FreeBSD –> OpenSUSE Linux 10 –> Ubuntu

I had a fairly nicely running FreeBSD box at home, with my massive mp3 collection on it. The drive with all the mp3s on it was formatted in FreeBSD’s filesystem ffs. I also use this box as my main desktop and I wanted to be able to run and write mono applications, so it made sense to me that I should run Linux rather than FreeBSD even though I really like FreeBSD.

Anyways, I spent several hours backing up my mp3s onto an external USB disk, which on my machine was really slow in FreeBSD for some reason. Then I installed OpenSUSE Linux 10 RC1 on it, intending to update that to the official 10.0 release when it comes out in October. Then I restored all my mp3s onto the big disk, after formating it with reiserfs. Then I started using the system for day-to-day tasks. Unfortunately, it was not a fun experience. Gnome looks nice and all the apps are there, but there was a maddening pause of anywhere from five to 20 seconds where the whole system became unresponsive, and it happened every minute or two. That’s not usable.

I still want to stick with SUSE, because we are a Novell user at work, and we have lots of Novell servers, so SUSE Linux is most similar to our Linux server environment, and that has a lot of advantages for me. However, I needed a quick fix for my unusable box. On top of my monitor, there was this shiny Ubuntu 5.04 official CD sitting there. I figured I could install Ubuntu, not have to backup and restore my mp3s, because they are on a separate drive already formatted in Reiserfs, and then later when OpenSUSE comes out for real, I can install that.

And that’s how a planned OS installation became two OS installations.