayon which I use as my main media center application. I can say that choice of pre-installed softwares are almost perfect for an average computer user. Kudos to Sabayon devs.

One somewhat disappointing observation was – Sabayon couldn’t detect my laptop’s atheros WiFi card, which was detected by all of the distributions I’ve used in last 5 months. Since, in my country WiFi-broadband is still costly and very few can afford it, it is not a concern for me, but for other international users, it is. But I am sure there are tweaks available for this problem. Another tweaks needed for me was by default no Bluetooth packages were installed and I’d to install them manually. But it worked promptly. Apart from these issues I didn’t find anything else to complain.

As soon as I hooked my laptop to my wired broadband connection, I got updates notification. I had to install ~400MB of updates just after 5 days of release. My webcam worked perfectly and so was my multimedia keys in the laptop. Overall I was happy with my fully working laptop.

Sabayon 5.1 is really another good as well as a newbie friendly distribution for average computer users. It may not be as easy as Ubuntu or OpenSUSE but a person with 6-9 months of knowledge in Linux can easily manage Sabayon.

Website: http://www.sabayonlinux.org/

OpenSUSE 11.2 has changed my mind

After resisting myself for 1.5 years, I have finally changed my mind and started using KDE4. But I was an avid Gnome user and I barely disliked Gnome even few months ago. Why I jumped the ship? One answer : openSUSE 11.2

I always try two Linux distributions at one time. My primary laptop runs on Linux (previously it was Ubuntu 9.10) which I rarely change, and I use another Linux distribution on Virtual box to try out various distribution’s latest releases. So I got my hand on latest release of openSUSE.

After few days, I noticed that I was spending more time on virtual openSUSE rather than native Ubuntu. I liked many features in latest openSUSE and KDE4.3:

• KDE4.3 is as stable as Gnome
• KDE4.3 is not slow and resource hungry like first KDE4 release.
• OpenSUSE is faster than previous releases. I used 64bit version.
• Default look n feel is polished and unnecessary packages are not included in the CD.
• Adding repositories and installing other packages are easy to do. I think openSUSE has one of the largest software repository out there.

I was very much happy working in openSUSE. I thought why not give it a try as my primary OS? So I decided to wipe Ubuntu out of my laptop and install openSUSE 11.2. And I can tell you it was not a bad decision.

Not a single hardware in my laptop goes undetected and everything is working fine except for my Wireless LAN card (I don’t have Wireless Internet connection, so I couldn’t test it). After few minor updates, my machine is running like a Ferrari.

Those who are waiting for a stable and latest KDE4.3 based Linux distribution, your wait is over. Try openSUSE 11.2 and you will not be disappointed. I tried it and it didn’t disappoint me.

It’s very tough to please Linux users with every distribution release. It is not that openSUSE 11.2 is bug-free or it is the ultimate distribution. But this release is well ahead from general distros. openSUSE 11.2 team has done a splendid job – a job well done.

I have written a blog entry about how good was the latest Ubuntu release but openSUSE 11.2 has changed my mind to jump into the KDE ship.

9.10 : Best Ubuntu Release for Me

I don’t know about others, but my Ubuntu 9.10 laptop (clean installation) is performing pretty well.

I feel Empathy is better than pidgin. Period. I used Ubuntu 9.04 and Fedora 11 both in my laptop (I was using Ubuntu 9.10 RC). For the first time, Hibernate and Stand-By worked just like windows. Awesome experience.

Laptop’s blue-tooth can successfully transfer file to/fro my mobile phones. Previously I could just browse files but couldn’t transfer to mobile phones.  Even battery life was better in 9.10 version. I can get more than 3 hours battery life now where as previously it was 2.30 hours only.

I couldn’t have asked for more. Thanks Ubuntu team for your great release.