Hey guys, I just wanna share my linux experience and I hope you can share your thoughts about it too.
I heared linux like 4 years ago, and since then I've been switching back and fort from linux to windows, but this time I totally gave up, every time I install linux (ubuntu9.04 - 12.10 , xubuntu 12.10, zorin 6, fedora 9-13, mint and arch{so damn tricky}) there's always a problem even after updates and tweaks, display drivers obviously not working properly, poor display quality, screen tearing everwhere, muffled sound, poor sound etc. I really want to be in linux because for some reason it makes me feel proud that I help the open source community to have more users and just be part of it in general. But it just doesnt work for me, from my own experience, linux is not there yet to the level of user flawlessness that windows have (except security and performance in old machines). btw I'm running on Acer Aspire 4732z
Oh well, this is just my personal experience, I might switch to windows this afternoon,...
I been using linux for like 6 years now. Got it running sweet on my laptop with steam installed (FC17) and my desktop (FC15).
Both of them work fine with multiple screens... on the laptop it has a display port and VGA port so I can run 2 screens plus the laptop screen. While it can get finicky sometimes when plugging in screens it usually just works or takes a bit of playing around with the screen positions in the display settings. The desktop runs three screens (2xDVIs + 1xHDMI) out of a HD6770 and pretty much never gives me issues.
Both are using the native linux display drivers. I use the native ones as opposed to the linux drivers from AMD because there were some limitations with the AMD ones. But that was a while ago, and I had 5 screens running with a HD5450 and HD6770 (It wouldn't let me drag windows between graphics cards on the AMD drivers but the native drivers couldn't run two graphics cards). I will have another hack around when steam gets some graphic intensive games on linux.
Anyways, the version when I feel Fedora really matured as in it was really complete and most things worked out of the box was version 14, so I would recommend to you to get Fedora 17 and give that a try. It runs Gnome 3 by default which most people seem to hate, but if you install some extensions for it and the gnome 3 tweak app then I'm sure it will grow on you.
I too tried Ubuntu but I never really felt at home in it and TBH felt like it was treating me like a n00b.
Okay I'll give it a try, I never tried LTS before I'm always into what's new because I always thought that it's better(I guess,.) my main problems are compare to windows when watching movies(vlc and others) or youtube, it's less detailed, and sounds do get muffled when put on high, and screen is always tearing as if it's a windows xp without a graphics drivers.
Linux also breaks for me almost every time I install it. To top it off, it's always a different problem every time. One time I installed Ubuntu, installed updates, restarted, and wham just like that the X Window System broke and my cursor was invisible. I have literally never had a Windows installation just break for seemingly no apparent reason.
Just a few days ago I was trying to install Elementary OS on an older machine for my dad and every time I tried to install it, the "installation failed". I was able to make it through installation after the 6th time. Oddly enough, right before installing Linux, I had installed Windows 7 with no problems first time. The only reason I tried to put Linux on afterwards was because of lower RAM usage and being able to customize it more to suit my dad's (very basic) needs.
I have the same problem. Linux is twichy with hardware. I solved the problem using virtualization. VMware works well with Linux. I'm currently running Win 7 with OpenSuse, Ubuntu, and XP 64 as virtual machines. Seems Linux and some graphics cards don't play well and some chipsets either. Good luck.
Just like, 20 minutes ago installed ubuntu 12.10. And man was it slow, unresponsive and buggy. Everytime I wanted to start something, it took like a minute, and then, if I were to do something sudden, like I don't know... do anything. It would crash.
I cleansed out my HDD out of around 500 gigs, cleansed out some other stuff that might have slowed it down and reinstalled ubuntu 12.10 with 30 gigs instead of previous 18. Any noticeable difference ? Nope.
Could anyone recommend me a good linux version where I can run steam and google chrome? Oh and it have to be fast, atleast as fast as windows 7, or close to it.
I have got the best luck with linux running on older or more popular machines. Older hardware means that most likely there are more stable linux drivers for it.
the X11 infrastructure is indeed... fragile. Wayland seems to be much more suited for the modern world but the proprietary display drivers won't support it in the near future.
Try ubuntu 12.04, it's a LTS release. If you want more speed you can install another desktop but what you describe is not a speed problem, it's more like a bug.
Actually I already remove pulse audio and use the default volume control, it did work but still randomly make muffled sound, I'm sure the headphone i'm using is not the culprit, it's a philips headset and I already tested it on windows machine and it sounds without a problem. I'm using Intel GMA 4500m, well it's the integrated gpu of T4300.
I have moved from windows 8 to Ubuntu 12.04 in the past few weeks. It is as fast, if not faster than Windows 8, which is itself much faster than windows 7. although I am running an i5 3570k and an ssd boot drive etc. from my experiences windows does run better on a lower spec computer than heavy linux distribution like ubuntu.