Taking a chill pill.
I don't know that I'll be contributing to Ubuntu by way of Kubuntu for a while. language-selector's been ported to PyKDE4 and is awaiting a wrapper to integrate Python applications into System Settings as control modules, so my part's done. That being said, I think I'm going to have to leave Kubuntu behind.
You see, I don't have a snappy new computer with loads of RAM and a dual-core processor. I have a nearly 4-year-old setup with 1 gig of RAM and an older NVIDIA card. I can't continue to run KDE4 as, even with Desktop Effects turned off, the desktop runs so sluggishly as to almost render it unusable.
Thanks to KDE 3.5.9, however, I've lost my irrational bias for QT applications. In fact, I've found a wonderful cross-platform IRC application: Quassel. It runs a core process, that maintains connections and communicates with the actual IRC server, and a client that makes IRC requests through the core. This gives the benefit of being able to remain connected to IRC from anywhere through one core.
So, for now, I'm giving Xubuntu a shot since I've played with the lightweight XFCE desktop environment in the past and loved it. Compositing in X works fine, Firefox doesn't crash when visiting certain websites (this did happen in KDE4 w/Desktop Effects turned on) and overall, my machine feels responsive.
Linux has always had the reputation of making older hardware perform better than in it would in Windows. KDE4 seems to run contrary to this, however. Hopefully, by the time 4.2 is released, I'll be proven wrong. If I were interested in purchasing new hardware to keep up, I'd already be running Windows or Mac OS X.
What Patriotism Is, and Is Not
To find the U.S. patriotism in foreign soil, Iraq brought to you by Barack Obama of the 21st century.
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