Kubuntu 12.04 Precise Thoughts

[macwolf74]

I don't know if this is the right place to post this because I'm still new, but I absoulutly LOVE Kubuntu Precise.

• I am really in love with the boot screen and the perfect integration with KDE 4.8
• The installer... well hasn't changed much, but it is a TON faster than it used to be.. I think using a USB helped that though.
• The Live environment was fast and simple and I loved the fact that the kernel uses pae by default as well.
• GRUB2 boot splash went from blue to grey.. not sure if I like that... I don't really like KDE 4.8's default colors in the background...

Of course all this praise doesn't mean it was bug free... I did come across crashes and glitches, but I'll report them to help out.

I loved KDE since Ubuntu 10.04, and Kubuntu since 10.10. Kubuntu is the best KDE distro ever; and this release, even in development stages, Is no different. Muon is much better, Telepathy I don't care for too much, but I do that stuff on the web.

Long live Kubuntu and I would like to thank the developers and everyone that helped made it this way. I wish them luck with bluesystems...

[jovin]

Kubuntu 12.04 Beta 2 runs stable and reliable. I'm proud to be using it.

I already set up Kubuntu for two of my family members. I'm helping them where I can and always
try to make them never want to see Windows again.

Before Kubuntu I was using Arch and had another Laptop to take care of with openSUSE. (I converted it to Kubuntu 12.04 )

I'm all honest when I say that I encountered no problems with Kubuntu 12.04 Beta 2 whereas I had a lot of problems with Arch and openSUSE.
Kubuntu 12.04 is truly the best KDE experience to me and I hope I can contribute to it in the future as well.

- jovin

[culdesac]

With the recent announcement of Kubuntu and Blue Systems, it will be interesting in how the future unfolds. Hopefully, Kubuntu will continue to gain market share, morph and adapt.

[GreyGeek]

I've been running Precise on this new Acer 7730 since Jan 3rd.

Precise has been very usable 98% of the time. I entered a rough period about a month ago, which was alleviated when I replaced a bad memory chip and updated to the 3.2.0-22 kernel. However, the last two MAJOR UPDATES during the past few days has turned Precise into a sold piece of Precision! From cold boot to usable desktop is 50 seconds (about 25 seconds to the log in screen and 25 seconds to the DE), the splash screen works perfectly on both boot up and shutdown, UbuntuOne qt client works well (although I hate the Gnome password dialog), Chrome displays almost instantly from the app launcher (if there aren't any stale threads in the process list), KMail works beautifully, as does VLC, Audacity, SAGE, K3B, Blink, Skype, Dolphin, Minecraft and many others.

What doesn't work yet is GoogleEarth, because of ia32 library incompatibilities not resolved by apt-get.

We are exactly 10 days away from the final release of Precise 12.04, and this LTS will be for FIVE years instead of three. Since this laptop is only three months old I plan to let it and Kubuntu Precise age together for the next five years.

[macwolf74]

Glad to hear it's all great for jovin and you guys too That sounds like a good plan GreyGeek, and aging system with an aging OS =p. It will be very interesting culdesac, hopefully they are better and more interested with the KDE integration that Canonical was.. although I think Ubuntu One woun't still be on there by default now because they left us in the dust...

Great to know that this will be our 5 year release. Precise from the core the to UI. :cool:

[capt-zero]

macwolf74 et al,

Yes, it was pure chance that I landed in Kubuntu. I decided a month and a half ago that I was fed up with MS and knew my brother had been dabbling in Linux. After calling and asking him for help, he gave me a 11.10 startup disk. After installing it, it's been mostly smooth sailing. Much less hassle than the first time I installed Windows (back in the 3.1 days), what a headache. Anyway, in 12.04 it was love at first sight. The only issues (if you can call them that) were all self inflicted. It's taken me a while to become adjusted to the risks and joys of so much control. By this I mean, as a newbie, it is very easy to change something and not remember what I changed. So if the change doesn't work, it can be troublesome. > But by playing around with Kubuntu, I've learned more about OS's than in the last 10 or so years.
Do I understand correctly that there will be no new releases? What a shame.

