[Coco] Ann: FUSE Support for Toolshed

[Joel Ewy]

I've been putting Ubuntu (and perhaps more often Xubuntu) on a bunch of
computers for a while now.  Mostly these have been for people who are
accustomed to MS-Windows.  But also I've found that Xubuntu (Ubuntu with
XFCE instead of GNOME) is really nice for some of my own computers with
more modest resources.  Works nicely on an iMac G3-266, though it really
needs more than 64M RAM.  I used to really like RedHat, (bought Official
RH4.2 in a box, installed 5.1, 5.2, 6.2 (still use this on a file
server), 7.something, 8, 9, FC2...) but since about the time it split
into RH and Fedora Core I've gotten the impression that it supports less
of the hardware that I want to use (read:  may not work with older stuff
at all, and doesn't configure what it does support as seamlessly as
Ubuntu), and seems to add way too much GUI bloat per unit of GUI
functionality.

The machine I have RH 8 on is an AMD K6/2-450 with 256M RAM.  When I
installed FC2 (FC3's POS installer kept crashing) on an Athlon 1800XP+ a
few years ago, I found it usable, but thought the GUI should have been a
bit more peppy, and I wanted (for my clients, if not for myself) to be
able to configure more things more seamlessly from the GUI.  Let me just
say here that while I much prefer the look and feel of GNOME to KDE, I
really loathe Nautilus.  It feels like it's written in Perl running on a
PC emulated on an Apple ][.  A file manager should be responsive.  See
ROX Filer.  That works pretty well in Debian m68k on a Quadra 840av or
Q630, and in DSL on low-end Pentium systems.  XFCE's Thunar isn't too
bad either.

Probably it was FC3's utter failure to install that really put a bad
taste in my mouth.  Maybe they've gotten their act together by now and I
should give them another look.  But I bet I can't just upgrade my RH8 to
whatever the current Fedora is.  And if I do, I probably won't want to
run current GNOME.  I haven't really kept up with Fedora development
over the last couple years.  If there's something like Xubuntu, where
there are XFCE configuration utilities that actually work with the
operating system, then I might consider that.  If the installer works. 
I'm not afraid of the command line, and I much prefer vi to Pico.  But
when I want to fiddle with every last bit, I'll switch on the CoCo or
the MM/1.

I guess the other thing that started to really irk me about RH/Fedora is
that the mess of package dependencies seemed to get wildly out of
control.  I found myself having to install Korean font packages in order
to add some utterly unrelated utility.  It was insane.  I was having to
install gigabytes of junk just to get a basic system working, when I
knew that 70% of that stuff couldn't possibly be really, truly necessary
to the packages I wanted.  And all the GUI config stuff was written in
interpreted script languages, and each one used their own widget library
and toolkit -- all this to get a level of GUI functionality somewhere
just below a mid '90s version of MacOS.  *Ubuntu doesn't seem to suffer
nearly as much from that malady.  Maybe Fedora has cleaned up their act.

Ok, here's one more thing.  I have FC5 on 5 CDs.  Now, I have DSL
(Digital Subscriber Line as well as Damn Small Linux), but it still
takes an afternoon to download what I need to install it.  And most of
that is stuff I don't want.  But *Ubuntu is a single ISO image to get a
really quite functional system.  Anything else I want I can quickly and
easily add with Synaptic.  Slicker than snot.

DSL proves that you can run current software (Firefox, Thunderbird, OOo
2) on older hardware.  It's mainly a matter of getting the GUI bloat
under control.  I find that Xubuntu strikes a nice balance between GUI
niceties and bloat.  If there's a Fedora equivalent (I mean where XFCE
is configured to really support the OS, not just slapped on top of X)
that might be a slightly better option for me than moving to Xubuntu on
that particular machine.  Then again, RH8 is old enough that even an
XFCE-based Fedora would probably be as good as a fresh install.

Just haven't gotten around to investigating how painful any of the
upgrade options will be.

JCE

Mannequin* wrote:
> John W. Linville wrote:
>   
>> On Sat, Feb 24, 2007 at 08:10:06PM +0000, Mannequin* wrote:
>>     
>>> Joel Ewy wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> So, I probably need to quit procrastinating and upgrade my RedHat 8...
>>>>         
>>> Might I suggest... *cough* Ubuntu? ;)
>>>       
>> Bah...
>>
>> A Red Hat user will be far better-off sticking with Fedora.
>>
>> IMHO, Ubuntu gets such fawning press mostly from ex-Debian users who
>> are so impressed by coming out of the stone age that they don't realize
>> that Fedora, SuSE, and Mandrake had been out-classing them for years.
>>
>> Of course, YMMV... :-)
>>     
>
> *snort* LOL. Of course YMMV... Debian, in my experience, was far better 
> than Red Hat. When I switched, I never looked back. (Kinda like Windows.)
>
> The only reason I switched to Ubuntu from Debian was because the 
> installer didn't recognize a good portion of the hardware in my new 
> laptop. Ubuntu's did, and I didn't feel like fussing with it this time 
> around. (I guess I'm getting lazy. :) )
>
> I'll make a note that it was before Debian's new installer was 
> finished... or is it? I haven't kept up. LOL
>
> -M.
>
>