Review: Kubuntu 5.04 “Hoary Hedgehog” and Interview
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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27 Comments
2005-04-22 4:23 pm
2005-04-22 7:00 pm
Anonymous
> My notebook is maxed out at 256mb RAM and a 10GB hard
> drive (which I try not to clutter too much). The
> processor is a Celeron 400. When I last tried KDE
> (version 3.1, I think), applications took forever to
> open.
Ok, then RAM is not the problem. 256 MB is twice the amount I usually recommend as absolute minimum (128 MB).
The CPU is not so current but I remember using KDE on my development box(!) with a Celeron 300 and it worked ok. But that’s been some years ago… 
Maybe the disk is slow? Is DMA activated?
BTW: KDE has been optimized from version to version from 3.0 on so KDE 3.4 is the fastest one of the 3.x series.
> > Scribus is a Qt app, not a KDE one, and should have
> > less dependencies. Have you tried it?
> I knew that. But when I last looked into installing it
> on my Debian-based system, it wanted to install a lot of
> other stuff, all of which had other dependencies, and
> some of which I think ultimately wanted to install some
> KDE-related stuff. Plus, it wanted to uninstall a lot of > other things, so I passed.
Sounds like a packaging problem. Or maybe it has optional KDE support compiled in. The developers were talking about adding that as compile option, not sure if they really did…
[…]
> Ideally, they could still be configured or skinned to
> adopt a Gnome or KDE look if the user was running either
> DE.
This works for me: Qt apps use the theme I selected in KDE, and I’ve set GTK apps to use the theme gtk-qt which also uses the Qt theme.
Not that I run GTK apps very often…
2005-04-22 7:26 pm
Why are the fonts so big? This isn’t just an Ubuntu problem, but basically with every distro I’ve tried. Why are the fonts so enormous and obnoxious?
I’m starting to believe it’s because small fonts still look like crap under X.
Nice to see how KDE 3.4 will look like.
But when I look at the list of distros on http://www.distrowatch.com, what are the difference? Roughtly the same source base is used in all of them. And roughly the same packages are included. So reading yet another 1-page “review” of the latest set of packages that will be found in all distros within a month is really boring.
The real difference is in what services are provided by Ubuntu as a company. Whether to corporations or to customers. But there is no mention of that in the review……
The other difference would be in term of performance of their distro, but there again, nothing.
A real review would compare several distros together, and take some measures to base their conclusion on something more than “Oh I liked it and it’s My distro of the week”.
So seeing 50 snapshots is nice (especially as they are not brown), but at the end of the day, those snapshots will be the same for any KDE 3.4 distro.
Article rating: 2/10
Because xft fonts look like ass at small sizes unless hinting is on…and even then it’s not as good as windows or mac.
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=306&slide=2…
Why do I get this error 17 boot error after installing Ubuntu. I have 2 scsi drives and 2 serial ata drives. Windows on sda, Ubuntu on sdb and data on sdc and sdd. Grub configuration looks good and suse worked fine in this configuration. What gives?!?
try “sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig” and enable the autohinder, why on earth it’s not on by default is beyond me.
anyway there are big problems with kubuntu, konqueror constantly crashes on me and composite doesn’t work with the newer nvidia drivers on the repos (worked fine with the previous ones)
I don’t get Ubuntu/Kubuntu. On one of their ML’s, I mentioned how I’d just assumed that Ubuntu was aimed at the corporate/home desktop, and Debian was more aimed at servers (with enthusiasts and Debian devs using Testing/Sid for the desktop). I was informed that, actually, Ubuntu is also aimed at the server market, and that Debian was also aimed at desktop users.
Why would Ubuntu try and compete with Debian Stable on the server front? They’ve only got limited resources and $n number of people who can be working on any one task. Why not just focus on getting Ubuntu/Kubuntu working smooth as silk on the desktop, and then selling support for that desktop product, rather than stretching yourself thin trying to *also* compete with the mighty Debian Stable on the server?
why on earth it’s not on by default is beyond me.
Cos it looks like crud on some monitors like mine (cheapish 17″ 1280×1024 DVI connected LCD at work, and really nice 19″ CRT 1600×1200 at home, so I think there’s some leeway for personal preference here).
(I believe the real reason is patent issues, see http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/1849 for some additional info)
Why are the fonts so big?
