I’ve been mainly developing on my Windows server, and things are going well but when I run it on my Webhost (linux) usually things are not working as intended. It easier to develop on a local server so I figured i would try running Fedora 12 on a virtual machine. I try running linux every couple of years to see how it has developed since then, and I was impressed by the improvements it has made.

The install went pretty much without a hitch, everything worked out of the box. After that things get awkward. Having spend years on the Windows desktop, linux feels clumsy. Which isnt exacly a surprise but it really hinders the adaptation process. Just clicking around things seemed fine, gnome looks a little bland but very solid. So what’s next?

Installing and configuring Apache and MySQL. The package managers are a godsend. Installing is so easy. After a couple of lines I had everything set, now the harder part configuring the installations. I had to alter the IPtables to allow port 80 and 3306. Ofcourse the article I was reading was out of date so things went wrong and my iptables would’nt start. Seemed the IPtables had changed since the article was written.

At that point things were running mostly, but I decided to get some other Window Managers. I’m a sucker for eye-candy and gnome doesnt really hold up to Aero. Tried enlightenment but I couldnt really get that too work, and then tried KDE. I was initially impressed by KDE. It had Air (Aero?) transparant windows and those looked nice, but after using it for a while it really started annoying me. It doesnt feel solid, things look glued together and inconsistent. It has some very nice programs but i really don’t like it.

At that point I had enough of Linux for a while and shut it down. Although I was impressed with it, I don’t think this will be the year of the linux desktop for me.