Over the weekend I did a bit of a search on Ubuntu. On looking at the repository lists, it actually looked like the latest distributions had at least been packaged better without broken dependancies. On the wiki, I also found that my wireless card, WPC11 v3, is supposed to work "out of the box". With this in mind, I downloaded Ubuntu 5.04 in the hope that the previous release had just been badly setup (probably by me).
I began the install. Unfortunately I hit a very major problem. One that really means there is no point in having Ubuntu at all. It can't detect the network hardware interface, which is quite crucial really to me using a laptop. I can only assume the wiki entry must have been for a brand new machine. I even tried to set it up with my PCMCIA card in and connected to the LAN (both at home and at work) and still no joy.
I'm now giving the latest Debian (sarge) release a go. As Ubuntu is built on top of Debian, I'm not expecting to be too surprised if it fails. As suggested previously I'm going with the netinst version.
Interestingly, Debian has spotted all my network hardware. Even spotted that the local domain is messagelabs.com. Here's hoping that the rest of the install is as painless :)
I like Debian, while the fancy versions of it get all the media attention, your basic Debian Woody and Sarge are actually sound distrubutions. Sarge is a lot more modern, ideal for a desktop, but obviously doesn't get security fixes as fast as Woody.
While the fancy versions have plenty of eye-candy and slick installers, they can be a bit unstable being built on the bleeding edge. At home I run Woody on my antique desktop system, Sarge on my server, Sarge on my fathers machine, and when I get a new desktop system probably Sarge on that too.
