rebuilding $HOME: Days 3 through 6

I was intending on building up my zsh(1) and mutt(1) configs before tackling the rebuild of my desktop –  the original catalyst of the idea.

But since I was rebuilding my account from across a nearby spare account, I thought I’d use it to take a peek at gnome3 and Unity, and so did “apt-get dist-upgrade” my Ubuntu 11.04 install.

…

A broken update later, I figured I’d install from scratch, and have gotten distracted these last few days with exploring XFCE, LXDE, Unity, Gnome3 and KDE. I’m testing them in a spare account, so as to not clutter up my main $HOME with cruft too quickly while I learn the ropes.

I gotto say, KDE has grown on me. I think its interface is a horrible hodgepodge when it comes to usability – especially out-of-the-box usability, but behind the stab-your-eyes-out bling, it’s really quite feature rich, and I’m all but thinking I’ll be moving to it. The real question for me is how many of my existing gnome-ish apps do I bring with me (eg: rhythmbox, pidgin), and how many will I adopt the KDE equivalents (konsole probably, dolphin…

Assuming I *do* go with KDE, mind you…

Like I said, KDE has grown on me, but I’m not quite sure yet if it’s a beauty spot, or merely a wart. (or indeed, a tumor. Itz not a toomaaaa!!

Interesting times indeed… full reviews will come later? =)

• I’m a linux user …In fact, I’ve been using linux for a long time – my first account on a Linux box was at least a year before 1.0 came out.

• I’m a bit of a hoarder …arguably more than a “bit”, actually.

Combine these two points, and I can point to dotfiles in my $HOME directory that date back over a decade. In fact, the oldest four date to 2001… Continue reading →