I really tried.
My wife's Macbook went crazy one day after a Mac OS update and was in need of a reinstall. I convinced her to try out Kubuntu 8.10 with KDE 4.1(and later 4.2).
At first I went ok. She complained about the system being slower than Mac OS, but she could live with it. But over time more and more has just been to disturbing and now, after 3 months of Kubuntu, I chose to reinstall her machine with Mac OS. Simply because I cant be around all the time to help her out.
But thats not all. I have myself over that period grown a bit less Kubuntu friendly than I have been. :-(
Here is some of the reasons:
1: It is just buggy. Even after KDE 4.2 I get weird bugs like alert boxes concerning bluetooth server not starting, I have seen Kwin restarting several times, my networkmanager cannot always connect and a restart is needed, compositing is sometimes suddenly disabled and more.
2: Its slow. Netbeans and eclipse takes much longer to start compared to Mac OS on the same machine. As a full time Java this is an issue for me.
3: The Graphics feel sluggish. I would guess it is almost only Xorg related, but anyway the Graphics server in Mac os just performs so much better on the same hardware. I dont know why, I just feel the facts.
4: The copy dialog disappears before it is done copying. This is related to the fact that is has been degraded to a info thing and resides in the taskbar. It is very confusing. (Caused my wife a major data loss while moving files to USB)
5: Cannot suspend due to my hardware apparantly not being supported by the kernel. (It wakes up alright, but network and usb does not work afterwards)
6: AWT-based Java apps looks BAD BAD BAD! An the taskbar is all flickering and stuff when using most Java apps. BAD!
I hate this feeling. :-(
I love open source. I love KDE. I normally fight for it every where I go.
But what ever happened to Less is More and KISS? I think Linux in general could need some more of that.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
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67 comments:
You must really hate your wife if you force her to use Kubuntu. Every sane KDE user knows that Kubuntu ships broken packages. http://flickr.com/photos/19616885@N00/2991047111 vs. http://flickr.com/photos/19616885@N00/2991042741/ is just one example that shows how bad Kubuntu really is.
I also gave up on kde4 with kubuntu, but I'm really happy with kde4 with opensuse, try it (actually using kde4.2 from factory: rocks, solid stable and very beautiful).
Ubuntu (canonical) is doing a great damage to kubuntu and kde by the way!!!
item #4 we can do something about.
the other items are not things the KDE team is responsible for.
i though its a common knowledge that *buntu world does not provide the best kde experience ..
if you like kde then use a distro that uses kde as its default desktop environment ..people have always complain that kubuntu is treated like a step child while ubuntu(gnome) is treated like a favorite child who get all the goodies
A few notes:
1) Kubuntu really doesn't have the packaging staff to do KDE4 justice. OpenSuse is much better in this regard.
2) Some of the components you listed just aren't finished yet (kdebluetooth4, the plasma networkmanager-applet)
3)Xorg's intel drivers are in a state of flux between the old diver model and GEM/DRI2. This will take a couple more months to shake out. This should fix the flickering & compositing performance issues.
4) There"s a legit usability issue with the disappearing copy notification. File a bug report.
If it doesn't work now, try again with this summer's OpenSuse. Set up a dual boot with that and see how that shapes up for you.
I'm with KAMiKAZOW. I put Kubuntu 8.10 on my Aspire One (it was the easiest "real" distro to install without an external optical drive). I absolutely hated it. Kubuntu has a lot of bugs and did a fairly sloppy job packaging KDE 4.1. I have openSUSE on every other machine (and now my Aspire), and seeing the two side-by-side made it worse. openSUSE spends a lot more time on its KDE, and it shows.
As for the file dialogs "disappearing", I actually like it. Yeah, it was confusing at first, but then I noticed "oh hey, there's something else in my system tray. Wonder what that is." When I move a bunch of stuff from my NFS server onto my portable machines, I don't like the process congesting my network AND my taskbar. I guess different strokes for different folks.
My husband is very happy on KDE 4.1.3 from Mandriva. He uses for his work and at home and it's really stable. He only once got a panel that went a bit crazy but managed to get it back. He os really happy about it, I was worried he would complain for icons for example as he covers his desktop of icons but Desktop folder does the job. Mandriva did a good jod with their release, adding only a few useful widgets as default.
Hope she'll come back for 4.2.x which really rocks! Wait for a minor debugged release!
