David Bolton Strikes Again

So I’ve been running Ubuntu as my primary Desktop at home for the last four months or so.  I’ve never run a linux desktop before, and its been a while since I was a regular *n*x user, so there was a period of adjustment.  Some point form notes:

• Breezy was good, but Dapper is really good – painless installation, and a lot of stuff just worked out of the box.
• Maintenance is still a hassle – you can’t make a hard and fast rule, because some stuff is easy.  But when things don’t work, it can be a real pain — building from source, chasing obscure configurations, trawling forums for answers.  Who has time for this?
• KDE looks great – I tell myself that I’m more worried about content than presentation – but on the other hand I just bought a MacBook which looks superb, and KDE was a no brainer for me, it just looks right.
• Automatix sucks – it didn’t really break my system, but it actually removed some of my software and my sources.lst.  Thanks a lot Automatix!  I had to put in a couple of hours to get back to where I was.  EasyUbuntu on the other hand didn’t break anything, but it didn’t really give me anything I was missing.
• Not ready for amd64 yet – If I had to start over, I probably would have built a 32 bit system, hardware and software.  The 64 bit issues are just too time consuming.

Overall I’m happy, I haven’t missed windows — but I have blown hours getting everything working (while some other stuff still doesn’t work), and that is time I’ll never get back.