Close to giving up on Linux...

Apologies in advance for the ranty nature of this.

Well, I've almost had enough. I really wanted to replace my crappy
windoze system with a shiny new Linux distro, but after nearly three
days of working on it I have bugger all to show.

I've tried Mandriva, Ubuntu and OpenSuse...

Ubuntu:
CD-based Linux seems to work OK (although lower res than I'm used to).
Installation appears to be proceeding fine until it comes to reboot
time - straight back into windows, no grub (or lilo or whatever it uses
as a boot manager) and not even a CD I can use to point the machine to
the linux loader. I posted something about this earlier and maybe if I
get a response to that query I can go on.

Mandriva:
Despite checking the md5 checksums on the ISO images, loads (and I mean
dozens, if not hundreds) of packages report errors. The graphics test
just gives me a blank screen and mouse pointer and has to be
interrupted with a ctrl-alt-backspace. The ethernet appears not to
work. Rebooting (with the CDROM disk 1 - without it I go straight to
windoze as above) gives me a "GRUB: Read error" message and nothing
else.

Suse:
Actually seems to install although the process is long and annoyingly
interactive (do we *really* need an "OK/Cancel" dialogue *every* time
it tries to detect some piece of hardware?). Disables my ethernet and
no amount of prodding will enable it - in fact, it disables it for
windoze on the next reboot too. Assumes my display 0 is the right-hand
one and no amount of prodding will change that. Awful menus, but I know
I can change that. Rebooting will only work if via the CDROM (then
"Boot from local disk" or whatever the option is).

In summary, despite being something of a Linux advocate, I'm thinking
of going back to Windows. I'm not an expert, but I'm not completely
clueless when it comes to OSs - I shudder when I think how some of the
less-computer-literate people I know would cope. I had really high
hopes - it's been a few years since I played with Linux (Suse Linux
8.2) and I really hoped it had moved on - all that has happened is that
it looks better. It's not like my hardware is even cutting edge.

Linux has an amazing opportunity, as we move to 64-bit, to challenge
M$'s hegemony. Based on my experience, it hasn't a hope in hell.

.

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