Ubuntu 13.04 Beta 2 — More stable than Quantal

Finally, after weeks of waiting, the Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail final beta was released, and today I just installed it. Even though there were Daily Builds, I could never install them because the installer crashed.
But that hasn't happened now.

Just my defaulty Raring desktop

I've just installed and updated it, and it's more fast and stable than Quantal... Yes, a beta version is better than a final product. Shame.

I haven't installed the Nvidia drivers yet, but once I restart, they'll be installed. I just can hope everything's good.

Of course I'll use symlinks, because I still use Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon as my main distro. But now I'll use Ubuntu for "normal people tasks," and Mint only for running my local cloud developing server, which I use to develop and try Kensaku and Hizilla^(GitHub).

Great work Ubuntu and Canonical, now I'm proud of being an Ubuntu user — not ashamed anymore! I just can't wait for the final release! 

Planning

Ok, my plan to stop hopping is to stay with the same distribution from around a mont, even if I'm bored.
To avoid downloading thousands of distros, I'll decide between the following:

• Ubuntu, at the moment 12.04. I'll just ignore 12.10, plus people says 13.04 will be much better.
• Kubuntu, not needed to ignore any version. Is my current distro.
• Xubuntu, also the last version available. Like the "fallback" one, if any of the others work decently, this always does.

And those are all my choices.
Now, why?

Ubuntu

People hate Unity, I really like it. I just hate Compiz, it's the cause of most Unity's bugs. Ubuntu 12.04, with Unity, is much more stable than 12.10. In fact, I haven't had any crash on 12.04, so that would be my version of choice at the moment.

Kubuntu

I've never been a KDE boy, but I've used it sometimes, and liked it. I stopped using it because of it's very heavy on resources, specially with KWin effects. KDE 4.10, though, has a much better performance, and you can happily disable some effects, in my case the minimizating ones. If you do that on my computer, KDE will be as quick as Xfce, I'd say! It's much more resource hungry than Unity and, of course, Xfce. Idleing with Chromium (without Flash), Quassel and a Terminal, 10% of CPU (2,00GHz I have)... On Xfce it's ~5% with Flash! 

Even though, KDE won't crash, as its CPU is high but constant, not like Unity which goes up and down and causes crashes.

Xubuntu

My fallback distribution. It always works for me, I never had a problem with it! Besides that, it's a bit too lightweight for me; KDE has more features, Unity has better looks. So I preffer trying them, but if in the end any of those are my choice, Xubuntu will be...

Actually...

Actually, I'm on Kubuntu 12.10 with KDE 4.10. I'll try to stay there for about a month. Here's my Unity-like desktop (thanks phunyguy for the idea!).

My current desktop!

So hopping isn't nice

Yes, hopping isn't nice. There are a lot of Linux distributions, but I think that for the distro hoppers like me, the best choice is a newbie distro. Why? — you'll think. Well, if I try, say, Arch, and I get frustrated because something doesn't work, I hop. It would be better to stick to a newbie, simple distribution, and if something is wrong, try to solve it but NOT hop.

That's easier to do on a newbie distribution, of course.

My current Xubuntu desktop.

So I'll be using an official Ubuntu derivative, or Ubuntu itself. Ubuntu 12.10 won't be my choice, I'm afraid. Unity is crappy on 12.10, and I don't want to use Cinnamon. Ubuntu 12.04 with Unity is lovely, and I think I'll be using that one.
We also have Xubuntu 12.10, which is my actual distribution due to its GNOME2 likeness, and Kubuntu 12.10, which is the best KDE IMO. But, should I use KDE? I'm afraid I've been too much time using GTK things, and I may got frustrated with GTK integration on KDE. It would be difficult to adapt myself to Qt apps.

So, we have Ubuntu 12.04 here, and Xubuntu 12.10 there. I'll be dual booting for a while.

Ubuntu 12.04.2 will be released soon, February 14th if I recall correctly, so perhaps I should wait until then to install it.

I never had problems with Ubuntu 12.04 and Unity, or perhaps I had before 12.04.1. So I'm sure 12.04.2 will be lovely. I just wanted to have the last everything — i.e. Ambiance and Radiance themes — so I upgraded to the 12.10 disaster.

But 13.04 comes to save me! Everybody says that —even being in active development— is the most stable Ubuntu they ever tried, so that's cool to hear. I think I'll stay on Ubuntu 12.04 or Xubuntu 12.10 until then!

Cheers.

I FOUND IT!

Hi!
I'm glad to announce that I finally found the Linux distribution which is for me, and just for me.
It's not Mint. It's Ubuntu, with the Cinnamon desktop environment.
That looks weird, you'll say. Why not just use Mint?

I can happily say that I preffer Ubuntu as a distribution itself, but I can't use Unity at the moment. So I mixed my favourite distribution and my favourite desktop environment and... Voilà!
I use the default Ambiance GTK/Window theme, the Faenza Ambiance icons, and the Ambiance Ubuntu theme for Cinnamon.

I found it!

Oh oh, d'oh!

I think I got a bit mad with Mint. He, he. I'm back to Ubuntu 12.04. The Quantal disaster made me forget how great it is...
Of course Unity. I always said I love Unity, didn't I? I've been playing with some themes, but my favourites are of course Ambiance and Radiance.
Here you have two screenies.

Use Ubuntu or the cat will die kill you!

Nitro is one of, or the best TODO application!

Oh, and now I'm also known as esy :)

What happened in half-a-month...

Yay! Half-a-month after my last entry, I'll explain you which kind of hopping adventures I've had.

Firstly, I didn't hop too much. I just switched to Xubuntu, dunno why. I finally got bored of the GNOME 2 look, and as it was the only reason to use Xfce for me, I installed Linux Mint MATE edition.

Minty MATE!

It looks lovely! But I still can see that odd bug... Even with the Mint-X theme, when you have some black thingie next to the screen border and you maximize a window, it will turn white, then black again if you focus the window...
This isn't a big bug, but it's a bit annoying. I think I can live with that, I also enjoy MATE, but if I finally *don't*, I'll go to Cinnamon again.

Long live, Mint!

PS: I got my first troll. Some angry user wrote at the Linux Mint forums saying that my UbuntuForums signature told I was using Xubuntu! Hacker... :P

Karmic MATE, and how to live alongside with Cinnamon

Karmic Koala was, alongside with Maverik Meerkat, the best Ubuntu release eva. Of course, I loved Ubuntu, and I still love the old Ubuntu, but not the new one. Since neither 10.10 nor 9.10 are still supported, I decided to try to bring them the life again using MATE and... it worked.