A few notes if anyone else is considering making the jump:
- amaroK is the best music player I was able to find. It's almost as good as iTunes at presenting a simple interface that nonetheless does everything you want it to, and it has some nifty features I haven't seen elsewhere, like music recommendations and built-in lyrics lookup.
- If you're using Ubuntu, you'll need to turn on Multiverse (non-free as in speech packages) at least long enough to get the Microsoft web fonts.
- Eclipse is really nice, even for non-Java work—I grabbed the EPIC Perl editor, the Subclipse bindings for Subversion, and a package that handles HTML, XML and CSS.
- The Gimp is funky, but I suspect it might be more powerful than even Photoshop.
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I am going to waste so much time as a result of Wanda the Fish.
If the designers of X-window built cars, there would be no fewer than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which followed the same principles -- but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo. Useful feature, that.