Slashdot Mirror
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."
When you've shot yourself in both legs... you're out of legs... Nice going Canonical.
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.
Yes, for me, the reason I'm not using any other KDE based distro is because I want access to the awesome Ubuntu package repositories, as well as all the PPAs. I love PPAs, and apparently so does a lot of other users and developers.
Slagborr
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
I'm not really sure that Unity is a tablet UI. They've replaced a menu with a search box, do tablet UIs normally involve more typing and less pointing?
The way Debian breaks stable with updates and leaves it broke? It's why I left Debian for Kubuntu to begin with.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
typing on an onscreen keyboard is easier to find stuff vs multiple menus layers if you've got a low resolution screen with a finger sized pointer.
In that context Unity is a perfectly acceptable UI for touch screen devices. Doesn't change the fact that it's a terrible interface for traditional keyboard/mouse input.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
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!!
I hear that. The version mish-mash in Debian following every KDE upstream release was atrocious - mind you, that was several years ago, as I too, eventually jumped ship to Kubuntu. Things were better there, but the overall lack of polish, probably stemming from KDE's relatively low priority in the the greater scheme of all things Ubuntu made me eventually leave for OpenSUSE. I'm still using it and it remains a very nice distro for KDE fans.
Drop support for Ubuntu?
Heh, this is the exact reason I've switched in other direction: from Ubuntu to Debian. After two failed upgrades to 11.10 (both resulted in unbootable system that requires tweaking to bring it back and then left me without true-and-tested classic GNOME desktop, I've happily switched to Debian which now provides some of the best parts Ubuntu developed in recent years. Debian 6 reminds me Ubuntu 8.04 which IMO was the best Ubuntu distribution ever released (in terms of stability).
Agreed.
While Ubuntu might have some issues that people are going to moan loudly about, remember, it's first job is to bring people into the Linux sphere, once they're accustomed to it, they can migrate out to other options if they feel they want to. Funding a parallel-but-different version is just encouraging the confusion. If there's one thing Linux suffers from in the eyes of the newcomer, it's too much choice, leading to confusion, subsequent frustration (with support) and returning to their hated-but-known Windows.
If we want cohesive desktop/apps then this is a reasonable move to make.
(I'm no fan of Ubuntu Unity, but I still use Ubuntu + Fluxbox instead :) )
Does this count? I'm also the GGGP on that. Sound chip doesn't work? It worked before they broke it and it's working now, I still have the thing, next to me, running.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Why not give Xubuntu a shot? Might be less of a headache. I just migrated to it from Mandriva.
Since everybody seems to concur that Kubuntu's KDE is pretty bad, which one's actually better? I'd welcome suggestions.
try lubuntu - finally something that feels human for a developer (boots and moves fast, easy to install/customize, good repos/updates - from Ubuntu. A desktop manager - LXDE - not maintained by Ubuntu)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
For me, Ubuntu stops existing right now. Oh the whole, I have had less breakage with Debian Sid, supposedly "unstable", and Canonical has just managed to push me over the tipping point: I'm going back to Debian (testing) on my primary machine as I should have done months ago. I am awfully tired of having to put up with Gnome bad idea of the week bogosity while waiting for Ubuntu to fix their broken, untested KDE packaging.
It stopped being amusing a long time ago. There is one reason, and one reason only that there is Ubuntu on this workstation: it came that way. Henceforth, Ubuntu will just be a way to establish which drivers (if any) the OEM configured, then *wipe* *wipe* install, install, there we go, blessed relief, it's not a hobby project any more.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
While Ubuntu might have some issues that people are going to moan loudly about, remember, it's first job is to bring people into the Linux sphere...
I assure you that for most people, being brought into Gnome is just going to send them right back to Windows.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
"(for instance: you need to click the tabs in the launcher menu instead of just mousing over them, which is unpleasant)"
we have a policy of having everything go upstream unless there is very good reason. I just checked and the issue you say is not true (now).
"Is there any reason to use Kubuntu instead of just about any other KDE based distro?"
We believe KDE to be the best technology and therefore way to take over the world. Other distros will fill in gaps in KDE's offering with non-KDE apps but we are much more reluctant to do that. If you are interested in having short term solutions go with other distros which ship non-KDE web browsers etc.
Me too. I think the Kubuntu developers did some great work pushing the envelope on what KDE can do on the desktop and netbook, and a lot of their work has appeared upstream. Kudos to Jonathan Riddell and the other Kubuntu devs! Personally, though, I needed stability more than shiny new features so I switched to Debian (ironically) unstable. Not only does it offer a more stable desktop experience with KDE 4.6 than does Kubuntu, but because its a rolling release distribution the packages are usually fresher than the latest Ubuntu release and I haven't had to reinstall in over a year. Hopefully now we will have more manpower to work on stable, vanilla KDE 4.7 and 4.8 on Debian.
As for Ubuntu, I now have zero reasons to install it.
You could use debian.
You could use Ubuntu.
Kubuntu is not the only way to get KDE on Ubuntu. There are also full, standard and minimal KDE packages available to any Ubuntu variant from the standard repositories. Just like the equivalent Debian packages, you get a standard desktop without all the Kubuntu customisations. The same applies to Xfce and LXDE, which are also available in vanilla forms without the Xubuntu or Lubuntu tweaks or alternative packages.
Me too. I think the Kubuntu developers did some great work pushing the envelope on what KDE can do on the desktop and netbook, and a lot of their work has appeared upstream. Kudos to Jonathan Riddell and the other Kubuntu devs! Personally, though, I needed stability more than shiny new features so I switched to Debian (ironically) unstable. Not only does it offer a more stable desktop experience with KDE 4.6 than does Kubuntu, but because its a rolling release distribution the packages are usually fresher than the latest Ubuntu release and I haven't had to reinstall in over a year. Hopefully now we will have more manpower to work on stable, vanilla KDE 4.7 and 4.8 on Debian.
As for Ubuntu, I now have zero reasons to install it.
You may have zero reasons to install, but it made a great deal of sense to many people I would point at a distro. Yes, KDE 4 is craploads better than Gnome [23]. Really.
However, as much as I love debian, I am not pointing raw users at a distro that expects the users to be able to deal with massive breakage when certain libs and so on are updated, and yes, that shit happens all the time in unstable. Hence the name. So now I have to point them at ubuntu, maybe suggest they install kubuntu-desktop and hope it isn't broken now, or just leave them with Unity.
Either way, debian unstable does not want a crapload of kubuntu refugees, trust me, no one will enjoy that.
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.