Why is Ubuntu more pupular than Kubuntu

[forcecore]

Re: Why is Ubuntu more pupular than Kubuntu

Yes, I people can and do end up running Synaptic, etc. But ins same cases it is very time consuming to find the right tool. What I think is that all these things should be included by default, even if they are not KDE native.

In other words, the default installation should be feature complete IMHO, even if at the cost of filling some blanks with non-kde applications. And we haven't een very good at it!

Synaptic has one critical feature that it can repair damaged internal apt system.

[wfp]

Re: Why is Ubuntu more pupular than Kubuntu

Ubuntu gets more media coverage. Was using Ubuntu for over a year. But found my self fighting with gnome too much. Switched over to Kubuntu about 4 months ago, and happy I made the switch. Kubuntu has run flawlessly during those 4 months not one problem.

[gemmakaru]

Re: Why is Ubuntu more pupular than Kubuntu

I have use KDE on a number of occasions and did prefer KDE3 to 4 if I am totally honest. All of the distros I have used over the years have had KDE including Suse, Mepis and of course Kubuntu.

I am currently using Kubuntu karmic and loving the speed and stability. A few days ago I Installed Gnome and I haven't looked back. I may find a reason to go back to KDE I may not but for now I'll stick to Kubuntu with Gnome. It's all about choice right. I haven't really used Gnome before and it's both something a bit different for me and at the same time pretty simple. Mango Parfait would roll in her grave!

It occurs to me KDE (kind of) looks like Windows and Gnome (kind of) looks like Apple OSX. I am a windows software developer so for me, maybe, the attraction of Gnome is that it doesn't look like my work computer. Hehee. Underneath though its all *buntu yeah? As they say, it's all good.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Why is Ubuntu more pupular than Kubuntu

I have no doubt that Microsoft and Apple are taking hints from KDE4 and GNOME!

Switching to GNOME, however, may be a future fraught with Microsoft IP, since Canonical has declared the future desktop remixes of Ubuntu (hence GNOME) will be DEPENDENT on MONO. In case you aren't aware, MONO is dependent on .NET and if it is to remain compatible it must remain dependent. Take a look at my sig...

[lmilano]

Re: Why is Ubuntu more pupular than Kubuntu

It occurs to me KDE (kind of) looks like Windows and Gnome (kind of) looks like Apple OSX. I am a windows software developer so for me, maybe, the attraction of Gnome is that it doesn't look like my work computer. Hehee. Underneath though its all *buntu yeah? As they say, it's all good.

I am forced to use Win XP at work, and I would say perhaps KDE-3 looks a bit reminiscent of WinXP (to some extent, though I like it way more). I find KDE-4 quite different though. And I find GNOME usable but a lot less appealing, but hey, as you said, it's all about choices.

Point in case, I have Lubuntu installed as a secondary light desktop "just in case". It turns out that to remote into my work machine, it works a lot better from LXDE and from KDE. So, I use LXDE for that and KDE otherwise.

Cheers!

[verndog]

Re: Why is Ubuntu more pupular than Kubuntu

...
I am forced to use Win XP at work, and I would say perhaps KDE-3 looks a bit reminiscent of WinXP (to some extent, though I like it way more). I find KDE-4 quite different though. And I find GNOME usable but a lot less appealing, but hey, as you said, it's all about choices.

Point in case, I have Lubuntu installed as a secondary light desktop "just in case". It turns out that to remote into my work machine, it works a lot better from LXDE and from KDE. So, I use LXDE for that and KDE otherwise.

Oddly enough, I'm sort-of reversed. I use Ubuntu as my main distro and KDE as a backup. Simple explanation is I'm more use to gnome and more comfortable with it than kde. Oddly I always though of kde4 as being top heavy and slow. But not anymore. suse was my first kde4 that I tried and was real impressed with its speed.
i just don't know my way around the ends and outs of kde yet to feel secure enough when something breaks to be able to fix it instead of a re-install.

The more I use kde and the more I pay attention and read some of the trails of the posts here the better I feel. Also, you won't find better docs than we have here on kde.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Why is Ubuntu more pupular than Kubuntu

....
i just don't know my way around the ends and outs of kde yet to feel secure enough when something breaks to be able to fix it instead of a re-install.
.....

There used to be a true dichotomy between the terminal and the desktop. Not so much, now. For one PC at work I wrote Python scripts which were placed in /etc/skel and set to run as the "shell" when ever a new account was added. I created two spawning dialup modem connections in /etc/inittab, once VERY important in other distros, but not in Kubuntu, if it ever was. When someone dialed in and entered their account name and password, they were taken to their account and the "shell" was run. It gave them the opportunity to upload new tax filings, download results for previous filings, or hang up. Putting your own executable "shell" in /etc/skel was (is?) how you forced non-root user accounts to run a specific executable when they logged in.

