My Honest Attempt With Linux Desktop

After the last uphpu meeting a few of us went to Applebees like always. We were talking about a lot of stuff and one of the big subjects was Linux Desktop. Kevin Carter, the presenter, was sporting off Kubuntu with the new KDE 4.2. This year I’ve made a goal to improve my Linux skills and I thought if I switched to using Linux as my main work enviroment. So Sunday night I started to try to install Kubuntu 8.10. I’m sorry to say, but after 24 hours, I wasn’t able to stick with it.

I was actually really impressed with Kubuntu. Many of the distros have made huge improvements over the last 5 years. The problem was configuring it to work was too much. I ran into problems with my xorg.conf and two graphics cards. Took me several hours to figure out that was problem. Then my sound wan’t working, couldn’t get my USB Headset to work, and I hadn’t even started to get my work stuff setup. The problem was I didn’t have enough time to spend configuring everything. Once it was time for work to start, I had to just give up and boot into Vista.

I also realized there were several programs that I use every day that I couldn’t use. Ventrilo, Jing, Rhapsody, and OneNote were just a few I noticed I missed in just the first few hours. The sad thing is I honestly wanted to make the converstion to a Linux Desktop for my daily work (I’d still dual boot for my ocassional gaming). However, I haven’t given up completely, just that I’ll probably spend the next few months playing around with Linux on a old machine. I just can’t afford to spend the large amount of time to make the switch that quickly (and I’m sure my employeer, and ex-CEO of a Linux Distro, would rather I spent my time getting my work done than trying to get Linux to work for me).

I’ll keep everyone posted over time as I work on getting Linux to work for me, just that the cold-turkey method won’t be working for me. Thanks for everyone in uphpu who helped me figure out my dual graphics card problem.