I have very much come to terms with the fact that I am a Slacker. There really are no two ways about it. Since late 2002, I have changed distros fairly regularly (although I ran RedHat 8 and 9 because I liked them) to see if there’s anything else out there, but I return to Slackware regularly.
While walking the dog, earphones in and mind wandering, it struck me that the reason I stick with Slackware is that I never give another distro enough time to settle in. Some of that is, I believe, because Gnome seems to be fast becoming the default desktop. Don’t get me wrong, I no longer cross myself when that DE is mentioned, and I can say that it’s fairly pleasant to use. But I’m a KDE user. I prefer KDE and feel far more comfortable using it.
So I set myself a challenge: install a different distro an use it for a minimum of one month. Fairly straightforward – I even decided not to gear the test against itself, I will be using KDE as the desktop wherever possible. That way, I can stay within my comfort zone while still trying something new.
I have decided on my first test distro: Debian. Debian Etch, to be exact. Don’t get me wrong, I won’t be growing a neckbeard and I’ll still bathe regularly, I’ll just be trying something a bit different.
So come with me, as we go through the door marked “Debian”…..
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Debian.. ewww! Good luck, I’ve given up on trying new distro’s, I found the one that works for me and I’ve stuck to it since. Except I do use Red Hat and CentOS at work, but for personal use and my own servers, it’s Slackware all the way.
I guess I’m just like you, when I did try new distro’s, I just got bored rather quickly, sometimes before it was even finished installing..
Put the same for me… replace slackware with Debian. Actually I use both, but since I use Debian as a productive desktop, I use slackware just as a lightweight desktop whenever I want to browse the web.
Both are good, but I use a lot of exotic apps so Slackware isn’t suited to me since it’s default package collection is quite small.
With Debian I use KDE as my desktop. Although it comes with Gnome by default, I just remove it and install KDE.
With Slackware I’m currently using XFCE since it’s so lightweight and takes minimum time to start up.
Nowadays I don’t get into distro wars or desktop wars. I lost interest in that kind of thing.
Debian is taking some getting used to – for example, I just installed ndiswrapper and needed to use “module-assistant”. This was completely not obvious and had me stumoed for ages. I too am uninterested in distro wars, bu it can be nice to “see how the other half lives”.