So since I’ve now got a stable install of Gentoo thats lasted longer than a month I’ve been playing a lot with desktop environments and window managers. I generally use Gnome as my default when logging on through GDM but I have also installed and tried KDE and Enlightenment (E16). I have setup paludis to use the Enlightenment overlay but I haven’t installed any of the files from it. I, of course, have used KDE in the past so there is nothing new there. I still don’t like it as much even though it does seem to have a better backend sometimes as it appears to use less memory to do the same tasks. E16 on the other hand is a whole-nother story. I installed, all two packages, and then logged out and then logged back in. My conclusions basically boiled down to the default theme is absolutely hideous. The controls feel backwards compared to every other DE I’ve tried, especially Fluxbox, which makes it extremely awkward to use. And finally the supposed ultimate level of configurability is no where to be found. There is a menu that lets you do some minor things but other than that I suppose you have to go hunting an pecking through config files. Which is something I’m used to but I really expected better. As soon as finals are over I’m going to actually install E17 from the overlay and see how it goes.
A new kernel version got released, 2.6.21 I believe it is. It has a huge slew of improvements in it. I read an article somewhere that said over 100,000 lines of code have changed. If I weren’t tired from going to bed at 7:30AM this morning I’d find it and let everyone else read it too. Torvalds claims it a great deal of bug fixing. Which excites me. I’d like to see a great more bug fixing in Linux instead of new features. Don’t get me wrong, I think new features should be a staple as well, but I think improving existing code should be a higher priority. There is also something about a new time thing. No idea what it is but I want it. =)
Enjoy the Penguins!
