[Novalug] Ubuntu, SuSE installations and old gear

[Megan Larko]

Robert W. Rowe wrote:

Greetings One and All!

Not intending to start a distro war, but to respond to Mr. Rowes comment 
"is SuSE a more mature distribution......", I personally believe it 
depends upon the hw to which one is installing.   I bought a box set of 
SuSE 10.0 from CompUSA Dec 2006.   It would only partly install on two 
of my computers.   For the record, Fedora Core 6 would mostly install on 
the same two boxes, but FC 6 did everything except network!  I switched 
to Ubuntu Breezy Badger and then Kubuntu Feisty Faun on the two system.
Now that install was essentially flawless for me; wireless networking 
and printing and everything.

I am installing to older hw (no sATA disks, for example).   So I think 
the install depends upon the hw it's trying to match.    I believe all 
of the three distros I mentioned would install on my older hw; it's just 
which one required the least amount of effort by me.  In my own 
individual, personal case, it was (k)Ubuntu.

megan

> I have an old dual CPU box running AMD MP1800+'s at 1.8 mHz each with two
> gigs of memory, an ATI AGP card, etc., etc. It has a Phoenix bios I
> haven't updated because, in essence, it would thrill me to no end to flash
> the BIOS, commit a faux pas and not be able to use the machine.
> 
> I have a two-drive SATA card and a USB 2 card installed to bring the
> system into the early 21st century.
> 
> Anyway, Bill's neat little "let's check to make sure everything's
> legitimate" executable stopped svchost.exe from running, which pretty well
> stops XP from running, so I decided to go with Linux again.
> 
> After looking around I decided on Kubuntu 7.04, so I ISO'd a bootable DVD
> and tried an installation. No good. I got this error (not sure what the
> actual numbers were following Debian):
> 
> "BusyBox v1.1.3 (Debian 1:1.1.3-3ubuntu2) Built-in shell (ash)
> 
> Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands
> 
> /bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
> 
> (initramfs)"
> 
> Peachy. So I ordered up and tried an official Ubuntu 7.04 installation.
> Same error. Tried live booting from either disc, same error. Tried a safe
> graphical installation as suggested on various forums. No good. Couldn't
> find the 360GB SATA drive, the one the system found pretty handily on
> boot-up.
> 
> Using an update CD is mentioned in the pre-boot menu on the
> installation/live boot DVD. So I tried various ways of using the SATA
> drivers on an update CD, to no avail. Nope. No good.
> 
> So, I had a SuSE 10.2 disc from a magazine I bought a few weeks ago while
> researcing what was up and about in Linux since I last looked at it--when
> the above machine was new in the late 20th century--and tried that.
> 
> A flawless installation. SATA--no problem. "Expert"
> partitioning--wonderful. Printing--well, I have a HP 8450, so that's going
> to be a problem with any distribution, as far as I can tell.
> 
> So, is SuSE a more mature distribution or is Ubuntu/Kubuntu geared toward
> newer hardware with SATA in the BIOS and all that? Or was SATA even the
> problem?
> 
> The SuSE installation seems to be working pretty well for me, even though
> YaST seems a little slow and too "all inclusive." I've used Red Hat/Fedora
> before and RPM's were okay, but I was looking forward to some of the
> apt-get action I've read so much about.
>