Linux

Most major Linux distribution vendors are trying to push the Linux desktop harder than ever, in my opinion this is mainly due to the new hugely popular subnotebook craze (such as the EeePC).  There is however one major problem to this and that is most open source alternatives to proprietary solutions are not release read yet.

For example, anyone who has wanted to go out and by a wifi dongle for their Linux desktop has had to proceed with caution...or use ndiswrapper with the Windows driver.  If you want flash there are 2 open source solutions, both good but neither support everything.

So vendors have had 2 choices, try and assist development of these open solutions and push a distro that does x, y and z but not a, b and c.  Or do deals with the devil.

Fedora appears to have gone one way (only open source), openSUSE the complete opposite (evil deals with MS) and Ubuntu appears to be somewhere in the middle (including some proprietary drivers and codecs).

My worry is the massive explosion of proprietary additions into a Linux distro to get competitive edge over other vendors could cause the original end goal for Linux to be lost complete.

The question is this:  When does proprietary additions into a Linux distro become evil?

I am currently a distro torn person...
I want to like Fedora 9, but it is far too buggy to use...
I want to like Opensuse, but there is the whole Novell / MS thing and the package management is terrible...
I don't want to like Ubuntu, I think the LTS on 8.04 was a terrible decision, I think the idea of aligning all package and distro release dates is an insane pipedream.  Unfortunately Ubuntu just bloody works on my laptop, has all the packages I need without extra hidden repositories and has an excellent package system.

The whole Linux world is a constant state of flux, I would say more so right now with the extra publicity generated during the recent lauches, KDE4's brokenish releases, etc...

For now I will stick with going against my feelings and stick to Ubuntu...

I have been following KDE 4 with interest since before the early alpha releases.  I have seen it evolve and even tried it out as my main desktop for a few days.

My verdict? (it that is worth much):

Its pretty damn good.

I am all for usability, KDE3 is quite...cluttered in my opinion.  Gnome has gone too far the other way, for example if I want to change the text on a text screensaver I have no hope.  KDE4 is a great middle ground.

I know a lot of things have caused controversy in the KDE community but I believe a lot of it had to be done.  Dolphin is great, a bit buggy still in 4.0.3 (it crashed a few times for me) but really goo at what it does, and I think the tagging and ratings are a really good idea in a Web 2.0 (and Desktop 2.0?) world.

There are still things I'm not so keen on yet, there are big bugs still, gaping holes where packages are missing (ie. no replacement for KDE3's Kontact yet) and using the launcher to find what program I want can be a bit fiddly.  But this is all being addressed at an incredible pace, most will be sorted by KDE 4.1 this summer.  I do personally think that KDE 4 will be the future of the desktop, and may well be using it as my primary desktop with OpenSUSE 11.

Ubuntu has taken the world by storm in the last couple of years.  I doubt that there is anyone who knows what Linux is who hasn't heard of it.

There are several things I don't like about it however.  They seem to worship the gods of Gnome without spending much time for KDE, I'm not blaming the Kubuntu KDE developers here, they do a great job, but there isn't as nearly much resources available to Kubuntu.

My next main gripe is at the Ubuntu team that deal with bug reports.  I have seen them ask things that users who are filing the bugs would find impossible to do, and in several cases I have seen are quite rude to the bug reporters.  They will not acknowledge a bug exists until it can be proven, which is fair enough, but a reproducible list of instructions does not seem to be good enough.

I have a lot of respect for RedHat and Novell (despite the MS deal) as they put a lot back and from what I have seen they have patience to listen to the users.  I believe Ubuntu is trying, but it not there yet.

Why do I use Ubuntu then?

I don't know, I am really questioning myself today.  I have had package management problems with OpenSUSE 10.3 which is the only thing that put me off it.  These are reportedly resolved in 11 and I am finding OpenSUSE hard to resist again.  I am downloading 11 beta 1 now.  If it looks promising from the live CD I may well switch to it when I get given a new laptop on Monday.

I have created an Ubuntu Hardy PPA (Personal Package Archive) which contains all my PHP packages (memcached, APC and phpunit).  It can be found at:

https://launchpad.net/~andrew-linuxjedi/+archive

This means you can add it to your APT sources and it will automatically update when a new package is available.  It also automatically builds my packages for i386 and x86_64 editions of Ubuntu.  I will remove my copies from my download area very soon in preference of this.