YDL 2.3 on powerbook lombard -- initial impressions

[art]

   From: NJCross 
   Date: Thu Aug 8 13:25:00 2002
   Subject: Re: FIXED! -> The "KDE is -real slow" problem: fixes fail

   Lastly:
   I would like to buy YDL 2.3?
   Is everybody finding it slow?


Hi,

I haven't given it a real complete test-drive yet, but
here are some initial impressions.


I have upgraded my PB Lombard from 2.0 to 2.3 and I'm
liking the 2.3 release a lot. It's configured as a single
disk, dual boot linux/macos9.2 machine.

Maybe I'm just getting better at it, but it was the simplest YDL
installation ever. (For example, there were no fatal crash bugs in
the installer like in 2.0 ... :-)) The graphical installer is
beginning to look pretty, too.


Once I got the apt-get thing working (see previous message to 
ydl-general: "YDL 2.3 apt-get needs to be updated before use"),
and got the patches for the KDE bug, it's running as well or 
better than before.

Some initial impressions, which should be taken modulo the fact
that I've been running it for only two and a half days:

 . Sound! Happy happy joy joy! It's just like a real computer now.
   It didn't work at first, and KDE barfed some warning about
   /dev/dsp not existing. But after a bit of futzing around
   (see previous message to ydl-general: "No sound - PBG3/FW, 
    YDL 2.3") it began working fine.

 . Finally, a decent browser! Netscape 4.73 was the last version
   that would "reliably" (and I do mean "") work on YDL 2.0 and
   it sucked. Konquerer was about at the level of an early 
   prototype, and the default Mozilla was a joke. The current
   distributed versions of Mozilla and Konquerer both seem solid
   and fast.

 . Generally feels fast. As far as I can tell so far, all the
   sluggishness reported was fixed with the KDE bug.

 . The installer didn't seem to run ybin, so I'm booting into
   linux through <option><command>of and running yaboot by
   hand. I actually prefer this, figuring if the notebook gets
   stolen, the thief will never find the important stuff.
   But there may be an issue there.

 . The "random freeze crash" that happens once every couple of 
   days only when I'm away from the machine still happens. I
   think it might have something to do with the screensaver.
   Or X. Or some random kernel thing. This is the main reason
   I upgraded, and it's a bit sad to see it still happening.

 . The KDE screensaver is a piece of crap. The frigging screen
   blank module alone sends cpu usage up above 50%. What on earth
   could it be doing? Turn it off.

 . No networking issues or problems at all. Ethernet came up on the 
   first try.

 . Haven't tried any peripherals except the CD-ROM. No problems there.

 . Sleep and wake work.

 . Can't build Xemacs yet because the Xemacs configurator can't find the
   X libraries. Anyone know what RPM I need to install? (It doesn't
   seem to be XFree86, XFree86-libs, or XFree86-devel ...) Please,
   Mr. Yellowdog, put Xemacs in the distribution!

 . The KDE panel goes away if you change it more than once using the
   KDE control center panel configuration tool. 

 . The X memory footprint is down from about 60Meg to a more "reasonable"
   30Meg or so. I still don't understand why it could need all that 
   ram, but so it goes ...

 . KDE 3.0 is suprisingly nice. I generally don't care much about window
   managers (`M-x new-frame' in emacs is my window manager of choice ...),
   but it's really getting to the point that if my Mom were to sit down
   at a linux box, she wouldn't be completely lost. The documentation is
   still pretty sparse, though.

 . apt-get is a big win over yup. Did anyone ever get yup to work even
   once ever? 


So all in all, there are a couple of piddly issues, it's at least as
fast overall as 2.0, many things are faster and better, and there are
no obvious disasterbugs. I'm happy I upgraded, which I very much wasn't
when I went from YDL 1.X to 2.0. A fine job by the YDL folks and completely
worth the price.



--art  |art-ydl1 [at] pigdogs [dot] org|