“The KDE Project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.5.6, a maintenance release for the latest generation of the most advanced, powerful free desktop for GNU/Linux and other UNIXes. This release includes a number of fixes for KHTML, Kate, kicker, ksysguard, and lots of other applications.”
In action on PCLinuxOS Test 1, here: http://shots.linuxquestions.org/?linux_distribution_sm=PCLinuxOS~*~…
havent used KDE before, is PCLinuxOS good place to start?
Definitely. Or, if you like deb better, go for Kubuntu. But PCLinuxOS is usually recommended as the most polished KDE desktop out there.
PCLinuxOS as a livecd, is a great way to test it on your hw. If you like it, login as root to see the install icon on the desktop. Thanks to the gnu tools upgrade, PCLOS is now current with latest sw.
The test release of PCLinuxOS 2007 will shortly go to
test 2 so you might want to wait a few days for it.
More info on the forum
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php
i thihk it’s suse who have the most polished kde desktop
kubuntu is surely the most bugged kde desktop, just check kde bug, alot of bug only happen on kubuntu and not on other linux distribution
I don’t use Kubuntu, but i think the bugs that are experienced by Kubuntu users is because the Kubuntu dev’s run the lastest KDE version possible, sometimes with svn versions that haven’t even been released yet. Think of Kubuntu as your bleeding edge KDE-wise distro.
So if you’re looking for a more professional business like stable distro I would have to agree that Suse is more stable, but only for the fact that it doesn’t do what Kubuntu does, and that’s pushing out the lastest possible version of KDE to the masses for testing/use.
At least that’s what I gather.
I’d have to say it’s the gratuitous patching they do, actually, especially when said patching is designed to *remove* options from the users. I have all sorts of little issues with kde on my kubuntu install that I never see anywhere else. They sure have made it easy to hibernate/suspend, though, even if it’s at the expense of some kcontrol options which are normally available to KDE users.
I don’t think that SuSE’s KDE version is the most polished out there. They made some patches to accomodate some of Novell’s new stuff and it is not quite stable as vanilla KDE that you can get from, say, Slackware or Debian Sarge/Etch/Sid.
But I have to second your remark about Kubuntu. I am currently running it (mostly because I got the CD for free and my 2 years old SimplyMEPIS installation was broken beyond repair) but this gotta be the worst Linux distro that I have ever played with (and I don’t want to spend my time describing what’s wrong with this distro… It will take way too much space to do that!). It WILL be replaced with the latest Etch that I just downloaded yesterday over the weekend.
Up to this moment there is still one serious bug with ksmserver (KDE Session Manager) that is Kubuntu specific and that is being patched for Edgy and backported for Dapper that is a heck of a showstopper. KDE is still an afterthought on Ubuntu-land and that becomes obvious when one compares it to their highly polished GNOME desktop which is gorgeous indeed, but just not my thing.
I’ll miss their System Settings replacement for KDE’s Control Center, though.
I have to make up for some of the harsh words on that last post. Jonathon Riddell is one of the friendliest developers that I ever chatted with and seems to be a heck of a nice person. You can find him almost all the time on the #kubuntu channel over FreeNode helping people. The channel is user-friendly and even downright stupid questions are treated seriously and with respect.
I just feel that Canonical does not dedicate nearly as much manpower to the KDE version of their distro as it does for the GNOME version and it shows.
i can agree with you on all statements. Riddell is surely a very nice guy, with AND without beer 😉
but Ubuntu still focusses on Gnome, their loss of course.
What’s the best distro to try out KDE 3.5 on sans a livecd? I wanna see how fast Konquerer is at native speeds. Last time I tried it was around 3.1 or 3.2. It was too slow to be usable back then (at least when you compare it to Directory Opus on Windows), but they say it has gotten faster with newer releases.
NOTE: I’m not looking for the fastest distro possible .. eg, having to compile the whole thing from source. Just a distro that runs at decent speeds.
Edited 2007-01-25 22:46
Konqueror is not that fast. You’ll be happier with Opera 9.10 if your concern is speed. And Opera integrates very well with KDE.
The rendering engine is faster than opera’s whats slower is that it doubles as a file mamager
The rendering engine is faster than opera’s whats slower is that it doubles as a file mamager
Yeah, I was referring to the file manager part. If it’s still slow, guess I won’t waste my time. Maybe Krusader is a better choice? I haven’t tried it yet.
So far, I’ve not found a fast file manager for Linux with advanced features built in, such as these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory_Opus
Someone help ?
Edited 2007-01-25 23:41
//If it’s still slow, guess I won’t waste my time. //
As a file manager, Konqueror is not slow. Not since KDE 3.5.4.
