[Techtalk] A move to Ubuntu

[Little Girl]

Hey there,

Anne Wainwright wrote:

> I enjoy my Ubuntu with Gnome as a desktop operating system. I find
> that I have everything that I need and therefore no need for the
> (apparent) extra weight of KDE. Gnome has just about everything for
> the average desktop user nowadays - but horses for courses of
> course.

Yeah, I've been toying with it in a virtual machine for quite some
time, and the more I play around in it, the more I realize how
powerful it actually is. A lot of people say KDE is far more
customizable, but I have yet to find a customization I prefer that
isn't available in GNOME. There probably are some, but since they're
obviously not things I use, it's not like I'll miss them.

The one thing I'll miss is the Konqueror file manager. There doesn't
seem to be anything quite like it in GNOME, although there are quite
a few to try out yet.

> As an example, I am putting together an interim solution to get my
> main database onto linux (from Dos!) I really want a Catalyst
> solution but progress is slow so over this Xmas I tried the RAD
> offerings from both KDE (Kexi) and Gnome (Glom). Neither are ideal
> nor are they even complete IMHO, but Glom will do to bridge the
> gap. For all its added complexity I don't see that the KDE
> candidate offers significantly more but understand that I need more
> experimentation with both.

A quick search turned up this page with instructions for installing
Catalyst in Linux:

http://www.scripps.edu/rc/softwaredocs/msi/catalyst45/install/install_database.doc.html

So if you want it, it's doable. My preference for databases is MySQL
from the command line. It's just *fun*! (:

> I don't want to knock one at the expense of the other, the point I
> make is that Gnome's deceptively simple offerings mask adequate
> power to do most jobs on the office desktop.

There's a page somewhere out there on the internet that shows how you
can make KDE (this was KDE 3 - not the new one) like GNOME and
vice versa, so users of either could probably be satisfied with the
other. Now that I'm planning on switching, my only fear is that the
GNOME team will decide to copy what KDE did and mess that up for me,
too. Then the hunt will be on for something else. What ever happened
to that old saying of, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," when it
comes to computers?

> When I get a spare machine I'd like to try Gentoo, just to steepen
> the learning curve a little! But for day to day work I don't need
> that.

Yes, that does sound like fun! That might be a good candidate to
put into a virtual machine for some poking around to see what it can
do.

-- 
Little Girl

There is no spoon.