90% of users reporting issues on our forum (KDE Italia) are using Kubuntu 8.10... I don't think that it resembles the ratio of kde users per distro.
P.S.: maximum respect to Kubuntu developers, but I don't think it's the best distro for KDE.
Hmmm. To give KDE 4 to a new user is nasty. If you want to give a new user a good well rounded experience, then rather go for Ubuntu
I'm going to have to agree - Kubuntu moved way to quickly to KDE 4 as a default desktop and it's a poor implematation as a result.
try switching to fedora 10. at the moment it serves kde 4.1.4 and 4.2 is already in testing.
it also has some small bugs (like the intel driver, previously mentioned, and volume keys not working on thinkpads) but it's far better than kubuntu. first i had to use kubuntu because of kernel 2.6.27 (for about 2-3 month) but with fedora 10 everything got better.
opensuse is not an option because it prostitutes itself for microsoft (e.g. putting mono into every gnome thingy).
I don't know or personally don't care whether if this is Canonical's revenge for I don't know things like KDE not having the same release cycles or they simply fail to realize how much harm they do, and are delusional, and think that they do a good job.
Seriously, If Canonical would not release new versions of Kubuntu it would be better, cause right now Kubuntu 8.10 is less then nothing.
KDE 3 is still for most people, it may not have widgets(which I and a couple of people I know of would never make use of anyway), but it's famous to just work.
OpenSUSE does the job, they may not release often, but when they do release it's something worth installing. The network manager actually works in OpenSUSE.
O well I guess the Kubuntu "team" is too busy speculating about a few megabytes rather than releasing a working version.
Try OpenSUSE, it works, and doesn't force KDE 4 on you, this is an advice from a former Kubuntu user.
Introducing new users to Linux should be made with sense. Personally I have a positive experience with KDE 4.2, but for a fresh user of Linux I would await one of the solid distros arriving with KDE 4.2 as a default environment. Of the "big ones" I presume the earliest option is Mandriva 2009.1 (ONE) due 16 April.
For persons with slightly higher tolerance an upgrade from OpenSuse 11.1 with KDE 4.1.3 to 4.2 or Arch could be godd alternatives. Grapewine indicates decent implementation in Debian 5 - due soon.
The Kubuntu team does the best they can - I wish that the definition of "broken" eventually could move beyond appearance and translation. Having said that, Kubuntu is probably not the best implementation and I would not push that one upon a inexperienced Linuxer.
try fedora 10 - it serves kde 4.1.4 and 4.2 is already in testing. i've used kubuntu 8.10 for about 3 month since beta and it's awful.
I also had some problems with the disappearing copy dialog. Actually, I like that is being hidden, but it should warn me when I log out while there are still files being copied. It's to easy to forget that otherwise.
Sounds like you need to use a different distro then. KDE-4.2.0 runs great on my box + Lunar Linux.
Fedora 10 with KDE 4.2.0 works great. I like the idea that they actually update software so you'll always get latest and greatest KDE and others after a brief testing period and it's also very stable IMO.
I think KDE 4 just needs some time to mature, and become a more consistent and stable experience like we've come to expect with KDE 3.5.
I used Mac OS X in the early days. The Public Beta was plagued by glitches and hangs, and even 10.0 was an uneven experience. But now Apple's had time to work out the major kinks, polish it up, and throw in all kinds of new features and eye candy.
MMM...well I had a lot of problems with kubuntu, but I have to say that the quality of the new 4.2 intrepid packages seems to be a great improvement. They resolved xorg video garbage problem (the ppa contains a fixed xorg), bluetooth problems and everything is quite good and stable on my side even if not fast.
Opensuse 11.0 was a GREAT distribution but I was disgusted with 11.1. Audio cd, burning, bluetooth, crashes, everything was just buggy on my side. I ran away! Then you HAVE to use packman and a lot of packages there gives problem and conflicts with the package in the main repositories. The update notifier doesn't work well. It just shows security patches and since 11.1 it's not possible to configure this so...sudo zypper up in 2009! The awful pulseaudio gives LOTS of problems with amarok and dragon player! Sure opensuse kde 4.1 was really a good work but now that 4.2 is out (making kubuntu and opensuse very similar in their kde) I ask myself if it was right to spend all these energies backporting stuff from 4.2 instead of changing their release schedule. If you read opensuse mailing lists there are a lot of people not happy with 11.1 and this is leading to a SERIOUS discussion about their way to develop a release and let users test it.
