I switched my desktop over to Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon yesterday. Previously, I was running Ubuntu 7.04, Feisty Fawn. Gutsy’s final release is in October and I always get antsy whenever the release dates get close, usually breaking down and installing the beta releases when they come out. This time however, I gave in a bit earlier than usual. Gutsy goes beta in a little less than a month, but I decided to go for it anyway, since I can alway reinstall the older OS version and I also have a laptop for backup if things are problematic, but I want to stick it out and play with things. So, I’m currently running Kubuntu 7.10, Tribe 5 and things are moving pretty smoothly. I see some things are missing or unfinished, but I’ve got a stable and functional desktop and I’m able to do just about everything I need or want. I’m sticking with it.

Another thing I’ve done is switched back over to KDE from Gnome, mainly just to see what’s new. I’m well familiar with KDE, so it’s a smooth transition. I do notice some annoying font issues, but I can probably fix that and though I’ve checked it a few times already, my resolution seems off. I could have sworn my windows weren’t so huge with Gnome. I vaguely recall this being something I had to fix in KDE before, way back when. I have a flat screen monitor on this desktop, so there’s only one resolution and I’ve amended my xorg.conf to retain only the correct one…yet something looks off. I’ll figure it out at some point, I guess. Perhaps it will fix itself by the beta or final release.

One thing I notice with 7.10 is that Kopete, the KDE instant messaging client now comes with built-in OTR encryption support as well as the GnuPG it was using before. I’m loving this, since most other clients out there like Gaim/Pidgin and Adium as well as others, are equipped with OTR. I’d previously switched over to Gaim since I couldn’t encrypt messaging between my friends with Kopete because none of them had GnuPG capable clients.

Anyway, I have a new desktop to play with. Maybe at some point in the near future I’ll put Beryl on it for some eye-candy, but for now, I’m just checking things out.