mysticgoat's Journal: First entry from FF under Kubuntu

20070226:

This is my first session on slashdot using Firefox under Kubuntu. It is also my first session on slashdot with Kubuntu at all. In fact, at this point my total experience with Kubuntu is less than 4 hours— and half of that was just reading the noobie toots. Most of the rest has been in just looking around to see what came in the package.

I'm dual booting with WinXP Pro on a Dell 4400 with 768 MB ram and about 40 GB internal hard disk (spread across 2 drives). AIR, the CPU is rated at 1.66 GHz. This is a modest 6 year old system.

This is my fourth attempt over about 5 years at dual booting a linux (with the intent of doing a controlled migration from Win XP). The first was Red Hat, then I tried Debian, then Mandrake v9.2. These were unsuitable because the technical hurdles of getting peripherals to work and managing upgrades of applications during the early stages of system setup were too high for me. I was unwilling to spend the time to learn the sub application level stuff that those distros required.

I'm pretty sure that Kubuntu is going to work out well. I have spent a total of maybe 5 minutes in the System Settings dialog, mostly because I use an odd tablet mouse (Wacom Intuos 2) and I'm fussy about the acceleration setting. The screen came up perfectly without any fuss on my part at all! No fuss automated setup of my internet connection! Installing Firefox was almost a one-click operation with the Adept package handler! I just did the most painless upgrade of systems and applications I've ever experienced by clicking an item in the toolbar and saying that yes, I wanted the 200+ upgrades that have become available since the CD image I used for the install was created! That's it: the smoothest installation I've experienced since the golden age of DOS 3.3, Quattro Pro, and Word Perfect. And a lot neater and faster than shuffling through the piles of floppies had been.

This is all good.

Plan is to keep identical apps on WinXP and Kubuntu and swap back and forth between the OSs until I'm comfortable enough with the KDE desktop to do almost all my work in Kubuntu. Then I'll delete all but the few Win apps that I absolutely have to keep (photoquality 11x17" printing on the Canon is not something I'm willing to give up, and I've got years of experience invested in some PaintShop Pro techniques). I'll resize the Win XP partition to a minimum, and start thinking about using Wine, or maybe a VM, to replace it completely.

A quiet hurray is in order. After waiting patiently for years, finally a Linux that I can cross over to without pain has arrived. Good for Kubuntu.