Looking good

[ukdave]

Due to getting real fed up with the kubuntu 15.10 and it's various niggling bugs I flounced off in a huff to do a tour of other distros.
Having done a full circle I have installed the latest kubuntu daily iso and been running for a few days. All I can say is wow the difference is amazing. On my machine it is running faster,smoother and far more stable than 15.10 ever did. Am really looking forward to the final release.
Big thanks to the kubuntu and kde teams.

My machine specs are:

ASUS Z170 mobo
Intel I5-6600K (skylake) CPU
8 Gig ram
Nvidia GTX 750 Ti

[whatthefunk]

I cant wait to get time to get 15.10 off my box. So many issues... Glad 16.04 is looking better!

[sithlord48]

you should be able to upgrade now..

sudo do-release-upgrade -d

[Silent Observer]

Are there known "gotcha" points one should look out for in upgrading Kubuntu 14.04.1 LTS to 16.04 LTS?

For reference, I have an 7 year old MSI motherboard (don't recall the exact model, but it has worked fine in Windows XP and multiple flavors of Linux), Intel Core2Quad, 4 GB RAM, nVidia GTx750 w/ 2 GB RAM, 120 GB SSD with the OS, /home partition, and swap and several unused partitions, and 1 TB platter drive with loads of old data and (never going to be used again) WinXP OS and software in multiple partitions. I've converted to Synaptic package manager, because I was used to it from my previous distro, and I use su instead of sudo most of the time (so I established a root password when I installed Kubuntu).

[Rich Oliver]

So the fact that its plasma 5.5 not 5.6 is not a problem? Some of the niggles I have had have also shown up on Suse Tumbleweed and Suse leap. To be honest I've found Leap a poor expedience compared to Suse 13.2.

[TiberiusDuval]

Some little quirks: Driver manager won't work (installed drivers from command line) MS-Corefonts install was somewhat tedious, needed to manually change some rights issue under /var to get font download working. Usual problems with Baloo (Running 100% CPU with 3.2GHz Haswell i5). Otherwise seems good

[GreyGeek]

I was dubious of Plasma5's austere look but after installing it I am able to brighten it up a bit. I installed the "Startup Disk Creator". It worked well when I created a LiveUSB of Xerus for my son, who runs a System76 Bonobo. He's replacing Ubuntu's Unity. When you run the app the main GUI appears but a progress dialog box appears over the main GUI before you click the "Start" button. When you move the progress dialog box and click the grayed out start button anyway the app GUI disappears leaving the dialog box showing a progress bar indicating how far along the process is. The bar gradually runs to the end and the "Finish" button activates but the USB light continues to blink for several minutes more. When it stops blinking the dialog box disappears on its own and the GUI re-appears. I resisted the temptation to click on the "Finish" button as long as the light was blinking. Glad I did. Another mess for the developers to clean up, but at least makes a startup USB stick.

[Silent Observer]

I'd really love to say I love 16.04 -- but after upgrading today, it's not looking good. I've had to boot into Mepis 11, a very old distro that I kept on my hard disk mainly "just in case" -- and it's a darned good thing. I'm off to find the right place to post for help; my system won't even complete a boot into 16.04, though it's clearly not booting 14.04 after upgrading. Yes, I made a full partition copy before starting, but I'd rather not have wasted a couple hours watching the install after finding, after it'd be going for an hour, that it was sitting at a prompt waiting for me to okay setting up lightdm...

[GreyGeek]

... it was sitting at a prompt waiting for me to okay setting up lightdm...

Been there, done that! A real DUH moment.
So far, Xenial has been good for me. The latest SAGE math engine installed and ran perfectly. I liked the way the compositer and Rendering settings have been moved to the Display, where it should be. XRender with Crisp is working perfectly for me. GL 2.0 gave me flickering. Driver Manager doesn't work but I don't need it. Sometimes a couple apps, I don't remember which ones, throws a crash dialog but continues running without problems anyway. Skype installed and runs beautifully. So does Google's Hangout. Steam installed OK but throws a useless "outdated version" dialog, which doesn't stop the main GUI from working normally. I was able to download and install Unverse^2, which runs smoother than it ever had on 14.04.

My VB experiments with KDE NEON and Plasma5 convinced me that I wouldn't like it. But, Kubuntu 16.05 is growing on me since I can modify its look & feel the way I want it, away from the pastels. I would say the the release version is a very good Beta but it won't take long for the remaining bugs to be ironed out. I believe that 16.04 will outlast my Acer Aspire 7739-6830, which is showing signs of thermal paste drying out.

[kubicle]

you should be able to upgrade now..

sudo do-release-upgrade -d

The "-d" option will upgrade to the devel version (if possible), you should omit that for (stable) release upgrades

[ukdave]

Sorry Guys, my enthusiasm has waned some what.
I was disappointed to find things like ntp not preloaded, driver detection still not working, icons missing when using dolphin as root. These things have been known about all through testing stages yet we still have them on final release. Not big issues I know but I find them niggling especially when other distros seem to be able to resolve them. I guess this is a problem with sticking rigidly to release dates.
I have been running manjaro with the latest kde release without any issues so am very tempted to remain in that camp.
I really am trying to hang on with kubuntu as there are a great bunch of guys and gals behind it and on the forum I will see what happens in the next few weeks.

Cheers
Dave

[kubicle]

I was disappointed to find things like ntp not preloaded

This is by design, not a bug. Time synchronization is handled by systemd-timesyncd service by default on 16.04, so ntpd (or ntpdate) are not really necessary on the default installation. You can still install them and use them if you prefer, of course.

driver detection still not working

I hear this is still an issue. I've never used it, though.

icons missing when using dolphin as root

This is certainly annoying. Fixed it by configuring sudo to keep KDE_SESSION_VERSION and KDE_FULL_SESSION environment variables. (If you're interested in the details, I can post them)

[ukdave]

Thanks kubicle, I would be interested in your dolphin root solution.
I found my local time etc was acting a bit odd until I installed ntp.
Driver detection can still be carried out easily enough it's just I get a bit hacked off with tools not doing what they are supposed to.
I plan to do a new clean install as I have been playing around and want to restart afresh.

[kubicle]

Thanks kubicle, I would be interested in your dolphin root solution.

Sure.

First, a word of caution, sudo is really picky about it's config syntax (and config file permissions) and may cease to function if the syntax is wrong. That's why we're adding the config in a root shell (so you can remove the new config file in case it locks sudo...this is not unrecoverable, but it's much easier if you have a root shell open).

1. Open konsole
2. Start a root shell

sudo -i

(DON'T CLOSE THIS SHELL UNTIL YOU CONFIRM SUDO WORKS WITHOUT PROBLEMS ONCE YOU'VE COMPLETED)
3. In the root shell, create a new config file in /etc/sudoers.d

echo "Defaults env_keep += \"KDE_SESSION_VERSION KDE_FULL_SESSION\"" > /etc/sudoers.d/50-my_kde_env

4. In the root shell, set permissions for the new config file

chmod 0440  /etc/sudoers.d/50-my_kde_env

5. Confirm that sudo still works (you can start another konsole session or use Alt+f2 and run "kdesudo dolphin"
6. Once you have confirmed that sudo works, you can exit the root shell ('exit' or Ctrl+d)
7. Done

[ukdave]

Absolutely spot on kubicle.

Works a treat, thanks for your help. This is a good example of why I like the kubuntu forum.

Cheers