Thanx,
capt-zero

[Snowhog]

By this I mean, as a newbie, it is very easy to change something and not remember what I changed.

hehe.

Do what I do. Create two text files to keep a log of exactly what you did, and on what date you did it. I have one log for apt-get changes, and another for system changes I make. Believe me, they will save your bacon, if, like me, you don't have eidetic memory.

[GreyGeek]

macwolf74 et al,
....... It's taken me a while to become adjusted to the risks and joys of so much control. ....

The difference between being a pilot and a passenger. :cool:

But by playing around with Kubuntu, I've learned more about OS's than in the last 10 or so years.

That's what being a pilot is all about!

Do I understand correctly that there will be no new releases? What a shame.
...

No shame at all, and the Five year LTS may or may not be, since Kubuntu is no longer controlled by Canonical.

Canonical WAS paying Jonathan Riddell to develop Kubuntu full time but will withdraw his services following the release of Precise on April 26th. BUT, Blue-Systems picked up the support for Kubuntu AND paid for both Jonathan AND another developer to work on Kubuntu. So, what happens to Kubuntu depends entirely on what the developers want to do after 4/26/2012. As far as I can tell they have no obligation to stick to Ubuntu's schedule or to Ubuntu. Since Canonical won't be supporting the marriage of the KDE DE onto the Ubuntu distro the Kubuntu dev team can choose any base distro they wish, if they want to. IF I were guessing, or making a suggestion to them, I would advocate bypassing Ubuntu and building Kubuntu directly off of Debian. Since Blue-Systems is supporting Linux Mint, which is based on Ubuntu, if LM switches to Debian I suspect that Kubuntu would follow. The more Canonical changes Ubuntu to fit a do-all paradigm the more difficult it will be for developers to put the most popular form of Gnome, or KDE on top of it. So, that's why I predict that sooner or later they both will switch to Debian. Linux Mint will focus on wedding Debian to Gnome and Kubuntu will focus on wedding Debian to KDE. They can both work together on their singular Debian base.

The schedule for Ubuntu has period releases (not LTS) every six months through Ubuntu 14.04 on April 25, 2014. What happens after that is anyone's guess except Mark Shuttlesworth.

[capt-zero]

GreyGeek,
Yes, I had read about the changes with Riddel and Blue-Systems. And while Kubuntu 12.04 is the snappiest and best OS I've worked in (admitedly a short list), it would be depressing to consider an end to further development. There seems to be so many possibilities on the horizon. How quickly I have gotten spoiled to change after being stuck in XP for the last seven or eight years.

capt-zero

[SteveRiley]

Since this laptop is only three months old I plan to let it and Kubuntu Precise age together for the next five years.

Somehow I doubt this. I think I know you well enough to predict that you'll be itching to try something new much sooner than 2017

Do I understand correctly that there will be no new releases? What a shame.

Yes, I had read about the changes with Riddel and Blue-Systems. And while Kubuntu 12.04 is the snappiest and best OS I've worked in (admitedly a short list), it would be depressing to consider an end to further development.

I haven't seen anything that would indicate this is the end of the road for Kubuntu. Unsettled copyright issues might force a name change for the distro. But I'm confident that we'll have a high-quality KDE-on-Ubuntu distro for quite some time to come.

[Jonas]

This is the first time I've not been forced to reinstall the system from alpha to beta stage (and this is a 11.10 upgrade(!) ). Testing is testing and I've always been willing and accept that it'll brake at least once during testing, only once I had some grub issues that I worked out - possibly I have learned with every release how to rescue my system, fact remains that this is so far the most stable test release yet for me.