Krusader has more features again than Konqueror for file management, it is a bit slower to load than Konqueror though. For added speed, you can optionally have KDE load an instance of Konqueror at startup, similar to what Windows does for explorer.
There is a Linux equivalent for directory opus. I will look it up for you.
PS: I can’t find the one I had in mind, that does graphical file differences & such. For pure file management tasks, Krusader, Konqueror, Nautilis and Worker are probably the best picks.
Edited 2007-01-25 23:58
I heard lots of good things about a new KDE file manager called Dolphin but never felt the need to try anything other than Konqi. Seriously… Konqueror really is THAT good!
Maybe the parent poster wants to try that? http://enzosworld.gmxhome.de/
There is a Linux equivalent for directory opus. I will look it up for you.
PS: I can’t find the one I had in mind, that does graphical file differences & such
That must be because it’s called gentoo.
Have a look at Dolphin:
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=40491&PHPSESSID=170a13…
Dolphin leaves .dolphin files everywhere it goes.
It is fast, but it is no faster than Konqueror.
Konqueror supports multiple panes, and tabs, and it has embedded viewers (including html and pdf), and it can access external filesystems such as nfs:// smb:// sftp:// and ftp://
Konqueror is neater than Dolphin, way more powerful than Dolphin, and just as fast as Dolphin.
I do not agree.
I know konqueror has many more features than dolphin ( i USE konky) but IMHO dolphin is faster than konky ( as well as rox is faster than konky).
//but IMHO dolphin is faster than konky//
What version of KDE?
I defy you to come up with a noticeable, measurable speed difference in the latest versions of KDE (3.5.4 or later).
Put it this way … on my PCLinuxOS test 2007 system, which uses KDE 3.5.6, Konqueror is the fastest program to come up of all. It comes up quicker than kcalc!
Edited 2007-01-26 00:23
3.5.6
As I said: is IMHO
Put it this way … on my PCLinuxOS test 2007 system, which uses KDE 3.5.6, Konqueror is the fastest program to come up of all. It comes up quicker than kcalc!
Well… Konqueror comes with at least one instance pre-loaded on most distros as this is a KDE default setting and I haven´t seen any distro changing that. So that may explain why it is so fast compared to, say, Dolphin, Krusader or even Kcalc.
or perhaps konqueror uses libraries that are needed for other things that are running while KDE is running, so that things are preloaded without purpose of having it like this.
// {{ Put it this way … on my PCLinuxOS test 2007 system, which uses KDE 3.5.6, Konqueror is the fastest program to come up of all. It comes up quicker than kcalc! }}
Well… Konqueror comes with at least one instance pre-loaded on most distros as this is a KDE default setting and I haven´t seen any distro changing that. So that may explain why it is so fast compared to, say, Dolphin, Krusader or even Kcalc.
//
On the PCLinuxOS test 2007 system, which uses KDE 3.5.6, the option to pre-load an instance of Konqueror on KDE start-up is available, but not enabled by default.
Even without this pre-load Konqueror option set (as I say the default setting is that zero instances of Konqueror are pre-loaded), Konqueror is still the fastest program of all to come up.
Edited 2007-01-26 13:52
Also, if you use a version of Qt and KDE compiled with the ‘-visibility’ flag and prelink konqueror, the result is something that is mind-boggling fast.
I know konqueror has many more features than dolphin ( i USE konky)but IMHO dolphin is faster than konky
The modular way Konqueror are bulilt gives you the added features without decreased preformance. So having less fetures does not make Dolphin any faster. Neither does having a more spartan interface, even if some may think so. On the other side Konqueror have seen years of optimization and speed improvments, oposed to the new and unproven code base of Dolphin.
Edited 2007-01-26 08:28
> Dolphin leaves .dolphin files everywhere it goes.
i actually patched that so it uses the standard .directory files now.
I don’t understand why you guys say that Konqueror is slow as a file manager…that’s not my experience at all. How old are your machines?
I don’t understand why you guys say that Konqueror is slow as a file manager…that’s not my experience at all. How old are your machines?
Just comparing it to Dopus on Windows running on the same hardware, which takes about 1 second to render a directory with 2,300 files in it. Konquerer takes … well, longer than that
Try ROX Filer…
Just comparing it to Dopus on Windows running on the same hardware, which takes about 1 second to render a directory with 2,300 files in it. Konquerer takes … well, longer than that
I just did a test here with my Kubuntu laptop, opening /usr/bin, and the rendering was almost instantaneous. Of course, I have file previews disabled, so that speed things up quite a bit.
