bcsco, I had the same difficulties with Ubuntu. I stumbled upon PCLinuxOS 2007. It’s great. I’ve never had to enter any coding to get anything to run.
2007 is getting a bit long in the tooth, as there’s a newer kernel out and lots of new updates, but there’s MiniMe 2008, which is a stripped down version. Load only what you want from the repositories. There’s TinyMe, Sam Linux, etc. all based on PCLinuxOS. There’s supposed to be a newer version of 2007 coming out sometime this year.
Your problems with Ubuntu mirrored my own. I deleted it and went back to Windows for a good while. PCLinuxOS is good enough to get me to wipe Windows. Everything works. If I didn’t use Microsoft Flight sim, I’d not need any windows at all.
Look into Flight Gear.
Binaries/Source available for:
Windows
Linux
Mac OS X
Solaris (sparc/x86)
sgi
FreeBSD
Perhaps not as polished as FS (yet) but getting there.
Thanks for the input. I’ll keep that in mind but right now I’m sticking with Windows. Somewhere down the road I’m going to replace this PC and when I do I’ll see about a full Linux installation instead of Vista. But that’s down the road.
I’m basically tied to Windows right now because of a couple essential applications (to me). Quicken and Microsoft Outlook for my scheduling and syncing to my Palm. I’ve tried the scheduler that is compatible with Thunderbird, but it doesn’t sync. If it did, Microsoft Office would be gone.
Yes, I did try applications that allowed running Windows apps in Ubuntu. I wasn’t impressed. Nor was I impressed with the scheduling app (Evolution I think it’s called) that comes with the Ubuntu version of Open Office. It synced, but there were problems.
So, here I am in Windowland... :)