As for the future - who knows what will happen? I don't think that Canonical will do much to pull the rug under Kubuntu, it's not a competition in that sense, however they may try to secure their interests. I have trouble seeing that they'll will upset the community with any drastic actions and put Kubuntu in a tight spot, name change perhaps, but that's not a major concern I think.

b.r

Jonas

[bsniadajewski]

So far, so good, I'd have to say. Other than an issue with qdbus and circular dependencies, which have since been resolved with a reinstall (and a fix at their end), I.ve haven't had any showstoppers. As for the future of Kubuntu with Canonical and Blue-Systems, I'll take a wait-and-see approach. Anything can happen.

[GreyGeek]

..... it would be depressing to consider an end to further development. ...

I hope you didn't interpret anything I wrote as indicating that further development on Kubuntu would cease. It won't. With two developers now, instead of one, I suspect that development will expand, not contract. The release schedule I linked to shows clearly that for Ubuntu the next two years will have biannual release dates for subsequent versions, through 14.04.

In 9 days Riddell will no longer be working for Canonical and Kubuntu will no longer be controlled by Canonical, so any released dates set by Canonical won't necessarily apply to Kubuntu, unless the Kubuntu dev team decides to continue to base Kubuntu on Ubuntu.. Also, I don't know about the branding issues. Will Kubuntu keep the name it has, which is based on Kde +UBUNTU, or will it have to or be forced by Canonical to change the brand name?

This is an opportunity for lots of positive changes.

To continue to be based on Ubuntu, as Canonical moves Ubuntu more toward tablets and de-emphasizes the other types of computers and the Gnome & KDE desktops, may make development more difficult than it needs to be in undoing all the framework for Unity so it won't interfere with the smooth functioning of the KDE DE. That's why I've wondered "out loud" if it wouldn't be easier to bypass Ubuntu and base Kubuntu off of Debian directly, since that is what Ubuntu is derived from. Debian, on the other hand, has released Debain 6.04 KDE, but it is not as smooth or polished as Kubuntu.

It is easy to see why Canonical is going where they are headed. Using Gnome or KDE makes their "Unity" table/smartphone offering dependent on developers outside their control. Not a smart move for a company wanting to break into that market. By creating Unity "in-house" from scratch, they make their UI dependent only upon themselves.

As far as tablets and smartphones go, the KDE dev crew already has created a plasma-active desktop, called "KDE Plasma Contour Active", designed for touch-screen tablets and smartphones, because the Qt API contains such classes. So, don't be surprises if part of the Kubuntu dev crew's activities continue to involve releases specifically for tablets and smartphones.

But, I am more hopeful for Kubuntu's future (what ever it is called) now than I was when I heard that Riddell was being moved away from Kubuntu development.

[SteveRiley]

In 9 days Riddell will no longer be working for Canonical and Kubuntu will no longer be controlled by Canonical, so any released dates set by Canonical won't necessarily apply to Kubuntu, unless the Kubuntu dev team decides to continue to base Kubuntu on Ubuntu.. Also, I don't know about the branding issues. Will Kubuntu keep the name it has, which is based on Kde +UBUNTU, or will it have to or be forced by Canonical to change the brand name?

To retain status as a recognized flavor, these questions need answered. Unfortunately, precious little information is available on what it means to be a recognized flavor. There's nothing about requirements for branding or following the Ubuntu release schedule, for instance.

[dequire]

To retain status as a recognized flavor, these questions need answered. Unfortunately, precious little information is available on what it means to be a recognized flavor. There's nothing about requirements for branding or following the Ubuntu release schedule, for instance.

Well the good news it that, at the very least, by being an official community release, all the packages Kubuntu needs will stay in the repo's. As Kubuntu as always strived to be the best KDE distribution, it has always been mostly stock KDE on Debian / Ubuntu base. As development on KDE is alive and well, there is no reason for anyone to leave Kubuntu-goodness IMHO.

Again, the only difference really is that Canonical does not sell support contracts for Kubuntu. I'm always on IRC, and I can tell you J. Riddell is as just about as active as ever in Kubuntu land. Also keep in mind that the Kubuntu Council is still active and isn't going anywhere as far as I know.

It is indeed a great and exciting time to be here =)