Even then, thre are features that Konqueror has that Dopus lacks (mostly kio_slaves), which IMO makes Konqueror a better all-around app.
The fact that Dopus is not available for Linux kind of makes the whole point moot, though, doesn’t it? Unless this was really meant as an underhanded criticism of Linux itself…
> The rendering engine is faster than opera’s
This is true, but I was refering to speed as a whole, for instance when you hit “Back” or “Forward”, it’s suggish with Konqueror. You don’t feel the speed difference in rendering though.
//This is true, but I was refering to speed as a whole, for instance when you hit “Back” or “Forward”, it’s suggish with Konqueror. You don’t feel the speed difference in rendering though.//
Back or Forward functions in the local filesystems are not slow. This would only apply to web pages … other browsers use cache to speed up back or forward functions. I don’t think Konqueror does.
Konqueror is not slow (any more) as a file manager, and it can load and render (correctly, it is acid2 compliant) a single web page at least as fast as, if not faster than, any other browser.
Nonsense,
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html
I think you misspoke yourself. Konqueror _is_ fast… It’s just in second place behind Opera…
… but yes, opera is also very well suited for KDE (it’s QT based)
source: http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html#linspeed
i doubt most of these tests though, except the history one, konquerors history is very slow, because of the way its stored (basically at every page open, it serializes all the data with a QDataStream, and then forces a sync).
and other than that, well, even if khtml is abit slower, i suppose its only fair, since it supports much more.
http://www.css3.info/selectors-test/
konqueror 3.5.6: 578/578
IE6: 276/578
firefox 2.0: 357/578
opera 9.10: 346/578
//What’s the best distro to try out KDE 3.5 on sans a livecd?//
Still PCLinuxOS, IMO.
PCLinuxOS boots to a LiveCD so you can check out if it will recognise all your hardware, and if it does you can click on an icon and install to HD.
It is far, far slicker and quicker and easier to install and run than SuSe or Ubuntu or Kubuntu or anything else I have come across.
//Konqueror is not that fast.//
Actually, since about KDE 3.5.4 or later, it is. It is almost as quick as a file manager now as thunar or rox, but it is far more powerful than both of those.
Edited 2007-01-25 23:41
If it’s speed you’re after, try Slackware. You’ll have to “get your hands dirty” a little more than with other distros, but it’s not nearly as fearsome as its reputation.
You’ll get a recent KDE with the default install and I’m sure the latest version will be on LinuxPackages in no time:
http://www.linuxpackages.net/search_view.php?by=name&name=kde&ver=1…
or arch-linux. at least it supports hal and some other modern stuff, has a nice rolling-release schedule, a ports-like system to install from source – and it’s fast and clean.
Yes you can find this up to date kde on pclinuxos newest beta live cd installable as well, kubuntu is all good and well , but for out of the box “just works” as in mac linux pclinuxos is the best
The article’s description (original KDE article quoted):
“The KDE Project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.5.6, a maintenance release for the latest generation of the most advanced, powerful free desktop for GNU/Linux and other UNIXes. This release includes a number of fixes for KHTML, Kate, kicker, ksysguard, and lots of other applications.”
Wasn’t GNU supposed to read out “GNU is not UNIX”? If that’s correct, “and other UNIXes” would be incorrect, because GNU/Linux is not a UNIX (by its own definition), so there are no “and other UNIXes”. In my opinion, “GNU/Linux and UNIXes” would be correct. GNU/Linux and UNIXes are two sets, GNU/Linux (systems) is not a subset of UNIX (systems). “And other” implies this relation. (Because peope like fruit analogies, “apples and other pears” would be incorrect, but “apples and other fruits” or “apples and pears” would be correct.)
Maybe I’m a bit pedantic… 🙂
To get back on topic: Some of the default file bindings of KDE are a bit complicated for “just work” users, e. g. Amarok searching all accessible media if you just want to play a media file. The KDE applications itself are quite fast, even from the PLOS live system CD. The german language support is inconsistent and in some cases incorrect, but it doesn’t really matter because we have a high rate of functional illiteracy here in Germany – along with our dynamic Newspeak. 🙂
> In my opinion, “GNU/Linux and UNIXes” would be correct
FreeBSD and Solaris ain’t more Unix than Linux, for instance, so the above is still not correct. There is only one Unix system, it’s the original Unix™ system.
You could say “GNU/Linux and other Unix-like systems”.
Reentering -Wall -pedantic mode…
“FreeBSD and Solaris ain’t more Unix than Linux, for instance, so the above is still not correct.”
