On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 3:17 AM, David <dfkettle(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks. I was thinking of installing a different version of Linux
> myself, because of all the conflicts I seem to have between different
> packages. The Asus and Xandros repositories don't seem to be very
> up-to-date. But I'm relatively new to Linux, so I'm being cautious.
> I'd also like to understand what, if anything, I'm doing wrong, before
> I take the plunge into installing a different version of Linux.
>
It certainly makes sense to think before changing your OS! ;o) Just to
elaborate a bit more on what i have personally learned, Xandros seems to be
a distro kept alive for the sole purpose of shipping Eee's with a very-legal
free OS, but the user and developer base is so small that you shall not
expect it to work very well, and the updates are indeed rare.
As you are new to Linux, another thing is worth to note: you can keep your
home folder which contains most of your personal application settings
(including for pd) and set up your new Linux which will then use these
settings. Linux is very modular, and changing one part (e.g. the kernel, or
the window manager) does not necessarily affect the other parts. The list of
installed apps, and most system-level settings are not conserved however -
the first can be saved and reloaded another way, the latter is not really
necessary unless you are running a server.
With ubuntu, the non-free (gratis, but not open source) elements become
available with adding more repositories, first of all Medibuntu.
Andras