Well I have given it much time but!!

[noelvh]

At first i hated the new Kubuntu 8.10, and after the release of the full version I was having fun and loving it. I misled my self at that point. I was just using it on the internet and was not doing my day to day stuff. So when I got back to my day to day 8.10 was not a fully functioning OS.

As sad as I was I have to push it to the back burner till it is a fully functioning OS. I know some of you have been using it for some time with out many issues, but when I can't use it for what I need it for then its no good.

What I like about 8.10
The look is great and the desktop was real cool. I like having next to nothing on my desktop and that was great.
Dolphin was well a knock out for me. Come on it have a built in terminal.

What I did not like
Hard ware support is well gone for me. Video drives are a pain, wifi well it works, but only at 30% sig strength.
I spent about 4 hours working on the wifi and gave up with 30%.
This was not enough to push it off. Now when I plugged in my digital camera, and nothing happened that was the last straw for me. I run all the photos through Picasa and my laptop. I know this is a small issue but when you add it all up its not worth it.

I want it to be perfect but it's not even close at this point. I will keep 8.4 going on 1 hard drive and my new hybrid Ubuntu 8.10 on another.

Yes I went and installed Ub 8.10 over Ku 8.10 and let me say its better, by far.
All My hard ware issues are gone even my dig camera works, and my wifi is at 90%. I have to say I hate the look of gnome but I got around that with a theme, then I installed Dolphin, AWN, Compiz, and a bunch of stuff i have been using under Kubuntu. Here are some of my screen shots.
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo...k-JHbn4-g2EJHg
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo...FDim4v2IjW9WFQ
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo...nFKyoT8nMo3zWw

I am in no way dismissing Kubuntu I am just got to wait till it works 90% of the time before I will give it more time. So for now its Ku 8.4

Noel Vh

[Dart]

Re: Well I have given it much time but!!

Wish I could say that Ubuntu worked for me also - but unfortunately anything labeled 8.10 I could not get to even closely function on 3 different computers. The best install of the 3 kept fighting me every step of the way. At the risk of sounding a bit ignorant here... Kubuntu was the best of 8 distros I initially tried. I was under the impression that each consecutive release builds on the successes of the previous one...so I immediately jumped on 8.10 thinking that if 04 was this good...well.

BTW - great screenshots !

[noelvh]

Re: Well I have given it much time but!!

In the end I am sticking with Kubuntu 8.4. Every thing works so I don't need to upgrade to the new version.

Thanks

Noel Vh

[aged hippy]

Re: Well I have given it much time but!!

I like the KDE 4 desktop, it's pretty (!), and it usually does what i want it to... but i wouldn't use it as a work platform - at the moment. There are several glitches which need to be ironed out.

I think that this is the way that the desktop will be in future, with lots of eye candy and a multitude of bells-and-whistles. :P

Maybe this says something about what (some) users want from their Desktop Environment of choice.... or maybe it says something about what the developers think the users want -- lots of content but no actual substance. :P

My own personal preference is - at the moment - for KDE 3.5, it's smoother, reliable, and more.... polished, but then, it's had a lot of time to mature.

Strangely - or not - my Desktop Environment of choice reflects what was always my motor-cycle of choice, something solid and reliable which starts with one kick -- rather than something bright and flashy with lots of acceleration - but then needs a major strip-down in order to change a spark-plug.

[TobbeR]

Re: Well I have given it much time but!!

Well I finally gave up. I have used Kubuntu since 5.?? something but I realized that it's not stable enough just now, to much work on eye candy and to less on usability. I tried to upgrade but it stopped during the installation fase and my box went unbootable. Did a fresh install but to many things didn't work, like auto mounting USB drives. Yes I know how to fix that but I don't I would have to.
So I installed Xubuntu!!
Light, fast and no problems so far. I do miss some of the KDE apps like Kate, Konq and K3b but the Xcfe replacements are reasonable and everything feels a lot faster.
T

[barbolani]

Re: Well I have given it much time but!!

I must say that after ironing out the problems with Samba, 3D video and service management, I'm pretty happy with the resulting system.

- KDE4 is, at least for me, faster and nicer than 3.5
- The desktop effects are better integrated and robust
- Dolphin has been improved to the point of being usable
- "Recently Plugged Devices" is definitely a step forward (if only the fixed the CD-ROM closing on eject issue!)

.... well done, KDE + KUbuntu team and keep up the good work. However, and this is a big HOWEVER

My conclusion is, if your hardware is old (video), you need to share files with Windows (Samba) or have network configuration needs beyond the auto-everything domestic router, don't expect a point and click experience. It's not that it cannot work they way you desire, it's more that the experience will not be what (K)Ubuntu tries to promote itself to be.

