As some of you may be aware I posted a topic on the Help Forum with the title "What Distro for a Laptop?"
I said that I would post an update after a week trialing Kubuntu.
Well I didn't last a week.
As I've been off work I've been able to try it for more than a couple of hours a day and I'm now less impressed than was initially
I'm now going to put on my asbestos suit.
Afraid I went back to XP.
The following are only my thoughts and apply only to my experience of things. This is not a critique of either Kubuntu or Linux per se.
My initial feelings were quite good. A distro that configured my WiFi card and looked reasonably OK. It even installed faster than XP + patches+ Software. many of the apps are very good. I have been using Gaim and Abiword under Windows for ages now so there was no problem using them.
The problems occured when trying to get things to work the way I am used to.
I got my bluetooth dongle to install OK, I even managed to get visibility of my mobile. However even after much Googling I could not get it to synchronise with either Kontact or Evolution. Sorry but on a Mac you pair the device and then press a button in iSync. Even Windows is relatively easy.
I have my collection od MP3's on an external hardrive attached to my iMac. Under Windows I use iTunes to stream the music to my laptop. Unfortunately that's not an option with Linux, there's no iTunes client. Even when I tried copying some files to my Mac's hardrive I had no joy. Juk said that it would only play local files and Amarok would not add network shares to it's collection. By the way when on the interface side they should be called Dyson and Hoover. I know its not open source but the iTunes interface is a model for how things should be done.
Now it may be possible to sort out some of these issues but I just want to use my laptop, not spend hours or days trying to get trivial things to work. I realise that some of this is down to other companies not being open about specs etc but that doesn't help me.
I had hoped that maybe things had moved on in the WYSIWIG web editor stakes. I keep seeing things said about NVU. Yes thingsare better than the last time I looked at them but I still want Dreamweaver. Yep, people are going to say "it's better to code by hand", fair enough but I prefer Dreamweaver, simple as that.
So it looks like I'm back to my old setup.
Desktop = OS X
Laptop = XP
Firewall/Gateway = Linux
Mucking about with box = possibly FreeBSD when I can get a new hardrive.
I know folk will disagree, but for me Linux works as a server OS not a desktop/laptop one.
I suppose I'd better duck now and get out of the way of "incoming"
Sandy