The Win8 of Kubuntu?

[e.c.field]

Over the past ten years, I've had a system for updating my primary system. My mini-tower has plenty of space for drives and there are usually two hard drives mounted in it. I'm running an AMD 6300 six-core processor with 16 Gb of RAM.

Every couple of years, I purchase a new hard drive, remove the secondary drive, unplug the primary, and install the new HDD as primary. At that point, I do a fresh install of the latest Kubuntu.

The old secondary HDD gets labeled and stored away. Once the new primary is setup and appears to be running fine, I plug the old primary as the new secondary. That gives me access to all my old data.

This system has been working well for more than ten years. Until yesterday.

I mounted the new primary HDD and installed Kubuntu 16.04 from a DVD. The following are some of my issues with 16.04 and Plasma5:

What is the "Desktop" panel/button on the top left of the screen? I can't add anything to it, nor resize it.

Why can't I create/place links to application or sub-folders on the desktop?

How do you rename desktop folder links?

Every time I restart, the system reports all languages not installed and requires a fresh download. It doesn't say what languages are missing. To be honest, I would rather not have anything other than English and Spanish on the system as those are the only two languages I use.

The DEB install of the Brave browser seems to go without a hitch, but Brave will not load.

The Google Earth package is missing required items.

As far as overall look and feel, I'm less than impressed with this release. Kubuntu 14.04 is a much nicer user-experience out of the box. The latest Kubuntu 16.04 icons, menu, and overall look and feel, remind me of cheap Android tablets.

I'm going to give this a couple more days, but I'm thinking it may be a good time to roll back to 14.04. Unless I see some marvelous revelation, it looks like 16.04 is going to be the Windows8 of the Linux world.

[elijathegold]

What is the "Desktop" panel/button on the top left of the screen? I can't add anything to it, nor resize it.

It used to be called the cashew and would be this huge thing at the top right. It took either additional widgets or removing files to get rid of. Now you Just right click on the desktop, Select Desktop Settings then Tweaks. Turn off the desktop toolbox option.

Why can't I create/place links to application or sub-folders on the desktop?

That's probably because of the default activity type. If you are looking for the traditional desktop interface then I think you want a "Folder View" pointing to the ~/Desktop. Not sure how you do that as I don't really mess around with Activities.

How do you rename desktop folder links?

Select + F2 or right click -> rename?

Every time I restart, the system reports all languages not installed and requires a fresh download. It doesn't say what languages are missing. To be honest, I would rather not have anything other than English and Spanish on the system as those are the only two languages I use.

I remember having that issue in 15.10 but when I installed 16.04 I set up the backports repository before doing the first update. Plasma 16.04 with Backports is a much nicer experience than 15.10 or 16.04. I can't say it fixed the language issue but it only asked to download them once.

The DEB install of the Brave browser seems to go without a hitch, but Brave will not load.

Do you get an error message? Try running it from the terminal which may give more details. It looks like an interesting browser and I'm currently trying to find out whether I trust it enough to install it. If you do get it working, I'd be interested in how it works day to day.

The Google Earth package is missing required items.

Never used Google Earth but without more details I can only try to resist the opportunity to be a smart arse and say "so install them then!" Maybe it's worth it's own support thread.

As far as overall look and feel, I'm less than impressed with this release. Kubuntu 14.04 is a much nicer user-experience out of the box. The latest Kubuntu 16.04 icons, menu, and overall look and feel, remind me of cheap Android tablets.

I'm not a fan of Breeze myself but fortunately, it's only a few simple configuration changes to make it look more 14.04like. Breeze tries to be too damn trendy and as a result will not age well.

[e.c.field]

First off, thanks, elijathegold for the detailed feedback.

The "cashew" is now gone. Good riddance.

I'm with you in not knowing what to do with "Acitivities". I much preferred the 14.04 desktop.

I tried the + F2 and still cannot rename a link to Dolphin on the desktop.

I just installed the backports repository. We'll see how it goes after another couple of restarts.

I've been using the Brave browser under 14.04 for the last couple of months, and it seems to work as advertised. It's much faster, but has none of the nice features of Firefox, Chrome, or Opera. It's my secondary browser. I'll give it a try from a terminal.

I researched the Google Earth problem and it is a known issue with 16.04. They have not updated the repository with the correct dependency calls.


Thanks again for the feedback.

Cheers!

[acheron]

I don't even try to install google-earth any more. It has been broken/difficult for install on k/ubuntu for several releases now.

Partly as ubuntu dropped the type of multiarch support the old GE debs need for their deps to install without fuss. Partly as Google are not bothering to update the GE debs to take account of the changes most debian based distros have undergone.

Could also be extra probs in 16.04, as I simply have not bothered to try it. The Google maps 'Earth View' on webgl enabled browsers has much of the same functionality.

I recall that it used to still be installable on Mint, as they has some extra multiarch meta packages in their own repo that pulled in the required deps. Not sure if that is still the case.

[Snowhog]

The google-earth .deb package maintained by Ubuntu at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/xenial/...eearth-package doesn't work? It's in the xenial and earlier distributions.

[GreyGeek]

The google-earth .deb package maintained by Ubuntu at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/xenial/...eearth-package doesn't work? It's in the xenial and earlier distributions.

Not yet. Xenial does not include by default lsb-core so the *.deb package fails with missing packages. There is an lsb-core update coming down the pipes "soon". Then, supposedly, one will be able to install the downloaded Google deb package and install it without the build nonsense.

[claydoh]

Something I have noticed recently in regards to upgraders going from 14.04 to 16.04:


"Changes" to the desktop:

The "desktop' button at the top - this has been present since the original KDE 4 back in Kubuntu 8.10. It originally had the 'cashew; thing and was until recently difficult to remove

Activities - which the "desktop" button is being used in part as a label for, have also been present since then

The desktop layout you get by default has been that way since kde 4 came out, the classic "folder view" has always been a choice but not the default in KDE or Kubuntu



It is interesting to note that between 10.04, 12.04, 14.04, and 16.04 that the only things that really has changed in terms of where and how things are used and configured is.........the color scheme and icon set, and how much this change does have an effect on things


There are many different elements that change how the desktop looks, but a quick one for 14.04 users is to install the plasma-theme-oxygen package

[sithlord48]

I tried the + F2 and still cannot rename a link to Dolphin on the desktop.

You cannot relabel link widgets on the desktop you can name the file what you want and remake the link..

IF you want a traditional desktop you need to right click on the desktop -> desktop settings and change Type to "folder View" this will work like a traditional desktop . it will show the contents of ~/Desktop and allow you to make widgets also.