Kubuntu mini review

[cga]

I have turned from the Dark Side after installing Kubuntu on my primary machine. I am more than a bit blown away by this distro and by how much better KDE has gotten since I last used it. The new "system settings" control panel is fantastic.

Kubuntu provides a clean, integrated desktop experence with a nice selection of applicactions such as OpenOffice.org 2 (with KDE integration) and the Krita paint and graphics program from Koffice. Konqueror seems to be much more usable as a browser now (thanks to Apple's input, I suspect) and works fine with all of my web sites.

The install is simple and requires only one ISO. The applications cover the needs of most SOHO users (and me) without a lot of redundancy and mixing and matching.

Overall, Kubuntu is ready for use right out of the box with no need to futz around with it -- the default settings, theme and look and feel are perfectly acceptable.

I like it very much.

[Lovechild]

welcome back..

[trickster]

Nice! I may give it a try.

[cga]

Note 1 -- the improvements in KDE are unique to Kubuntu.

From the release notes:

Kawabunga! The traditional KDE Control Center has been replaced with KDE System Settings. This change is not part of KDE, but is unique to Kubuntu. The new interface is cleaner, faster, simpler and comes with improved usability features such as quick search.

...and;

Konqueror has been slimmed down to include only the basic buttons and simpler menus.

These are great improvements over the standard KDE setup and the end result is the most elegant and usable UNIX desktop I have yet seen.

[Compunuts]

I've been wanting to try Kbuntu as well. I will give it a shot soon.

[cga]

Kubuntu is nice, but I guess I got too use to Gnome when I was using Warty, so I ended up switching back to standard Ubuntu "Breezy". My first impressions are that it is a much better user experience. Nothing against KDE -- I just find that I like Gnome much more.

[Compunuts]

Yeah, same here. :-\

[Lovechild]

[quote author=cga link=board=7;threadid=10842;start=0#msg97223 date=1135436045]
Kubuntu is nice, but I guess I got too use to Gnome when I was using Warty, so I ended up switching back to standard Ubuntu "Breezy". My first impressions are that it is a much better user experience. Nothing against KDE -- I just find that I like Gnome much more.

[/quote]

YES!!!!!!!

[njcajun]

I use fluxbox, xfce, gnome and kde. I guess I'm just to a point where I don't care what I use anymore. I'm an admin, so if I can just run a terminal app (any one will do), firefox, and some mail client (any one will do), I'm fine.

That said, I have to say that kubuntu is *really* nice. I've even actually made use of some of the things I used to consider eye candy. For example, they took KMail, Kontact, Akregator and a few other apps and put them all in one window. Normally, I hate this kind of thing, but I like the way they did that. Very nice.

What I didn't realize at first was that I could actually just install kubuntu packages right on top of my breezy install, so now I can go back and forth between gnome and kde if I want, which is also nice.

I still don't like the desktop wars, in the end, though. What really sucks about it is that now that there's all of this integration work being done, there's a ton of bloat on the back end, such that if I'm in kde and want to run evolution, it's like running *all* of kde, and *all* of gnome at the same time.

The nice thing about kubuntu is it does a nice enough job (and kde fixed enough kmail bugs) that I don't miss evolution or gnome much.

[Tyr_7BE]

[quote author=njcajun link=board=7;threadid=10842;start=0#msg97257 date=1135954934]
I use fluxbox, xfce, gnome and kde. I guess I'm just to a point where I don't care what I use anymore. I'm an admin, so if I can just run a terminal app (any one will do), firefox, and some mail client (any one will do), I'm fine. [/quote]

Agreed. I've been using my mac all the time of late. I find that even on my mac, I spend virtually all my time in a mozilla-based browser, terminal, and email client. Also, Gnome on a mac is still at 2.6 so when I'm running Xorg for X forwarding and gvim that doesn't suck, I'm using good old blackbox. Makes little difference to me.

What really sucks about it is that now that there's all of this integration work being done, there's a ton of bloat on the back end, such that if I'm in kde and want to run evolution, it's like running *all* of kde, and *all* of gnome at the same time.

You're right in that it's pretty ridiculous how starting a KDE app starts huge chunks of KDE, and vice versa with Gnome. However I'd say that integration work is still a good thing. Integration is nothing more than defining a common set of protocols. Apps must talk to each other in a certain way, menu files must be formatted in a certain way, and notifications must be done via a common mechanism, etc etc. The fact that you must start all of KDE and all of Gnome just to run one app is a matter of unfortunate design. Hopefully in the future KDE and Gnome will share a common core that implements standards common to both desktops, and the only thing that will vary is the look and feel of the apps.