[Tfug] Well it's back to Ubuntu...

[Jim March]

Fedora 10 had just too many stability issues.  Compiz was basically
unusable (and I have a very simple Intel 965/FOSS driver video setup),
an auto-update sent YUM/RPM into dependency hell (turns out it was a
mistake on their end that broke *everybody*) and a few other
annoyances.  If I can't trust it not to do anything colossally dumb on
updates, then I can't install/support it for anybody else.

Learned some other things too:

* Network Manager 7 is used on both Ubuntu Intrepid and Fedora 10.  As
it's a Red Hat project I expected it to work better in F10.  In one
sense it did: in Ubuntu, I have to tweak settings at /etc/ppp/options
to get my Verizon cellmodem working reliably while in F10 no tweaks
were needed.  But the bigger NM7 issue relating to it forgetting WiFi
passwords was equally boogered in both distros so there's something
fundamentally hosed in NM7.  In Ubuntu Intrepid, Wicd 1.5.6 is out and
works perfectly for those doing just WiFi and Ethernet, while
replacing the network management functions in Fedora 10 is messier by
far.

* Ubuntu's performance in disk-to-disk transfers (to/from external USB
drives) is higher, by at least 1/4, but it also seems to hog more
front-end performance (slowing down everything else while the transfer
is going on).  Hard to say though, since I was comparing 64bit Fedora
10 with 32bit Intrepid (just loaded it).

* Ubuntu has fixed the headphone glitch in the last three weeks for
Intel's HDA audio.  That had broken yet again.

Basically, "the grass isn't greener" in this case...and early reports
on OpenSuse 11.1 involve some horror stories regarding stability.  All
three are using basically the same parts (kernel version, Gnome
version, Xorg stuff, etc.) and Ubuntu appears to be assembling the
parts the best.

Jim