Since I've written about why I've done so much work getting the code on this site clean and why I'm using the license that I do, I've decided to next step would be to detail why I used the operating system and applications that I do.
For a long time (circa 1998) I've wanted to use Linux. I put it off at first while I waited for Linux to mature and become a bit more user-friendly but, in 2006, I finally found that I was using mostly apps that were on Linux anyway. I also wasn't doing anything that I actually required Windows for (I've never really done much PC gaming) and so I decided to switch.
After a quick discussion on a forum I frequent, I decided that Ubuntu looked very good, and that KDE looked more promising to me than GNOME (this was before Dapper Drake, so Xubuntu wasn't really an option for a newbie like me at the time).
I soon had Kubuntu 5.10 installed and despite some hard times, I had about six months of good usage out of it. It was stable, reasonably fast, and did just about everything I wanted.
Of course by this time it was August, and Dapper Drake had been out for a while, so I decided to upgrade. After some initial troubles, it seemed to go well. But then, disaster. I filled my root partition and Kubuntu wouldn't boot. I could've probably fixed the problem, but I decided to use this as an excuse to wipe my primary HD entirely (using my secondary HD as backup) and go exclusively to Linux.
The transition took place over a hard few days, but it all worked out and Kubuntu was soon working well again.
Linux isn't for everyone, but Canonical have made a cracking distro with Ubuntu, proving that Linux is a good desktop competitor to Windows these days. Microsoft's days may be numbered...
Of course, even the best operating system is nothing without good applications, and I've found myself a nice bunch to work with.
The archetypal 'IE-beater', Firefox is what really spurred Microsoft to replace Internet Explorer 6 (which celebrated its fifth birthday this year, it really is that old!) with something a little more up-to-date and standards-compliant (IE's handling of CSS2 and the PNG image format is woeful).
Kubuntu comes with a built-in browser though (Konqeuror) which is a lot faster than Firefox. So why not use that? The answer is simple. Extensions. I am hopelessly addicted to my Firefox extensions (Tab Mix Plus mainly, formerly Tabbrowser Extensions) in particular) and find it hard to live without them.
Recently, I've been trying out Gran Paradiso (the alpha version of what will eventually become Firefox 3.0) and it's pretty good. There's some new bugs, and the speed can be worse at times, but altogether it's something I can live with. I'm impressed enough to be currently using it as my main browser.
After a while of using KMail (through Kontact), I decided to switch to Mozilla Thunderbird. Partly because I like Mozilla applications, partly because I felt Kontact was a bit too much for my needs.
Rather than using the stable 1.5 branch, I decided to go straight to 2.0 beta 1 (which was released on the same day I switched). It's proven stable for the moment, though it'll require some tweaking until I get it feeling right, which is great since I love tweaking stuff. I've also mapped opening it to a key combination, which may make me check my e-mail more often in future.
When I switched to Kubuntu, it was my intention to use Irssi right from the start. Typical newbie difficulties stalled this though, and I used Konversation for a while (which is quite nice) but I really ended up liking Irssi once I had it working. It's got loads of features and is operated entirely via the keyboard (which is helpful for IRC, where it's best not to take your hands away from the keyboard sometimes).
The entirely text-based configuration isn't for everyone though (I'd recommend savIRC, a graphical-based IRC client for both Windows and Linux for those who prefer a GUI) but it's certainly the IRC client for me.
A good image viewer. I'd prefer the ability to view multiple pictures (at full size) with one instance of it, and the ability to make it only refresh the file list when I tell it to, but it's usable enough as it is.
Krita wasn't working right, so I switched to GIMP. It seems to be working a lot better, though it is a little hard to use sometimes. I'll probably check on Krita every now and then, but GIMP is the better program for my needs right now.
Yes, I've joined the editor wars on the side of vi. It's a free software version though, so I'm sure Saint IGNUcius won't mind. ;-)
I wanted to use Azureus, but that froze up the entire system trying to download a particularly large torrent. I'm not sure whether it was Azureus itself (it was a beta version) or the Sun JRE I was using, but I decided it was too risky to try using on a regular basis. I had rTorrent recommended to me (which I may try again later) but found the interface a bit esoteric at the time. KTorrent seems to work well, so it's staying for now.
I've heard it criticised for bloat, but this audio player is very popular. I generally just leave it in my system tray, playing on random most of the time. A rewrite in Ruby is being toyed around with for version 2.0, which certainly sounds interesting. It may not happen soon, or even at all, but there's always Listen for if I end up not liking it.
The ultimate media player really. It plays everything on my PC and is pretty easy to use. I always use Amarok for music, but MPlayer is just the best for video playback.
That's it right now for my regular applications. I may update this later for more details, if I feel like writing about others, or if I change/add applications.