Kubuntu 9.10 review

[Guest]

I found a good Kubuntu 9.10 Review on Linux Critic that I thought I would share. Seems he's not fully impressed yet.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Kubuntu 9.10 review

A "good" review?

Seems more like a rant to me.

The installer crashed? I've installed KK on nearly a dozen different machines and NEVER had the installer crash.

Did he check his ISO or his burned CD? Seems unlikely.

Did he vet his hardware? There are a small number of video and audio chips which don't work well under Linux, regardless of the distro.

He doesn't like the new menu system, which apes VISTA? Neither do I, but I didn't whine or rant about it on my website. I merely right-clicked on the menu icon and selected "use classic menu".

You should be familiar with the drill by now... "it doesn't work for me so it must not work for anyone"... etc, etc, etc....

Then, the usual naysayer chime in with their "experiences".

[Guest]

Re: Kubuntu 9.10 review

Speaking of rants.. you have serious tension issues. His review is no where near a rant..

[dibl]

Re: Kubuntu 9.10 review

Well, I'm glad he reviewed it, but I'm with GG -- the reviewer appears to have used mostly his personal preferences as the "standard" for comparison.

-- "too many" apps running in the tray?

-- the menu is "counter-intuitive"?

-- call kpackagekit "Software Management"?


I dunno -- doesn't look terribly objective to me.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Kubuntu 9.10 review

I very close friend brought his laptop over this afternoon. He had installed Kubuntu 9.10 last night but kept having "issues".

First, he said the original boot was "slow" in coming up, and the install from the LiveCD took a LOT longer than any previous distros he's installed. He couldn't get the wireless to work (Broadcom 4306). And, "things kept crashing".

The "slow" part raised my suspicions about a faulty CD burn. I booted up his laptop. It was slow coming up. I plugged in an eth cable to get an Internet connection. Then I issued "sudo apt-get update" and "sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter" in a Konsole. It failed! That shouldn't happen.

I pulled out my trusty copy of the 32 bit Kubuntu KK release LiveCD. It has been used to successfully to install Karmic before, but it never hurts to take the 3 or 4 minutes to check. I booted it up, it was quick and snappy, and then ran the CD check. It passed so I went immediately to the "Install" option.

30 minutes later I was looking at the KDE 4.3.2 desktop. No crashes. I opened a Konsole and and used apt-get to install b43-fwcutter without a problem. The blue halo light on the wireless button turned on! Then wicd, also without a problem. I signed on to my wireless and unplugged the eth cable.

I added Rog131's PPA for KDE4.3.3 to sources.list and did a dist-upgrade to bring KDE to 4.3.3. It went perfectly.

I installed Stellarium to test the video acceleration. Stellarium gave an FPS of 0.022 !! That's not good. I opened systemsettings clicked the Desktop icon. On its dialogue I checked the "Desktop effects" and reran Stellarium. It now gave between 29 and 55 FPS, depending on what I was doing!

But, no sound. I opened KMixer and ran the configuration to add all the channels it could see. I made some volume adjustments and changed the LFE setting to "mixer", then used the Multimedia dialog to play some sounds. Beautiful sound came out!

Then, on to Medibuntu to pick from its delights.

Perfect install, running perfectly. The difference? A good md5sum on the ISO and a GOOD BURN for the LiveCD.

[dibl]

Re: Kubuntu 9.10 review

The difference? A good md5sum on the ISO and a GOOD BURN for the LiveCD.

Amazing, isn't it?

[GreyGeek]

Re: Kubuntu 9.10 review

The difference? A good md5sum on the ISO and a GOOD BURN for the LiveCD.

Amazing, isn't it?

Sure is.

I read postings from folks struggling for DAYS with issues similar to what my close friend had. Spending all that time and generating all that frustration, only to end up posting "Kubuntu stinks" messages, when all they had to do was spend 30 minutes to md5sum check the ISO, do a SLOW burn, and then check the CD before they installed.

I've also found that a verified LiveCD that was burned on another machine with a different cdrom device may not check out on on another machine with a different cdrom device. But, that's old news. On older machines floppies and CDs burned on one machine occasionally were unreadable on other machines, especially if the newer machines had optical cdroms.

[MAOexWimdows]

Re: Kubuntu 9.10 review

I upgraded to Karmic a few days ago and since then I have had no sound at all. Was fine under jaunty. I understand this has been a common problem but I can't find a definitive solution. I tried running KMix as GreyGeek says in an earlier reply to this post but it won't run, the speaker with green sound lines jumps up and down next to the cursor for a while, the KMix bar appears on the lower panel for a few second and then disappears.

I got sound on Jaunty after following a post which said that they got sound after finding that the PCM volume was turned right down (kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=3106344.0) and sure enough that was the case with me. But now there is no PCM option from Mixer from the volume icon in the system tray.

Is there something I'm missing?

[chipbennett]

Re: Kubuntu 9.10 review

FTA:

Pro's

• Uses the KDE desktop which would be good for those who are fans.
  Based on the popular Ubuntu core.

Con's

• Poor presentation on the desktop with windows overlapping one another.
  Poor software management application, not user friendly.
  No Firefox! This installation comes with Konqueror as the default browser which we think was a bad decision.
  Crashed during installation which doesn't bode well.
  Poor presentation of the installer.

