Just installed Kubuntu Lucid Lynx

[Eric KDE]

Extremely satisfied with the look and feel of KDE 4.4. I really like Dolphin over anything else. I love the widget implementation, i really enjoy finding and applying new widgets such as the weather widget just to name one. I'm a noob and just got exposed to Linux from my brother. Real glad i found this new side of the computer world. Overall, i believe the KDE and KUBUNTU team have done an outstanding job, but I can't really express how satisfied i am with everything KDE. Keep it up, you have made me a lifelong KDE Person, Thanks.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Just installed Kubuntu Lucid Lynx

Welcome aboard!

Only a few of posters here actually "work" on KDE or Kubuntu. Most of us are satisfied users like you are. I second all your comments!

[Eric KDE]

Re: Just installed Kubuntu Lucid Lynx

I searched through the forums here and couldn't find certain information on the KDE website and the KUBUNTU website. Are they separate? Is Kubuntu the same team as the people who make KDE? if so why the separate websites and forums. I figure since i use Kubuntu i'll come here for help. Not of 'real' importance. Thanks again.

[kyonides]

Re: Just installed Kubuntu Lucid Lynx

They're separate teams actually. KDE just deliver a GUI, now they prefer to call it a framework, Kubuntu is a team that binds it to GNU/Linux and an X server in an Ubuntu fashion. Kubuntu devs weren't always part of Canonical dev teams, they first started on their own and later got invited by Canonical after they found it a interesting project to invest in.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Just installed Kubuntu Lucid Lynx

KDE is just a Desktop Environment (DE). It's home page is here: http://www.kde.org/
GNOME is just a DE, too. The GNOME home page is here: http://www.gnome.org/

There is another application, a "video driver" which is responsible for creating a video server on which the DEs can run. The project which writes it is Xorg. Xorg creates an "xserver" which accepts input from the DE and "serves" the video chip output to the DE.

Sometimes KDE and GNOME are referred to as "X Windows" or "xwindows". Some distros let Xorg create a configuration file, /etc/X11/xorg.conf, which controls the xserver, but Kubuntu and GNOME do not. With Kubuntu and Ubuntu video chips are usually configured automatically (or the config file is stored as a binary file somewhere within the root file system-? I really don't keep track anymore because I find myself letting KDE do its thing and I do mine) during bootup and no xorg.conf file is created that the user can edit to change the video configuration. Systemsettings has a "Display" page that allows changing screen resolutions. The lack of a user editable xorg.conf file has caused some problems with some older or obscure video chips when the video configuration routines used at boot up fail to recognize or properly configure the video chip, preventing the running of a DE or other user usable interface. All that is left for the user in that circumstance is the console (not Konsole, which is a KDE GUI console interface).

KDE and GNOME are the most advanced and up to date DEs, probably because they are the most popular, have more users, and there are more developers working on them.

Like you, I love KDE4 because of its power, beauty and speed. It's no wonder that Microsoft lifted many of its eye pleasing features and put them into VISTA. Dolphin is my favorite file manager. While running as root I sometimes use "mc" (Midnight Commander), a console based file manager that is as fast a lightening. But, as Dolphin has grown in features, power and speed I find myself using mc less and less.

There is a web page here which lists most of the Windows Managers. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Some are designed to meet some particular need, like a small memory footprint so it will work on older laptops and machines that have slow CPUs and 256MB or less of RAM, or to work on mini computers, etc. I had a lot of fun 10-12 years ago, when I first started using Linux, trying out different xwindows. When KDE 1.0 beta was released in the fall of 1998 I installed SuSE 5.3 because it

Another, and a principal part of a distro (an abbreviation for "distribution"), is the Linux Kernel. It is fairly well explained here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel and its home page is here: http://www.kernel.org/.

But, the Linux kernel and an xwindow combined does NOT make up an entire distro. A Linux distro would be impossible to make if it were not for the Free Software Foundation (FSF) GNU (Generally Not Unix) C Library and associated utilities. The DE talks to libc (/lib/libc.so.6), also called the libc6 library. Libc talks to the kernel, which talks to the hardware. Libc contains all of the system functions that most (if not all) programs need to run on Linux. Now you know why Richard Stallmen, the creator of the GPL public license and the initial GNU utilities, insists on referring to Linux as "GNU Linux". IMO, he has a point. Without libc AND the GPL we wouldn't have any Linux distros or the Linux kernel itself, as FOSS. (Free Open Source Software).

