I downloaded the new Kubuntu Dapper RC Desktop CD, to see how things are going in Dapper, especially regarding the desktop installer, which I've been dreaming about since that project got started. Yehey for no more downloading of separate ISO's!! I later on installed it on a separate partition just to test the installer and to see how the installed Dapper looks/feels like (I'm guessing a fresh install from the Alternate Install CD might have a different outcome).
And generally, I was very much impressed!
- Things were "generally" faster (see my comment later about "generally") as compared to the Breezy Live CD.
- Things also seemed tidier and cleaner. The window decorations (Crystal) sort of syncs with the Ubuntu decorations (ClearLooks, AFAIK).
- And the K Menu! That has got to be the cleanest, shortest, and most organized K Menu I've seen! Comparing it to MEPIS and KNOPPIX, no wonder why some people say that KDE is cluttered and messy. Of course, MEPIS and KNOPPIX might have different audiences/goals for their Live CDs, but still, a clean K Menu is a sight for sore eyes.
- The wallpaper, while simple, sort of mesmerizes me with the bubbles and curves. Of course, I'll be changing that eventually, but it's good to know that the default is very nice.
- A lot of improvement on the apps, too. They have returned Konqueror's profile options in the Settings Menus. A lot of people where looking for them. Unfortunately, they also reduced the profiles to only two: File Management and Web Browser. While I make my own profiles to suit my own needs, others may like to have defaults to fall back on. I'm beginning to like System Settings and find myself using it a lot lately. They've included the KControl modules that were missing in Breezy (Spell checking, Samba, and OBEX, although the last two I think only show up in the proper context). Network Settings puzzles me, though. In Breezy, it would not enable my eth0 no matter how hard I try. In Dapper, it's already enabled automatically, using DHCP (which my ISP doesn't have).
Unfortunately, I've also noticed some things that were less than amazing. So here goes my rant.
1. Remember when I said Dapper was fast on the Desktop CD? Yes it was, until after a few minutes. Then it begins to slow down. Opening anything related to system settings takes far longer than in Breezy. The first time you try to open System Setting modules or Adept goes by fast, but the next ones are considerably slower.
2. Monitor/Video Card: Ubuntu has yet to give me a 1024x768 default resolution, which it hasn't done in any version/release/mode. Based on the Desktop CD, it has successfully identified my (onboard) video card as a VIA S3 Unichrome, but failed to identify my Monitor, which is an old 14" AOC Spectrum 4Vn. I'm not sure, though, if it's just a monitor problem. KNOPPIX also fails in this respect, and gives me, like Ubuntu, a 800x600 resolution. The only Live CDs that have given me the correct resolutions are MEPIS and, surprisingly, the Kororaa XGL Live CD, although in MEPIS I had to use the VESA option.
3. Sudo: it just makes me wonder why we emphasize on the advantages brought by sudo, yet have no implementation of this on the Desktop CD. If the Desktop CD is a sort of preview of what Kubuntu has to offer, shouldn't it also have sudo, which is one of the distinguishing characteristics of Ubuntu. MEPIS (again comparing it to MEPIS...) has implemented a separate root account and asks for the root password for administrative tasks. Couldn't we also do something similar, if just to emphasize on Ubuntu's sudo identity (and also to train newcomers to the process). They could perhaps just implement a simple password (like "root" or "user").
4. Is it just me, or do you find the bootsplash Kubuntu logo/banner a bit too glaring? the contrast between the black background and the very bright blue color is a bit uncomfortable for me.
5. Adept: I still think it's quite in-adept for normal desktop users, and the addition of cluttered tags doesn't help. I'm a bit disappointed with the progress, or lack of it, of this app. It might have the potential to be good, but at version 2.0, it's still crawling. The much needed prompts/reminders are still absent, allowing you to inadvertently uninstall or break certain things. I don't know why/how some Kubuntu devs/people seem to be excited over it. Well, probably, it's because it's something only they could use/understand.
6. Adept Installer a.k.a. Add/Remove programs: What is it and why do we need it? Was this made because Windows people are more familiar with the terms or because GNOME/Ubuntu has it? Can someone out there please explain to me this strange creature that I can't understand.
7. Lastly, this concerns more the installed Dapper rather than the Desktop CD one. This is about upgrading to amaroK version 1.4. After installing Dapper, what I immediately did was setup my internet connection and check what's upgradable. So far it went well. Then I added the KOffice 1.5.1 repositories and upgraded Krita (haven't installed KOffice yet). Then I added amaroK 1.4's repository and tried to upgrade amarok 1.3.9. Lo and behold, it won't continue because upgrading amaroK would break packages. After searching here and there, I found out that 3 packages that amaroK needs in order to upgrade is found in the universe repositories! I know that enabling universe is simple, but why should a package in main (a.k.a. fully supported) need the universe repositories (a.k.a. not supported) to be upgraded? Specially if the universe repos is not enabled by default?
Anyway, aside from these 7 things, I found that my Dapper experience has been very pleasing. So far, I've had only 1 Konqueror crash (which I was able to exactly duplicate in Breezy) and 3 Adept crashes (somehow due to updating repositories whenever I add/remove amaroK's). But that's far less than the crashes I experience in Breezy. But then again, I haven't yet installed most of the apps that I have in Breezy, so who knows. I just hope that KDE in Dapper is more refined and polished this time, and less prone to crashes. (Otherwise, I might have to make a forced and sorrowful move to some other KDE based distro, coz I'm never leaving my beloved KDE
)
Really looking forward to the official release. Backing up my data now so that I can bravely update tomorrow.
EDIT: I forgot something important. While I had no problems using the Espresso installer on the Desktop CD (including using the partition utility to reformat one of my existing partitions), one behavior bothered me. The installer doesn't ask where to put GRUB and automatically puts it in the MBR. It's no problem for me since I use a floppy disk when I boot (and use the menu.lst that's on my Breezy installation), it might not be an easy thing to undo/repair for beginners.
