Linux II Reloaded (pun intended)

OK being the fanatic that I can be I went on a quest yesterday to find the perfect Linux distro. One could say this is a futile quest, but what I mean by perfect is perfect for my needs. So what was I looking for? Here’s a list of the main points:

1. Mature distro with good community support and regular updates
2. Preferrably Debian based
3. HWSetup hardware recognition based on kudzu library
4. KDE with a good installer (apt or synaptic) and source lists
5. Fits on 1 CD (why? Because I don’t like OS’s that try to be everything and anything. I already have Windows).

After a full day of research I found the answer, to MY question. It’s called Kanotix, and it rocks! From installation to customization to adding apps everything simply worked. When I needed some help with screen resolution I just got onto the Kanotix IRC channel (while on Linux) and in a few seconds had an answer and a solution to the resultion changes I was making. Fabulous.

Next, I installed all the firefox extension goodies followed by.. IB’s TWS. At first I was a bit cautious and treaded carefully, I copied over my spreadsheets, launched OpenOffice and TWS, started my routine and.. everything worked, just as it does under Windows, with the added advantage of stability and speed. Brilliant.

All of the above took only 2-3 hours. So this is by far one of the best experiences I’ve had with software, not to mention an OS which is far more complex than just an application and an open source one which is absolutely 100% free! OpenOffice is great btw, if you don’t need all the fancy corporate IE/SharePoint/Office integration then OpenOffice is indistinguishable.

Next, music. All multimedia such as mp3 and mpeg worked out of the box (you hear that Ubuntu Shmubuntu..?). I then found about klik, wow.. thousands of applications just a click away. No terminal, no scripts, just click on a link. I even found an application that connects to my mp3 player (Creative Zen touch) and downloads/uploads files. It works even better than the original application and recognizes all the odd fonts I have in there like Chinese, Korean and Hebrew(!) song titles. What more can you ask..

So, would I get rid of Windows, sadly no. Although I would like to and enjoy my linux environment far more than Windows, in today’s world that’s not possible. Check out some these links for why that is the case.

For some companies, Internet = Internet Explorer.
Why Linux is just different and not a replacement.

Other possibly related posts:

• Missed
• Worth noting today
• Fast spreading Windows virus