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Canonical Pulls Kubuntu Personnel Funding
LinuxScribe writes "An announcement on the Kubuntu-devel mailing list tells the sad story: Canonical is pulling funding for in-house developers to work on the KDE-based Kubuntu flavor. Canonical now seems committed to its single vision of a GNOME-based Unity as a desktop and other Ubuntu flavors will now have to rely on community support and some infrastructure from Canonical."
Good, nothing against kubuntu, but it's no ubuntu
When you've shot yourself in both legs... you're out of legs... Nice going Canonical.
From what I remember from Kubuntu, most of their tweaks to KDE just make it inferior to the vanilla version (for instance: you need to click the tabs in the launcher menu instead of just mousing over them, which is unpleasant). Is there any reason to use Kubuntu instead of just about any other KDE based distro?
As a Linux user, I think this is a great business move on the part of canonical.. It is very important that we have choice software... but for Linux to success, the companies backing need to have a focus.
Considering Microsoft is going the same route with 8 (i.e. tablet UI over desktop UI and a few big buttons for Joe Average over access to all that's on the computer) they can afford to focus on the horrid Unity UI. Not like there was any big competition left for a usable UI for anyone but tech-illiterate.
Every time the subject of Ubuntu comes up on Slashdot I see a slew of comments complaining about how bad Unity is and what they've done to Gnome and how they're jumping ship for Mint I think "OK, so why not just use Kubuntu instead?", but now they've dropping funding for Kubuntu it looks like even more people will be moving over to Mint too.
I only update to the LTS versions of Kubuntu but if Precise is going to be the last one then why bother? Mint 12 came out a few days ago so maybe I'll just move over to that instead.
Summation 2
Just when I had settled on Kubuntu as my distribution after Unity and Gnome 3 ruined most of the others. Still, I've been using Lubuntu too and that is based on Ubuntu but nothing to do with Canonical and it's pretty good. Kubuntu could even become stronger and better for being cast loose. The more I think about it the more I think that this is definitely good for Kubuntu and possibly good for Canonical.
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
It does make business sense to drop financial support for Kubuntu when you think about it. Ubuntu has been around for 7 years and Canonical still has yet to make a profit, so the purse strings undoubtedly have to be tightened so that the focus of attention can be put towards things that are more likely to succeed. It's not like they took Kubuntu seriously anyway - it was generally one of the least polished KDE distros available (though it has been getting better).
Having said that I think Ubuntu is mostly doomed anyway - even with this new tablet/TV angle Shuttleworth wants to get into, the fact he hasn't managed to expand Ubuntu's marketshare via OEMs preinstalling it on machines (with some rare exceptions) kinda tells me he is either really optimistic or really stupid. Red Hat gave up on the desktop and, but then again Red Hat never had Unity and disappearing global menus. Yeah, I'm sure that's what's gonna fix things to make Linux more appealing for mainstream users. :)
To all newcomers - people here are very close-minded and can't handle complaints about Linux. Keep this in mind.
The New Ubuntu is becoming increasingly less flexible. In Lucid 10.04, you could place the gnome-panels anywhere you wished. You could add icons and and even short cuts to scripts to the panel, and there were a whole bunch of panel applets that you could add.
Now, Ubuntu's new layout with a top panel and left launcher bar is so inflexible that you're stuck with what they give you. You could go with installing classic gnome shell, and/or install ccsm and turn unity off..... but if you do, look out, because when you copy files, don't even dare minimize the File Operations Dialogue, coz it will be gone forever. It;s almost as though Ubuntu punishes you for not using the Unity interface. Oh and forget mentioning this in any of their forums, because if you even imply that you don't like unity, prepare for some snooty feedback.
But the engine below the interface is pretty fantastic. I fell in love with Ubuntu from Lucid, because everything worked, and it was so flexible and customizable, and that suited my indecisive personality... now things are very mac-like... where everything works perfectly, but sort of comes with a sticker saying, don't change it too much, coz it's perfect the way it is!!
Drop support for Ubuntu?
Oh, just great. So where to now? Stick with Kubuntu, move to Debian Unstable, or OpenSUSE? Since everybody seems to concur that Kubuntu's KDE is pretty bad, which one's actually better? I'd welcome suggestions.
Well, there it goes.
I've been using kubuntu for about four years now.
I HATE GNOME, and UNITY is an unmitigated disaster
I will look at Debian/Mint using XFCE, as I can't stand the bloat in KDE; but at least it is very usable, unlike GNOME.
