I have a Compaq 6720S laptop on which XP came preinstalled. I wanted to install some GNU/Linux distribution on it. I generally use Slackware or Fedora/Centos, hence there was no idea of Ubuntu creeping in at all. In fact, I loathed Ubuntu for its "dumbing down" of things to the point that system administration has beome a drag. Unfortunately, neither slackware 12.0 nor fedora could be used. Slackware had problems with the network and fedora 8 gave up on the display. Ridiculous i thought.
Anyway, I put in the 8.04 ubuntu DVD, it has about 3.5 GB of stuff in it. I ran it in the Live CD mode, things looked fine. So i pressed the install button on the desktop. No problem! The installer asked me the usual questions on language, time zone, partitioning and few other steps. I was expecting it to ask about the packages to be installed, but no it started installing. I thought that it would install everything on DVD, and groaned mentally on the time lost. I was checking the partition it had made as root, and i found the usage climbing steadily to 5GB. Then, to my utter surprise, the installation manager told me that it was uninstalling packages and the usage steadily went down from 5.0GB to 2.3GB. What stupidity and waste of time!
Ok, i waited till everything was over and configured the ethernet. The Wireless networks weer detected automatically, which is good. However, as i was switching between wireless and wired, the ethernet stopped working. Rebooting did not help and I left things as they were as it was getting late. In the morning, i began where i had stoped. I disabled the wireless, and still no ethernet. I went to administration settings and disabled and enabled the wired network, and it has started working. I am not sure if it will work on the next reboot though!
ok, i enabled NIS and NFS, no problem there. Though for mounting NFS, the timeout i think is set to be very long. I had forgotten to enable permissions on the NFS servers, for this new IP, but the timeout did not happen. anyway, not a major problem there.
Coming onto the fun part, which really pissed me off, i typed emacs..... and got a terminal (NO X11 emacs). I checked the file emacs, it was a sym. link to /etc/alternative/emacs! wow! what a bright idea! non standardise or Ubuntise! anyway, that was a link back to /usr/bin/emacs22 which again led to /etc/alternative/emacs22 and which again led back to /usr/bin/emacs-nox, that is NO X11. great!! so, i went again to package manager and selected emacs X11, but i got the strangest message that emacs is not supported or not available. hmmm. i guess the magicians at ubuntu find emacs to be dispensable.
of courswe, i had to install tetex and many other stuff.
i thought i would install opencv, ffmpeg, mplayer and also emacs from source. ffmpeg went off without a hitch, surprisingly. opencv configure script gave no errors, but the final status message showed that it did not find gtk+ 2.0 header files nor it could use libpng,libjpeg. the development files needed for usage apparently are not considered useful enough to be put in in the 3.5GB package!! i should have to download them from some repsitory, using the magic mantra chanted by millions of ubuntu fanboys everytime they want to install a simple software. i believe they get multiple orgasms this way, otherwise the rotten inconvenience of the thing would have convinced any sane user to give negative feedback to the developers.
ok i thought, at least let me try ICEWM. of course, the packages are not available, only 300-400 MB KDE/GNOME are available on the dVD, small sized desktops are passe, gimme big fat bloatware with plenty of eye candy and fancy window motion(which cause headache and eye strain) but nothing useful. i guess that unless some software ahs 50% bloat, it does not pass the ubuntu test for acceptance. compiling icewm from source is another bit of fun. configure script gives error on many development files, i do not have the patience to mention them here. i had to abandon the plan.
finally emacs from source! config. script shows non availability of xaw3dmdbus,png,jpg,xft,xpm,jerror,libpng,tiffio,gif_lib. the script gave up at this point, which leads to the question: WHAT THE FUCK IS 3.0 GB of SOFTWARE DOING ON MY HARD DISK?
this may seem to be an over-reaction but when one has to manage 20 computers, this is simply ridiculous.
