All change again!

Well, my iPod Video finally arrived on Friday, and I'm really pleased with it. I got it scrobbling to my Last.FM profile in no time. Now, all I have to do is spend hours on end ripping all my CD's to it. Still, once I'm finished, my profile will show a truer reflection of my listening habits.
Anyway, sorry it's been a while since my last post (once again!). I've changed my IM client AGAIN! I finally got Kopete working OK, so I'm using that. I don't think it's as good as Pidgin or the Google Talk client. For one thing, both Pidgin and Google Talk tell you when you have a new email in your Googlemail inbox, whereas Kopete doesn't. So, when I change to Kubuntu Gutsy in two months time, I may install Pidgin (assuming Google Talk for Linux doesn't become available in the meantime).
I was also using Kontact for my e-mail for a short while, but I ditched it. As I mentioned previously, I recently decided to stop using Automatix, which I had previously used to install my favourite e-mail client (Thunderbird 2). As the Ubuntu repositories only had Thunderbird 1.5, this left me with a choice - either use Thunderbird 1.5, or a different e-mail client. As it was just as hard to set up Kontact for Googlemail as Thunderbird 1.5, I thought I'd give it a try, but it just wasn't for me. So I decided to install Thunderbird 2 manually.
I'm starting to reach a new level of competence with Linux now. I've passed the point where the command line starts to become easier a couple of months ago, and I'm now quite happy using apt-get and dpkg to install software. I'm now beginning to get more confidence in myself in installing from tarballs as well. I've installed Seamonkey, Thunderbird 2 and NetBeans from tarballs now, and it wasn't hard at all. NetBeans was one of the things I used Automatix for, but I needn't have bothered.
Still, from the sound of things, I won't have to reinstall these three from tarballs when I upgrade to Gutsy. NetBeans appears to be properly available as a deb package for Gutsy, Thunderbird 2 will certainly be in the repository, and so will Iceape, which is a version of Seamonkey. So if I'd waited I wouldn't have had to learn. Never mind, it's still a useful skill to learn.