[Techtalk] What distro?

[L J L]

Little Girl wrote:
> Hey there,
> 
> L J L wrote:
>> Little Girl wrote:
>  
>>> You know that you can make Kubuntu look just like Ubuntu, right?
>>> Both are pretty well interchangeable when it comes to looks as
>>> long as you're willing to play around with their themes, colors,
>>> icons, and other settings for a while.
>  
>> Yeah, but I actually tried both, and found both very annoying to
>> change easily other than purely cosmetic stuff.  The apparent
>> difference between them is what window manager is the default, and
>> you can always specify another, but the tools aren't always there.
> 
> Agreed. Also, there are certain programs in KDE that I've become
> attached to. One (KXStitch - a cross stitch pattern designing and
> editing program) doesn't exist at all in GNOME, one or two are
> different in GNOME than they are in KDE (with Kjots, Kolourpaint,
> and Akregator being prime examples of programs whose every detail
> isn't duplicated in the GNOME offerings). GNOME, on the other hand,
> has way more panel applets, and some of them are far nicer than the
> ones offered by KDE. But in the end I've got warm fuzzies for the KDE
> programs.
> 
>>> They restored enough original functionality to convince me that,
>>> after a bit of tweaking, I should be able to get comfortable in
>>> it. (:
>  
>> Yaaay!
> 
> Yes, I'm *so* happy to discover that! Thanks to the OP for starting
> this thread or I might not have even looked. Now that I've found what
> I want to upgrade to, I ordered a new CD/DVD drive to replace my
> broken one so the upgrade can commence. (:

Don't you hate it when your CD/DVD drive won't work.  It usually happen 
when I'm burning CDs to hand out - it just goes *bleah* and stops 
working, and I have to throw money at it.

>>> Heh, I didn't know that. I figured that most people make the
>>> switch for security reasons. I remember spending a good chunk of
>>> my time maintaining, updating, and running all sorts of
>>> anti-virus, anti-trojan, anti-spyware, anti-adware, and
>>> anti-other-horrible-stuff programs. Being able to just simply
>>> *use* my computer rather than dedicating myself to maintaining it
>>> was a novel concept for me when I first switched over to Kubuntu.
>  
>> That too.  The AV, virus/trojan/spyware stuff is a nightmare, and 
>> Windows updates break things often.  Then running it is often BSOD
>> and corrupted files all over the place.
> 
> I'd forgotten about those updates, and you're right that they often
> broke things. Didn't they also interrupt things without saving, too?

Yep. They also would corrupt files from non-MS software... funny that.

>>> There have to also be those who make the switch to save money. How
>>> much does Windows cost nowadays? I know quite a few people who
>>> have Windows even though the last price I remember for it was out
>>> of their league, which brings me to the next reason: those many
>>> who most likely have an illegal copy (which must be stressful). (:
>  
>> I don't know, since I haven't actually bought a copy in years.  The
>> only Windows computer I own runs Win 2k.  Other than one provided
>> by a job, I've been running Linux on my systems - desktop and
>> laptop - for the last ten years.  The last time my roomies bought
>> an OEM XP license for a system they were building, it was somewhere
>> around $150.
> 
> Yeah, and figure it goes up every year, so it's a good chunk of
> change now, I'm sure. You've been running Linux longer than me. I've
> been using it for about three years now, and loving every moment of
> it. (:

I liked it so much that I went ahead and went into Linux sysadmin. 
Initially I was looking for something to get me out of having to deal 
with the infuriating Windows stuff that I had to deal with everywhere I 
went.  At home, I run Debian because I like it, and at work I usually 
deal with RedHat Enterprise.  I started in Unix with Solaris, and Debian 
and RedHat are the most Solaris-like distros, and KDE is very similar to 
CDE, the Solaris default window manager.

ljl