If you want a point and click experience, stick with 8.04 with KDE 3.5. With each successive release KDE4 will get better and probably in less than a year it will be on par with 3.5

[noelvh]

Re: Well I have given it much time but!!

For me my hard ware is not that old! And the drivers should be in the kernel, they are for Ubuntu 8.10. This is a waiting game for me, as I will wait till it works before switching to it. Please keep in mind that if not for the hardware issues I would have stuck with it.

If I have some time I will submit bug reports but time is not all ways on my side.

Noel VH

[CVPunk]

Re: Well I have given it much time but!!

This is not meant in a bad way, but I don't know what you mean by "given it much time".
The final release of Kubuntu 8.10 was less than 2 weeks ago.
As to your hardware issues... I have no idea since I have not seen you post what hardware you are running. I have been running Intrepid since the Alpha 5 release and only had one issue with my Nvidia driver (which was sorted out with the next update).
So is it that things just refuse to work or is it impatience?
I have not come across a problem with my system or my daughters (old Dell with Linux Mint) that I could not solve with a quick Google or http://www.uboontu.com search.

[noelvh]

Re: Well I have given it much time but!!

My subject is not very clear I will give you that.
I started playing with 8.10 about a month before the release, then put it down this weekend.

As for hard ware issues I have also not opened any posts on them ether, other than in a mass post.

These issues are listed in order of importance to me.

Issue 1 is my wifi card, and I spent the most time on this issue. I googled the crap out of it as well. When I run the live CD I get 90% signal from the card, but when I install the 8.10 to the hard drive I get 30%. I am running an IBM T43 laptop with an intel pro wire less card. In my google search I found a number of people with this issue under KDE4, but most of them were not running Kubuntu. So I worked on this issue for 4 hours over 2 days (kids nap time), and was unable to get more than 40% strength for this card. So of the fixes were the firmware, some were ndiswrapper, and I tried every fix I read with not real help. Now the same laptop under 8.4.1 I get 90% on the card, and with Win XP I get 80%. So its not the card.

Issue 2 Digital camera,
I have a canon ps710 that KDE4 sees but that's it. I can not connect to it as it gives me a error can not load the config for this device. Once more I googled this, but this time I did not get any hits. I did see other cameras with the same issue and none had a fix.

Issue 3 USB drives well they worked then did not work. I did not spend much time on this as it was not my main concern.

Issue 4 Samba. Well this one was strange! This was the first issue I ran into. Samba was not in the system menu or the system config area of KDE, as it was in the past. Also it was not an option under network as in the past. When I posted this to the forum people were telling me to install it then you will see it in the system config. I installed it but nope it was not there. There was a Samba under net work now but I could not configure it, as I have under 8.4 KDE3.


Now even though I had wifi signal this should not have been an issue but I could not do any thing on the internet with out hanging up the system. I stuck with it for weeks but I gave up. I open 2 web tabs and it would take 2 to 3 minutes to open.
Not fast enough for me. Now the camera will this is a big one as I have kids and need to make sure the photos are in order, and online. So this was a big show stopper as well. I would have to get off my ass and go down to my windows machine to do photos nope, or switch hard drives for the laptop and run under 8.4.
Now then if I am under 8.4 why not stay?

USB drives I do allot of Hard drive recovery and use linux for this as it dose the best job. Mounting them under 8.10 was less than perfect. Under 8.4 all I had to do was plug them in and get to work on the data.

And the last Samba well once I have the data recovered I need to put it some ware. No access to my NAS, and the data is not going to be recovered.

I know I could have, no should have been more vigilant in how I posted my findings but I am all ways pushed for time. I will try to be more expressive moving forward on this forum.

Now taking this to the next step I installed Ubuntu 8.10 and all of the issues I had were not there. What I mean is every thing worked, out of the box. But I did have one issue as the weekend went on, and that was power management. the LCD stopped turning off after my given time.

The reason I went this way was to see if these issues are truly KDE4 issues or are they the new 8.10 build.

So with all this I am going to slap my 8.4.1 hard drive back in my laptop and keep that running for now. I will be looking forward to the next release of KDE4.2 next year and I am hope full my issues will be fixed.

I hope this makes better sense than my first post.

As a foot note I have been reading a number of trade posts about the new KDE4 and that the masses are not taken with it. I do how ever like the new look and feel I just hope it gets worked out.

Noel Vh

[noelvh]

Re: Well I have given it much time but!!

Well I have to take it all back.
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3099463.0

Thanks for the help here guys.

Noel Vh