For the technically inclined

Kathy wanted a laptop to help her with her school work. So we got me a new one, and she got the one I used to have. The first thing I do with a new computer on it is put Linux on it. Well, I first to install PCLinuxOS on it, which is my favorite distribution of Linux. It wouldn't install. So I went to the distribution PCLinuxOS split off of, Mandriva. It installed, and I really like the administration controls it has. PCLinuxOS uses the same tools. The problem is that Mandriva isn't stable. Of the two installs I did with Mandriva 2008.1 one distro, both failed me. The first installed failed because I tried to make it go straight to cooker. Didn't work to well. The second failed because it would no longer work with OpenOffice.org, the office suite I use. It kept crashing repetitively, not to mention that the system seemed to be unraveling. When I first started using Linux, back during my high school years, I started with Mandrake for a little bit, but quickly went to Suse Linux. This was back when you actually had to purchase a boxed version from off the shelf of a computer store. I don't remember what version I started with, somewhere around 6.4 or 7. something. I'm not sure which one. I stayed with Suse or openSuse as it became until they released the 10.1 version. I found it unusable. Like many fans of Linux I had been sampling distributions for quite a while. I found PCLinuxOS .93. I liked it the best, and since openSuse had taken such a wrong turn, I decided that I should use that one. I was extremely happy when PCLinuxOS 2007. Lately I've been trying Kubuntu, but found that Firefox has some glitches with it on Kubuntu. The checkboxes don't always work like they should. After a brief discourse of my Linux usage, back to the original story. So when Mandriva had failed me, and kubuntu was no longer a viable option, I went to look for a distribution with KDE 4.1.1 on it, since KDE 4.0 is bascially unusable for everyday use. As I looked around I found one with KDE 4.1.1 on it, thought that one was not an official release. There is KDE-Live cd based on openSuse 11.0 that isn't too bad for this. Though I suggest waiting until KDE 4.2 to those who aren't willing to put up with some annoyances. OpenSuse seems to have gotten over there prior package management woes for the most part. So far, I've only had one real problem with openSuse 11, and it lies with a program installed by default: Beagle. I greatly dislike beagle, but it seems to do especially horrible stuff to a laptop. With beagle running, I couldn't really run it longer then 40 min, because by then the laptop was cooking my legs or the table it is sitting on. I also discovered that leaving it on all night was a bad idea, as it would nearly burn up the laptop, it ran so hot. I also noticed that battery life was greatly reduced. When I looked at all the processes, it turned out the beagle was taking 50% of my CPU on idle. I know it was indexing my files, but that is quite a bit. So i uninstalled Beagle, and now my computer runs faster, cooler, and it is actually usable. Anyways. Here is a small screenshot of my desktop. Except for one or two small things, I quite like it.