I liked Ubuntu up until after 10.04. Now it's got some kind of tablet/smart phone infection that I wish it could get a shot for so it'd go back to the way it was. The worst part is it spread outside of Ubuntu in to Gnome. Well if Kubuntu doesn't float for lack of funding then there's always Xubuntu or Lubuntu. If those go then Mint will be the real shining star even more then it already is.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Who here doesn't install a *box WM anyway?
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
But that's where part of the problem is, in recent years there was virtually no marketing for Kubuntu, for quite a while there is no more reference to the project on Ubuntu's front page
As a desktop KDE is far more integrated than Gnome ever was and Unity will still be based on this disjointed approach.
Unity is a high stakes experiment by Mark Shuttleworth and is it that now he sees more and more users go over to the KDE desktop he feels his experiment is threatened?
Regardless, KDE development is not depending on Canonical and the Canonical infrastructure will still be available so we can continue to enjoy this very good distribution.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Its a shame, but it probably makes sense for them to do it financially. Canonical hasn't turned a profit in years and ubuntu has been bleeding users at a rapid rate as of late. There really is only one option for the desktop lately - Linux Mint. The new cinnamon desktop for mint is absolutely stellar. This is pretty much going to further isolate users and send them packing right into Mint's arms, bet they are happy..
I wonder if this is the beginning of the end for KDE. Sure it'll continue to be developed for years to come but without major backing it'll probably fade away like a lot of projects do. It's a shame, I feel KDE had much more to offer than Gnome but long term there could be only one winner and all the major players picked Gnome. Over all I think this is probably a good thing for Linux though, the war between Gnome and KDE has been a huge waste of resources and has massively hurt Linux adoption on the desktop. I really look forward to the day when the Linux desktop just works even if that means it's Gnome based.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
I went back to raw Debian. Most distos tell me rails 3 doesnt exist. debian says chrome & firefox doesnt exist
For me, they failed not having tcsh and rubygems.
I just switched to kubuntu a few weeks back because of the state they put ubuntu in. I hate the new interface as its way too faffy. How am I supposed to advocate that for an OS? Now this!! :(
looking for a new home.
Kubuntu was always the poor cousin, so let it die. Other distros have much better KDE variants anyway.
It seems that Canonical has the stategy to exclusively target Noobs and people who use Linux for nothing more than using a browser. Unity and Co is absolutely unfit for professional or productive work.
It is time to change the distro in order to strengthen strategies that take care of people who need Linux to get some work done.
I've pulled my funding for Conical when they forced me to use Unity
Since KDE 4.x, Kubuntu has been useless and even before that, there were way too many problems with default installation. There are other very good distributions that run KDE very well, openSUSE is one of those.
Like a month ago regular Ubuntu decided to partially die. Unity went kaput, the wm was also dead, pretty much everything X related broke down. I started fixing each part until I got tired and returned to my old and trusty openSuse for a KDE experience (hadn't use it since the 3.x era). Big mistake, a lot of crashes, downloaded debug info to report them only to see they were reported to kde like a bizillion times before, repeated menu items, etc, etc etc.
Decided to try Kubuntu for the first time yesterday and I really liked what I've seen so far, and you also have those wonderful PPAs .... but these news makes me thing that investing time in the distro might not be a smart move. Too bad we are so invested on the *buntu brand. Anyway I will give the distro a chance to see how it goes, may be loosing some of Canonical's grip might help somehow. If everything fails ... well, you always have Debian.
What compelling reason anyone has to use Ubuntu over Debian anymore? It used to be because the former was supposedly more user friendly, but that doesn't seem like a compelling argument nowadays when even Debian has a GUI install and autodetects most stuff.
Yet still they create a distro targeted excusively against people who are unable to edit configuration files, while simultaneously being almost unusable once you need to do something out-of-the-highway like compiling and installing some software outside their repos.
Kubuntu is competitor to their "besf of breed" Unity crap.
That said, name one KDE distro that actually works?
I like Ubuntu because it's frequently updated, and seems to be where the "zeitgeist" of Linux development is living these days.
But I don't like Unity. How do I get Ubuntu with the original Desktop?
And while I'm at it, how about a (local storage) replacement for Evolution, since the zeitgeist evidently abandoned it years ago?
--
make install -not war
That is true, why do they not package software like xv and xmms like Fedora do? And what happened to the old Electric Eyes image viewer. Try compiling that nowadays.
liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
I sure as hell am not switching from KDE to that steaming pile of poo.
