Confession: I haven’t always been a Mac user and I still sometimes stray from the path. :-)
I’ve an older Intel P4 PC (one I built years ago) that I keep around for various purposes. For one, I believe Linux has promise and occasionally I like to install some of the newer releases and take them for a spend. This PC is my testbed for that purpose.
Windows XP and Fedora 9 are currently installed and for a period I had OpenSUSE 10 installed as well. Most of the major Linux released have been on this PC at one time or the other as I’ve cycled through them.
In my experimenting with Linux I’ve found that in general I prefer the KDE desktop over the GNOME one. I not sure why, but for me I find KDE to be more pleasing.
I recently read ArsTechnica’s first look at the newly released OpenSUSE 11 that stated it offers the best KDE 4 experience.
OpenSUSE 11 ships with KDE 4.0.4, which is acceptably stable. It’s not quite ready yet for all KDE users, but it’s far more complete and robust than the original KDE 4.0 release.
I’m tempted to install this newer version of OpenSUSE simply to experience the desktop. I migrated from OpenSUSE 10 to Fedora 8 some time ago and then went to Fedora 9 when it became available…could OpenSUSE 11 lure me back? Perhaps, but Fedora 9 has a lots going for it.
If you currently use a release of Linux I’d be interested to know which Linux Desktop you prefer and why?
I got my first taste of Linux with a dual boot setup with XP and Suse 9.3 (or maybe that was 9.2). I used it off and on for months. Switching to Ubuntu 5.10 after that, it’s been Ubuntu all the way for me. Not because there aren’t other good distros out there, I’m just too lazy to switch and I’m happy.
I’m currently running Ubuntu with an Xfce desktop. It seems to be much quicker for my middle-aged machine. I think Ubuntu’s got a good balance between flexibility and ‘just works’ mentality. With a large friendly community and an equally large number of people interested in keeping it stable, interesting and progressive gives it the nod for me.
I like some of the things KDE4 offers, but it’s not enough of a charmer to lure me away from Gnome/GTK right now anyway.
Richard,
I switch Linux distros because they are test beds for me. Since my operational computer is OS X, switching this test machine doesn’t cause a hardships. There’s only the time to install and conf.
If I used Linux as my main OS, then I’d no doubt pick one and stick, same as you.
Thanks for the input.