Both distros have very serious problems but kubuntu is improving, opensuse 11.1 not really.
PS: somebody posted a kubuntu vs opensuse screeshots but the kubuntu one is with kde 4.1 while the opensuse one is 4.2. This is not a very nice way to behave.
I think the problems with Kubuntu are more of a developer focus problem than a KDE4 problem. Even when Kubuntu shipped KDE3 it was pretty unstable. Kubuntu loves to experiment with new patches and tools that really degrade the KDE3 experience. I remember the "hide system folders" thing in konq, the crappy python power managers, and other one-off attempts to make changes to kde that didn't work right.
No disrespect to the kubuntu devs, but the end result is not something I would recommend to anyone. It just doesn't work right. Never used a single version of Kubuntu that didn't have some horrible crippling bug in it.
I'm also leaving back KDE 4.
After using KDE since 1.4, this is a huge step back.
So many dependencies and services required for a desktop (eg: automoc, strigi, clucene, soprano, mysql for soprano).
And after all of this all I get is bug after bug, crash after crash, and even when it works, its slow as hell.
Before you blame it on my distribution: I've always built it from source, and yes, I am experienced and I know what I'm doing.
I'll have to switch to something else, or go back to 3.5.10, the problem is that bugs in 3.5.10 are not being worked on anymore, they are just ignored.
Being a full time KDE user myself I can tell you KDE 4.x is not ready yet and Kubuntu is just a small project within Ubuntu space.
Use Debian + KDE 3.5.10 (Debian Lenny) and you and your wife will be happy forever.
I can confirm that KDE 4.1 is buggy (probably that's why it was for early-adopters?) and 4.2.0 is still not 3.5.10. But if you try either Debian, Mandriva, openSuse, Fedora, Arch, Sidux, PCLinuxOS, Ark, Slack or another more stable distribution, you may surprised that most of the problems just go magical away.
Extension to point #4: to don't be able to abort a copy-job sucks.
Too bad to hear this happened for you.
I get confronted with some "this should not happen to end users" issues lately too. I read someone that love can sometimes make you blind.. :-p These kind of situations can also put you with both feet on the ground again, and realise what we'd still need to work on!
Currently my impression is that KDE is ready for the desktop, but Linux isn't. Underlying stuff like Xorg, video drivers, Pulseaudio, and suspend still need work.
The worst thing is that kubuntu deserve the bashing we are seeing here. Itried and tried and submit bug reports. I told them that the bug where solved upstream and there are no answer for the packagers and worst no correction apply. They are just ignoring users and launchpad is useles, completely useless. I even close my account it means nothing to keep it. I was just becoming more and more frustrated by the whole situation. It's clear and simple and that won't change at least before 9.10, don't use Kubuntu at all and I even think that KDE project should ask Kubuntu to provide later but better package because it's harming a lot the project.
I reconize the points you make, but I can´t say openSUSE is better, its easy to add sources in Kubuntu and upgrade to 4.2.
But i reconigze all the problems, 8.10 was really bugged, but upgrading to 4.2 maked it less buggy.
I going stick with Kubuntu because it provides a easy to use kde4.2, openSUSE puts its own stuff on it, adds and like.
I am running om my mini itx kubuntu 9.04 they are doing great, but still have a way to go still its really stable, but in mean time its very useable, i havent needed to report really anything lately, but i put kwin effects of so it works better, but the effects run to fine.
For the first time in the 4.x series I get a really fast and snappy desktop with 4.2 installed with archlinux.
Its just awesome! I am a gnome user for about 3 years.
I am also stuck with Kubuntu, i have all problems that you mentioned before, and many times I have cursed Kubuntu packagers and canonical for this! They are really. really damaging KDE with this.
ubuntu gets all fame and glory, ok, but do not create a distro(kubuntu) if you are not going to take care of it!!!
I would switch to Open Suse but i love deb packaging too much and i couldn't live without apt-get and adept...
My girlfriend uses Kubuntu. The only real problem is that the sound for flash videos in Firefox sometimes crap out and sometimes a restart or snd module reload is needed. This happens (less frequnetly) on my opensuse laptop as well. But software sound mixing sucks, we already knew that.
