Argh! How to fix Linux?

Well, my time with Fedora 18 was not good.  I couldn’t leave well enough alone and tried to unload the Cinnamon desktop.  If you remember, I had loaded MATE, Cinnamon, and KDE on top of my XFCE Fedora.  I tried to remove CINNAMON.  I really try to like Cinnamon, but it just doesn’t make it for me.  Well, that hosed my install.  I could still enter the desktop with startx.  My install dropped me into Linux, which is the command line.  I had to manually enter the X windows environment.  Since I liked KDE and wanted to explore more, I got the KDE spin.  I kept getting the same error when entering KDE.  Strike One.   Then Dolphin kept crashing and ran TERRIBLE.  Strike Two.  I tried to load the rpm from Midori’s site so I could get 0.5.0.  The system would load the rpm built for Fedora.  Strike Three.  You’re out.  (American baseball reference.)

During this time I also realized I didn’t use any of KDE’s customization.  You see, I am a minimalist at heart.  At least, when I comes to my computer environment.  KDE doesn’t deserve the bashing it gets, but I personally don’t want to use a desktop environment that has a bunch of gadgets.  I like a clean desktop.  I also want stability and reliability.  I don’t want errors.  I am tired of distros that are not polished.  I am tired of the fragmentation of Linux with 300+ distros.  Linux will NEVER be a popular desktop because of all the fragmentation.  Some say choice.  I say fragmentation.  Choice I understand.  Making a distro just because I want this app, or group of apps loaded when I install isn’t a reason for a distro.

Just because Linux is free doesn’t mean I want a sloppy distro with errors.  I want a polished, professional looking and acting distro!  Is that too much to ask.  I am also tired of the distribution elitism.  This distro is for newbs, or this distro is for advanced users.  Just because I don’t want to spend a couple of hours installing and configuring my Linux experience, doesn’t mean I am less of a computer user.  I want to spend my time learning how to write Java code and small engine repair.  Tracking down an error in a package and finding out why my touchpad isn’t working out of the box really frustrates me.

My final rant is with Ubuntu leaving the spirit of Linux and remaking Linux into a private distro.

I want Linux to be Linux.

I am now running #! (crunchbang).  It uses Openbox as a desktop and Wheezy Debian at its base.  It is stable and my laptop’s touchpad works without editing the conf file.  I am loving my experience so far.