My latest adventures on the linux desktop:

• Upgraded to KDE 3.5; finally they have cracked removable media. CDs in drives *reliably* show up on the desktop, as does my ipod shuffle and NFS shares. Very, very slick in general. I honestly and truly prefer it to OSX. (You do, naturally, have to restart X after installation; ctrl + alt + backspace. Also, do make sure that kdm gets upgraded.) Map several of your most commonly used applications to key combinations, and you will notice payback very quickly. Another hot tip: drag mp3s, drop them onto an open xmms. Bingo.
  Kubuntu Instructions
• Installed Adept, which attempts to be an easier to use alternative to Synaptic. In reality I will be keeping both for now. (Perhaps they should merge resources?)
• Installed gtk2-engines-gtk-qt, which renders GTK apps (e.g. firefox, thunderbird, …) with your QT settings. On the whole, a modest, i.e. subtle, improvement. (After installation, open kcontrol, Appearance and Themes, GTK Styles And Fonts — choose QT from the dropdown.)
• Installed firefox 1.5 from the firefox site (it isn’t in the Kubuntu repositories yet.) Some nice stuff including draggable tabs. The real bonus comes in the extensions available; must have extensions include: Foxspose, SessionSaver (buggy!), SearchBar Autosizer - all available from official extensions site.
• Gave up on Cinelerra; not officially supported for Ubuntu, installed via a hack. Was exceptionally buggy, but obviously has potential. Couldn’t get compile from source going - it relies on approx 10 libraries, many of which I had to compile & install from source, which I wasn’t thrilled about doing. I tried Jahshaka and Kino, both of which have potential but aren’t there yet. Diva looks like it may be cool in the future. I’m now looking into Main Actor, which is a commercial, i.e. supported and slick, video editing package, also available for linux. I downloaded the demo, went through the quickstart tutorial, and am now pretty much ready to put down $200.
• Installed OpenOffice 2. No obvious improvements in the word processor yet; the spreadsheet seems to be faster at making charts; also, there’s a rudimentary DB app which looks like it’ll have potential. Keep up the momentum, OO developers! Actually, speed up the momentum, if you can. All in all - it’s usable, certainly. I haven’t pushed it to its limits yet.
• Upgraded to DigiKam 8. Very nice. Had a problem getting it to read my old DB, but this went away the next time I restarted X. The problem may be resolved now. Adds browse by date, better tagging, etc.
  Kubuntu Instructions

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