But yea what Arron said. Your blog title is rather trollish, in that it mostly doesn't concern KDE or your wife (unless she is constantly running Awt programs?).
Well sorry but you're responsible: why did you choose KDE4 for your wife instead of the more mature KDE3?
As for the slowness, it's unfortunate yes, I remember fondly BeOS's responsiveness.. Even on computer ten times more powerful Linux or Windows cannot touch it!
#1
No. I really LOVE my wife. :-) And I believe I AM a sane KDE user, but thats what both me and my wife is - users. How should we now that Kubuntu is broken? It doesnt say so on the label!
#3 (Aaron)
I think KDE 4 has gotten a lot better User-Friendly-And-Eye-Candy-Wise compared to Gnome, Windows, KDE 3 and more.
But to me it feels like important some element just havent been through a good user test before being released.
The #4 issue(copy dialog being auto-hidden) is one of them, the default KDE menu is another...
But other parts of KDE has really nailed it and are very user friendly.
You can turn the notification for file dialogs off and get your old window back.
Please file a bugreport for your item #4, because I think you have a good point there. There should be a warning in the logout if there is a still an operation going on. I think you will get a warning if you try to unmount your USB stick though if you are still copying to it.
mmm well, at least you tried :).
About the java part, things are improving !
The latest version of icedtea (openjdk packed by red hat) include XRender acceleration for java2D (not yet activated by default)
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.java.openjdk.distro-packaging.devel/4670
Of course, speed will depend on your graphic driver...
Try again in one year :)
Certainly the Kubuntu dev don't deserve any bashing! First they have a lot less people working on KDE integration, than e.g. Novell/openSuSE. Second, many problems just aren't their fault! I'm using the alledgedly rock solid long term support Hardy release with the experimental KDE 4.1.3 packages. And I must say, though being far from perfect, the KDE packages are quite usable (with a bit of tolerance from my side, I might add;), but no crash orgies or things like that).
My real problem is an unusable ethernet driver after resume (I thought we were past this point a long time ago..?) and a freezing Xorg due to an opengl bug in the radeon driver (so no desktop effects or any opengl app for me). Both no things the Kubuntu team is to blame for. The worst of all is, that I don't have any hope for these grave bugs to ever get fixed by Ubuntu/Canonical... :( Even despite being LTS ...
Still I have to agree with the majority here, for the near future I'm not really confident as far as Kubuntu is concerned. I guess intrepid won't be for me ... I'm just not in the mood to update from one test release to another. At some point I just want to use that system. And waiting for the next LTS and a better integrated KDE 4.2/3? No! :) So back to SuSE? This seems to be the only real option for a well integrated KDE 4.2... I don't really like it though ...
Michael
Interesting how other sites link to this entry with the title "My wife gave up on KDE". Did you change the title afterward?
#agateau
Yes. I have changed the title(KDE->Kubuntu) and some of the content also.
I realized I was really unfair to KDE. Kubuntu has the responsibility of delivering a good distro, not KDE.
#renoX
I chose KDE 4 over KDE 3.5 because of the same reasons why I chose Mac OS over Windows.
I looks great and the default style makes me focus on the data I work with instead of my windows decorations(like in Vista fx).
Last but not least I just want to point out some facts:
My girlfriend uses Kubuntu Hardy Heron, and she is yet to give up on it, for one reason: I didn't upgrade it to Intrepid Ibex.
I did a little experimenting, I set up kdesvn-build on her laptop and all she needed to do is to click an icon and it would download and compile the newest KDE 4. But this failed, for a few reasons, for one, the SVN is known to be broken quite a few times, but it was way better than any Kubuntu package.
Well a few thins I learned is:
- KDE 4 (including 4.2) is for developers and early adopters, you can't use it for "mission critical" stuff
- Canonical does not care less about KDE, and what about Debian? give me a break they don't even let you install KDE by default well at least they don't make KDE look bad
- some KDE 4 devs, especially the Amarok devs never listen to users, they think they know what's right for their users, well they do have the right to do so, but for some reason they get extremely upset when they see negative criticism, which means they simply can't stand to hear about their failure(something that users don't use is failed in my definition)
- a lot of alpha quality KDE stuff(including Amarok 2.0) is released and labeled as stable
- KWin is not as nearly as functional and stable and Compiz and Compiz is starting to work on those issues that started the new KWin idea anyway, but I gues now that KWin has begun to be like this, it will continue, kind of reminds me of GNOME's story
I can go on and on but I rather stop here, KDE has it's problems, but the biggest problem here is Kubuntu, I think, we should write a pettition, asking for "Kubuntu to not suck" or they should discontinue the Kubuntu project.
