Opensuse

So there I was reading a copy of Linux magazine (i think!!) They were waxing lyrical about opensuse v11.0. I read the article with interest and got sort of carried away. As there was a copy on the dvd with the magazine. I decided to install it.
I followed the instructions and voila opensuse v11.0 with KDE v 4.1 (i think) was installed. I have to say i really liked the look and feel of it. It looked and felt very slick and far more user friendly than hardy heron. I was not convinced about the plasma applet on the desktop ( a premonition of things to come, i suppose).
A few things impressed me:
1 Adobe flash was available through the package manager and bang everything was working well with Firefox.
2 I found it quite easy to connect to my network using the wifi dongle.
So I was at this point further down the Linux road. It was going well.
With a little bit (well actually a lot) of help I managed to connect up to my windows network and printer. This was good and I was pleased. All was going well but I stiil had not manged to sync my phone to the evolution address book and or KDE mail.
Anyway, I carried on using it still not entirely happy.
I tried running Opera as a web browser and still had the same problems with flash. I gave up on Opera again!!.
Some weeks later open office v 3.0 was out and I wanted it. I ran automatic updates hoping it would come through but lo and behold something went wrong and i was left with a blank white screen - the error message related to the plasma applet. Aaargh!!!!
So there I was with another problem. I googled the error message and found a supposed solution to fix the problem. This involved using the terminal and typing in a command. I did this and phew I was back at a visible desktop. However none of the programs worked. I just did not know enough about unix to be able to fix it. I then decided to reinstall. The reinstall did not work. I was stuck with a non working desktop. Once again I had come to a halt on the Linux journey. However, I knew a lot more and had a better understanding of Linux than when I first started out.
By this stage the next version of Ubuntu (Intrepid Ibex) had been released. From what I was reading this seemed to be a huge leap over the previous version. I then decided to reinstall the new version of Ubuntu and see how I got on.
More about that later.

Linux

Before I start to talk about Linux, you should know that i have been using windows for a substantial length of time. I have not yet used Vista as i have had no reason to do so. If i am lucky i may be able to bypass it all together. I am a reasonably experienced user. I can do a fair bit without assistance though there are some who would disagree with that comment. You know who you are!!! Seriously, I wouldn't consider myself a super user but I know enough to end up fixing most things that may go wrong in Windows (a reboot usually fixes all ;-)
I first came across Linux some ten years ago. At the time I knew less about computers, software and hardware than I do now. At the time it was far too complicated and difficult for me to use. It did not have a desktop view and everything ran from the command line using Unix. Then and now I know next to nothing about Unix.
I got interested in Linux again some time last year. I installed Fedora on an old notebook. Got it running but then gave up on it as the notebook had hardware issues. I did not have the time to get going on Fedora probably which would involve me first having to fix the laptop.
Fast forward six months and my wife was and is hogging the main computer. At home, I usually need to do a little bit of browsing and check my mail through a webmail account. I got my hand on another old notebook (about 5/6 years old) which just could not run windows xp anymore. It kept falling over. So I installed Ubuntu on this machine and voila, I had a second working machine at home. I did have a few problems with Ubuntu (about which more later). I was reading a copy of Linux magazine (i think) and I found a big write up on the new distro from opensuse. Better still it was available on the dvd which came with the magazine. So I installed this on the notebook over Ubuntu. I enjoyed playing with that till I came a cropper on an automatic update. So its back onto Ubuntu.
Well now you know how I got here. I am going to write separately about my experiences with both Ubuntu and Opensuse in separate post's.