I see you gnome folks have switched to Mint. Minty goodness I like it too.
Ubuntu I think they meant ungabunga too.
It's time to go back to Slackware.
You always know who to blame. Yourself.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
"Canonical wants to treat Kubuntu in the same way as the other community flavors such as Edubuntu, Lubuntu, and Xubuntu, and support the projects with infrastructure."
... it's hard to lose financial support, but I have to say Kubuntu was never a good example of KDE any time I tried it over the years. Ubuntu for a good Gnome distro, you bet, but Kubuntu never managed parity. And I like KDE.
Lubuntu OTOH is a great option for people who want the classic win95 GUI that Gnome has turned away from, without being a lightweight so stripped it's reliant on CLI. It shows what a success a community project can put out on Canonical infrastructure.
Kubuntu is joining the ranks of secondary but respectable projects. They can still do well there, and I hope they do.
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=461309 shows why xmms was kicked out of debian. Presumablly ubuntu just followed them. Not sure about the others.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Perhaps Unity is the perfect fit for 'B' Ark inhabitants. Doesn't seem like a complete community on some level, though. Shuttleworth should bone up on his Hitchhiker's Guide.
Bubuntu: Bathtub Ubuntu.
I almost had the boss conviced to test an open source os. Now he just points this out as yet another reason that opensoure is an unviable option. Back to that old windows XP box from 2000. Thank you Canonical. #@^%$&!!!!
1. There are many other Ubuntu derivatives that as far as I know never had direct support from Canonical. Kubuntu is not going to disappear just because it is now at the same level as Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Lubuntu and other projects.
2. Kubuntu itself is an installer, KDE customizations and a set of dependencies. As long as Canonical (or anyone) supports KDE packages, it is at the same level of "legitimacy" as KDE support in Debian.
3. Oh, it's anti-Linux propaganda worker Brian Proffitt again. Figures.
4. Canonical made a really bad move with Unity that was followed with a worse move by Gnome. This leaves KDE as the best desktop environment currently supported by developers.
5. Kubuntu remains the only Ubuntu-derived distribution that supports sane window management, and can be reasonably customized (with Compiz instead of kwin). It's also the best desktop Linux distribution that currently exists.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Perusing this thread will tell anyone why Linux is not a significant player in the OS universe. Too much chaos, to many sharp opinions, jingoism... in the end, all that keeps Linux from being a serious contender beyond cell phones (where it is invisible) and scientists (who have certain needs).
There will never *be* a "Year of Linux".
Yet I'll keep on using customized versions of Linux for my own development needs, just like my wife uses odd and exotic materials media for her artwork. Linux/GNU/etc is an artist's tool, but it will never be mainstream or popular. Deal with it, be glad you have it, and quit bashing each other over the head.
All about me
Unfortunately, this includes me for the time being.
My experiences with uBuntu were a disaster. Some were upgrade problems, then driver support changed, semi-bricking one machine, etc etc.
I also never understood why I couldn't simply update Firefox, I kept getting error messages about newer versions of ____ file necessary. Sorry, Windows "just updates stuff".
When next I feel like foraging into linux land, maybe it will be Mint, or something, and I've been quietly itching to try Xfce or something as the manager.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I think the arrogant GNOME developers are the only ones to blame here. ... gnome hell.
If Canonical hadn't developed unity then the choice would be
xv is shareware, something weird in the Linux universe. Hasn't been updated in a looooooooooooooooooooooooooong time.
xmms was abandoned for xmms2, which was a big mistake in my mind. Yeah, it became client-server, but I had problems adding my collection to it. It'd import a certain amount, then choke and die. I stick with the classic xmms, it still works. I update my list with a simple shell script I knocked out in like 5 minutes that automatically finds all my MP3s & sorts them out. Takes less than a minute.
I don't use KDE or GNOME, I use Fluxbox. I left Fedora for Ubuntu with the Dapper release, having been a hardcore RedHat fan since 3.0.3. RedHat/Fedora just got to be a pain in the ass to update when I made the switch. You couldn't really update it anymore, you had to pretty much wipe and reinstall, which they recommended. KDE 3.x was good, so was GNOME 2.x. I've tried Unity, KDE, ICWM, AfterStep, FVWM2, Blackbox, e17, just about everything out there, coming back to Fluxbox every time. I haven't much cared what's under the hood in ages, and yeah, some stuff I still compile by hand. That list is getting smaller and smaller all the time. I don't have much problems installing new stuff cause I know how to use apt-get from the command line. Apt-get is what got me interested in Debian-derived distros. It seems to Just Work for me.