Talking about K.I.S.S why don't you use Arch? It's really great and is a rolling realease. It's much faster than *buntu. I've been running KDE 4.2 on it quite nicely (though there are some bugs in Konqueror and the cursor disappears sometimes). Also, It was running very slow before I did this : -
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/KDEmod#How_to_get_decent_performance_on_KDE_4_using_a_NVIDIA_graphics_card
Now it runs fine...
I would not either suggest Kubuntu for anyone. I think it is for those who want to follow Canonical (Ex-windows users who wanted follow Microsoft) and try to get KDE users a good desktop, so they are not forced to GNOME or other desktop environments or window managers if not wanted. So thanks for all the Efforts what Kubuntu developers are doing.
But I think that Kubuntu developers should start following the KDE project more. When I used Kubuntu few months as #1 desktop when KDE 3.5 was going, I got very bad feelings from it. Menus, panels, applications etc, seemed to be customised to offer "better" UI for normal user. I could not help customers who were using other than Kubuntu, because on my menus did not have those options what default KDE had.
I have not tested 4.x series version of Kubuntu, longer than few minutes. And I just turned away right away from it, because I feeled that nothing was learned from the earlier versions. Kubuntu is just like Ubuntu... it tries too much to be the "big brother" and fails.
All my friends has started with Ubuntu, switched to KDE (Kubuntu) and then to other distributions like openSUSE and later to Mandriva, on what they have sticked since that.
I have used Mandriva now since 8.x series when it was Mandrake, and few periods used other distributions like openSUSE, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Fedora, but always turned back to Mandriva.
I am currently running Cooker version from Mandriva 2009 Spring. So I have KDE 4.2 and I do not have any problems with it.
If it would be up to me, I would throw Canonicali (Ubuntu, Kubuntu etc) out of the markets... just doing more harm than good. But that is mostly my opinion, but I am not alone. Many ex-ubuntu users has started to feel that way and I can not blame them. They are just suprised when I say "I dont like them either" because they mostly think that I like Ubuntu, because I suggest it usually first for new comers to Linux OS.
One think what I do not like about the Linux OS distributions communities... bashing KDE, GNOME etc just by the knowledge of one distribution. I have heard now lots of complaints about KDE 4.2 translation and how bad it is etc. But then when switching distribution what use updated l10n etc packages, everything is fine.
I can totally understand the blog poster point of view. And I am little "suprised" why he did move from Mac OS X even to KDE?
Okay, if his wife wanted to test... Okay... but I would just let her to test desktop first and then slowly "convert". But like he said... how he (or they) could know that Kubuntu is not best KDE distribution? Just like many tought that KDE 4.0.0 was stable, final and _ready_ for normal users... they did not follow blogs, IRC or mailing lists at all. They really tought that that is IT!
This is the "dark side" what many distributions... Sorry.. actually not about amount of distributions, it is about peoples toughts.
It is very dificult to tell people, that Kubuntu, openSUSE, Mandriva, Fedora etc, are all using one and same operating system. The Linux kernel, it is the operating system.
And that they have multiple choises to select what _distribution_ they select, what offers Linux OS + all other system softwares. And on that point, they should already know what they want and what they need. For that they need to relay for experienced users who can say bad and good sides of different distributions.
But, problems starts exiting when distributions start marketing that they are "Superior Operating System" or "LInux-based operating systems" etc false information. Normal people are totally out of truth what the meaning of open source etc.
And then when this kind things happends. When the seed of problem is found from simple thing as software packager and their default configuration. It is hard to try to explain that they can just switch to other distribution. And they start saying "No, I do not want to switch operating system again... I like to keep this desktop or these applications because I have already learn to use them." And then you need to start from fresh, telling what is the OS, what is the GNU, what is the KDE/GNOME and how the whole computer works and then they get it... switch is easy, painless and it just gives them much better feeling about open source and they actually do not blame developers/projects from stuff what ain't their fault.
