Sunday 11 April 2010

Update to the Linux install

I've had Sabayon 5.2 on the upstairs PC for a couple of weeks now. Initial experience was mostly good: everything worked, although Firefox had some odd glitches, and speedwise it was somewhere between XP and Vista - about the same as OSX. I got Thunderbird installed, though I've still not managed to transfer a single email or contact.

Then came the updates.

And there were a lot. Enough to nearly match even Apple's gigabyte size downloads.

Then stuff stopped working.

First the time couldn't be reset.

Then audio disappeared.

Next the wireless network became patchy and slow.

Finally the ability to update was lost (oh the irony!) when it could no longer connect to the update repositories.

Each update and iteration has progressively broken the system a bit more. I know of no way to undo the updates either, other than a clean install. On a forum on one of the linux websites someone commented about not updating because people try things with the code that can and do trash machines. This wasn't that extreme, but it will still be easier to just reinstall than dig around hoping for a fix. The downer is that because everything gets installed directly there are no files to save and then reinstall later from CD/memory stick, so it has to be downloaded again.

Ho hum.

Might try the gnome desktop of 5.2 this time too, just to see if it really is a less sharp interface.

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