Debian Desktop... but which Debian on my Desktop... now?!
Hi all,
is there any news about debian-desktop yet?
Any kind of release / preview / something in sight?
I'm a bit stuck right now - don't know what to use for the systems I set up to
be used by 'real users' (i.e. not Debian Unstable).
I'm still pretty much a Windows admin and don't know half as much as I'd like
to get all my Debian installations working the way I want them to. So I'm
quite dependant on as much out-of-the-box and just-works (tm) as I can get so
I don't have to think about everything on all the systems myself.
One typical issue is some form of auto-mounting for usb sticks and the like.
Looks like GNOME already solved this, but a KDE Volume Manager seems rather
far off... Got a Logitech MX1000 mouse and to get it going I have to patch
evdev into my system - that's the kind of thing a good Desktop Distribution
could take care off... anyway I'm getting a bit off topic here.
What I really need right now is a more or less 'just-works like' and clean
Debian based system (won't go near something else for real productive
(private ;)) use right now) that does most of the "standard desktop stuff"
out of the box.
Right now there are MEPIS, Ubuntu, Munjoy and pure Debian unstable or testing.
MEPIS is more and more going it's own way and doesn't seem to be all that
clean and pure (the debian way) anymore - I've got some strange slowdowns
using it I've not been able to reproduce with any other Debian based systems.
Munjoy hasn't had a (preview) release for some time and is quite a bit of work
to get working properly / the way I need it.
Ubuntu is GNOME - I can't use that (not meant as a flame) - and the KDE
support (it _is_ there) isn't the best - beeing still based on 3.2 and having
to install everything you need by hand. Had quite a few problems with samba
on Ubuntu - could be me though. But I've read about quite a few other
problems with it, and that's with supported packages - though that's to be
expected from a preview.
The last candidate would be Debian Unstable or Testing (tend to unstable
because testing's desktop side already feels 'old' to me) - and from my
experience it's a lot of work to get a desktop system going the way a windows
convert would expect it. There's no automounting without a custom build
kernel, and the inavailability of a simple one-CD install version with KDE
(and GNOME if need be) is a real problem for me since I'm on dialup and what
I would use (unstable I guess) is always changing.
What would you recommend me to do right now? Personally I could maybe find my
luck somewhere between pure Debian unstable and Munjoy, but what to do with
the PC of my girlfriend (.NET programmer btw) who is just atm fed up with
Windows' problems (JPEG exploit) and wouldn't mind a change. I'd refuse to
just throw SuSE or the likes at her system because that might turn her away
from Linux again quickly.
Somehow I feel that DDD is _just_ what I'm waiting for but there doesn't seem
to be even a sign of it's arrival - maybe there's some preview one could have
a look at already?
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