I am sure that there is people who likes the job what Kubuntu packages are doing. There is reason why they are doing it. But many should just understand that most problems usually comes from packages, not from the upstream itself....
it's real funny; this thread remenbers me on "Barry Schwartz - The paradox of Choise" The People here don't try to understand your Situation, they blame you (you had the choise between Arch, Suse and so on, but you made the wrong one :kubuntu)
"choice has made us not freer
but more paralyzed, not happier
but more dissatisfied" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM&translated=1
#1 can be handled by the Kubuntu crew and within the next 2 weeks I know I will be going through a lot of bug reports during the global bug jam.
#4 as I know it is already in progress on both sides of getting fixed and I was just told on IRC that in Jaunty they have fixed it somewhat.
The rest, well those issues are shared among Ubuntu in general. Sounds like you and I share Java issues in general. I am a Java dev as well and will say I experience your pain, even in Ubuntu. I do not do Java desktop development, server side only, so I can't say I have experienced the AWT issue, as I haven't used anything utilizing AWT.
Now to respond to some of the comments. How is Kubuntu treated like a step child? The team has the same resources as Ubuntu, but more people are jumping on board to develop the GNOME side more so than they are the KDE side. I would love to see Kubuntu attract more developers and of late I have started to see that happen. Though I am afraid we are losing the super duper power users while gaining all of the super duper new users. I love gaining the new users, but it is the power users who typically make wonderful developers in the long run.
No, Canonical is not taking revenge, that is silly. Though Steeeeeve I will agree with trying to spare a few megabytes as well as trying to fill in the Gap between what Ubuntu has and what Kubuntu doesn't have seems to be hurting the stability a bit. I hope we can get past this and fix it to be honest.
Thanks for the post and hopefully I will start spending some more dev time in both Kubuntu and KDE again here soon, as I have been super busy with personal life (Java development takes a lot out of you) :)
Yeah Kubuntu is a horrible KDE distro. I have had great success with Opensuse 11.1 with KDE 4.1 and KDE 4.2. I highly recommend it.
While I agree that Kubuntu's KDE 4.x work hasn't been the best, I feel it necessary to point out something that has thusfar not been said:
You installed KDE 4.2 packages from an experimental repository and are experiencing issues. When you update from an experimental PPA, you acknowledge that you're taking a risk. The 4.2 repos had an updated kernel too (with patches to remove the garbage fill bug that Fedora introduced), so I would blame that for your hibernation issues. I've been getting similar problems as well.
Overall, I'm very impressed with KDE 4.2, and find it to be on par with 3.5.10 in terms of usability (for me, YMMV). I have always been a bit disappointed with Kubuntu, but they provide a fast, small out of the box experience, so I stick with them - their releases have been slowly improving in quality.
If you throw away os x from a (NEW! sigh) mac, you deserve all bad things can happens. Simple and inevitable.
Btw os x doesn't get crazy too easy, maybe do an hardware check and the classic ram reset. Anyway if you want your wife try another os, please reinstall os x and use vmware fusion (or virtual box).
Linux natively installed on a mac simply doesn't make sense.
So, what would be a good APT-based Distro for KDE?
+1 for OpenSUSE
+1 against Kubuntu
+ suggestion of trying a real Debian
I use OpenSUSE 11.1 with KDE 4.2 on my production box at work with big fat dual screen. Works just as I demand it to work.
Tried Kubuntu with KDE4, it's a mess.
Tried Debian unstable with KDE4, works just fine there too.
I've found most of the problems are caused by Nepomuk turn it off (in Configure Desktop, Advanced) and find your swap disk/partition becomes inactive.
On the PS3 openSUSE KDE4 changed from being unusably slow to just about usable.
I've found Nepomuk thrashes the swap drive/partition, turn it off (in Configure Desktop, Advanced) and the desktop speeds up and most of the random crashes go as well.
I've had very few problems with KDE 4.2 on Gentoo, and it's been noticeably snappier than my Gnome desktop. A few widget crashes but I've pretty much been converted.
I have never had a good experience with Kubuntu either. Now I use Mandriva, and while they're always tardy with their KDE updates (twice a year) KDE really shines on MDV 2009. OpenSUSE is as good or better as they have more frequent access to the latest KDE releases, and yes, even Fedora is better than Kubuntu as well.
I won't go so far as to say shame on Kubuntu, but neither would I go so far as to recommend it to anyone either. I'm not sure of any case where I would recommend it.