Distros I've tried? I started out on SLS, used Slack, went RedHat/Fedora, played with Mandrake (for a couple customers' machines), SuSE, Debian back in the day, Ubuntu. Now I'm thinking, time to check out Mint?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They broke even almost 3 years ago dude.
People tend to forget that Canonical is a company. Focusing on Unity makes perfect sense from a business perspective as they target the mobile device market.
So sad, I use kubuntu and never liked gnome :-\
Last time i test it, suse was a very good kde distribution... but i liked ubuntu community more
Most people i know lately prefer linux mint anyways
O well, lest wait and see, i would ratter not have learn the inevitable little details that arise from switching distro
Canonical seems more and more determined to abandon any loyalty to its users. They should not be surprised when users reciprocate.
...ro [Limited amount of chars in the title, thank you so much, /.!]
And how we have all had our regular switching-your-distro-experiences over the last 10 to 15 years!
And how we were proud to have found the latest and greatest - multiple times!
Does anyone of you waste a second of thought on us; us who try to actually make it the "year of the Linux desktop" by rolling a distro and a DE out to a multitude of users?
Users who give a toss about new distros and yet new DE? Users who would love to stick to their distro and DE for the rest of their lives?
No wonder about this bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1 It is mostly self-inflicted.
It does make business sense to drop financial support for Kubuntu when you think about it. Ubuntu has been around for 7 years and Canonical still has yet to make a profit, so the purse strings undoubtedly have to be tightened so that the focus of attention can be put towards things that are more likely to succeed. It's not like they took Kubuntu seriously anyway - it was generally one of the least polished KDE distros available (though it has been getting better).
An alternative for Canonical would have been to put more effort into Kubuntu, then for those who truly dislike Unity, they could have provided a modern option other than the person going to a different distro.
The American automakers tried the same thing by dropping less profitable brands with a loyal following (for instance Oldsmobile, Saturn, etc.). GM figured they would just switch to Chevy. Instead they switched to Toyota, Honda and Lexus.
What Canonical needs to realize, from lessons learned in the auto industry, is that people very often have a good reason not to use the flagship product and dropping alternative choices does not mean they will switch to the flagship.
Ubuntu is supposed to mean "Humanity towards othersl." I guess it really means "Humanity towards others who agree with us."
And you haven't worked on Archlinux because?
Some apps are WYSIWYG. Some others are WYSIWTF.
Sorry, Windows "just updates stuff".
What did you type into the command line? I tried typing "sudo pacman -Syu" but it said unrecognized command :(
I was looking forward to get updates to my games and Adobe suite and Internet explorer that way :(
Some apps are WYSIWYG. Some others are WYSIWTF.
Actually, no, they didn't. It says they were closing in on that point - and since then, they've lost the Dell OEM netbook market.
The reason for the headcount is financial. If they were profitable, there'd really be no reason to cut one of the distro and help stem the flow of people abandoning Ubuntu. The fact is that every product they've announced since that article has been a dud - their music store (turns out it's not even theirs), their initial cloud offering (again not theirs - just a rebandged Amazon deal), the android execution environment (abandoned), tablets (abandoned), cell phones (abandoned), and the latest fiasco - UbuntuTV (code ripped from samygo.tv that anyone can use to install any linux distro on samsung tvs) - announced at the same show where Lenovo was showing off 55" Android Ice Cream Sandwich TVs with facial and speech recognition, remote with motion and multi-touch sensors, etc.
Expect more cuts.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
I have had a lot of time to deal with this, as I dropped ubunturd 3-4 years ago, as I found that every dist upgrade horribly broke the system, and that I had to jump through a lot of hoops to get my custom modifications and kernels not to cause dependency hells...
I'm personally very partial to ArchLinux for my daily driver laptop. Admittedly, I'm a bit of a tweaker and ricer on my laptop, but Arch is perfect for that...
You control every aspect, as you set the system up from the ground up, and it's packages are always more up to date than most distros. It's package management is faster by far than apt, and the PKGBUILD building system gives even the most novice compiler of software what they need to package any application not included in the distro, build any of thousands of premade PKGBUILDs in the AUR repository, and rebuild and modify anything that is already packaged by the distro via ABS.
My server, however, runs Debian testing - which is rock solid...if you need something that "just works," Debian is definitely the way to go.