Overall, we wouldn't recommend this release. Personally, we don't feel it's ready for prime time.

And also:

We've always liked KDE but this new menu seems counter-intuitive. It's hard to get past the slowness of the menus and the fact that you often need to search for an application which defeats the purpose of a menu in our opinion. The classic menu is better but this could be good if organized in a more logical manner.

And again:

Hm, is it me or is there simply nothing available for software? (For the record, I am aware that you can obviously search for software but similar to Ubuntu, showing some apps and categories would be helpful instead of presenting nothing.) This is what we were greeted with at first startup. Not exactly the best approach for new users. It would also make more sense to get rid of the KDE names and revert to something a bit more sensible for new users.. calling something kpackagekit just adds confusion when it could just as easily be called Software Management or something similar.

It also needs a lot of work to be more user friendly.. seeing nothing available is not a good first impression and there's no obvious help available either since the menu is greyed out.

And bear in mind the disclaimer:

these reviews are written for those who are new to linux and are the comments and suggestions within are geared this way as well.

Wow.

This "review" is just so wrong, in so many ways:

1) A back-handed compliment to KDE in the list of "pro's". Yet I contend that KDE is *far* better than GNOME for a new user transitioning from Windows, because the UI is *far* more recognizable, and the various usability assumptions much more closely resemble Windows.

2) The reviewer had the installer crash, and didn't immediately think to check the burn? I'm only a two-year Linux user, and even I had that as my first thought when I read the review.

3) As others have said, I *never* saw overlapping plasmoids on the desktop. The reviewer's experience is both the exception, and also is based on the LiveCD, and not an actual install.

4) The review lists "no Firefox" as a con, without pointing out that the Kubuntu devs provided a "Firefox Installer" app that sits in the menu where one would expect to find Firefox. How much more simple can it be? Further, he declares that Firefox should be the default browser (with which I happen to agree), but he doesn't explain that the decision rests on the ever-more-constraining Canonical requirement that the install must fit on a single CD. With only 700MB, something has to give. The Firefox Installer is a good compromise (for the time being).

5) Crashed during installation? Oh, it was a VM? Oh, and you didn't verify the integrity of the burn? Yeah, it *must* be Kubuntu's fault...

6) Poor installer presentation? Really?!? Oh, you mean *only* during the actual install, while displaying the progress - since you went into rather great detail regarding the configuration/setup part of the installer, and commented about how *good* it looked. As for what is displayed alongside the progress bar during actual installation: who the heck really cares? Who sits and stares at a progress bar for 15 minutes?

7) Not ready for prime time? Based on what?

8) The new KDE menu is "counter-intuitive"? How so? Don't like the new KDE menu? Did you try right-clicking on it, and selecting "classic menu"? No? And you expect us to believe you competent to perform a review and declare Kubuntu 9.10 "not ready for prime time"? Really?

9) KPackageKit: Yeah, it doesn't show anything by default. That was different at first, but now that I'm used to the change, I think it just looks cleaner (and *less* intimidating for a new user). Also, you're concerned that the *name* of a *package manager* will be unintuitive for a new user, but that calling it "Package Manager" (we know, you just *love* GNOME) will be more intuitive? Really? For someone who doesn't have the slightest clue what a "package manager" is, to begin with?

New users will have to learn some new terminology and application names (as do Mac users, though I don't hear many complaints that people just can't figure out what their various programs are). I had to do it. I didn't run away screaming at those strange things called "Synaptic" or "Adept". New Kubuntu 9.10 users won't, either, with KPackageKit.

That said, I did like "Add/Remoe Programs" for when I wanted to do some exploring ("hey, what new games would I like to try?" etc.), but the vast majority of the time, I was looking to install a specific package - for which KPackageKit does just fine.

So, my review of this review:

Pro:

• Actually looked at Kubuntu, and not just Ubuntu
  Lots of pretty screen shots

Con:

• Review based on a GNOME bias
  Review based on a probable bad CD image run only in a VM
  Review focused on relatively unimportant aspects (installer progress-bar display, KPackageKit appearance, Firefox not installed by default, KDE Menu) rather than the more important aspects
  Review fails to recognize the easy (and built-in) "fixes" and configuration changes that address most of the issues identified (Firefox installer, KDE menu, plasmoid configuration).

Overall, "we" don't recommend this review. Personally, "we" don't feel it's ready for prime time.

[chipbennett]

Re: Kubuntu 9.10 review

The difference? A good md5sum on the ISO and a GOOD BURN for the LiveCD.

Amazing, isn't it?

I actually cut out better than half of the potential issues in that scenario, and installed from a LiveUSB. No more need to burn a CD to test or install.
Sure is.

I read postings from folks struggling for DAYS with issues similar to what my close friend had. Spending all that time and generating all that frustration, only to end up posting "Kubuntu stinks" messages, when all they had to do was spend 30 minutes to md5sum check the ISO, do a SLOW burn, and then check the CD before they installed.

I've also found that a verified LiveCD that was burned on another machine with a different cdrom device may not check out on on another machine with a different cdrom device. But, that's old news. On older machines floppies and CDs burned on one machine occasionally were unreadable on other machines, especially if the newer machines had optical cdroms.

[monte48lowes]

Re: Kubuntu 9.10 review

In his defense... the website is titles "Linux Critic". There's a search bar on the dang menu that makes finding things so easy...

Mike