And generally, I was very much impressed!
- Things were "generally" faster (see my comment later about "generally") as compared to the Breezy Live CD.
- Things also seemed tidier and cleaner. The window decorations (Crystal) sort of syncs with the Ubuntu decorations (ClearLooks, AFAIK).
- And the K Menu! That has got to be the cleanest, shortest, and most organized K Menu I've seen! Comparing it to MEPIS and KNOPPIX, no wonder why some people say that KDE is cluttered and messy. Of course, MEPIS and KNOPPIX might have different audiences/goals for their Live CDs, but still, a clean K Menu is a sight for sore eyes.
- The wallpaper, while simple, sort of mesmerizes me with the bubbles and curves. Of course, I'll be changing that eventually, but it's good to know that the default is very nice.
- A lot of improvement on the apps, too. They have returned Konqueror's profile options in the Settings Menus. A lot of people where looking for them. Unfortunately, they also reduced the profiles to only two: File Management and Web Browser. While I make my own profiles to suit my own needs, others may like to have defaults to fall back on. I'm beginning to like System Settings and find myself using it a lot lately. They've included the KControl modules that were missing in Breezy (Spell checking, Samba, and OBEX, although the last two I think only show up in the proper context). Network Settings puzzles me, though. In Breezy, it would not enable my eth0 no matter how hard I try. In Dapper, it's already enabled automatically, using DHCP (which my ISP doesn't have).
Unfortunately, I've also noticed some things that were less than amazing. So here goes my rant.
1. Remember when I said Dapper was fast on the Desktop CD? Yes it was, until after a few minutes. Then it begins to slow down. Opening anything related to system settings takes far longer than in Breezy. The first time you try to open System Setting modules or Adept goes by fast, but the next ones are considerably slower.
2. Monitor/Video Card: Ubuntu has yet to give me a 1024x768 default resolution, which it hasn't done in any version/release/mode. Based on the Desktop CD, it has successfully identified my (onboard) video card as a VIA S3 Unichrome, but failed to identify my Monitor, which is an old 14" AOC Spectrum 4Vn. I'm not sure, though, if it's just a monitor problem. KNOPPIX also fails in this respect, and gives me, like Ubuntu, a 800x600 resolution. The only Live CDs that have given me the correct resolutions are MEPIS and, surprisingly, the Kororaa XGL Live CD, although in MEPIS I had to use the VESA option.
3. Sudo: it just makes me wonder why we emphasize on the advantages brought by sudo, yet have no implementation of this on the Desktop CD. If the Desktop CD is a sort of preview of what Kubuntu has to offer, shouldn't it also have sudo, which is one of the distinguishing characteristics of Ubuntu. MEPIS (again comparing it to MEPIS...) has implemented a separate root account and asks for the root password for administrative tasks. Couldn't we also do something similar, if just to emphasize on Ubuntu's sudo identity (and also to train newcomers to the process). They could perhaps just implement a simple password (like "root" or "user").
4. Is it just me, or do you find the bootsplash Kubuntu logo/banner a bit too glaring? the contrast between the black background and the very bright blue color is a bit uncomfortable for me.
5. Adept: I still think it's quite in-adept for normal desktop users, and the addition of cluttered tags doesn't help. I'm a bit disappointed with the progress, or lack of it, of this app. It might have the potential to be good, but at version 2.0, it's still crawling. The much needed prompts/reminders are still absent, allowing you to inadvertently uninstall or break certain things. I don't know why/how some Kubuntu devs/people seem to be excited over it. Well, probably, it's because it's something only they could use/understand.
6. Adept Installer a.k.a. Add/Remove programs: What is it and why do we need it? Was this made because Windows people are more familiar with the terms or because GNOME/Ubuntu has it? Can someone out there please explain to me this strange creature that I can't understand.
7. Lastly, this concerns more the installed Dapper rather than the Desktop CD one. This is about upgrading to amaroK version 1.4. After installing Dapper, what I immediately did was setup my internet connection and check what's upgradable. So far it went well. Then I added the KOffice 1.5.1 repositories and upgraded Krita (haven't installed KOffice yet). Then I added amaroK 1.4's repository and tried to upgrade amarok 1.3.9. Lo and behold, it won't continue because upgrading amaroK would break packages. After searching here and there, I found out that 3 packages that amaroK needs in order to upgrade is found in the universe repositories! I know that enabling universe is simple, but why should a package in main (a.k.a. fully supported) need the universe repositories (a.k.a. not supported) to be upgraded? Specially if the universe repos is not enabled by default?
Anyway, aside from these 7 things, I found that my Dapper experience has been very pleasing. So far, I've had only 1 Konqueror crash (which I was able to exactly duplicate in Breezy) and 3 Adept crashes (somehow due to updating repositories whenever I add/remove amaroK's). But that's far less than the crashes I experience in Breezy. But then again, I haven't yet installed most of the apps that I have in Breezy, so who knows. I just hope that KDE in Dapper is more refined and polished this time, and less prone to crashes. (Otherwise, I might have to make a forced and sorrowful move to some other KDE based distro, coz I'm never leaving my beloved KDE
)Really looking forward to the official release. Backing up my data now so that I can bravely update tomorrow.
EDIT: I forgot something important. While I had no problems using the Espresso installer on the Desktop CD (including using the partition utility to reformat one of my existing partitions), one behavior bothered me. The installer doesn't ask where to put GRUB and automatically puts it in the MBR. It's no problem for me since I use a floppy disk when I boot (and use the menu.lst that's on my Breezy installation), it might not be an easy thing to undo/repair for beginners.
)
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