I love the GNU and Linux philosophy. I love the command-line. Yet, I’m still running Windows Vista.
I’ve tried, honestly. A few days before last year’s Biton LAN Party, I decided to switch to Ubuntu. I liked it at first, but then things started to piss me off: I couldn’t find a proper replacement for Visual Studio, Wine failed to produce any sound, and as soon as I wanted something slightly different, something in Ubuntu would fail. After a day at the LAN without any gaming done, I gave up an just booted to Vista. After all, what’s a LAN party without games ?
At least 6 months have passed since then, and I still long for a Linux desktop. My recent adventures with setting up a MythBuntu server at home and playing around with an ArchLinux Gaming LiveDVD have only made that longing stronger. So I’ve decided that once I’m back in the Netherlands, I’m going to give it another try. And this time slightly more prepared.
So I’ve taken the time to make a little list stating things I should investigate before making the plunge, and I’ll try to tackle them one at a time later on. So here goes:
- Which distribution? Ubuntu sounds simple, but once you start messing in the configuration it breaks horribly. And there are so many around nowadays, why not look a bit further?
- KDE or Gnome? or even XFCE?
- What apps do I rely on, and what are their Linux counterparts?
- If counterparts are not available for a specific app, will it work under Wine or a VM ?
- My hardware should all work (especially my networked HP Laserjet 4000 printer, which was failing last time in Ubuntu)