Fedora 9

The good news is that Fedora 9 is nothing like Ubuntu. The bad news is that Fedora 9 is nothing like Ubuntu. Let me explain. First of all, I haven't *actually* had to compile anything in a very long time. apt-get works like a dream. Auto-dependencies, auto-links, auto-run time scripts, and at the conclusion....auto-start. yum on the other hand, apt-get's retarded half-brother, has a sub-standard search capability, a half-assed dependency check, and when the dependancy check works, sometimes requires packages that either it doesn't have access to, or packages that don't exist for its distro and/or architecture.

I've been doing a lot of compiling lately.

And while I enjoy the control over not having to auto-remove entire suites of software just because I want to down-rev a single package, it is an awful lot of work. I've also never compiled on a box as fast as my CoreDuo laptop, which was at least a plesant surprise.

And while VMware 6.5 Beta has been rock-solid (locking up my entire laptop only once, likely due to running three virtual machine's simultaneously, over extending my memory and cpu allocation) it doesn't do well with my 16:10 aspect ratio widescreen monitor - VMware won't let me a set a 1440x900 resolution. VMware has a setting, "Match hosts resolution when fullscreen" but to date, it won't properly size. I fought hard enough with xorg to get it right since Gnome couldn't autodectect it on Fedora, but I don't think the fault lies with the host operating system.

I have a 19" 4:3 LCD panel at work, and I'm sure everything will work swimmingly tomorrow. The only downside to running VMware on linux vs. running it on XP is utilizing my laptop's display as an extended desktop. A serious hinderance to productivity. At any rate, I can now run Lotus Notes and IE as 'applications' on my linux desktop via VMware's Unity. Change is in the air.