Because DPI gets set to 96 in the Gnome preferences, meanwhile xorg sets it to something else entirely. Unless it’s a full moon, you have a room full of dancing virgins, and you’ve just sacrificed two live chickens then both DPI settings will be wrong.
Grab a tape measure and measure your real display size in millimetres.
Add this ‘DisplaySize <Height in mm> <Width in mm>’ at the end of your monitor section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.
Run ‘xdpyinfo | grep resolution’ in a terminal.
Adjust the Gnome font preferences to match that DPI. After that your 8pt fonts shouldn’t take up half the screen.
Adjust the Gnome font preferences to match that DPI.
It’s Kubuntu, so of course I meant KDE font preferences.
Well… I like ubuntu and kubuntu a bit, am testing their 64 bit versions… alongside WindorksGP…
Ubuntu is kool… I like how it manages (Genome is nice, but am confuce a bit since it is the first time I use it)… Kubuntu is OK… etcept that I hate Kynaptic… I can not read descriptions, the search menu is an outside window… anoyin… it feels wrong… And I find synaptic more than able and better set to the task (oddly, kinaptic is made with sinaptics source…) I installed synaptic in Kubuntu and firefox… but for some reason the font on both programs were anoyinly SMALL… It migth be what some of you have mention…
Besides that… Well I have tried to get the 2 video cards to work but Have ended up in the CLI… where I know nothing… I tied to get the Nvidia drivers to work but just mde it go in to the command line… plus only the sis card would display the video, even thoug the instalation had gone true the Nvidia card… I ended up removing the sis card and reinstalling… so I got the Nvidia card to work… then installed the sis one but have not eneble it nor the 3D drivers for the nvidia card….
It is hard to make both monittors work under linux… I would like if it were as easy as in WincrackPP, or at least not as complex as it is now… I am willing to learn since I am determin to get dual monitor suport… (I dont want xinerela, I just want to be able to use the monitors just like in windorks…)… I need to keep on investigating…
if anyone has this types of setups (dual monitors) pleas feal free to go to distrotalk.net and post how you did it and with what setup… also how you get about geting the videocards set (in the case of 3D)
And;
“Help with anything that can help make the linux experience a better experience.”
-Big Moron
Why would Ubuntu try and compete with Debian Stable on the server front? They’ve only got limited resources and $n number of people who can be working on any one task. Why not just focus on getting Ubuntu/Kubuntu working smooth as silk on the desktop, and then selling support for that desktop product, rather than stretching yourself thin trying to *also* compete with the mighty Debian Stable on the server?
Because a server takes less programs than the desktop, so its easy to include it. In Ubuntu, the minimal install is also the server install. Everything else desktop related is added to that.
Add this ‘DisplaySize <Height in mm> <Width in mm>’ at the end of your monitor section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.
At least in Debian the dpi’s are also set in /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc. I’m not sure about Kubuntu but you might need to remove the -dpi xxx option in that file or the server will ignore the DisplaySize value
Can’t take this “review” very seriously – it’s too euphorical, not real. This guy must have installed Kubuntu 5.04, looked at the nice KDE 3.4 desktop and immediately written the story. If he would have tried to do any actual work with it, he’d have noticed for example that Konqueror crashes every other moment … this made Kubuntu quite unusable for me.
Looking in the forums showed that this is common behaviour, and there are some sort of tentative workarounds; but this doesn’t look very good for a “no-worry” distro. If one has to get one’s hands dirty anyhow, one might as well install Debian Sarge or Sid, so I did that.
Basically I did like Kubuntu, it does have some great things, suspend-to-ram and suspend-to-disk worked right from the start, but I don’t think it’s quite ready yet. Probably KDE’s fault, 3.4 just came out, and the x.y – releases tend to be buggy, with x.y.z come the fixes. Kubuntu 5.10 in coming in October then should be a different story.
i’d be really interested in an xfce based distribution from the (k)ubuntu base.
i know you can add the packages and run xfce but that’s not the same.
i don’t use gnome or kde – why waste the memory and cpu when i don’t need those features. but i do use both gnome and kde apps. or maybe gtk and qt apps. from gqview to k3b.
i bet there is a significant number of people who want a nice polished “just works” system that isnt as heavy as kde/gnome.
> i’d be really interested in an xfce based distribution from the (k)ubuntu base.