That’s right, I agree. But I was refering to the claims the OS families did for theirselves. For example, GNU/Linux claims not to be UNIX (“GNU is not UNIX”), while FreeBSD claims to be “Based on BSD UNIX”. So Linux denies to be a UNIX, while FreeBSD (as other BSDs) and Solaris mention their roots. Solaris has its roots in UNIX System V, which comes from BSD UNIX and this one once came from AT&T UNIX, if I can believe the Wikipedia information. So let’s be more correct:
“There is only one Unix system, it’s the original Unix™ system.”
You’re refering to the UNIX(R) (the successor of MULTICS), from it’s First Edition up to the Secenth Edition, which is a registered trademark of AT&T. In the past, BSD included the term “UNIX” (“BSD UNIX”).
SINIX, AIX, HP-UX, IRIX etc. could be considered the same category you suggested.
“You could say “GNU/Linux and other Unix-like systems”.”
Yes, that would be more correct than correct, ubercorrect 🙂
GNU’s Not Unix means it IS NOT UNIX, it’s an unix-like system but not unix itself. clear?
“GNU’s Not Unix means it IS NOT UNIX, it’s an unix-like system but not unix itself. clear?”
This is nothing else than I stated. So the descriptin extracteeed from the artice is a bit incorret because it implies GNU/Linux to be a UNIX. Not more, not less. No need to be offensive.
it is A unix, definitely. but not ‘THE’ unix, that’s why it tells you ‘GNU’s Not Unix’.
let’s say you’r name is Mohammed. possible, of course. you are ‘a Mohammed’, like there are more of them. but you are not ‘THE Mohammed’, you’re not the prophet. so you’re NOT Mohammed, in a way.
so GNU IS a Unix, but it is NOT Unix. ok?
He’s not THE UNIX, he’s a very naughty boy!
Don’t flame, it’s about as relevant as the entirety of the preceding thread. Surely we can all interpret what they were getting at, and nobody needs to be taken out back and shot by the Lingo Police?
hey, Lingo rulez
but yeah, agreed….
“He’s not THE UNIX, he’s a very naughty boy!”
Who, (some) Mohammed? 🙂
“[…] nobody needs to be taken out back and shot by the Lingo Police?”
They shoot? Better throw with books, AS/400 systen documentation if available. 🙂
FreeBSD and Solaris are real derivatives, Linux is mimicking Unix. So *BSD is “real” Unix without the trademark and so on.
>You could say “GNU/Linux and other Unix-like systems”.
Unix-like is true only for GNU/Linux. But to be true a modern Unix with lot of BSD code in it, would be Unix-like too (compared to original Unix in ’69)
“FreeBSD and Solaris are real derivatives, […]”
Exactly as I stated.
“Linux is mimicking Unix. So *BSD is “real” Unix without the trademark and so on.
>You could say “GNU/Linux and other Unix-like systems”.
Unix-like is true only for GNU/Linux. But to be true a modern Unix with lot of BSD code in it, would be Unix-like too (compared to original Unix in ’69)
“
These were my thoughts. I’m just filing a report for THINKPOL so they can punish me for still being in -Wall -pedantic mode. 🙂
//Some of the default file bindings of KDE are a bit complicated for “just work” users, e. g. Amarok searching all accessible media if you just want to play a media file.//
This is a misunderstanding of the intended use of Amarok.
Amarok is not “just a media player”, but rather it is a media collection browser and player.
Amarok’s “scan the media collection” only happens on first run anyway.
If you want to just click on a file & play it, a better choice for that is XMMS or Mplayer or Kaffeine.
“This is a misunderstanding of the intended use of Amarok.
Amarok is not “just a media player”, but rather it is a media collection browser and player.”
That’s exactly my point. I know this behaviour of Amarok and its intended functions. I just wanted to state it to be not a good default binding for media files, because if Joe Q. Average doubleclicks a music file, he wants to play it, nothing more. I’m not complaining about Amarok itself.
“Amarok’s “scan the media collection” only happens on first run anyway.”
Which could mean trouble and irritation for Joe Q. Sixpack if he just wants to play his music…
“If you want to just click on a file & play it, a better choice for that is XMMS or Mplayer or Kaffeine.”
As I would have said. 🙂
That’s exactly my point. I know this behaviour of Amarok and its intended functions. I just wanted to state it to be not a good default binding for media files, because if Joe Q. Average doubleclicks a music file, he wants to play it, nothing more. I’m not complaining about Amarok itself.
Last I heard, Amarok wasn’t a part of the default KDE desktop; thus, distributors are making it as a default binding.
