It’s Baaack!

CHOICE! I have been running Linux Mint 5 for about a year now on my laptop and it has been doing it’s job brilliantly. It’s fast, super stable and Pretty. But i have been reading a lot of great things about the new Ubuntu version. Especially the very fast boot-time, better PulseAudio integration and the new notification system sound great! Reading and seeing all those things awakened a little voice in my head. “Maybe you should install it”. Well maybe i should, but i’ll wait for Ubuntu’s “Mint Edition” aka Linux Mint which is due for release soon. Or should i install Debian Squeeze? I have been running a rolling release distro on my (and on my girlfriend’s) desktop, namely Arch Linux, for a long time now and i love it. And Squeeze, being Debian’s Testing release, would be a perfect balance between stability, up to date packages and not having to reinstall your Operating System every (half a) year. So what an i going to do? What am I going to do?

The Joy of Choice

I have tried several GNU/Linux distro’s over the years, i “made friends” with some and “hated” others.  My top picks are Debian, Arch and Ubuntu/Mint. Each of them have their own strong and weak points.  Now i’m about to install one of them on my second desktop because the os installed on it now, Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy, got a bit outdated since the new Ubuntu came out this years.  It’s very hard to find updates or totally new software for it because most developpers only support Ubuntu 8.04 or higher at the moment.  I’m leaning towards the rolling distro’s (Arch, Debian) so that i wouldn’t encounter that “outdated because a newer version is available”-problem anymore from now on.  That leaves me with the choice of Arch, bleeding edge but with a chance of a bad update when you are unlucky, or Debian Lenny or Testing, mostly up-to-date but very stable.  I really love both and that doesn’t make my choice easier.  And to make it even worse, am i going to use my beloved Gnome Desktop or switch to the new KDE4+?  I use Gnome since i started using Linux, i love it and for some reason i never really liked the old KDE3+, but the new KDE4+ can look very good and i do like a lot of the “thinking” behind it.  Freedom of choice is great!  But at the moment those choices are making my head explode!