In my mind, these are the only two distros that exist, as I've been unimpressed with any others, unless you count the TAILS livecd when using public computers, for paranoia's sake.
It seems like there are people and orgs who would want an Ubuntu dist with the KDE. It also seems like the financila needs wouldn't be too great. They just have to take the KDE and make it work with Ubuntu.
How possible is it that Kubuntu can get alternate funding?
What is the best distro for the KDE?
Which of those is closest to Ubuntu?
Which of those is as easy/end user friendly as Ubuntu?
Slackware is Linux for grown-ups, people who know what they want and aren't afraid of learning new stuff.
The first time I installed Linux it was the Yggdrasil distro, back in 1995, but I only started using it for real in 1998, when I discovered Slackware.
Slackware had this wonderful quality that if something didn't work you could find someone who had written a simple how-to on that. If you weren't afraid of digging under the surface, it was the easiest system to hack.
Perhaps it's time to get back to Slackware now.
If KDE goes away or becomes unmainted and I get stuck with GNOME I might even go back to Windows!
Windows is a far better interface than GNOME.
GNOME was just made because of a licensing issue, that has been resolved, and it should fold whatever good ideas (if any) it has into KDE and disappear, it has outlived its usefulness and now only serves to divide the user and developer communities and siphon off interest and support to an inferior platform!
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
1,) Ubuntu is completely free, and it's open source is available, and they contribute in spades upstream. That's really cool.
2.) Unlike Windows or OSX, Ubuntu always has and always will be a choice, not forced upon you. It's not democratic, but you can take the pieces you like and nix the rest.
3.) Ubuntu, like it or not, has made the biggest contribution to mainstream usage. I know all kinds of non-technical people that run Ubuntu. They don't run Arch, or Fedora, Debian - they run Ubuntu.
In short, I see a whole lot of unjustifiable bitching going on. You don't have to use Ubuntu, but to be honest you need to step back before you start throwing them to the wolves in spite of the past 6 years of enormous FLOSS contribution. Grow the hell up, Slashdot.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
This is a requirement. I make sure that crap is disabled and nothing calls that or the rest of Akonadi to start. The insistence by the developers of trying to force that crap on people mystifies me when the rest of it works so well without it.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Folks, this is when Ubuntu/Canonical has jumped the shark. Choose another distro.
It's already bad that Canonical persists with its Unity mistake, now it won't even allow a KDE flavor of its OS.
I now support Mageia:
http://www.mageia.org/en/
Lightweight, no BS, happens to work.
You can contribute to this promising distro too. Code, test, report bugs, localize, evangelize, donate etc.
>>>
We believe KDE to be the best technology and therefore way to take over the world.>>>
Hello jriddell, a Canonical developer by the name of Jonathan Riddell was admitting yesterday that kubuntu has not proved a business success in 7 years.
Taking over the world will take time.
Getting rid of a shitty KDE distro is a good thing for KDE.
If you want to have a look at a good KDE distro, check out OpenSUSE.
But fuck if I'm going to Gnome or Unity; I would rather do my development on windows with Cygwin+Directory Opus, its hella better experience than either of those two are.
I concur. If you want a bleeding edge rolling release (meaning that it takes at most a few days for a fresh stable upstream release to get into the repos) distro with vanilla (unpatched) packages, Arch takes the cake. It's like Gentoo, but without all the recompilation BS, and a really simple init that's easy to edit by hand. And Debian is for when you want things to just work, and don't want to fuss over updates.
openSUSE is also featuring KDE as their preferred desktop (although Gnome and others are supported too). And is a little bit easier to use and less prone to breakage than Debian Sid.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I moved from Kubuntu 11.10 to Arch w/ KDE two weeks ago, and I was struck by just similar a vanilla KDE is to Kubuntu. Hearing they only employed 2 devs is entirely believable.
If you've used a *buntu for a few years and are interested in learning more about your system, Arch is great. The wiki and forums for Arch are excellent, and a vital resource for intermediate users who have found the Ubuntu forums to have a very poor signal-noise ratio for anything beyond basic questions.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
When you discover the port system, you will be won over. All of this scramble to go stable for a release is restricted to the operating system itself. All ports fend for themselves, and keep themselves up-to-date and stable. Plus, if you don't like the dependencies of a certain piece of software that you use, just install it from ports with the tweaks you want.
I've been using it for years and some things were never fixed, even simple ones that always worked in ubuntu. I also never seen any big costumizations, so I'm not really sure what they were actually doing, besides putting together new versions default packages. So IMHO, no custom features, no fixes for blocker bugs, no funding should be done.
