Xubuntu, come and talk bad about it.

[vw72]

A couple of practical considerations for Kubuntu vs Xubuntu would be that KDE has a lot more developers working for it and some of them are paid. KDE has in place a desktop strategy, smal screen strategy and is releasing a tablet strategy, all based on the core KDE.

While people have fled from Gnome 3 to Xfce, that will most likely be temporary. Ultimately Unity and Gnome-shell will mature and get the kinks out. Both are poised for tablet market and Unity for other devices as well.

I really like Xfce, I used to be a developer for a distro that was only Xfce based. However, in the end, Xfce has a limited development staff and will find it difficult to move into new devices (they are struggling to change to Gtk3, let alone an entirely different interface for, say tablets).

If your goal is to have a more traditional desktop interface, Xfce (and Xubuntu) can provide that. However, KDE (and Kubuntu) can be configured to provide that, too and you would have all of the advantages of the underlying KDE architecture for the future.

[Jonas]

the machine i use the most is not that old by any means, its a laptop with an i5 with 4 gigs of ram. while xubuntu may be good for older machines i aboslutely love it on my newer ones. as for trashing xubuntu, not sure if you read the first post but i am looking for reasons to boot up into kubuntu over xubuntu at this point BECAUSE i am liking it so much, which is why i want to know what others prefer about kubuntu over xubuntu as this is the ditribution showdown section. i have seen some pretty good responses so far and i hope that no one thinks i am here to bash kubuntu or xubuntu. i am not.

kubuntu will always have that special place with me as a few years back i loaded it on 3 different machines two of them laptops, and all 3 ran perfectly with fresh kubuntu installs after updating via an ethernet cable(im sure lots of you remember how much of a head ache laptop hardware was in any distro including windows and in some cases still is). it seemed like a real life miracle when every time i put it on a system and there were NO hangups, and then it did it again, and again* while other distros were not finding my hardware and involving lots of google searches. they were just fustrating and didnt seem as user friendly/inuitive including ubuntu, xubuntu, windows and many other operating systems at that time. For that i will always maintain and update a kubuntu partition on any machine i use.

* I know that this is not the case with everyone and i saw many a forum post from fustrated users, lucky for me tho that i had better luck

You got me curious - I love the functionality of KDE/Kubuntu but it is a resource hog in comparison. I'm still looking around for some distro that have what I need in KDE/Kubuntu yet use less resources. Graphical applications do tend to be very demanding. I use Blender and with that come some image editing (bump maps etc) so it's crucial to be able to run several programs at once. Usual set up is Blender(main work), GIMP/Krita(pre/post processing) and web browser Firefox (tutorials/input/feedback) each on different desktops.

I've started to rely on Desktop wall with desktop corner actions to switch between them so some effects are needed. Question is if Xfce with compis(?) would be a "slimmer" choice then KDE native effects?

I'm not running on old hardware sign below (12 GB ram), just need to trim the system - I believe I could do other tweaks and configs to enhance performance, but not sure which and haven't taken the time to really dig in to it. One thing mentioned and from own experience is to ditch FF and switch to Rekonq for example.

b.r

Jonas

PS: I hate the stuttering pen over the canvas - totally ruins the fun of playing with GIMP or other applications.

[K-Project]

You got me curious - I love the functionality of KDE/Kubuntu but it is a resource hog in comparison...

I don't think that's necessarily true nowadays. I think perhaps if you're using the 64 bit edition then it can be demanding, but I stuck the 32 bit Kubuntu on the missus' laptop yesterday and was amazed by how little it was using. She only has 1Gb RAM, but the system was flying and the monitor was backing that up. I was massively impressed, and to me for what you get from KDE, it was a no-brainer; time to move away from xfce.

Linux users can't have it all ways. You can't have a feature rich environment that doesn't touch the system. I have come to realise this from prolonged distro-hopping. There's not getting away from it, to me any DE is a compromise one way or another.

[vw72]

Jonas,

I think that the moment you add compiz as the window manager in Xfce, any real resource savings go out the window. Compiz is the windows manager for Ubuntu and Unity and although not the same as Xfce, Ubuntu with Unity uses quite a bit more resources than Kubuntu/KDE.

There are some things you can do to minimize resources even further by turning off 3d effects and the like, if it is really a problem. If you have 12GB of RAM, however and you are experience performance issues, then something else is wrong.

[erigais]

I don't think that's necessarily true nowadays. I think perhaps if you're using the 64 bit edition then it can be demanding, but I stuck the 32 bit Kubuntu on the missus' laptop yesterday and was amazed by how little it was using. She only has 1Gb RAM, but the system was flying and the monitor was backing that up. I was massively impressed, and to me for what you get from KDE, it was a no-brainer; time to move away from xfce.

Linux users can't have it all ways. You can't have a feature rich environment that doesn't touch the system. I have come to realise this from prolonged distro-hopping. There's not getting away from it, to me any DE is a compromise one way or another.

I am using the 64 bit edition of kubuntu. And i agree with what you say about you cant have it both ways. With a great UI comes the resources, im glad the UI in kubuntu is so customizable, unlike windows where its resource demanding, annoying, and unchangable for the most part, especially on vista and 7. Ive seen kubuntu on systems worse than 1gb laptops. My father once installed it on one of those 200$ ubuntu pc's from walmart. it didnt run great but it ran and it did what he needed. i believe those run 512 mb of ram.

PS: I hate the stuttering pen over the canvas - totally ruins the fun of playing with GIMP or other applications.

