I've used Ubuntu before. It still uses Gnome so the interface is similar. Worry not, there is a Kubuntu for the KDE fans out there. I hear it doesn't suck The user experience is not what freaked me out last night when I was converting my data over from one system to another.
First of all, there is not much conversion needed because most of my
data files are OpenOffice. Ubuntu supports OO just fine. Not sure of
versions. I'll have to deal with as I go.
No, what freaked me out is that I really only have one program left
that I have to save a data file from in order to transfer straight
across. This is Gpodder. It exports an OPML file that is the list of
podcast information that allows me to keep track of my news. I put the
file on my second drive, which I have not hooked back up yet. I install
OSes with only the install drive hooked up because Linux in general
freak out and put partitions all over the place if you don't go in and
do thing by hand. So, I haven't verified that the OPML file works to
save all my likes. I'm sure I'll blog it if things blow up in my face.
I have the links saved in gdocs in a spreadsheet.
That's it. There are some OpenOffice docs, but everything else is in
the cloud. That is, I use gdocs for most of my blog stuff. I use gdocs
for most of my personal documents. Formatting sucks. I've tried tried
to print anything yet. It is a for prophet company, so if it goes belly
up I might just loose everything. I use it none the less.
This makes me wonder why people pay so frigging much for MS Windows
on their desktop. What do people really use their computers for anyway?
My phone does many tasks today that I used to need a computer to get
done. Next week the iPhone Car Wash app will come out and you will be
able to sit in the shade and sip a mi-ti while it labors over a sudsy
fender. ... Maybe not.
I use Google Reader for a feed reader or agrigator. This keeps track
of what I have and have not read in the wonderful world of blogs.
Come to think of it, I haven't looked for espeak, the software that
reds aloud to me. There are dozens of packages that do this, but I like
espeak because it is simply drag and drop command line driven text
reading. All the packages try to go beyond this and screw things up
with complexity. There must be something that will work. I have also
not tried playing the Divix movies. I remember getting them to work in
Ubuntu the last time I used it so my confidence level is high on this
one.
What did work right out of the box was Flash. I was able to watch
YouTube and Hulu videos with the click of a mouse. All my old Firefox
plugins just plane worked. Ubuntu has standard repositories for
software that do not just jump forward to the bleeding edge of package
versions. They wait for a bit to let some of the bugs get shaken out of
the system. These are the "Not 1.0" repos. These are the one's I have
hooked up at the moment. If it comes right down to it, I'm tired of
things that don't work.
I got home at around 22:00 last night and went to bed around 0:45.
It took me three tries to get the system installed because I had to
convince myself to pull the second drive
it is my opinion that Fedora is a failed experiment.
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