Why is Kubuntu so less customized and polished

[lmilano]

Re: Why is Kubuntu so less customized and polished

Sunanima, please don't. The newest (4.3) is distributed in an experimental way, only for advanced users, or people who want to contribute to improve it for the next kubuntu release, and it has had lots of problems. And I mean BIG problems. It will most certainly bring you trouble.

The best thing you can do is to use the updates you get regularly, those fix stuff (security and bug fixes). Every 6 months you can upgrade your whole OS if you so like, to the new release.

You can see the version in the Help->About menu. Now, if you really feel like playing around a bit, there is a much safer KDE upgrade (still unofficial, but at least much safer, from 4.2.2, which I am sure you are running, to 4.2.4, which is the latest stable update to the 4.2 family. Instructions here

http://www.kubuntu.org/news/kde-4.2.4

[SCBrazil]

Re: Why is Kubuntu so less customized and polished

I second Imilano.

I am a freelance writer so when I saw the new version of KWord (4.3.1) had a live on-screen word count, I thought Christmas had come early. I have used this function on a Mac. When you have to find 9 words to cut from a 409 word article, it is literally priceless.

So I tried it but not long after I had to do a complete new Kubuntu install, including total HDD format and start everything from scratch.

But I refused to believe it was the KWord update and tried again.
Same problem.

Although I have no evidence it was the KOffice update, I have since left 4.3.1 alone and everything is working okay.

But now I'm taking this thread in a different direction so I'll shut up.

If you want to try it out of curiosity Sunanima, I suggest you backup your current setup to a different HDD. I suspect many on here could have avoided formatting my HDD but I too am a new user and found no way around it.

[metricus]

Re: Why is Kubuntu so less customized and polished

I suspect many on here could have avoided formatting my HDD but I too am a new user and found no way around it.

After years of Linux I still use the same practice. The only difference (and I recommend every newbie to look into it) is to have several partitions. For example I keep 2 partitions (sda1 and sda2) for OSs and one bigger one (sda3) for my files. When a new release comes out, I install it on the other partition and only after I have it going as I want to I start using it every day. If anything goes wrong I can boot from the old partition. GRUB is just perfect for this.
All you have to learn is how to manually setup partitions when installing Kubuntu so u don't erase the your files in sda3.

[lmilano]

Re: Why is Kubuntu so less customized and polished

Yes, multiple partitions is great and safe. Having said that, in 15 years, and multiple computers, I probably only had 5 to 7 original installs. I always upgrade ... (and fix any little glitch).