It’s a good time for me to distro-hop, since I had to troubleshoot a program anyway, and that has put me in the mood for a little variety. Next stop is Fedora 9, and with it I’m (almost) proud to say that I think I’ve found a desktop slower than Ubuntu.

Pretty, but that’s irrelevant. I can make pretty out of anything. Technically this isn’t the first time I’ve worked with Fedora; it’s at the center of my OLPC laptop, and I don’t care much for it. It’s too … heavy for my taste, and package management is a bit tetchy.

But slow is my defining adjective for this one. It’s taking over an hour and a half to do a system update, and this is on my 1Ghz system too — Fedora’s package management makes Aptitude look like a speed demon. I’m admit there are a lot of packages that need improvement — around 220 or so, if I remember right. So maybe it’s sheer volume as well that’s slowing it down.

But boot times are slow. And opening Firefox takes a long time, comparatively. And there’s a lag when I press buttons, and for menu icons to appear. And, and, and … oh, why bother mentioning it all. I knew it would be slow when I installed it, and coming off Slitaz doesn’t help much.

On the other hand, things do work like you expect. Much like Ubuntu, all the mounting, configuring and whatnot are handled with a minimum of fuss. I suppose if I had a faster, heavier machine something replete like this might be useful. Or usable. Or perhaps even enjoyable.

But … it’s not for me. Perhaps there’s a way to strip it down to nothing and build up from scratch, but I have other fish to fry, and I’m getting old waiting for this one to bring itself up to date. I need to move on before I start rolling the bottoms of my trousers. 😀