[CS-FSLUG] Time to jump ship?

[Timothy R. Butler]

>
> I've tried every distribution I can think of, Mandrake, SUSE, Fedora, 
> Debian
> and its derivatives, Slackware, Onebase, Lycoris (older versions), 
> Lindows
> (free giveaway versions, no CNR subscription), Yoper, Libranet (free
> versions),  and none of them succeeded to satisfy what I'm looking 
> for. I'm
> honestly hoping that I'll get some sort of convincing argument to try 
> another
> distribution but as it stands my only incentives to stick with Linux 
> are the
> free developer tools and KDE.

	Not to repeat the same old tune, but I think the key isn't finding the 
right distro for you but making the distro right for you.

	You seem to like to tweak and play with the system, so I would just 
make it a goal to take a distribution of some sort and hack on it until 
it does what you want. Start with one that is fast and has most of what 
you want already -- let's say Mandrake (or Fedora Core 2 maybe). Then, 
it shouldn't take much to get it to do what you want.

	Better yet, go with Debian. And really use it -- for at least a month 
or two as your only distribution. I betcha you wouldn't switch back.

	I'm currently debating what to do myself -- my GNU/Linux box is in 
disarray. I'm probably going to go to Fedora Core 2... and, if that 
doesn't work the way I want with my hardware, I will settle on Mandrake 
and set back to getting it the way I like it. Presently, I'm spending 
my time on my PowerMac until I get things cleaned up (haven't had 
time). The problem is, I decided to switch to FC1 back in January, but 
never had time to move it to the main partition, so I'm out of room, 
and I never got things tweaked quite right either. *sigh*

	Also: try GNOME 2. If you like fast, you'll like GNOME. Don't try it 
for a few hours, try it for a week or two. You'll really like it, I 
think. Plus, look at it this way: you keep thinking about an iBook or 
other Apple... well, GNOME gets a lot of inspiration from the Mac. If 
you don't like GNOME after a few weeks, you probably won't like Mac OS 
X either (not to say GNOME even comes close to fully imitating Mac OS X 
yet, but it does seem to follow the same spirit of UI design).

	Another benefit to learning GNOME 2 is that you'll become better at 
switching between distributions. If you always use the same D.E. you 
really never switch anything but a few optimizations and configuration 
tools. Essentially KDE is pretty much the same everywhere. If you want 
some excitement, you need to try a different D.E. Maybe try XFCE too... 
lots of people love that.

	But back to what I was saying... I don't think you'll ever find the 
right distribution. I've never even found the right Operating System! I 
love GNU/Linux, and I've really grown to love Mac OS X too... but both 
annoy me in different ways (but not even to a smidgen of the magnitude 
that Windows annoys me). I always have to tweak a system to my needs. 
:-)

	-Tim

---------------------------------------------------------------
Timothy R. Butler       Universal Networks      www.uninet.info
==================== <tbutler at uninet.info> ====================
| Christian Portal:      | Have you not learned great lessons |
|      www.faithtree.com | from those  who  braced themselves |
| GNU/Linux News:        | against  you   and   disputed  the |
|            www.ofb.biz | passage with you?   --Walt Whitman |
---------------------------------------------------------------
Presently on "Albert" (DP PPC 970 "G5" running at 2.0 GHz)