Mark Shuttleworth said in an interview that he would welcome another community-driven effort to create an XFCE-focused Ubuntu sub-project. Just do it 😉
BTW: I don’t think your “I don’t use either KDE or GNOME because of the resources but I use both KDE and GNOME apps” argument holds water. As soon as you start KDE and GNOME apps the respective desktop infrastructure and GUI libraries will be hauled into memory, and the required desktop services will be started. So you’ll pay in terms of memory and CPU anyway. To make it worse, all this happens when you start the app, not already when the desktop starts. So you probably have really bad application startup times (at least the first time).
If you then use a browser and an office software that doesn’t belong to either desktop and thus has extensive code of its own (Mozilla and OO.o come to mind) I’d venture a guess that you will use even more resources than with a pure KDE setup with Konqi and KOffice, for example.
> Why would Ubuntu try and compete with Debian Stable on the server front? […]
Yes, I wondered that myself. Kubuntu on the desktop and Debian Sarge (once it’s stable) on the server sound like a dream team to me.
> Because a server takes less programs than the desktop, so its easy to include it. In Ubuntu, the minimal install
> is also the server install. Everything else desktop related is added to that.
Yeah, but 18 months of support (security fixes!) is not much for a server distro. Debian does better on that front.
cm wrote: “BTW: I don’t think your “I don’t use either KDE or GNOME because of the resources but I use both KDE and GNOME apps” argument holds water. As soon as you start KDE and GNOME apps the respective desktop infrastructure and GUI libraries will be hauled into memory, and the required desktop services will be started. So you’ll pay in terms of memory and CPU anyway. To make it worse, all this happens when you start the app, not already when the desktop starts. So you probably have really bad application startup times (at least the first time).
If you then use a browser and an office software that doesn’t belong to either desktop and thus has extensive code of its own (Mozilla and OO.o come to mind) I’d venture a guess that you will use even more resources than with a pure KDE setup with Konqi and KOffice, for example.”
So what is the answer, then for those of us who might like a polished distribution that does not require so many resources? That is one reason I have shied away from any apps that require installation of Gnome or KDE libraries. I run IceWM on my older machine (but would consider Xfce).
I don’t have the ability to create such a distro myself, not do I have the financial resources to a) hire someone else to create such a distro, or b) buy a beefier machine to run a more resource hungry KDE or Gnome based distribution. This is the same reason I don’t install OpenOffice (I use AbiWord instead) and why I haven’t installed Scribus, much as I’d like to. Oh well.
Tried Kubuntu and I think it has a lot of work to be done . Ubuntu is more polished , stable , usefull etc . Thus said being a KDE guy . Hope the next release of Kubuntu will be much more better . Yes Konqueror crashes , yes kynaptic is not very usefull yet , but I want , I hope Kubuntu will be improved .
… Xubuntu, of course! 🙂
What is the trick to burning a Kubuntu live CD? I’ve been trying to burn various releases of it for the past few months, and I just end up with a stack of coasters. I have both Nero and Roxio, and I’ve tried burning it with both. I can successfully burn a Knoppix live CD with no problem, but for some reason, no matter what I do with Kubuntu, I end up with a CD that refuses to boot. BTW, I’ve been burning it mostly as an iso, but burning it as a data CD also doesn’t work.
Would someone please post exact instructions for burning Kubuntu; preferably with Nero (v6.something-or-other).
> So what is the answer, then for those of us who might
> like a polished distribution that does not require so
> many resources? That is one reason I have shied away
> from any apps that require installation of Gnome or KDE
> libraries. I run IceWM on my older machine (but would
> consider Xfce).
Dunno. Maybe the rule-project. See http://www.rule-project.org/ . I don’t have any personal experience with it, though.
Memory is important and IMHO not too expensive. Have you considered putting more RAM into your box?
And finally, KDE can be tuned, too: http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=Performance%20Tips
> […] and why I haven’t installed Scribus,
> much as I’d like to. Oh well.
Scribus is a Qt app, not a KDE one, and should have less dependencies. Have you tried it?
cm wrote: Memory is important and IMHO not too expensive. Have you considered putting more RAM into your box?
My notebook is maxed out at 256mb RAM and a 10GB hard drive (which I try not to clutter too much). The processor is a Celeron 400. When I last tried KDE (version 3.1, I think), applications took forever to open.
And finally, KDE can be tuned, too: