Why bother?

For years now I’ve been a chronic distro-hopper. I’ve always loved checking out the latest and greatest things available from all corners of the vast Linux universe.

Today, I had this wonderfully awesome post planned out for you. I was going to compare the GNOME vs. KDE implementations of Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva and openSUSE. I was going to use what (I thought) had become my “test box” which I could pave at will for such things, and as I went to blow away it’s current Kubuntu Karmic install, I couldn’t  bring myself to do it.

Why bother? I thought. I wasn’t going to gain anything personally from this little experiment, and I really didn’t want to blow away this install. Two things have happened.

First – for the first time, in a long time I have a Linux install that just “works”. It does what I want it to do and does it well. I  have no issues to speak of, and I’m thrilled at not only the great strides KDE has made recently, and I’m very pleased with the Kubuntu KDE implementation. I’m using Synergy to share the keyboard and mouse of my Windows 7 workstation w/ the laptop, and I really like using the two systems in tandem, side by side. There are some things I like better on Linux, some things I like better on Windows, and with this setup I have them both, side by side doing what each of them do best. Combined with my Windows XP and CentOS 5 Virtual Machines in VirtualBox on the Win7 Workstation, I have all I need right here at my fingertips (well, except a Mac), so why even bother trying anything else? Kubuntu Karmic is as darn near perfect of a Linux distro as I have found…and  I’m sure whatever comes along in 10.04 can only be better

Second – I just don’t find testing out the different distro’s and stuff as interesting or personally gratifying as I once did. So, as I said in my previous blog entry, I won’t be turning this laptop into a test-box after all – it’ll simply be my Linux box.

So I hate to say it, but you won’t get the post originally planned for today, but you will be seeing a nice review of Kubuntu Karmic soon (I’ll wait until the final release for that).