walkah: no more linux desktop

for now anyway.

no, i haven't gone crazy, but.... for those of you that don't know, i've used linux on my desktop machines exclusively since around '98 or so. i've spent countless hours over the years trying to tweak my desktop to get it "just right". i've been through enlightenment, sawmill/sawfish, and most versions of GNOME (and, yes, i've tried KDE too). I've churned through installs of most every redhat / fedora version, every debian version since slink (which I still use on every server I have control over), and even recently gave gentoo a try. I may be just getting old and grumpy... but I've had it with needless tweaks. for the time being, I'm working exclusively off my powerbook.

actually, it all started because my current desktop machine ( a dual 1ghz pIII box) is noisy as hell (as boris recently pointed out in a skype call). it was giving me a serious headache on a grumpy morning. so, *perhaps* i really just need a new desktop machine. i'd love something a bit faster and a lot quieter. but i still have some real complaints, but the main one is that: there doesn't seem to be a conveniently up-to-date yet stable enough for daily use distribution. now, i have isos of fedora core 3 and ubuntu sitting around waiting to try, both of which claim to solve that problem (fc3 even claims to have fixed yum to a usable state). ubuntu is promising, in that it is debian-based, and would thus be usable with other apt archives (in theory).

so, maybe it's possible, and i've just not tried to the "right one". what do other people use on their desktop workstations?

I'd also *love* to see some compliments to a few OSX apps, namely : AddressBook and iCal. I've started to use these apps religiously. i tried evolution , but i don't want another outlook. i want good, simple apps for each task that integrate well together. i think apple "gets it" in that respect: perhaps i just want evolution-data-server ? still seems too complicated.

i have a longer list of gripes, but many of them are nit-picky and would bring on flames should anyone every stumble upon this blog, so i'll keep them to myself. but the bottom line is, i'm getting old, and have to "work for a living" - rather than fiddle with my conf files. so, for now, i'm enjoying mac os x's "just works" factor. long term, i still believe heavily in free software. i want to see (and even help) the gnome project succeed. i'm not gone for good. but i need a "just works" distribution / set up. anyone got any ideas? or am i out of luck for now?