I've had a high spec desktop DELL machine sitting under my desk for a few weeks now, just itching to have something installed on it. I took the plunge yesterday and breathed life into it with Fedora 3.

I consider myself more experienced with Linux than your average user, having used it exclusively for all my server side requirements. I am no stranger to configuring and tuning the beast from a remote console. However my experience when it comes to the desktop has been nil, with my daily desktop consisting of WindowsXP. While I run WindowsXP I am proud to say that it is the only piece of 'commercial' software running. I am happy with WindowsXP and have no major gripes with it. But since starting in my new role with SpikeSource they all run Linux desktops, I thought I had better check it out.

In the process I wanted to see what the state of Linux on the desktop was. I was expecting a lot of pain while I went through this. As a safety net, I acquired a KVM switch and I am running both WindowsXP and Fedora3 on separate boxes but sharing monitor/keyboard/mouse.

Installation of Fedora was a no brainer; just answer the questions and let it run. I did do the extra step of installing all the developers tools/libraries, because at some point I am sure I am going to have to compile something. Given that I was using a 120GB hard disk, I felt this wasn't going to be cutting into my disk quota too much.

Once installed, I got up and running very quickly. It detected my graphics card and sound card perfectly. I couldn't get the default desktop to recognize my LCD monitor was wanting 1280x1024. So I got the fuzzy look for a while as it worked in a resolution a little lower. A colleague recommended I use the KDE desktop (for a variety of reasons) and it drove my LCD monitor at the correct resolution, which really did show off the clarity of the desktop. Very sweet.

The first thing that struck me was the fonts. While a little fatter and taller, they do render much cleaner. Windows default font is quite small, which I prefer. On Linux its a little bigger, which I felt was using up a lot of screen real-estate on menu items that was constantly on show. I tried reducing it, but there was too many places to do it and I ended up with a wide range of bizarre effects. So I just resorted to defaulting back again.

Next thing was to stop that blinking red exclamation mark alerting me to all the updates. Updating the box took around 4 hrs as it downloaded pretty much every RPM again! Considering I had already download 1.8GB from Redhat I was a little annoyed that the updates where so much in such a short space of time. Ironic though, that it didn't have the latest Thunderbird or FireFox. I still had to install them manually.

Which leads me onto my next gripe. The lack of documentation/guidance on the software installation side of things has a long way to go in my view before the mainstream users get their hands on it. For example, I downloaded the wrong Eclipse (use the 'gtk' version not the 'motif' version). I found this all over the place. Listing Linux wasn't enough, I had to figure out the acronyms that accompanied the listings. It was a case of trial and error (and lots of wasted bandwidth).  I also wasn't sure which user account to install this software under, and if there was a convention where to place desktop applications.  I stuck to what I know placing them under /usr/local/xxx until told otherwise.

Installing Java1.5 on the machine wasn't without its problems. I had to give it a new home and do some symbolic linking to make sure everyone was using it. Once installed though, Eclipse and SmartCVS ran up very very fast. Eclipse3.1 looked beautiful and excusing the slightly large fonts that the desktop puts everything in, it felt like the Windows version and ran as quickly. I was instantly comfortable.  Installing Eclipse extensions (cfEclipse etc) all went without any pain through the Eclipse update manager.  Importing projects sitting on a Windows drive also proved to be no problems at all.

Thunderbird installation required the same symbolic linking nonsense and again, it was a joy to see. I found an extension for it that docks new mail notifications into the system tray which I was concerned I might lose. That said, on the point of the system tray etc, I took for granted just how much secondary information this provides. For example, I work with teams from many different time-zones and in Windows I have all their times in the system tray so I know if I expect a reply etc. I miss that in Linux; will have to go hunting. Also, I use instant messenger a lot, so there are tons of windows always floating around. Should someone talk in it, WindowsXP flashs on the task bar, again, no such alerting for me under Linux. Need to go hunting for a solution before people think I am ignoring them.

MP3 player wise, I do like WinAmp. Largely because of its excellent library facility and its ShoutCast support for listening to streaming radio. Also iTunes is somewhat gone to me, so the iPOD is dead to me if I exclusively move to Linux desktop. Mapping the Windows drives on Linux wasn't without its problems; I couldn't do it via the GUI tools, had to resort to mount'ing them manually which worked beautifully.  Once sorted, my MP3 collection was available, and sadly the choice of players under Linux wasn't rocking my boat.

Small things like my Blackberry, my CF USB reader are all lost to me within the Linux world. Which is why, for the time being at least, I am keeping KVM switch and moving between the two of them with the touch of a button.  I am sure there are alternatives out there, but after a quick Google search nothing was jumping out at me.

I feel I want to move to Linux, not sure why, but I do feel a deep rooted calling me there. There is no doubt, that the machine running Linux on paper is a little less spec than the one on Windows, Eclipse etc are running much snappier. But I have a lot of 'toys' with Windows that at this point I am reluctant to give up.

Life is too short for unnecessary pain, so I have no guilt in keeping Windows, but Linux is definitely coming up the inside lane as a strong alternative. I will report back in a week after I really get use to it.