In the 12 years I've used Linux the things I come to value the most are its security, speed. stability, the wide range of free world class software available to it, and its freedom from DRM and the mountain of licenses fees that greedy folks like to pile on because of artificial program scarcity created by "IP" they bought with bribes to Congress and the Judicial system (ever hear of "Trips for Judges"?), which buried the US Patent Office.

[Eric KDE]

Re: Just installed Kubuntu Lucid Lynx

Thanks for the info guys. Everything i can learn about KDE makes me respect it even more.

[askrieger]

Re: Just installed Kubuntu Lucid Lynx

@GG -- One trivial correction: GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix". Recursive names were excessively popular among computer cognoscenti in the mid 3rd quarter of the previous century, (especially at the "tute", where RMS worked and I drank beer, played cards, and occasionally even studied).

[GreyGeek]

Re: Just installed Kubuntu Lucid Lynx

@GG -- One trivial correction: GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix". Recursive names were excessively popular among computer cognoscenti in the mid 3rd quarter of the previous century, (especially at the "tute", where RMS worked and I drank beer, played cards, and occasionally even studied).

Opps! You are correct! Well, a 70 year old brain is better than no brain at all, but not much ...

You studied at MIT? A friend of mine, Cotton Hance, graduated with his BS when I did, I went on to get my MS in Biochemistry at the same school, he went to MIT and got a PhD in Physical Chemistry. Did you know Cotton? He as at MIT between 1965 - 1970.

[askrieger]

Re: Just installed Kubuntu Lucid Lynx

Unfortunately, I did not know your friend. I got my BS in '62 and my PhD in '67, both in the Physics department. I then worked for what is now the Kavli Center for Astrophysics as a post-doc for one year. But I actually spent a significant fraction of my grad school and post-doc career on a mountain top in Bolivia at the Laboratorio de Fisica Cosmica. My wife, got her PhD in Organic Chemistry in '71, but when I just woke her up to ask, she denied all knowledge of your friend. I'll try again in the morning if she's willing to talk to me, by then.

While I was an undergraduate, I was actually paid (very little) to learn both Fortran and an Algol-like language called MAD (There was a picture of Alfred E. Newman on the cover of the language manual.) so I could do data analysis drudge work as part of my work/study support. I also played "Space War" on the TX-0 which was the precursor of the PDP-1. Among the denizens of my dorm were Les Lamport (LaTex), and Bob Fabry (BSD Unix). Andrew Tanenbaum (who wrote Minix, which inspired Linus Torvalds) was a year behind me, but I believe he was in a different house.

[Eric KDE]

Re: Just installed Kubuntu Lucid Lynx

Even better to be part of Kubuntu, we got the original guys right here!

[GreyGeek]

Re: Just installed Kubuntu Lucid Lynx

Unfortunately, I did not know your friend.

Sorry to hear that. He is a great guy! EXTREMELY smart but very humble. You would like him.

I got my BS in '62 and my PhD in '67, both in the Physics department.

The last time I checked there were only about 200 PhD's in Physics awarded each year. A PhD in Physics at MIT. The air doesn't get much thinner than that!

I then worked for what is now the Kavli Center for Astrophysics as a post-doc for one year. But I actually spent a significant fraction of my grad school and post-doc career on a mountain top in Bolivia at the Laboratorio de Fisica Cosmica. My wife, got her PhD in Organic Chemistry in '71, but when I just woke her up to ask, she denied all knowledge of your friend. I'll try again in the morning if she's willing to talk to me, by then.

I loved Organic Chem. So logical, so natural. What was your wife's thesis on? Mine was on the re-arrangements of 3-Amino-3,4-dihydro-1-hydroxy carbostyril, which was non-toxic and a broad spectrum anti-biotic active at 1 ppm. It was also easy to make. Unfortunately, it wasn't the anti-cancer metabolite we were looking for. Since I was on a Welch Foundation grant my research was in the public domain, so the pharmas learned, after their first contact with me, that they couldn't patent it, which meant they weren't interested in producing it.