Intrepid Ibex lays claim to the Black Tower

[Reply from DeviceGuru: Yeah, I like a simple background so everything's readable. Incidentally, I've updated my Ubuntu 8.10 desktop background with an organic black-and-blue image.]

Here’s what the completed desktop looks like.

The Black Tower’s Ubuntu 8.10 desktop
(Click to enlarge)

As you can see in the above screenshot, I’ve configured GNOME to have a single panel, at the bottom, similar to KDE’s. I find that having a panel on the top, near applications’ control menus, is confusing — I prefer having the system control panel at the bottom of the screen and the application control panel at the top. Also, I’ve installed a handful of KDE applications that (at least for now) I prefer to GNOME counterparts.

The OS found and installed the Nvidia proprietary drivers, and I can enable all sorts of freaky GNOME GUI effects (although I prefer the middle-of-the-road effects).

I’ve tested the system for everything critical, and it all appears to be working perfectly. This includes: suspend/resume, audio/video, flash and java plugins, camera photo transfer, cellphone bluetooth read/write access, printing, usb backup drive access, Skype VoIP, etc….

At this point, I’d have to say that Ubuntu 8.10 is the best-performing linux distribution that I’ve ever used. And, I’m really warming up to GNOME, surprisingly enough.

It’s really VERY nice! The only problems I have noticed are:

(1) The system doesn’t restore from sleep mode

(2) Hardly any desktop application launchers result in busy cursors while the programs start

Considering that these both may be due to my having done a dist-upgrade rather than a clean install, I’m going to try a clean Ubuntu 8.10 (GNOME) install next, to see if that remedies the problem. #1 is rather critical as far as I’m concerned, but I can survive #2 just fine.

My point is that Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid, with its latest GNOME desktop, is so sweet — and imo KDE 4 is so lame — that it has tempted me to abandon KDE in favor of GNOME. The GNOME developers haven’t gone hog wild reinventing the UI and creating something that isn’t a functional superset of what came before it; rather they’ve made evolutionary enhancements.

Consequently, I’m being pulled away from KDE-based Kubuntu 8.10 by GNOME-based Ubuntu 8.10. It’s like, as long as I’m going to be doing a full upgrade to a major new version, why not cut the umbilical cord and see if GNOME might not be a better UI for the future. Of course, I could have tried GNOME before, but I’ve always preferred the way KDE works to how GNOME does. So, this could be the opportunity to make the big switch.

- – - – - – -

As a matter of fact, I just tried a dist-upgrade (to upgrade the Black Tower from Kubuntu 8.04 to 8.10) and it went very poorly from the KDE 3-to-4 transition perspective. So, rather than figuring out how to downgrade KDE 4 to KDE 3, I did an “apt-get install gnome” and I’m just now in the midst of tuning up my shiny new GNOME-on-Intrepid configuration!

You know what? I think I like it, although it’s clearly going to take some getting used to. I’ve been a KDE user for 8 years and have only occasionally played with GNOME, and there’s a lot I don’t know yet. But it’s looking pretty decent already, after a few hours of tuning/use.

…wish me luck!

Since Ubuntu (Gnome), Kubuntu (KDE) and Xubuntu (Xfce) are “officially supported” versions, you can install any combination of these desktop environments alongside any other on one *buntu system.

For example, if you start with an Ubuntu install, by using Synaptic Packate Manager, you could install KDE or Xfce or both alongside Gnome on your Ubuntu system.

If starting with a Kbuntu or Xubuntu install, you could install any mix of the other desktops on you system to have some combination of KDE, Xfce or Gnome on your system.

At login, you can select which desktop environment you want to use for that session –and select a default desktop. The underlying desktop libraries being installed allow apps coded for one desktop environment to run in any of the other desktop environments on your system.

So, KDE apps (with KDE libraries installed) can be run from within Gnome or Xfce, and Xfce apps (with those libraries installed) can be run in KDE or Gnome, etc..

–Happy K/U/Xubuntu-ing! Zach