I got a new old laptop today, which is pretty cool by itself. After wiping its hard disk, I fooled around a bit before settling on Xubuntu for the new OS.

Holy crap. It’s like the Gnome version of Ubuntu used to be back when I liked it! Guess I should have listened to Dan when I was whining about Unity back in October.

The only reason I’m writing this right now instead of migrating this machine is a little hesitation about Dropbox. You know, the cloud service? In Linux, it only works with Nautilus, the Gnome file manager.

Ubuntu has its own cloud service, Ubuntu One, which seems to be available for all flavors of Ubuntu now. I’ve been using it for a while, and I’ve even set it up to sync my Dropbox folder, basically using this machine as a bridge between the two cloud services.

So the real question is, how badly do I want to keep Dropbox? Since the game I originally set it up for was postponed indefinitely I haven’t used it, to the point where I got email from them saying they missed me. A quick Google search tells me that it is possible, though it looks like a pain, to get Dropbox working in Xfce by installing and running an instance of Nautilus that pretty much does nothing but activate Dropbox.

It seems like a clear case where I should go ahead and migrate, and if and when I have need of Dropbox again I can figure out how to make it work. Yet I hesitate. Perhaps I’ve seen enough change today, and the thought of drastically altering the reliable desktop rubs surfaces already raw from new experiences. Perhaps I’m getting used to Unity, like a sort of UI Stockholm Syndrome, or the co-dependence of an abusive relationship.

Or perhaps I’ve had enough things go wrong during software installs that I’m reluctant to risk breaking something that works even if I don’t really like it.

For now I think I’ll sleep on it. After I play with my new toy a bit more. As always, thanks for reading!