Another week, another Linux distribution.
I had been using Elive for a while, but became very distracted by all the development for the KDE linux environment. I used several KDE-based distros to find a stable, fast system, but went back to Elive. This is a very promising operating system. It works very, very well on mediocre hardware, and using the Debian base makes installing some updated applications easy.
So what was my issue? Elive does not offer the average user the updated software needed to do much more beyond basic tasks. Much of the best Linux software is less than two years old, and the Debian base values tried-and-true above all else. Installing some updated .deb packages results in a long, long list of unmet dependencies.
I value freedom, but hate endless hours following various rabbit holes just to do something I can pay a Windows developer $40 to do for me. BUT.. what about freedom?
So after trying Sabayon 5.1 I went back in Elive 2.0, a distro you have to pay a modest amount to install. Windows7 was sitting on my other drive, just in case I need to do something with which Elive has trouble. Sabayon was a slow dog, and seems to have issues with the standard Intel Hi-Def audio card on my motherboard.
Elive 2.0 zooms along with grace and beauty, but I grew unhappy with certain small glitches, like having Opera and Firefox choke on YouTube, manually installing the latest Adobe Flash plugin. There was always a feeling that something was missing. While the release candidate of aTunes 2.0 for music/podcast listening was fine, it was, well, clunky. So now I'm testing Sabayon 5.2. I hope this works.