That said, I do agree that something like Kaffeine would be a wiser choice for opening a file. I would even go as far to say that using anything else than Amarok would be a wiser choice, but that’s just me… (It’s really powerful, but I find the interface horrible, kinda like KDevelop)
“Last I heard, Amarok wasn’t a part of the default KDE desktop; thus, distributors are making it as a default binding.”
Yes, I see. My elaborated observation was about openSuSE, as far as I remember. So this does not seem to be a matter of KDE, but of the respective distribution designers. I don’t really know if other distributions handle it another way. In my opinion it would be better so the KDE desktop is easier to use for Joe Q. Average and even for Timmybob M. Stupid. 🙂 Doubleclicking on a file should just open the file – and play it, as an example of media files, or load it into the respective application instead of searching for more files. The default should be simple; more advanced users will know how to change the bindings if they really want to connect Amarok to certain file types. Joe and Timmybob surely won’t. And maybe they get disappointed if it looks to complicated.
If you want to just click on a file & play it, a better choice for that is XMMS or Mplayer or Kaffeine.
Or even better Kaboodle, it’s afterall what it’s designed to do.
I am not trolling, before anyone begins pointing fingers
but I think this has been mentioned before on OSNEWS. Are maintenance release really news worthy ? I can understand to a certain degree the last GNOME release because you get told more than just there were fixes in the text editors and libraries. It may be because it’s showing fairness and impartiality to equal appropriate coverage of both DEs, It is hard to comment on a story like this and have a useful discussion.
I think it’s worthwhile. I’d not have known about it otherwise. Also as it’s a maintenance release, I’ll actually install it.
Meaning no disrespect to the KDE devs and testers, I’d not install a x.0 release of something so important.
“What’s the best distro to try out KDE 3.5 on sans a livecd?”
It would be PCLinuxOS definitely and its derivative SAMLinux. I’m using PLOS 0.92 (with nVIDIA kernel module)
on my Celeron 500 MHz system with 256 Mb SDRAM since June last year and cosider that distro most valuable code I’ve ever installed on that poor Pentium II generation Compaq PC. I’ve also installed same version PCLinuxOS on several other system just to prove its excellent hardware detection abilities and perfect performance.
One thing I can’t really understand is why’s that mavellous distribution so undervalued and overlooked.
Today PSLinuxOS is #1 distro on Distrowatch.com Top 100
Linux list and If I remember well It was August or September 2007 when I submitted news to OSnews.com
that PCLinuxOS jumped to 1st place on that same list but the news was ignored.
I simply couldn’t resist to submit the news since there
was so much hype surrounding …buntu distros last summer. I’ve tried all Canonical Linux variants on my systems just to wipe out my hard-disks and install something else ( Mint-Linux,Dream Linux and blazing fast Slackware 11.0 based Vector Linux 5.8 come to mind).
PCLinuxOS is intended for desktop systems but it also gave me rock solid foundation for samba/FTP and WEB server. It turn to be one of distros with most complete multimedia support besides all polish, customization optins etc. With little more than 5000 packages ported
by Texstar and Co. to distribution all available in numerous PCLinuxOS repositories PSLinuxOS is not on par with 20000 items *.deb packages list but what you have already is thoroughly tested and well implemented.
BTW sometimes I really think Debian (as well as Ubuntu ) list of packages really looks like museum of Linux archeology quite often very confusing even to me who is using Linux for more than eight years now.
Whats most impressive with PSLinuxOS is their implementation of “Install once – upgrade as you go”
If I remember well original install gave me KDE 3.4.2 version and now I have KDE 3.5.4 . No hassle no glitch so far.
I bet PSLinuxOS will be Linux distro of the Year 2007!
Read more: http://tuxmachines.org/node/12897
if you search absolutely performance, i think arch or pardus linux is the best choice
pardus is really fast
Personally I’ve never heard of this distro, and from the web site it sounds like there’s not been a release. I’d recommend suse if you want a KDE desktop, or slackware if you want unmodified sources.
“Personally I’ve never heard of this distro…”
That’s exactly what I was talking about. PCLinuxOS was/is
most overlooked distro to my best knowledge.
As in Shakespeare “Much Ado About Nothing” there were series of articles, reviews and opinions on Canonical Linux project and other releases from SuSE , Fedora and/or <your favourite distro name here> while PCLinuxOS was pushed to margine.
Only bunches of PCLinuxOS devoted developers, supporters and Linux aficionados knew what treasures were hidden behind not so attractive distribution release numbers e.g. 0.85 , 0.92(a) or 0.93. Was that misleading release numbering system strategical trick or such I don’t know but what they were brewing behind
the scene was pure Ambrosia !
