I was pretty excited about the whole process of switching from XP or Vista to desktop Linux, tried Gnome 32-bit, Kubuntu 32-bit and 64-bit, after a month of spending on average of 15 hours a week attempting to repair things that broke or drivers to install I gotta say now that I have lost my desktop setting again for the 28th time I am just fed up with fixing the same problems over and over again.
I attempted to upgrade to the .11 kernel again lost all my settings related to the Nvidia 180.22 driver working, lost my X-Fi audio again even though it does see the card just asks if I want to forget it and never try to install it again, had to re setup my xorg.conf again (I must have edited this file alone 300 times) removing the network manager in KDE actually improved my network performance after manually editing the files, on and on and on.... I could write 20 more pages of all I did to make it a stable place to conduct real work but it's just not stable this including a fresh install of 4.2 x64.
Tried to use 32-bit Kubuntu on my XPS Dell laptop this is my back up machine as soon as I started to work on getting the desktop settings setup I ended up getting a white desktop and having to re setup the desktop from scratch, what did I do, I clicked the Desktop Effects button and clicked apply, that's all, White desktop again, and going to the prompt to repair or remove the setting file I edited.
Firefox and Thunderbird mail well if you turn on GTK setting under the appearance and use the Raleigh or the whatever it is called setting in the sub menu you actually get XP like performance for Firefox and Thunderbird if you don't use this and let the default setting continue to manage the look of these programs you will get the worst performing Firefox in the history of mankind, slow enough that you can watch the screen rebuilding itself, seems that it KDE 4.2 normal settings conflict with the normal rendering of both these apps, if you let the GTK libs render the screen you are in better shape unless you are using a custom window color setting for KDE and skin for Firefox like Abstract Classic my normal for all op systems, I get a nice Zebra look where it seems half rendered by the skinner and some of KDE in there, my favorite part of figuring this out, is that the settings will not stay so every time I reboot I need to go back in the appearance and switch back to default, then switch back to GTK then use the sub option again so I can get the apply button so actually surf the web, or check my email with a good frame rate, also if you do this enough you will remove the KDE manager's ability during that session only to skin the windows so you get GTK version of the window which performs well but doesn't look like any of the other windows on the desktop.
CD burning seemed to work well, DVD playback after spending a few hours locating the proper files to install worked but comparing it to viewing the same movie on the same hardware under vista or xp or KDE I just found the experience to be less on KDE overall.
Amarok compared to WinAmp, its ok works fine has a lot of default streamed audio stations that I remove so I can find what I am looking for easier.
WINE 1.14 seems to have broken what I had working before using 1.13 and .12 I have just given up on WINE at this point, if I fix the rest of the problems I am having with the Nvidia drivers with the new kernel maybe it will work again.
Grub Kernel entry missing after upgrade, I had to manually add it to the grub boot menu to get it to show up, I cannot make it the default setting I have to manually select it every time.
IM client Kopate compared to trillian, well if you spend some time changing enough options it is decent, unless you want to transfer files to a non Kopate user, seems to struggle in the same way that trillian does, just more people I know use trillian so it is easier over all for me.
Adapt is a pretty pile of crap compared to Snaptetic.
Network bug on the last tab, you get the .xml error when clicking on the tab, this was broken before the final release and still seems to be broken, sure you can search the web find what to hack in to make it work but again broken on release means someone just didn't click a button, so no testing.
I feel like I have gone back 20 years in time and have become a tester for code, and tools that have seemed to have very little testing overall. My recommendation is to have the devs broadcast what they are actually using what should be avoided every release, a master list of what they had loaded when they decided to add code to the branch so aren't guessing, looking for what you really need to install in the vast pile of options even if you know what you are looking for can waste hours, and break your system. Its the wild west of software, the overall result seems to take away from the core concept of what linux should be something stable and useful for work.
Well these are my notes so far, I will reread this post and attempt to fix all the type o's and grammar errors, once I become less angry that I am stuck with XP for any useful development work.
I attempted to upgrade to the .11 kernel again lost all my settings related to the Nvidia 180.22 driver working, lost my X-Fi audio again even though it does see the card just asks if I want to forget it and never try to install it again, had to re setup my xorg.conf again (I must have edited this file alone 300 times) removing the network manager in KDE actually improved my network performance after manually editing the files, on and on and on.... I could write 20 more pages of all I did to make it a stable place to conduct real work but it's just not stable this including a fresh install of 4.2 x64.
Tried to use 32-bit Kubuntu on my XPS Dell laptop this is my back up machine as soon as I started to work on getting the desktop settings setup I ended up getting a white desktop and having to re setup the desktop from scratch, what did I do, I clicked the Desktop Effects button and clicked apply, that's all, White desktop again, and going to the prompt to repair or remove the setting file I edited.
Firefox and Thunderbird mail well if you turn on GTK setting under the appearance and use the Raleigh or the whatever it is called setting in the sub menu you actually get XP like performance for Firefox and Thunderbird if you don't use this and let the default setting continue to manage the look of these programs you will get the worst performing Firefox in the history of mankind, slow enough that you can watch the screen rebuilding itself, seems that it KDE 4.2 normal settings conflict with the normal rendering of both these apps, if you let the GTK libs render the screen you are in better shape unless you are using a custom window color setting for KDE and skin for Firefox like Abstract Classic my normal for all op systems, I get a nice Zebra look where it seems half rendered by the skinner and some of KDE in there, my favorite part of figuring this out, is that the settings will not stay so every time I reboot I need to go back in the appearance and switch back to default, then switch back to GTK then use the sub option again so I can get the apply button so actually surf the web, or check my email with a good frame rate, also if you do this enough you will remove the KDE manager's ability during that session only to skin the windows so you get GTK version of the window which performs well but doesn't look like any of the other windows on the desktop.
CD burning seemed to work well, DVD playback after spending a few hours locating the proper files to install worked but comparing it to viewing the same movie on the same hardware under vista or xp or KDE I just found the experience to be less on KDE overall.
Amarok compared to WinAmp, its ok works fine has a lot of default streamed audio stations that I remove so I can find what I am looking for easier.
WINE 1.14 seems to have broken what I had working before using 1.13 and .12 I have just given up on WINE at this point, if I fix the rest of the problems I am having with the Nvidia drivers with the new kernel maybe it will work again.
Grub Kernel entry missing after upgrade, I had to manually add it to the grub boot menu to get it to show up, I cannot make it the default setting I have to manually select it every time.
IM client Kopate compared to trillian, well if you spend some time changing enough options it is decent, unless you want to transfer files to a non Kopate user, seems to struggle in the same way that trillian does, just more people I know use trillian so it is easier over all for me.
Adapt is a pretty pile of crap compared to Snaptetic.
Network bug on the last tab, you get the .xml error when clicking on the tab, this was broken before the final release and still seems to be broken, sure you can search the web find what to hack in to make it work but again broken on release means someone just didn't click a button, so no testing.
I feel like I have gone back 20 years in time and have become a tester for code, and tools that have seemed to have very little testing overall. My recommendation is to have the devs broadcast what they are actually using what should be avoided every release, a master list of what they had loaded when they decided to add code to the branch so aren't guessing, looking for what you really need to install in the vast pile of options even if you know what you are looking for can waste hours, and break your system. Its the wild west of software, the overall result seems to take away from the core concept of what linux should be something stable and useful for work.
Well these are my notes so far, I will reread this post and attempt to fix all the type o's and grammar errors, once I become less angry that I am stuck with XP for any useful development work.
And the beta is dying soon afaik: MS built in kill switch.
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