linux fuck
I've spent the last few days glued to my monitor - no food, no sleep, just 24/7 linux and trying to get the fucking thing to work. Some notes:

• XGL is runs shitty on an ATI 9800 (ok, not true - XGL runs shitty on everything unless an OpenGL app is stressing it, and AIGLX cannot use XGL with Beryl)
• ATI should fucking open source their drivers
• AIGLX is sweet and can only get better
  
• KDE: Fluid but I dislike the built-in browser/file manager (Konqueror) as it reminds me of Windows with IE integration (however, thinking now - this is not so serious)
• Gnome: fuckin great (ehhh KDE is good too)
• Beryl runs well with AIGLX and ATI 9800
• Eye candy rocks
• Working with terminal feels good
• VIM is very comfortable
• This shit isn't too hard
• Backup xorg.conf's!
• apt-get! apt-get! or aptitude for messy dependencies

Started with Kubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) and things worked well but as I recall direct rendering was disabled by default so I couldn't run a pretty 3d desktop with Beryl.  So I tried installing the closed source FGLRX ATI driver and it fucked everyhing up.  I fucked it up so bad the X server wouldn't start anymore, even with old xorg.conf's.

So then I decided to try Gnome and installed the alpha Ubuntu 7.10 (Feisty Fawn).  That was cool but got weird problems, like Gedit crashing when opening files after being launched as root, and the system updater crashing.

So downgraded to Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Edge) and everything finally works.  Got Beryl rocking out hard fucking core with bubbly windows and fucking wobbly tilts and fades and a bunch of cool crap.

So after days and days of agony I finally have a stable system in front of me.  What do I do?  Search for a cool terminal background.  Yep.



EDIT: Ok, well, I ended up ditching Kubuntu and tried Ubuntu, with Gnome enabled by default. Gnome's ok, a little flaky though so I think I'm switching back to KDE. The AIGLX driver is good but one my particular card the closed source ATI driver, FGLRX, unfortunately, works better and faster in XGL than AIGLX on a standard X-server. I am becoming comfortable with the Linux environment and can usually recover whenever I break it now. So, very close to completely migrating over. Imported my email, working on getting Ipod syncing down as well as office apps and such. Beryl is great and very pretty, but XGL fucks up any other OpenGL application running under the Beryl layer so it is not yet ready to replace my 2d desktop but it's getting there.