For some reason, despite the fact that I still had way too much to do, I got the urge to poke my toe ever so gently into the Linux pool once again. Will I ever learn?

This time, my interest was piqued by an app/distro/emulater-type thingy called andLinux. It's a sort like WINE for Linux, allowing you install this thing in Windows, and then run your favorite Linux apps. In this case, I was kinda missing Amarok, but wasn't willing to give up Oblivion. I installed this thing and had Amarok running inside of 15 minutes, including download.

The download and install were easy and straight-forward. It wasn't any harder than installing any other application. It dropped a few new icons on my system tray, and pre-installed a few basic KDE apps (like Kate, one of my all-time favs). I dropped to the CLI, apt-got Amarok and, boo-yah, I was good.

Well, not entirely. It launched and looked beautiful, but it didn't actually play anything. It seems to have a problem cataloging my music collection, and it wouldn't make any sounds (a key feature). I spent way too much time perusing still-nascent forums and didn't find a lot of useful help.

Despite the fact that it doesn't do anything useful for me at the moment, I like andLinux. Its out-of-the box functionality is pretty slick, and I think it's a pretty cool idea. I'm not going to angrily uninstall it and swear off Linux and all related enterprises for another 6 months (the usual script). But I'm done with it for now. It's still in Beta (whatever that means these days) so it might be able to work out remaining bugs before I need the disk space.

The water, for now, is still a little chilly.