Which Distro to Choose, Part 2

So after my little adventure with openSUSE, I decided to go back to good ol' Ubuntu.

Why? Because it's known territory; I've become as comfortable with Ubuntu as I am with Windows (that is, I know my way around very well). But after a while I felt the urge to go and explore new distros.

So off I went, back to my little thread I had started on the Ubuntu forums regarding recommended KDE distros.

Seeing some new replies, I read them. I was pointed to a survey which was supposed to recommend a good distro for me. I tried it. Of the choices I got, I thought Fedora 9 and Mandriva Spring 2008 looked interesting, so I downloaded both. I used KTorrent to do so, and I marvelled at how beautiful its KDE4 interface was, so I paused my Mandriva download, and finished my Fedora download (Fedora 9 supports KDE4 by default).

Fedora installation went smoothly, but I noticed with great annoyance that I was going to be dumped in Gnome. After looking around, however, I didn't really mind - Fedora's Gnome offering is very fast, and I rather liked it. I still wanted myKDE4, though, so I googled to see what I did wrong.

I discovered that I needed to specify advanced program setup during installation, and choose KDE from there. I think, in future, the Fedora devs should give the users a choice of desktop environment by default, instead of in advanced settings.

Once in KDE4, I felt like my computer was extremely bloated, and I was instantly reminded of Vista. I also found it to be very sluggish, a huge contrast compared to Fedora's Gnome. I still liked the Oxygen theme, though. I guess KDE4 still isn't really ready for everyone.

So I booted back into Ubuntu, and finished my Mandriva download. After burning and booting, I was presented with a surprisingly fast (for a live-cd) desktop. I checked it out for a couple minutes, and decided I definitely wanted to install.

So I launched the installation wizard, which was very nice; the installation only took about what seemed like a few minutes.

Partitioning was interesting; but very easy after I figured out how the partitioner worked. Once I had finished setting up my partitions, installation finished up, and I was told to reboot.

After doing so, I created a new user, configured my time zone, and then a new screen came up, asking me to register and complete an optional survey.

I did so, but after submitting the survey, I was presented with a bunch of russian text. Thinking I had somehow reset my language preferences back on the registration page, I went back a step. This presented me with the survey - in German.

Thoroughly baffled, I went back another page. Now I was at the registration step again, in English. So I tried registering, but was told my account already existed. So I tried logging in, and was told I provided an incorrect password.

I tried every password I could think of, even purposely putting in the wrong combinations, to no avail.

So I tried resetting my password. This seemed to work (I tried logging in from the Mandriva website), but entering my password in the install still didn't work. So I tried resetting one more time, this time using a different password - this worked, oddly enough.

So I finally got past the registration and survey, and the strange language mixup. I have no idea how that happened. O.o

Once in Mandriva's KDE desktop, I started playing around. And now, after a few hours of said playing, I must say I am very pleased. Mandriva is an excellent distro, with MP3 and flash support enabled by default. I have yet to try watching a DVD movie, though.

My quest for distributions hasn't ended here, though. I'll continue to try a few more, but I think I'm happy with Ubuntu and Mandriva. :)