I have chosen to abandon Kubuntu-Linux over the next weeks, but I am unsure where to switch. It would be safest to go back to Ubuntu and Gnome to have everything nice and cuddly, but I’m drifting towards the shell more and more again. I was a long-time user of WindowMaker and I only switched to Unbuntu because of curiosity over their Desktop-ideas. But at the moment I’m disappointed. At the moment everything feels sort of stuck in the Linux-Desktop-World. People try to imitate the big Players instead of using their own heads. Distributions like Fedora or (K)Ubuntu or SuSE have an immense overhead of background-daemons, which slow systems down way too much. It’s like losing control to me so I’m going to switch to something colesterol-free.
My first thought was Debian, but I don’t really like it as a development-system. Unstable could be a bit fresher and I never got into their system of package-building and I always need to build some stuff by myself. So I’m going to give Arch-Linux a go on my Box. Hopefully I get all that hw-compatibility-stuff done, like acpi with battery-status and sleep and hibernate. My first impression is splendid. Arch has a good way of configuring network-profiles inclusive swichting them from the shell via ´netcfg´ I really like it. And Arch has a User Repository of Packages build by users for users. Their simpler and nonrestrictive build-system allows more people to contribute, I hope even me, as this is a main factor for me to switch. I can even recompile things for my box if I like, mplayer for example.
And since I’m more attracted to shellwork than ever I would like to try out the new and improved wmii. That Window-Tiling-Mode seems to be really promising. Normally I’m spending way too much time to arrange my Windows, or to put them in fullscreen. Now I don’t need to grab the mouse for it. Sure, I will need to learn more commands, but I think it’s worth the effort.