And in fact, I changed my mind about the optimal linux version for Java. I’d recommend Freespire, when it comes out.
http://www.freespire.org/
A few reboots later and my mouse has spontaneously fixed itself under Ubuntu - yay!
I also found instructions for installing Java 6 betas, and although it’s painfully silly to have to manually edit three scripts to do what is simple a double-click, they worked.
I’m getting used to it. And I suppose I can see the appeal to newbies that like to tinker around with stuff to see how it works, but I just don’t care about all the details that Linux makes me care about. I’m going to keep using it for now though… the painful part is mostly over… I would just like to get the SMP kernel working.
Btw…Freespire looks good on paper… but I would avoid recommending it as the optimal version for linux before you actually see it in action. I’ll keep my fingers crossed though, because it does look like they are addressing many of the issues that I have with other distributions.
downloaded OpenSUSE 10.1 today (network install), it automagically downloaded the x86_64 arch for everything and downloaded the SMP kernel too with the correct kernel-sources (need them for the nvidia driver)…
All went smoothly and after about 20 minutes of reading up on Xgl and Compiz, i have a vista looking GNOME desktop 
DP
I agree.
freespire is pretty useless really without its click and run service (which you have to pay for), CNR is great if you have it, but if not your better of with just plain debian cos thats what freespire is really a mod of.
Not exactly. Because if Freespire has a nifty graphical installer, nvidia and ati proprietary drivers & sun jre/jdk & flash & acroread ON CD, then freespire’s still the best choice.
Takes about 2 seconds to download those? I doubt anyone’s mental stability if they choose a distribution because they get a “graphical installer” that your only going to see a couple of times…
PS. Flash doesn’t work on x86_64…so that makes flash useless for the newer machines…
DP
Yeah, but you know how users are stupid those days ^^
Never said Flash was of any use… Instead I always said it was a pain in the ass (non-SEF, non-W3C, non-OSS…)
Another note about flash on linux is that its still stuck on Flash 7 (no flash 8 for linux was released), so a lot of the Flash 8 ones don’t work properly with it, however good news is that Flash 9 (which was 8.5 before) will be launch simultaneously for Windows and Linux.
Yeah, it’s because they had to do the 64-bit version so they decided to skip Flash 8 for linux, and to release flash 9 for Windows & Linux both for 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.