I feel myself somewhat caged. I must use Kubuntu because I rely on a heavily patched evtouch driver (I ABSOLUTELY need a Debian-based distro, because neither Fedora nor OpenSUSE have the evtouch driver I'm looking for, and there is no Debian-based KDE distro but Kubuntu I know of), but I have to rely also in obscure experimental repos, Adept is a DISASTER and the distro-specific stuff is borked. I'm a seasoned Linux user, so I can live through it (actually I rely in aptitude for my package management needs), but I need some info.
1. How about Mandriva? Does anybody has reports about Mandriva running in tablet PCs? How is Mandriva One 2009?
2. I tried OpenSuSE 11.0 here and my touchscreen was a no-no. How is OpenSuSE 11.1 on that matter?
3. Will someone package evtouch for Fedora someday?
Thanks in advance
"Before you blame it on my distribution: I've always built it from source, and yes, I am experienced and I know what I'm doing."
The fact that you compile from sources does not automatically mean that "you know what you are doing". Back when I used Gentoo. I noticed that many people who compiled from sources used ridiculous optimizations that resulted in crashy software that had poor performance.
I run KDE 4.2 on OpenSUSE and I haven't noticed any major issues. It's an older laptop, but the performance is fine. I haven't really had any crashes either.
So the cause of your problems might very well be the fact that you compile from sources.
Regarding opensuse 11.1. pulseaudio really sucks, not sure why Gnomies forced it on the whole distro, it was certainly not a KDE team idea.
The CD burning is solved.
bluetoothe not working in KDE4 was not a opensuse issue but a KDE issue and it was suse staff who ported kbluetooth4 to work with bluez4 within a week and shares that work with upstream, so thanks for putting that much work into somethings all distros and user profit from.
The updater can be configured to show 3rd party updates, if you use the zypper backend.
Packman is needed because of software patents, so this is not a opensuse "bug" either.
[[I looks great and the default style makes me focus on the data I work with instead of my windows decorations(like in Vista fx).]]
Then I hope that you understood this time that choosing new software because of its look instead of more mature software isn't such a good idea..
I'm using daily KDE3 and I don't have any issue with its windows decorations (which you can choose anyway)..
Free software does not equal quality software. I'm sorry, OS X is truly superior in every possible way to any Linux distro (and Vista is too, if you ask me)
Having said that, Opensuse offers quite a better KDE experience than Kubuntu. Canonical is centered around Gnome, and it shows.
"Linux natively installed on a mac simply doesn't make sense."
Because the hardware can't do a two button mouse? lol
I used to use a mac (up to Tiger) and now I do not look back. KDE4 on Mandriva (or OpenSUSE) need not appologise. The environment is as good or better in every way relevant to me, and I can run Adobe software through CrossOver. (But I'm eagerly looking forward to Krita 2.0 anyway.)
That said, despite Apple's touchpad deficiency, I do like the MacBook Air for hardware, but guaranteed the first thing I do when I get one is wipe OSX permanently.
" I'm sorry, OS X is truly superior in every possible way to any Linux distro (and Vista is too, if you ask me)"
I couldnt agree more, however I dont think it HAS to stay that way.
Linux benefit is the freedom, but it is also its curse. I think more controlled distributions could do a lot.
Example:
If I as a developer wanted to develop something for Mac OS, I would go to Apples doc pages to check out their API's.
Whenever I want to develop something in C/C++/Python on Linux I dot not have that kind of luxery. I have to google around just to find out that theres not only one but several recommended API's - and most of the times nobody agrees which is better. Should I use GTK, QT, wxPython? Should I read up on Alsa, PulseAudio or Jack? Gstreamer over Phonon?
My point is that there is not a single source to guide me - there are thousands of disagreeing developers!
Im not saying that QT should overrule GTK. But I think a Linux distro could benefit from choosing their supported API's and that way guide developers that want to develop for their platform.
This, of course, goes directly against Linux Standard Base who seems to promote a lot more API's than actually needed for one single platform.
Regarding the file transfers _seeming_ to have ended, please comment on this bug:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=177708
(Usability: File Copy dialog always _seems_ to fail)
I must agree with many of the other commenters... Kubuntu's packaging of KDE 4 reeked,reeks, and will probably continue to reek. I recommend Opensuse and Arch Linux.
