i upgraded my desktop system to jds last friday. the process was trivial resulting in crisp and responsive system. minimalist to be sure but very snappy. not sure what the trouble was with my other system but it dragged, significantly, at times.

i was a bit aprehensive about going with gnome as i had switched to kde sometime back and have since tricked it out with wayt too many distractions ... super karamba, aqua-like themes, busy backgrounds, translucent windows ... mmmmmmm, tasty.

going with vanilla gnome felt a bit stark for me but in short order i was at home tayloring it to my liking with no significant troubles. once i had alsa up and running (alsaconf) i had my tried and true friend xmms themed out and purring away. for a bit of background, i started my home linux experience with debian/enlightenment and went to suse/gnome for a very brief spell before switching to suse/kde. enlightenemnt rocked, amazing really, but i haven't seen it rev for quite some time so i opted for something a bit more mainstream. kde felt alot richer and so i happily switched.

i run suse 9.0 at home with fully tricked out kde. given i have yet to dump our digitized photos from our disneyland travels to my system i opted to hack a bit on my system to see if it would embrace my shiny new sony dsc-p100 ... no go. given a healthy bit'o encourage from my linux colleagues i twiddled drivers/usb/storage/unusual_devs.h so that if finally recongnized my camera ... but i couldn't get it to see the stick. realing that i needed yet more more set of wires sticking out of my monster system i opted to get an iogear card reader. worked like a charm and supports 14 media types to boot. speaking of ... no more kernal (re)build/(re)boot cycles for the moment.

having all our pics at our fingertips was immensely fun. we had a great time thumbing through them with gthumb, which is a great piece of s/w. we saw several we want to print out for wall art. the difference between the 5MP new pics vs the 2MP old pics was obvious. and the new camera is way smaller and has more features. the only trouble is that i need to buy more sticks given they get chewed up pretty quickly. that said, they are relatively cheap these days.

it looks like linux 2.6 may support my camera natively, possibly even the memory stick pro. that would be sweet. i'll check into upgrading. early reports are promising.

having accomplished a great deal and feeling pretty good about it i prepared to push myself away from the keyboard only to discover that something got completely mucked up with kde ... ksplash spun really hard, taking up the bulk of free cpu. bummed, i thought about if for a bit and decided to give gnome a go at home as well given the experience i had at work just days before. the gnome include with suse 9.0 is decked out. way better then the old gnome i was used to. i won't miss kde, for the time being although i do hate having unsolved oddities with my system. i have yet to figure out how to specify distinct backgrounds for each workspace ... but i think i'll try one better now and and get something that changes my background images as i now have a bunch of fresh family pics that spin through.

Java == platform independence
XML == application independence
JXTA == network independence

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in my ears: Modest Mouse/The Lonesome Crowded West/Cowboy Dan