Just for Kicks

Ever since I’ve upgraded to Windows 7, I’ve noticed that every now and then svchost.exe makes a connection, either to the HTTP or the HTTPS port of one of many IP addresses registered to Microsoft, eg 65.55.xx.xx. This is not the initial network connection to bay-something-or-other.hotmail.com that Windows uses to find out whether the machine is connected to the Internet. Or I don’t think so. I wonder whether it is part of Windows 7’s WGA notification, which probably comes built-in with the system.

Although nowadays, because of my work, I mostly use Windows, and barely touch any alternative OS, I downloaded a few Linux distros early this month to play with. I got the latest Ubuntu 9.10 and OpenSUSE 11.2.

Ubuntu of course came with a GNOME desktop, and I used the OpenSUSE KDE desktop version. I know that GNOME has a lot of fans, but no matter how I try to like it, I somehow seem to take to the KDE desktop better. And it’s not just with this latest trial that I found this. I have always tried to like GNOME, but have somehow always found myself more comfortable with KDE, and gravitating to it in the end.

I suppose that now with Qt’s GPL license, the old arguments against KDE are probably moot. But I still don’t understand why I find it so hard to move to GNOME. Not that anyone is forcing me, mind you. I just find it curious why some people can like one desktop and others can’t get used to it. Maybe I have a KDE gene.