Edited 2007-01-26 01:09
What is the state of Kopete? Do file transfers on Yahoo Messenger work? So far no IM programs on linux have functional YM transfers. Anything on this?
coming from a noob (and someone lazy) why is suse so big (download size) compared to PClinuxOS
Because you get a lot of apps on the dvd to install as well (and you get a crippled OS when it comes to multimedia).
I actually think PC-BSD is the fastest and most polished KDE experience. Lightweight and very well thought out. Nice icons and themes too. Multimedia and MS fonts are just a few clicks on the PBI packages. Openuse 10.2 has horrible menus and bloated packages. Kubuntu is totally unpolished and quite flaky.
Mainly because I don’t see what’s wrong with it… All the Linux users I know (in real life) run Kubuntu (one runs Ubuntu), and none have any major complaints. Has anyone here _specifically_ come across anything that would count as unpolished?
You can’t resize the fonts for the KDM login screen, for one simple one.
Starting up the GTK-QT widget selector crashed Gnome, at least a while back (which I didn’t realize because I didn’t use Gnome much)
” Has anyone here _specifically_ come across anything that would count as unpolished?”
The ‘display’ screen in the Configure – KDesktop applet is gone after updating KDE to 3.5.5 in kUbuntu 6.06 and for no good reason except apparent laziness. I asked why in the kUbuntu forums and got such an answer.
you should stick to the official packages, these updates are a nice service, but no garantuees, they don’t get tested or bugfixed at all….
use edgy, the kde 3.5.5 in there is tested and integrated. or wait for feisty with 3.5.6 or 3.5.7
1) My favorite theme, Polyester, for some reason looks a lot different – and uglier – from what you can see on its homepage´s screenshots or from what I can see on my Debian Etch that I have running under MS VirtualPC at work. No matter what I do, I can´t change that (Already tried to compile from the source to no avail).
2) The aforementioned KDE Session Manager bug is driving me crazy but it is being addressed as we speak: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kdebase/+bug/67889
This problem also affects FreeNX as it has to start the ksmserver as well when one starts a remote session. And it becomes worse since X crashes and even the Sysrq Magic keys don´t work. I tried to log into the machine using PuTTY afterwards but I couldn´t. Don´t know if the entire OS is hung or just if X is taking all the resources available. Regardless, I have to resort to a cold restart everytime.
3) Every once in a while, Kubuntu fails to mount my /home partition for no reason and I don´t know why, X refuses to start when it does that. So when I boot it up, instead of being presented with KDM, I have to logon at the shell. Not a big deal, but can you imagine my wife´s face when she saw that? (Of course, she went to Windoze immediately afterwards…. 🙂
3.b) The fact that it did not mounted the /home filesystem for the first time almost caused me a heart attack, as I logged on and suddenly I couldn´t find my video and audio collections nor my family pictures. Eventually I found the mounting problem but until that point, I was kicking and screaming bloody murder!
4) Some packages are not as up to date as you would imagine such as Amarok and k9copy for instance even though everything is updated to the latest versions available.
5) When I´m working from my wife´s or my daughter´s profile and need to do something that requires administrative priviledges, I am prompted to enter that user´s password for sudo on the kdesu prompts instead of root´s. Since it does not accept the root password and it also refuses my first user password, I have to resort to the shell and run su to be able to do anything. (And NO! I won´t add my wife and children´s profiles to the adm and/or admin groups nor I will enable their user accounts to use sudo. That simply does not make sense. AT ALL!)
6) Talking about groups, I was quite surprised that I had to add my wife to the audio group manually as initially we couldn´t get audio from any application from her profile no matter which application and backend engine I used.
7) KWallet never opens before an application request a stored a password. Eg: I always have to enter my e-mail password on Kontact and only after that is that I got the prompt to open KWallet. Now, that´s odd!
7) Generally speaking, Kubuntu is SLOW. It is better than Ubuntu but compared to my old Mepis installation, both are terribly slow. I can´t point my finger where the problem is yet and I don´t have nothing of that Mono nonsense installed on my system, but even when the machine is idle doing nothing, I can see on htop (or top) that it is taking more resources than it should. I saw several kernel modules loaded by default (at least three times more than Mepis) but I don´t know if that is what causing it to be so slow.
I could spend all day long detailing small and irritating things that I found on this distro but I think that you got my point. Most are small things and can be easily circumvented but the mounting problem and the KDE Session Manager really are showstoppers, as far as I can tell.
Ubuntu is gorgeous but I can´t stand GNOME´s lack of response on an old machine and I tend to use KDE or QT apps most of the time so there is little point keeping it. I installed the ubuntu-desktop meta package out of curiosity mostly as I wanted to have a taste of how GNOME feels these days.