@Michael:
If you're developing on Mac, do you want Cocoa or Carbon for your GUI? If you're developing on Windows, do you want DirectSound, WinMM, ASIO, or one of the other audio APIs? What about MFC vs. WinForms vs. WPF for your GUI? (Or one of the third-party wrappers or portable toolkits like wxWidgets or FLTK or Qt) Linux doesn't have a monopoly on API multiplicity... though I will agree that Linux audio is one big turd polishing orgy. (Too many vested interests with too much ego to scrap ALSA and do it right... especially now that they've built a big enough house of rickety hacks to make it "just work" for most situations. ...and OSS v4 isn't an option because it violates certain rules about what functions go in user space and what functions go in kernel space)
Based on general quality and stability, I think Qt should be "the one true GUI" for Linux, but I doubt we'll ever see one of those. wxWidgets may fade away now that Qt is going LGPL, but GTK+ will probably never die. Again, too much ego and inertia. Here's a list of some of the broken GTK+/GNOME technologies any why they are:
- PulseAudio (Unstable as all heck but the developers think it's fine and focus on new features)
- GnomeVFS (At least half a decade and not one release that didn't crash on me with minimal testing. Now they've switched to GVFS/GIO and it's just as buggy. By contrast, KDE has had KIO at least as long and, since I first tried it somewhere around 2002, it's been almost rock-solid and the rare few crashes didn't bring down the application thanks to process separation akin to Google Chrome's)
- GTK+ itself (GTK+ really needs a complete internal re-architecting to have any reasonable chance of catching up with Qt feature-wise (eg. widgets on canvas with input redirection) and the gap is still growing)
- Glib (They re-implemented C++ in C because they didn't like it and they're still living with that decision)
- GStreamer (Still a crapshoot for anything more than basic audio/video playback. I can personally attest to this.)
KDE/Qt developers would never use GTK/GNOME technology because they know Qt is superior by a large margin. GTK/GNOME developers are too egotistical (Our design is better) and self-deluded (GNOME has stable releases) to ever switch to Qt, so all you can hope to do is develop against APIs like D-Bus, MPRIS, and Project Portland which provide a desktop-independant wrapper layer on top of them. D-Bus is basically a slight extension and generalization of the design of DCOP (KDE's in-house desktop IPC system) written in C without Qt/KDE libraries so the GNOME devs will accept it.
On the note of wrappers, I should probably explain Phonon and Gstreamer to you. The KDE devs were looking into endorsing Gstreamer as "the one true backend for KDE 4", but the Gstreamer devs couldn't guarantee API stability for the entire lifecycle of KDE 4 and they'd already been burned by a thin wrapper around GStreamer which wasn't enough to protect them when GStreamer's API changed. As such, they wrote a thick wrapper. It ended up being so good at abstracting away the underlying details that Trolltech added it to Qt and added backends for DirectShow and QuickTime. As a result, at least one Gstreamer developer was deeply offended and I've seen several very immature responses from fans on blogs.
"if you're developing on Mac, do you want Cocoa or Carbon for your GUI? If you're developing on Windows, ..." etc.
Well. Lets pretend im new at this, and I dont know which API is better. If I go to developer.apple.com I see cocoa and cocoa touch, but not carbon. If I try hard, I can find a page for Carbon that states thats it is a 32-bit C interface, and that new projects should consider Cocoa if they prefer an object-oriented interface.
My point is that there will always be other API's, but to guide a developer a distro needs to point out which is the recommended API for fx. GUI.
"Based on general quality and stability, I think Qt should be "the one true GUI" for Linux,"
I totally agree. Qt's API's cover almost all you need for an everyday application. And true Qt apps has the benefit of being Windows & Mac ready.
I think a desktop linux distro should stand out of the "we support everything ever coded" mess, and have their developer docs state which API's to use on their platform.
And I do believe that leaning towards a Qt only distro would be the way to go.
Hello
I personally understand what you mean, i am running kubuntu 8.10, but there is life beyond kde, even for somebody used to 3.5. So I switched to kfce, I can work at last...and your kde apps continue on disk...so you may use those.
Cheers
Antonio
Hi, we study linux at my college and i can understand people reactions, because it's gui interface has more bugs then other operating systems and and it's still luck of abillity of using it with out open the shell at all.
All progromers between as, we must work together on this problems.
it might be a nvidia driver issue
the 180 has come a long way but its still not perfect yet.
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