[Tfug] Audio/Video woes

[Chad Woolley]

I swear this is not trolling, just My Humble Opinion :)

On 9/22/06, Stephen Hooper <stephen.hooper at gmail.com> wrote:
> Upgrading your distribution to fix a video problem?  Try Gentoo: video
> just worked for me on this beastie as well.  Of course, I had it
> compile everything, but what the hey!

Sorry, I disagree.  "Having to compile everything" doesn't fall under
the "just works" category in my book, even if it does compile and work
flawlessly.  "Just works" to me means I install the distro, click on a
video link in firefox, and see the video pop up and start playing with
working audio.

I started using Linux as my main box (I'm a software developer, so
this is not just hobby use) about a year and a half ago. My primary
reason was not because I was a linux zealot, but because I wanted a
real operating system that I could rely on and didn't have to
reinstall every year.  I wasn't a linux guru, but had used it for
close to a decade, including installing and using it for a few
production servers.

I started with FC4, and had several various troubles.  I found RPM to
be flaky and annoying to use.  I also had persistent heat-related
crashes which FC + ext3 didn't deal with well at all, and the worst
final one took much of my /etc with it, prompting me to go ahead and
switch to Ubuntu (about the time I re-joined this group).  So, FC
failed my "real operating system" criteria because I had to reinstall
it within a year.  Maybe it was my lack of skill, but whateva...

I then switched to Ubuntu, and have been much happier. Multimedia was
the only thing that didn't work, and like I said they seem to have
fixed that (at least for me) in Ubuntu 6.06.

As for the distro switch, it was pretty painless for me, and I'd
recommend it for anyone who is at least comfortable installing extra
drives and installing the new distro on them without blowing away
their old data.  I bought new drives, and installed Ubuntu on Software
Raid with XFS (which eliminated filesystem corruption during power
outages/hardware crashes).  I left my old filesystem mounted under
/media (Ubuntu did this automatically).  I just copied over what I
needed as I needed it.  I had all my data well organized, and most
well behaved apps are a painless migrate just by reinstalling and
copying the settings dir over (like ~/.mozilla).

Just my experience, and I wanted to relate it since it seems like the
Original Poster's situation is similar to mine.

-- Chad