Debian Desktop
Finally I got my desktop properly installed. Since I got a new harddisk and
wanted to use LVM anyway I decided to do a clean reinstall. Now I am running Debian unstable. The
installation was a piece of cake with the new Debian (sarge) installer. …until you come to the point where you want to
configure X. This has always been a pain. And to be honest: most of the tools still just suck. I don’t want to fiddle around with my XF86Config anymore. That’s where the big
distributions still have a big competitive advantage. (Installing SuSE or RedHat is now even easier than installing
Windows) Also: as much I love the idea of an “untainted system” in the spirit of Debian …when I have to install the Nvidia drivers and mock around with java
dependencies because there is no Debian package for the Sun JDK …I could just puke. Probably because once you used the awesome Debian packaging system through “apt-get”
you want everything to be as easy. It’s just like with the cool java IDEs – IDEA and Eclipse. If
you ever had to go back to Visual Studio or other crappy IDEs you die to have the project done and go back to java. (Hm… maybe that’s how you finish ahead of schedule?)
As for my desktop: I am becoming to feel much more comfortable with Gnome! After some theme tweaking (hint: the theme support still has a lot of room for improvement, guys) I ended up
with quite a nice environment. Still some little inconsistencies here and there …but in the end quite nice, slick and functional. Would be great to have a desktop like that right
after a few minutes installation time. But maybe that’s the price you have to pay for a stable system you don’t have to reinstall every 6 months?
Having used Windows as (main) desktop system for quite a while I am unfortunately still missing some applications. Has anyone come across a good ftp client e.g.? Don’t tell me gftp
until you tried Filezilla – which just rocks! …but is Windows only – unfortunately. Not to talk about the never ending
Gimp vs Photoshop battle.
Gnome (and Linux in general) has come along quite a way …and it still getting improving. But you don’t have to be an UI expert to realize that e.g. the Gnome select icon dialog is probably one of the worst designed dialogs in the history of mankind. And: ok, the Gnome folks decided to open a Window on each click on a folder – I am fine with that! But why do I have to go into the menu to open the parent folder? A “..” or arrow would be good and straight forward. …the tiny things that are annoying.
With all this in mind and a brief look at my desktop …it seems pretty obvious where I am heading. I am not too religious about my operating system. But I do I want to trade one proprietary system for another? Although it’s probably trading *the brown stuff that smells* for gold. Hm… maybe that’s already the answer? Hm…
Anyone borrowing me his PowerBook for a test drive while he is on vacation?