“Kubuntu will have a new sponsor in Blue Systems from the 12.10 cycle starting in May. Kubuntu is a community led project to create a KDE flavour as part of Ubuntu. Our sponsor since it started has been Canonical who are now moving to focus on their Unity flavour. We would like to thank Canonical for this kind support and wish the best success for the Unity flavour (also called Ubuntu). Blue Systems sponsors a number of KDE projects and will encourage Kubuntu to follow the same successful formula as it has always had – community led, KDE focused, Ubuntu flavour.” This makes me happy.
Sadly KDE (and Qt as a whole) seems to be a second class citizen on most distros, which is a real shame as (in my opinion at least – please lets not turn this into a KDE vs GNOME flamewar!) KDE is every bit as good as the other DEs.
Let’s just hope Kubuntu will be less crappy than it was when Canonical managed it.
While I agree that KDE 3.5 was equal to, if not superior to GNOME 2.x, KDE 4.x still has issues with release QA and, last I checked, they seemed to think that “the same thing happened with earlier releases of KDE 2 and KDE 3” justifies the problem.
It used to be that, no matter what desktop I was trying, Konqueror 3.5 was my file manager and tabbed KPart harness. These days, I either use Trinity (that KDE 3.5 fork) or LXDE.
Darn shame too. KDE 4 has a ton of potential if they could just muster the focus to fix bugs and optimize for performance before they chase after each shiny new idea.
Does anyone know what Blue system really is? Their web page is quite simple.
http://blue-systems.com/
http://whois.domaintools.com/blue-systems.com
Clemens
Toennies
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=07092
So lead deweloper of Netrunner OS is sponsoring Kubuntu and couple of other “KDE projects”
http://www.netrunner-os.com/kubuntu-partnership/
The “whois” record also talks about “IT Works GmbH”.
http://www.itwu.de
http://www.itwu.de/kontakt.html
Edited 2012-04-11 16:51 UTC
Jonathan Riddell, the main Kubuntu developer, that was a Canonical employee, will now be leaving the company after the Ubuntu Developer Summit in May and will be joining Blue Systems.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA4NTM
Kubuntu rollouts include the world’s largest Linux desktop, in Brazil.
http://lwn.net/Articles/455972/
http://www.kubuntu.org/news/kubuntu-to-be-sponsored-by-blue-systems
About Canonical, will support Kubuntu 12.04 for 5 Years
http://www.kubuntu.org/news/12.04-lts-announce