Never got to it.
Just checked out the Lubuntu desktop. Interesting, not bad, but could use some more work on the configuration tools. For some strange reason, it didn't find some stuff I use all the time, like Aterm & FBReader. I'dve thought it would have had some kind of dynamic menu or created a menu from the apt database, but I guess not...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Nothing from the *ubuntu family matches the freedom that Archlinux and Slackware give.
Please try :)
Some apps are WYSIWYG. Some others are WYSIWTF.
Problem is, (despite the article claiming they use gnome), they don't really use normal gnome, they use Unity. Which somebody at Canonical thinks is tits, but it's not. Perhaps it's OK for tablets and touchscreen devices... maybe.. but I don't have one. On a normal computer, it looks dumbed down, it's clunky, it's not feature-complete, and appears to just be different for the sake of being different.
Ubuntu 10.10, gnome2 was the default, the same interface they've been polishing for years (not just canonical, the general "they"). Ubuntu 11.04 defaulted to Unity but you could pick "Ubuntu Classic" and there you go. Ubuntu 11.10 and Ubuntu 12.04, they gnome interface must be manually installed, and then it turns out it's gnome3, and looks very unfinished in comparison. (If you point this out, they helpfully point out "That's not Gnome, that's Gnome Shell". Don't give a shit, that's splitting hairs since the gnome interface was "gnome" before gnome 3.) So in the course of one year, they went from the (pretty nice) gnome interface being the default, to having it not even available as an installable option any more. I'm at 11.04 right now, but if this doesn't straighten out I'm sure as hell not using Ubuntu any more.. maybe I'll install gentoo on my Ubuntu boxes, since I have it on a few other machines.
So, people's solution out of this mess was "Just use kubuntu". THAT is why people are complaining about them now pulling development of kubuntu.
I actually LIKE KUbuntu, and their build of the KDE desktop (remember - pretty much everyone here KNOWS I am a "Windows guy" though). I used it for a large portion of 2010, KUbuntu 10.10x, & I liked it (whilst I travelled in Europe for the summer).
* I hope it doesn't "disappear" into history's all... because it's "good stuff"!
APK
P.S.=> Going to have a new roommate here to share expenses come next month (old pal, he had a stroke in June 2010 just before I went to Europe in fact), & I am going to set him up with the KUbuntu 10.10x distro DVD I have here so he can try it out too... I have a feeling he too will like it as much as I did (he doesn't have a licensed copy of Windows anymore, so... "no time like the present" to try Linux for he I guess)...
.... apk
when volkerding ditched Gnome out of slackware, where were the kde sympathizers? I know, windows ui similarity is a reason kde is loved(yet the kde fanatics still deny this!) imo, Ubuntu must be consistent with Gnome version. unity seems to me, much worse than default Gnome. look at what Gnome3 did to Gnome DE development! 3 forks as of now iirc - unity,cinnamon,mate bleah!
move to FOSS,save ur nation's resources.
> if you need something that "just works," Debian is definitely the way to go.
Now there's something you'll never hear in an Apple store. Only on Slashdot :-)
/troll - as every recent OS and many DE's seems to be going the way of touch screen, hidden options and less configurablility, .. poor dumb users .. getting all confused over options.. the people who wanted control over their GUI .. the assumption by many UI designers that 'less is good' - across the board is fundamentally flawed.
hiding options from the *stupid user*
often use KDE
modern GUIs can be attractive and add a little more to using software than basic utilitarian design, if this was so in the transport world,
we'd all be using ugly, cheap, dull, uninspiring Lada or Skodas from the former soviet states.
The power of most modern computers, including the available video GPU horsepower common now almost makes a flat,
boring desktop user look like a luddite.
Canonical and Shuttleworth (a former KDE fan) should remember Linux is about choice too, Gnome is going all dumbed-down,
worse than it ever was before, and personally i'm sick of Gnome, or rather Canonical's almost pathological want to be Mac.
Add to this L. Poettering's weird success in trying to screw Linux in several ways, and Canonical's unquestioning devotion to his breakage kinda says its over for Ubuntu .. so, it was ok while it lasted Canonical, party's over now, you dropped the ball too many times, and someone ... I shall be moving from *buntu - next time i get bored and i start life with a new KDE distro.
else has come to take over
Time to change distribution for my desktop pc
Do people actually use Kubuntu ? It would have to be the worst KDE-based distro on the planet. Simply awful.