Dear Kubuntu: I’m Leaving You for Another Distro
We started flirting in April of 2006 and went exclusive a year later. At that time I quit seeing Mandrake, Suse, and Red Hat. FreeBSD and I still hung around in the server room, but you were fine with that.
We both had the best of intentions. You kept your packages cutting edge and I liked that. I wanted frequent releases, and you provided them. Your support for wireless networking was great in days when that was unusual but recently hardware changes and advancements have slowed down. Hardware manufacturers are starting to release Linux drivers. Cutting edge and brand new are becoming less important to me.
We still both agree that I need a desktop OS that doesn't require me to fret and fuss with building drivers and software on my own, that I should be able to retrieve them from binary packages and have a unified updater for all of my software. What I'm finding more and more, though, is that we don't agree on when I should get an update. You think I should get one as quickly as possible, but more and more you have been giving me broken updates.
Your 9.10 64 bit release was the final straw. Applications were crashing, shut downs would randomly cause beeping from the PC speaker, suspend to RAM only worked for between one and three times before it required a reboot, you couldn't burn a CD using K3B, and a lot of other reasons I won't detail here. We both know what they are. We both know they've been getting worse with every release.
So I'm leaving. I'm leaving for someone whose goals are more in line with where mine are now. Someone who provides me with a stable, 64 bit KDE experience that just works, like you used to.
I called Fedora, but we didn't agree on drivers. Centos and I didn't really hit it off. FreeBSD and I have been talking about getting together outside of the server room, but that will probably be a long process. But I've been seeing openSuse behind your back for the past two weeks, and I think we might have rekindled our old flame. I'll still check in with you now and then to see how you're doing.
Yours truly,
Eric
OpenSUSE is the ever-forgiving distribution, I believe. I’ve had so many flings with Debian that I believe we were nearly common-law married.
However, I’ve been very faithful and happy with OpenSUSE since 10.3. I hope yours provides as much joy.
@Shawn:
openSUSE 11.2 64 bit KDE has been nothing but perfect for me. I had almost forgotten how it feels to never have to worry about my computer. They seem to do a good job of keeping the packages up to date, but not letting them out before they’re ready.