[ale] Suse vs. Ubuntu. Is is worth the time to switch to ubuntu?

[Jeff Lightner]

FYI - Many distros don't ship the codecs (and other "free" downloads)
because they're not GPL or they're logo'ed or whatever a given distro's
philosophy is against shipping certain items.  As with SuSE you often
have to download these things if they're important to you.  I know it's
true for Fedora because I had to help one of our Windows admins get them
after my proselytizing of Linux had gotten him to install FC6.  I
haven't checked for RHEL because we don't use those machines for video
or audio stuff at all.


-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
To: ale at ale.org
Chuck Huber
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 12:55 PM
To: Keith Hopkins
Cc: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] Suse vs. Ubuntu. Is is worth the time to switch to
ubuntu?

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Keith Hopkins wrote:
> Chuck Huber wrote: [snip]
>> I guess what I'm fishing for are a few good solid reasons for
>> converting a half-dozen or so workstations and servers from Suse to
>> ubuntu.
...
> The one big thing that keeps me from switching, and I try out every
> pretty new Ubuntu release, is SuSE's support for hardware.  There is
> always some toy/feature one of my PCs has that Ubuntu's kernels don't
> support, but SuSE's kernels do.

The responses have been fantastic.  Thank you all.

As for support, I have never purchased software support for any machines
except for one we have in the D.C. area and it's rented.  Any problem
I've run into thus far I've been able to solve with the help of google
searches and folks like those on this list.

The biggest problem I've ever had with SuSE was with playing video and
audio files.  SuSE doesn't distribute the codecs for most of what I
receive.  After a brief search, download, and "./configure && make &&
make install", that problem was solved (thanks again to this list).

What Kieth pointed out above regarding driver availability, however, is
a good reason for me to stick with SuSE.

Again, thanks for all the input.  Perhaps I can re-evaluate a switch in
a year or so.

Enjoy,
    - Chuck
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