Skip to main content

I think its time to start seeing other distributions...

     I have used Ubuntu for nearly 5 years now and it has been my primary desktop OS sense then.  Ubuntu was my first taste of GNU/Linux so I suppose it will always be my first love in the world of open source operating systems.  

     I have never used another GNU/Linux based operating system as a desktop for a long enough period of time to really get a good feel for it.  I have used Debian a few times for servers and have used Fedora enough to be familiar with it.  I got a Gentoo desktop up and running ; I was feeling particularly masochistic one month.
  
    I have no major complaints with Ubuntu.  I mean it has been several releases now and I am still not totally used to the Unity desktop environment.  However, that is only an occasional annoyance and its not like you are stuck with Unity if you use Ubuntu.  But now, I do feel it is time to explore other options for a primary desktop OS.  

     The plan is to give several different distros a try for a month or so, using the distribution as my primary operating system on my old Dell laptop. My usage mainly consists of browsing the internet, occasionally gaming and fiddling with Python and other programing languages when I feel like it, so nothing to intense.

    I have started by installing Arch Linux which I will write about in a later post. I'm planning on giving Debian a try next which I assume will feel very similar to Ubuntu. Any suggestions for other distros to try? 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ubuntu games?

    One of the things I have been doing very little of for the last several years is PC gaming.  This is probably mostly due to a complete lack of a Windows machine in my life.  Plus with all of the great games available for Android my needs as a casual gamer are more than met.     However, this years humble bundled has reignited my interest in PC gaming.  I got it and installed a couple of the games on my Ubuntu machine.  So far they are a lot of fun especially VVVVVV .  This got me asking "what else can I play on Ubuntu?"  Turns out there is a plethora of free open source games, some awesome, some not so much.  Many are available from the   Ubuntu Software Center and many you have to hunt down around the web.     One thing that keeps many Windows users from Ubuntu (or any Linux OS for that matter) is a supposed lack of games.  This is simply not the case.  While yes many of th...

New Years Resolutions 2014

  I don't normally do new years resolutions.  I typically keep a long list goals in my head; I'm sure some of them fall out every once in a while.  But I figure it is not bad to write  some of these goals down and put a 12 month deadline on them.  Writing down, publicly stating and setting deadlines for goals is like some kind of weird magic sauce that makes you actually want to get shit done. Pay mortgage down to $110k   Having a 30 year mortgage with a 0% down payment we essentially started out behind and only making slightly more than the minimum monthly payment has not given us much progress.  Even with adding on to our house we are still under water. As it sits now the mortgage is at about $129,700.  I'd like to get that number down to $110,000 by the end of the year.  That will set us up nicely to be able to refinance and start saving for another house.  According to my lender if we keep making the normal payment I will b...

Ubuntu Games: Retro Blazer demo

    Loved blasting Nazis in  Wolfenstein?  Hacking apart demons or whatever in Doom?  Just plain get nostalgic for running around inside a pseudo-3d environment, gunning down your enemies?  Me too!        Retro Blazer is a truly retro FPS based on the Darkplaces game engine .  Missed using arrow keys?  They got you covered.  Retro Blazer just released a demo/alpha test for all us FPS lovers to download and play.  It's a lot of fun and so far the alpha release seems very stable.  Don't worry about  the game crashing to much.       To play Retro Blazer on Ubuntu simply download it , unzip and execute the proper binary (probably  darkplaces-linux-x86_64-sdl and  ignore all those .exe files...).  The game is also available on Windows and OS X. Get it!     If you are a terminal junky  here is a quick how to.  Fir...