I've been investigating switching my desktop distribution from Kubuntu to something more...seriously maintained. I love debian, and consider it one of the best distros out there, but Ubuntu's KDE variant is downright pathetic.

When I first started using Kubuntu, it was back in version 7.10 on Rei. After more than a year enduring Gentoo's progressively more disruptive effect on day to day use, I gave up and switched. At first, I was thrilled. The system worked with little problem, wireless configuration was dead-simple. I felt I finally found the desktop OS for me.

Then KDE 4 happened.

First of all, let me clear the air. KDE 4 does have problems, it also has a lot of potential. Plasma is a much more modern and versatile base on which to build the future of the platform. Changing that fundemental base, however, is not without it's problems. The 4.0 release wasn't even feature complete. I personally did not switch from 3.5 until 4.3 came out; call me shallow, but I couldn't live until the panel could auto-hide. As a programmer, and a IT professional, I knew that what KDE was attempting was ambitious. It wouldn't happen overnight and certainly not without user feedback. They couldn't sit on the code until it was "perfect", they needed to turn it out to users just so they could debug the thing properly. 

In short, KDE 4.0 = Plasma 1.0. Can anyone say "Early adopters beware?"

So how does this bare on my current dilemma? Distros have been slow on the uptake for KDE 4.0 for good reason (see above). Many remained on 3.5 offering the option to use Plasma as the standard desktop. Today, OpenSUSE is a shining example of what a proper KDE 4.x distro can look like. 

So why am I not using OpenSUSE? My reasons aren't terribly logical. One of my first Linux desktops ran Mandrake (now Mandriva), and package management was a damn nightmare. I didn't want to scour the internet like a Windows user looking for wayward pieces of software. It's not even a sensible strategy for a Linux system as the available applications are fewer, and installation is more complex due to library dependencies. When I was introduced to Debian, I was in package management heaven. Just login as root, type apt-get and it downloads and updates everything you need.  I've tried RPM based distros several times since 2000, but the situation hasn't improved as much as I had hoped. To date, Red Hat, SuSE, Mandriva just feel wrong to me.

If not OpenSuSE or Kubuntu, then what? I wanted to stick within the Debian ecosphere if at all possible, but I quickly found that impossible. There just doesn't seem to be a solid KDE 4.x, Debian-based distribution. Maybe a year from now Project Timelord will bear fruit and I can come back to my beloved Debian. For now, it looks like I have to go elsewhere.

But where? After some research online and a few helpful suggestions online, I've been pointed to Arch. The way they frame their Raison d'être is certainly enticing. Their installation method isn't as intimidating as Gentoo was in 2005, but it certainly isn't for the faint of heart. If the forum chatter is to believed, however, it's KDE credentials are best-of-breed.

Not having the time this weekend to do a full install, I decided to cheat a little and give The Chakra Project a spin. Chakra is an Arch-based LiveCD focusing on easy of use and considerable polish. Booting into it on my Dell Studio XPS 13, I felt I had come home. The system feels responsive, stable, and a far sight better than Kubuntu ever hoped to attain. 

Not everything is perfect, however. Even when booting with the non-free drivers enabled, my Wifi and sound failed to initialize. This unfortunately, stopped me from going any further than a LiveCD excursion today. Given my only other option is Windows Vista on my present system, I did not want to trash my current Linux installation no matter how flaky it is. Later when I have the wherewithal, I'll bother to slice off 20gb of space on my partition table and triple-boot the system. 

Until then, I won't know for sure if there even is the perfect KDE 4.x distro. 

Catch Croc, Thom and I duke it out on the topic of the XOrg implementation on the OSNews Podcast.

I can't help but chuckle a bit each time I'm referred to as "the Linux chick" in the podcast comments. I found it so humorous that I decided to take a look at acquiring a domain name themed around it. Alas, they've all been bought up by parking services. I can, at least, create a channel for it...

I have been meaning to set aside time to work on deninet for several weeks now. Unfortunately, by the time I get to the weekend I find myself collapsing like a run-down wind-up toy. Despite my ambitions, it's clear that I need the rest.