I have yet to come across stuttering pen in xubuntu! switching between workspaces isnt as fun with out compiz but i dont really do it that often anyways, most times i only have one workspace with gimp/krita open and the other one with my web browser and skype.

[Jonas]

I don't think that's necessarily true nowadays. I think perhaps if you're using the 64 bit edition then it can be demanding, but I stuck the 32 bit Kubuntu on the missus' laptop yesterday and was amazed by how little it was using. She only has 1Gb RAM, but the system was flying and the monitor was backing that up. I was massively impressed, and to me for what you get from KDE, it was a no-brainer; time to move away from xfce.

Linux users can't have it all ways. You can't have a feature rich environment that doesn't touch the system. I have come to realise this from prolonged distro-hopping. There's not getting away from it, to me any DE is a compromise one way or another.

It's 64 bit. I agree you can't have it all. Maybe that's why I have kept Kubuntu for so long

Jonas,

I think that the moment you add compiz as the window manager in Xfce, any real resource savings go out the window. Compiz is the windows manager for Ubuntu and Unity and although not the same as Xfce, Ubuntu with Unity uses quite a bit more resources than Kubuntu/KDE.

There are some things you can do to minimize resources even further by turning off 3d effects and the like, if it is really a problem. If you have 12GB of RAM, however and you are experience performance issues, then something else is wrong.

From when I tested compis some time ago it felt more demanding then todays KDE setup. I don't have any real issues, some minor annoyances that I would like to be without but not to bad that I can't live with it. It's just that very little, can do very much, regarding time. (last test of a animation I did was 20 sec long and took 5 h to render on low settings - I wouldn't mind cut that to 4 hours if I could - or just have more patience )

I have yet to come across stuttering pen in xubuntu! switching between workspaces isnt as fun with out compiz but i dont really do it that often anyways, most times i only have one workspace with gimp/krita open and the other one with my web browser and skype.

I wish that was the case with working in 3D, need to work with several applications at once at times ... 4 workspaces is starting to feel small ... oh and I have a dual-monitor set up so it's actually 8 workspaces :S
When I get the spare time I'll dual boot with Xubuntu instead of Debian.

b.r

Jonas

[Guest]

Xubuntu could be one of the best environments available. There is only one word that can describe how hard and often xubuntu crashes, JOKE! Yes the crashes are so often, many times each day, and so hard (no minimize/exit buttons, no icons, some times keyboard is dead, often the only option left is the reset button) that the whole thing looks like a joke!

You keep saying... these xubuntu fellows must be kidding!!?? I have installed xubuntu on a different machine and it crashed even harder!

I just replaced uninstalled xfce and install lubuntu-desktop and in a few minutes all was working GREAT! I used xubuntu for months, every day and it never never stopped crashing! I don't know about kubuntu, hope to try it soon! As for lxde/lubuntu never faced a single problem/crash till now, have installed lxde in many machines.

[erigais]

Xubuntu could be one of the best environments available. There is only one word that can describe how hard and often xubuntu crashes, JOKE! Yes the crashes are so often, many times each day, and so hard (no minimize/exit buttons, no icons, some times keyboard is dead, often the only option left is the reset button) that the whole thing looks like a joke!

You keep saying... these xubuntu fellows must be kidding!!?? I have installed xubuntu on a different machine and it crashed even harder!

I just replaced uninstalled xfce and install lubuntu-desktop and in a few minutes all was working GREAT! I used xubuntu for months, every day and it never never stopped crashing! I don't know about kubuntu, hope to try it soon! As for lxde/lubuntu never faced a single problem/crash till now, have installed lxde in many machines.

!!!!
quite scary to think about. i guess i am lucky enough that i have never had it crash on my current set up(a sony vaio e-series laptop). kubuntu did crash once but i was doing something pretty weird at the time, it was quite some time ago so i dont remember exactly what it was but i do remember i was playing with my video drivers in a way i really wasnt supposed to. i have been pretty lucky since replacing my HD a while back(long story short my 3 year old nephew was over, laptop was on, met the floor, hd dead.) no major hick ups with any of my installed os's except an annoying ghost window problem in win 7.

[Guest]

I am surprised to hear that there is a Xubuntu setup without major crashes!? As for kubuntu I have already it installed alongside lubuntu (apt-get install kubuntu-desktop), but have not experimented too much with it, anyway.. it looks soooo different, I liked the the look of kubuntu-openbox so much though (I know I am old school, I some times use open box or icewm).

If I was to make a fresh install on a new/good hardware, I would consider kubuntu for a user asking a modern-looking OS. The first thing I liked while exploring kubntu was to see the dolphin file manager, hadn't used it before, so I installed it under lubuntu too. I can say that the first impression I had after installing/using kubuntu was very positive.

One (among many other) thing I don't like about windows is that I always listen the hard drive working and making noise all the time, while under ext4 it is so quiet! During the years using win I have experienced some serious ntfs failures, so I would not really trust ntfs for my data.

[ubume2]

Xubuntu is now my workhorse distro. After installing libreoffice and removing abiword, it works just great. Much better than the Unity or Gnome alternatives.

Also I am trying out Kubuntu 12.04 and openSuse KDE.

[Jose Manuel]

Xubuntu was a bad distribution (I remember Xubuntu 9.10, 10.04 and 10.10 that were really awful). But Xubuntu (like Kubuntu) was improved, fortunately, and 11.xx and 12.xx versions are actually quite good. If you do not have a computer that allows them to run KDE decently, I recommend you try Xubuntu or Debian with XFCE. They consume very little and are really fast.- Kubuntu also has improved a lot especially in the versions 11.xx and 12.xx. Best Regards to all.-