I was drawn to SuSE 5.3 because it contained BETA1 of KDE 1.0. I had been running RedHat 5.0 for the previous 5 months. Now, RH5 was simple. LILO was your boot loader and and /etc/inittab contained the spawing and runlevel settings. You ran xf86config to set up your graphics card and when it created the proper xf86c.conf file (IIRC) you issued "startkde" to start up kde. Of course, you could put "startkde" in your home bashrc file to make it fire up when you logged in. "startkde" was easier than starting up one of the other 20 or so xclients, NONE of which held a candle to KDE 1.0. When it came to networking the easiest thing to do was populate resolv.conf yourself. Wireless wasn't around and one even rolled his own routing tables to make web connections (which were usually dailup or dsl).

SuSE 5.3 was set to start KDE automatically from bootup, so I didn't have to modify scripts to get KDE to start, or do it manually. BUT, SuSE had YAST, which was a powerful system admin tool. From the USER's standpoint, it simplified admin tasks, but it was more difficult to follow what it was doing. If you intervened and changed something manually, suseconfig "sensed" it and turned itself off, leaving you with management duties for ever. The script, susconfig, was called, it presented a console or gui page to change settings, then the "save" button caused 20 other scripts to run, even if your change required only one of those twenty to run. SuSE had set up a complicated management system, easy to use up front, but complicated on the back end.

Distros have gotten even easier to use but MORE complicated on the back end. For the last 3 or 4 years I haven't even bothered to figure out exactly how any of the distros I run get from power on to a desktop. All I learn is how to get KDE running again if I end up at a terminal. There isn't even a tool to use to configure and/or tweak your own video chip/monitor any more. Even the "-high" parameter has been removed from dpkg. One has to create a "partial" xorg.conf file and hope he/she doesn't mess up or burn out their display unit, which is easy to do IF you don't use gtf and overdrive your frequency settings by guessing. Fifteen years ago, by toggling between port 928 and 958 more quickly than 50ms you could over drive the filament in your CRT (monitor) and burn it out. It's probably still possible to overdrive a pixel on an LCD panel.

There appears to be several paths available when going from power on to desktop. Debian (Kubuntu) has one, Fedora, has another, SUSE has a third, and both PCLinuxOS and MEPIS seem to have blazed their own paths. There are at least 5 different run level settings, plus a "typical" one.

From what I have gathered, Canonical introduced "Upstart" to replace the init daemon. Upstart is event-based. KDE is event based (because Qt4 is, which is what "signals & slots" provides). What that means is that when a KDE desktop starts it initializes a perpetual loop
...

#include <qapplication.h>
#include <qpushbutton.h>
int main( int argc, char **argv )
{
QApplication a( argc, argv );
QPushButton hello( "Hello world!", 0 );
hello.resize( 100, 30 );
hello.show();
return a.exec();
}

...
which constantly checks for events. The loop quits only when KDE4 quits or dies. When a new task is run it is added to the KDE4 loop so it can communicate with KDE4, the other tasks, and the environment. Instead of watching (polling) a port for a specified amount of time for a voltage change, or timing out, the even loop looks for an interrupt event, a signal or flag which says something has happened. In stead of watching the line to see if a fish hits, the line rings a bell to tell you a fish has hit.

By creating an event driven replacement for init, Ubuntu has moved the main event loop away from the domain of the desktop and down to the domain of the kernel. The KDE event loop becomes a sub loop within upstart, if I fathom this change correctly. This could be viewed as moving the desktop control down to the OS level, or making the OS the new desktop, so to speak. Normally, the Linux kernel interfaces the BIOS to what's above it, the terminal and/or desktop. Now, it appears, the desktop is at the kernel level. If the desktop is KDE4 I don't mind. IF it is MONO....

[BubbaBlues]

Re: Why is Ubuntu more pupular than Kubuntu

I tried Kubuntu back when kde 4 first came out and it was pure crap. Everything was unstable and very difficult to configure. Therefore in my opinion Kubuntu was crap. Then I tried PCLOS with it's rock solid kde 3.5 and it worked flawlessly and was easy to learn and configure. It wasn't until kde 4.2 that it started behaving properly and 4.3 was solid again. Still complicated and it takes a while to learn, but it's solid. So I decided to give Kubuntu another shot, just in case they improved it, and was I ever shocked. Its beautiful and stable and I love it. Gnome on the other hand, though ugly as it is, is solid and stable and and so easy to figure out, a cave man could do it. Sorry cave men. 8)

I used Kpackagekit twice, once to up-date after installing.... then to install Synaptic. Grin

That's exactly how much I used it too. and after the update, my system wouldn't boot into the new kernel. I had to set it back to 26.32.21. Still don't know why.