What really got me thinking yesterday was the results of several web searches on blogging tips. One article in particle was about ten things you should consider prior to starting a blog. The more I looked at the list, the more I began to realize how many I no longer met. Needless to say, I found this a bit disheartening. Then I began to wonder, Did I ever meet those criteria?

I have been maintaining an online writing presence for many years now. Years before the term "blogging" was even invented. Why is it that I was so much more successful in keeping regular updates compared to now? For most of that time, I was a college student. I had more down time, but no less stress (just different stresses compared to now). I was somewhat less inhibited about writing. I wrote more often and was less concerned about crafting each and every sentence.

What really is wrong with the site is not that it doesn't have a purpose, or the features are undeveloped, or any of that. It's simply that it's not updated enough. Regular updates make up for all the other problems.

Yesterday I became one of a growing group of people. I installed Kubuntu.

For almost two years, I had my laptop dual booted with Windows XP and Gentoo Linux. Sadly, I spent the majority of my time in the former as there were several roadblocks preventing daily use. Still, I had hoped that with a bit of tinkering, I'd be able to get Linux up and running with a bit of effort.

"A bit of effort" doesn't begin to describe Gentoo.

When I had started using the OS in 2005, I marveled at how well laid-out the operating system was. Out of the handful of distros I had tried, Gentoo was the only one I liked. It felt "clean" in a way that many others at the time did not. It did, however, come at a price: Gentoo had no installer. You booted into a LiveCD, then used the command line to manually format the drive, copy over the base system, and then build the kernel. Where many distros took a hour to install, Gentoo would take days.

The biggest reason was that Gentoo is a source-based OS. Instead of downloading pre-compiled applications, the Gentoo package manager emerge would download source code and configuration scripts. Then it would compile the software on your system and (allowing success) install it. Why do this? Pre-compiled applications are built with the lowest system specifications in mind. By compiling each application for your particular hardware, you gain a performance boost. The consequence is that you have to compile everything.

"Compiling can't possibly take that long!" you say? Compiling can take a few minutes for a small program, but hours for something as commonplace as Mozilla Firefox. A larger piece of software like OpenOffice, can take nearly all day. Unfortunately, I'm not building software I'm writing -- like these fortunate programmers -- but the very system I'm going to use.

Why the hell did I choose such a ridiculous OS? Simple: I wanted to know how Linux works.

Installing Gentoo can earn you some serious geek barging rights. Successfully installing it requires determination, know how, research, and above all else, a metric ton of patience. In total, I've install Gentoo on three different systems: One with faulty memory, Another as a desktop OS, and finally my beloved Sony Vaio laptop. Sony laptops are particularly tricky as much of the hardware was software emulated. Getting 90% functionality on that is quite a feat of tenacity indeed.

I never quite got to 90. The wifi was clumsy and often didn't hold a connection. The NTFS support was slow under captive, but miraculous with ntfs-3. I had direct rendering and Beryl (now Compiz Fusion) running. The skype 2.0 beta with video support? That too. While it may sound like I'm talking up my skills, in reality I'm astonished I was able to pull it off.

The biggest problem was maintainability. Gentoo is seemingly on the decline the last 9 months. The project has suffered management and direction problems. There hasn't been a system update I've run in the last 6 months that didn't break two-thirds of my system. Instead of using my laptop, I was in perpetual maintenance mode, always grasping for that "mostly functional but stable" straw.

On a whim one evenng, I decided to put together a VMWare image of Kubuntu. I'd walk through an install and play with the OS. I was impressed. Since I had first tried it in 2005, Kubuntu has come a long, long way. There was a sense of organization and polish that I found lacking in previous versions. VMWare, however, doesn't give you an accurate picture of how the system will run on actual hardware. The device drivers are emulated and do not resemble your physical system at all. The only way to truly tell was to boot my system into the Live CD.

About a week later I did indeed boot my system off the Kubuntu Live CD. I spent the entire evening astonished. Everything just worked! No hacking, no rambling, no experimental kernel patches! I was floored. The system ran with more functionality off of the install cd than I had ever gotten with over a year of Gentoo.

It wasn't until yesterday that I had made the switch. The last two evenings have been spent installing and configuring applications. I'm still quite impressed with this system.