I am still trying to like Adept, but since I can use it on Etch I can keep trying it out. The only thing positive that I can say about Kubuntu is that it found all of my hardware, including the webcam (it is the only one that did it so far but it is not a big deal) and I really like System Settings, so I will miss it.
But my overall experience with Kubuntu has been frustrating so far.
//But my overall experience with Kubuntu has been frustrating so far.//
Agreed. Kubuntu is buggy & not-quite-stable. Mostly annoyances.
That thing with “no root account” is also very non-standard.
If people like Kubuntu, then they should LOVE PCLinuxOS.
That thing with “no root account” is also very non-standard.
sudo passwd
(type root password)
Ah! I forgot to mention:
8) I like to run alternative window managers every once in a while so it is not unusual to find Windowmaker, Icewm and Enlightenment DR16 installed along side KDE on my machines. And while Enlightenment runs flawlessly on my Debian Etch under a virtual machine(!) it hangs all the time under Kubuntu and all that I have to do is to keep browsing its applications menus.
So, it is not that I ain´t giving a fair share to Kubuntu ´cause I have been trying it as my main OS for over two weeks but all these annoyances are getting on my nerves.
Perhaps it is a good OS for the newbie but I can´t see myself using it again for quite some time. Again, no harm intended to the developers as I am sure that they do all that they can with the small amount of resources that they currently have. I thought that with Mark Shuttlesworth himself saying that he uses Kubuntu (don´t know if that is still true) Canonical would devote a certain level of attention to it but looks like I was wrong.
well, i’m not saying it is perfect, but edgy does a great job here. i use it at work – no problems… I’m going to recommend to my employer to upgrade the Dapper systems to edgy, as dapper DOES have several issues…
Just a few comments:
3: is /home listed in fstab? Have you checked out /etc/init.d/mountall.sh ?
4: All applications are at most 6 months old. My Amarok, for example, is 1.4.3… the latest version is 1.4.4 but that came out after the Kubuntu Edgy release. Also, often times newer software will be available for Kubuntu: case in point, KDE 3.5.6… available for download from the Kubuntu home page for Edgy.
5: you can allow them to sudo, but still require the root pass… just a bit of work in the sudoers config.
6: no suprise, the audio group is a remnant of Debian! You learn to love it
7: something is misconfigured in kwallet. Mine works perfectly (from out of the box)
7: Well, at least the bootup is fast
😛
Edited 2007-01-26 16:47
3: is /home listed in fstab? Have you checked out /etc/init.d/mountall.sh ?
Yes and yes. I can mount it manually just fine when I log in as root. This one got me scratching the back of my head as I never seen such a thing before.
4: All applications are at most 6 months old. My Amarok, for example, is 1.4.3… the latest version is 1.4.4 but that came out after the Kubuntu Edgy release. Also, often times newer software will be available for Kubuntu: case in point, KDE 3.5.6… available for download from the Kubuntu home page for Edgy.
My Amarok seems to be the latest available on universe/multiverse repositories based on what I can see from the splash screen and from the About… dialog. But it still does not have Magnatunes integrated on the UI as it used to before on Mepis.
5: you can allow them to sudo, but still require the root pass… just a bit of work in the sudoers config.
I see your point and it is a trivial enough change to make but I don´t want to tweak that myself. kdesu should accept either the first user´s password (optional) or at the very least, root´s password.
6: no suprise, the audio group is a remnant of Debian! You learn to love it
I LOVE Debian and use it often so no problem there.
I just found odd that a newbie-friendly distro would requires me to add user to specific groups just to be able to, say, hear sound, burn a CD or shutdown the machine.
7: something is misconfigured in kwallet. Mine works perfectly (from out of the box)
I KNOW!
Believe me; I even deleted the whole ~/.kde directory to ensure that everything would start with its defaults but I still cannot make KWallet work properly.
7: Well, at least the bootup is fast
I kinda liked that, too. And when you remove certain unnecessary daemons (in my case, blue_utilz and the HP Inkjet something) it gets even faster. And my wife liked the grub splash screen (That´s a nice touch, I gotta admit…). I try to remove as much as I can from Debian init scripts but I never manage to get it that fast.
But compared to the old Mepis (don´t know about the new one based on Kubuntu), Kubuntu had only a slight advantage on speed so it was not enough to get me hooked.
My Amarok seems to be the latest available on universe/multiverse repositories based on what I can see from the splash screen and from the About… dialog. But it still does not have Magnatunes integrated on the UI as it used to before on Mepis.
