Which Distro?

[Alan Dayley]

On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 10:27 PM, Mike Bushroe <mbushroe at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am once again having trouble with my SuSe 11 system not booting. It
> seemed to occur after I loaded the drivers in Windoze for a
> video-to-USB converter. I tried downloading the latest SUSE 11.1 ISO
> and do an update, but it still seems to get of the way through boot,
> then die about the time it should be starting the Xwindow system.
>
>  Looking other posts on this forum, I see few others mention SuSe as
> there distro, and many talk about switching from one to another. How
> do you decide when it is time to switch distros, and more importantly,
> how do you decide which distro to switch to?
>
>  I have been stuck running my Windoze partition on my main computer,
> and my new (used) laptop running Windoze for some time now. Even with
> Knoppix I can not get my Open Office files to work, so I would like to
> find some way to get back in the running.. I have looked through the
> latest boot log, and it shows no obvious sign of problems. I have not
> yet checked for an X11 boot log to see if problems are creeping up
> there, but I am also less clear where such a log would be.
>
> Mike (using Linux for several years now, but still just beginning)

Mike,

I move off of Fedora (5, I think) when I got tired of something
breaking every upgrade.  From 3 to 4 the video went hinky.  From 4 to
5 Palm device synchronization broke.  So when Fedora 6 came out, I
jumped over to OpenSUSE and was happy as a clam.  I found it much more
stable than Fedora.

Then Novell got chummy with Microsoft.  And I stayed with SUSE for
about a year before I couldn't stand my fears of potential patent
tainting any longer.  I jumped over to Kubuntu and have been happy
there.  My kid's computer is still SUSE but it will go Kubuntu as soon
as school hits summer vacation.

So, my major changes have been two: The first stability related and
the second philosophical.

As to your specific issue, I don't know what to say without diving
more into the specific error messages, etc.  Video-to-USB drivers
"shouldn't" effect Linux but I have seen cases where a Windows driver
actually changed some sort of settings in hardware, making the
hardware subsequently misbehave in Linux.  Went through that with a
video card once many years ago.

I think you'll have to get your "hands dirty" to figure out what is
going on.  Look at it from the Linux logs and information first.

Alan