Ubuntu Edgy vs Dapper

I am new to linux. I am planning to install Ubuntu on my new laptop. Would you recommend Edgy or Dapper? I read that many people have had problems with Edgy, while many have prided its speed and features. For a newbie, which would you recommend (or if there is any other distro suitable for newbie please also recommend)?

Thank you.

 

Dapper is a long-term support version. This means that if you are planning on keeping the same version around for a while, it is the better choice. However, Eft has better support for some of the newer hardware. On a desktop, this is rarely important. If you have a new laptop, though, you may find that Eft works better for you.

As a general rule, I'd recommend Dapper to people unless they have specific reasons to try out Eft. If Dapper doesn't work, then I'd try out Eft.

My laptop runs Eft because of the better hardware support. My desktop and servers run Dapper.

 

I'm pretty new to linux as well. Although I've never ran dapper, I installed Edgy on my new HP nc8430 and it works great. I've had no stability problems at all.

 

Thank you for the replies.

Between Edgy and Dapper, which one would you say is more stable? I will use it for 1/2 - 1 year (still in Edgy time frame) to run some intensive computation experiments so stability and speed are desirable.

Thanks.

 

I've had no stability problems with either. However, if this is a concern for you, I'd recommend dapper. It's had an additional six months of stability testing.

I had problems installing Eft on my laptop because it correctly determined the resolution of my LCD display but the VESA driver was unable to run the screen at that resolution. It wasn't too hard to fix, I just had to get the ATI drivers installed and there was no special trick to that. However, this WAS more difficult than an average non-Linux user would be comfortable with. This has been the only problem I've experienced with Eft.

 

Linux is much easier to upgrade, too. You just keep your home directory backed up, and everything should work. Both should be stable, and both will be updated regularly with bugfixes and such. I'd personally say Edgy, just so you have the latest technology available.

 

I have not had great experiences with Edgy on either machine, but that may just be me. Updating Dapper to Edgy completely screwed up the install on my old C640, and now I have no GUI. No way to get it back either; I've tried everything I can think of. And on my M90, wireless was not detected out of the box, and I've experienced a lot of little quirks with it.

 

Upgrading in place can be really hairy, especially to a new distro. Did you just update your sources and "apt-get dist-upgrade"?

For a new install, I still think Edgy is the way to go.

 

I tried updating via the built-in Ubuntu updater. Followed the instructions here.

 

There have been tons of problems doing the Dapper->Edgy distribution upgrade. It is the one major negative thing reported about Edgy.

However, the reviews for those doing an initial install of Edgy have been overall very positive. Thus I recommend Edgy for an initial install. You'll find it somewhat more feature complete, slightly better hardware comaptibility, and more eye candy. Keep in mind, as with all things linux, your mileage may vary.

Cheers

 

Yeah. I had problems going from 5.10->6.06 on Ubuntu, but the fresh installs have always worked perfectly. I actually just installed 6.10 on my laptop, and so far it seems to be working great. I haven't really done much, as I grew the NTFS partition while doing so, and it takes a bit of work to get the filesystem to realize it's on a larger drive.