You’re running Edgy, right? Because I have the magnatunes intergration, and it works fine (i’ve bought some music from there.)
I see your point and it is a trivial enough change to make but I don´t want to tweak that myself. kdesu should accept either the first user´s password (optional) or at the very least, root´s password.
I think Kubuntu will auto add the user to the audio group if you use the GUI user add dialog, I’m guessing you used the commandline to add the user.
I’m still very content with Kubuntu, however, all this talk about PClinuxOS has gotten me interested. (I wish it was deb based!)
My Amarok seems to be the latest available on universe/multiverse repositories based on what I can see from the splash screen and from the About… dialog. But it still does not have Magnatunes integrated on the UI as it used to before on Mepis.
You’re running Edgy, right? Because I have the magnatunes intergration, and it works fine (i’ve bought some music from there.)
Dapper. But I know my way around Debian-derived distros as I used lots of them and even followed instructions on UbuntuGuide.org for lots of things so I was willing to update whatever I need to update just to get the latest Amarok in place. Magnatunes is just on thing that was bothering me. The other one is that the integration with MusicBrainz.com (to fill out ID3 tags on music files that don´t have them) is currently broken and that´s a critical feature for me.
I see your point and it is a trivial enough change to make but I don´t want to tweak that myself. kdesu should accept either the first user´s password (optional) or at the very least, root´s password.
I think Kubuntu will auto add the user to the audio group if you use the GUI user add dialog, I’m guessing you used the commandline to add the user.
That is correct. I did add my wife´s user account manually on the command line as I have been doing for years. If that´s true then they need to patch the command line adduser to do the same thing as the GUI. I understand that, being a GUI-centric distro, they will give more love to the GUI utilities but they cannot let the inner workings of the OS behind like that.
Actually, that gave me a scary thought: It is very unlikely that adduser is the only command line that needs to be changed to be “Ubuntu-compliant”.
I’m still very content with Kubuntu, however, all this talk about PClinuxOS has gotten me interested. (I wish it was deb based!)
I understand that. I had nice chats with lots of people on their channel that were coming from other distros that were extremely happy with Kubuntu so I can completely understand your statement and I don´t wanna sound like a troll bashing something without even trying it. But I realized that almost all the good things about Kubuntu I could reproduce with Etch but Etch doesn´t have not even one tenth of the headaches.
I always wanted to try PCLinuxOS as well but the fact that it is a RPM distro always kept me away from it. Is not that I can´t stand them as I used RH for several years at home and at work and even played a little with early Fedora releases, but I became spoiled with Debian and its huge repositories shortly after.
SUSE always has a quality KDE desktop
SUSE is a kitchen-sink distro with DVD iso’s
YAST is a fantastic do-anything management tool for n00b’s
SUSE is pretty bomb-proof, and yet pretty bleeding edge
that said, the new PCLINUX OS is very interesting in that:
it is based of a solid commercial distro – Mandriva
it has the magic of Texstar waved over it
it comes with lots of codecs, unlike SUSE
it comes with Openoffice 2.1.0 and KDE 3.5.6
some questions that might sway me:
> does it come with nVidia drivers?
> do they do a DVD iso?
> can you just ‘use’ mandriva compiled rpm’s?
> are PCLOS repo’s already setup on a default install?
some questions that might sway me:
> does it come with nVidia drivers?
Not on the cd but only a synaptic away
> do they do a DVD iso?
There are variants of pclinuxos that are DVD in size like Pclinuxos gamers edition
> can you just ‘use’ mandriva compiled rpm’s?
Pclinuxos hasn’t used a mandriva base for some time although it still uses tweaked versions of mandrake tools like the excellent pclinuxos control center which in my opinion is better than yast. The website warns you not to use mandriva rpms although some will install fine.
> are PCLOS repo’s already setup on a default install?
simple answer is yes.
All the best
Alie
Ubuntu was and is my first Linux, havent used KDE yet, im gona wait for final PCLinuxOS (end of month), if i like it, i might download the whole suse
I can’t wait until some apps on KDE 4 are natively ported and mature on OS X.
Yum!
Since moving to OS X I do miss some of the K apps…..
do yourself a favor and not use osx then
…is still not been fixed.
Well, normally I do not use those GUI based administration tools like Kcron but I just wanted to know how to make task “silent” (receiving no mails if the task has been executed). So I tried to use Kcron to see what Kcron does to make a task silent but if I mark this option Kcron cannot save the changes.
Anybody knows how to make a task “silent”? I have read about a workaround: Changing ‘MAILTO=”root”‘ to ‘MAILTO=””‘ but I do not want to make all cron jobs silent – just some of them.
somebody tried pardus?