Earlier this morning, I realized that I was disappointed in the mileage that I was getting out of Linux. I decided that I had a number of options:
- Quit: Backup all of my data, format the drive, and reinstall Windows, living the cruel but beautiful world of Linux behind forever.
- Start Over: Backup all of my data, format the drive, and then begin the long and ardurous process of installing Gentoo from scratch.
- Switch to KDE, which I fondly remembered as having a better interface. The original reason that I switched to Gnome was its weather applet, which I have stopped using in favor of gDesklets. To increase both the amount of free disk space and performance on my machine, I decided not to have any QT (the underlying libraries that most KDE applications rely upon) support.
- Shut up and stop complaining. While it would be nice to instantaneously find all the applications I will ever need in Linux, it took me several years to put together a proper suite of Windows programs.
Despite the fact that running Windows would be simpler, I did not want to give up on Linux, especially if the alternative was returning to Windows, with its various problems. Nor did I wish to install Linux, as its configuration would take just as long as installing Windows. As a result, I began to consider switching to KDE. Since I did not want to spend several hours building KDE packages only to realize that I did not want it, I booted up
Knoppix in order to see if KDE conformed to my positive memories. Alas, I had fooled myself! While KDE generally has better applications than Gnome, Gnome has a much better user interface. I am anxious for the next stable release,
Gnome 2.8, to come out.