Keep in mind that if you are switching from MySQL to Postgres, that Postgres is much more strict on what a valid SQL statement is. You CANNOT have an ORDER BY without the field existing in the query, whereas MySQL will just ignore it and continue.
Popularity: 90%
Tired of the constant nagging of the Anti-Virus, and MS Excel locking up on virus scan, as well as VMWare disabling sound entirely, and finally generally poor performance of the default Windows install on Dell boxes, I decided to switch to Linux as my primary environment for about the 8th time in my life.
I decided to go with CentOS 4.2, as CentOS is what I have installed on various servers that I admin. I backed up all the important data off the Windows box, and then started the adventure. First, download the DVD image from a torrent, which necessitates a BitTorrent client. Install the client, start the download, work on something else while it takes 6 hours to download. Burn the DVD, drop it into the PC, and reboot.
Try the graphical installer, but watch it fail from either the ATI X600 or the Dell 2405FPW. Try the text installer, installing everything, and reboot. No dice. Seems my RAID controller isn’t GRUB happy. So toss the RAID0 array, and re-install. Finally get it to boot, but into X, which is not working.
Reboot ‘linux single’ this time, editing /etc/inittab to start in runlevel 3. Then download the ATI drivers (never buy ATI if you want to use Linux out of the box), and try about 6 different ways to get it to work. Finally just hack the x config to tell it to use the native resolution, and finally everything seems to be working.
Now, just setting up my dev environment (svn, emacs, etc).
Linux is SO not ready for the desktop, at least as long as Dell is the number one vendor, and they ship mostly ATI, and ATI doesn’t open up their drivers. Holy Crap!
And yes, Steve, I did consider Ubuntu, but it is still downloading from the torrent, so CentOS won on sheer download speed. I am actually fairly impressed now that everything is working. The fonts don’t look bad, tabbed terminals, full firewall 
More updates later, as I settle in.
Popularity: 25%
