What was your path to Kubuntu?

[Frank616]

Woodsmoke:

A friend contacted me and suggested that I try Kubu and join the forms...

told me to PLAY NICE!!! ....

In all the years that we were together on the Xandros forum, I never found you difficult.

Frank.

[MoonRise]

Hmmmm. Interesting thread. Here? Started in 1980/81? with the C64. Christmas from the parents to not just me but me siblings as well. Majoring in Computer Science I got an 80386SX machine. An ACER at that time beleive it or not! Grew from there. During that whole time I was and am an avid subscriber to PC World. They had an article on Ubuntu. I beleive it was 5.04. Actually liked it and used it to test out my work's new network I had desinged and implemented. Yep, used it to test a Windows network. Perfomred beautifully. Still couldn't really get use to GNome so I happen to stumble upon Kubuntu in version 6.06. Never looked back.

[Buddlespit]

I started with computers with a 286 back in '89 or '90. I was using Windows from 3.0 to when XP was first released. I was in a divorce and my ex took my computer. I had to build yet another computer and found that I couldn't afford another copy of WinXP. I downloaded either Suse or Mandrake, I don't remember which. I tried both Gnome and KDE. KDE was entirely to laggy. Plus, I really, really like evolution. My mother lost her harddrive and a copy of her Win98 install disk, so I installed Mint (2005-ish) on her computer and just threw her into the deep end. I kept a copy of mint running in a vm so I could help her when she had problems. I used to download and install into a vm every distribution of Ubuntu when they came out, starting with 8.04. When Ubuntu went to Unity, I disliked it so much, I started playing around with the other flavors (plus, I sometimes aquired old laptops and needed xubuntu or lubuntu installed). About 2 yrs ago, I installed Kubuntu via Wubi and found that I really liked it. Once I figured out wine to run my mmopg (EVE Online), I backed up my user files to the server and completely wiped windows from my system. No more BSODs. The only blue I see is KDE.

[whatthefunk]

The first time I used Linux was in a youth hostel in Africa in maybe 2008. It was running Ubuntu and I was blown away by the fact that it wasn't a command line. I was one of those Windows users who thought that Linux meant a black screen with a flashing cursor and nothing else. At the time, my only computer was an old Sony Vaio running a Japanese version of Windows XP. I had lost the recovery discs and the thing was essentially useless. It took over 15 min to boot and doing anything on it was a massive pain in the ass. I tried several live CDs but it couldnt handle them so I took the leap and installed Ubuntu. It worked alright, but it was still slow so I installed Lubuntu on it.

I used Lubuntu for a year or two and during that time read quite a lot about Linux and especially the Ubuntu spinoffs. Kubuntu stood out as being both beautiful and functional so when I built my new computer a couple years back, I had Kubuntu in mind. I havent looked anywhere else since.

[woodsmoke]

well thank you Frank! really!

[perspectoff]

I started with Home Automation with X10 controllers and found my way to the Pluto / LinuxMCE project. (To learn the system I rewrote their wiki in its entirety.) LinuxMCE used Kubuntu (Feisty at the time) and that's how I was introduced. KDE had superior apps to Gnome back then, and a fancier and snappier presentation.

I had tried Debian just before that but it was quite monolithic and the Debian documentation wasn't very evolved or easy to read back then, either.

At work, Kubuntu was the only distro that long-time Windows users would adjust to... they would never use Ubuntu or Debian with Gnome UIs. So that clinched it.

At the end of the day, the package management system, dependency consistency, and ability to be interoperable with both GtK-based and KDE-based packages are the sine-qua-non qualities of Kubuntu for which, quite honestly, there have been a lot of hiccups along the way.

A lot of credit has to be given to the handful of Kubuntu developers that kept to the mark -- thank you.

[Achaean]

My personal history is DOS -> Win 3.1 -> Win98 -> XP.
Then I switched to Kubuntu at ~ 2008. (Dual boot at the time).
I didn't knew much at the time, but I wanted to learn Linux or die trying.
I suggested to do so, by some friends from a Sourceforge project.
When KDE4 rolled out, I couldn't handle it, so I switched to Debian stable (Lenny), who had KDE3.
I tried also some other KDE distros (OpenSUSE, Mepis) and also Ubuntu (with Gnome).
Finally I returned here and waiting to see what's going on (after Canonical's controversial decisions about the community and planned Mir disaster).
I hope Kubuntu will continue it's own steps and growth as developers promised.

PS. This community is really outstanding! Skillful, helpful and friendly is a great help for everyone but specially for beginner users.

[life0riley]

My first desktop was a 486 with Windows 3.1. I upgraded that box and installed Windows 95. In 1999 we purchased a Gateway Pentium II with Windows 98 installed. By 2002 the Pentium II PC was getting tired, so we bought a Pentium 4 with Windows XP. I got my first notebook with Windows Vista in 2007.

I started using Linux in April 2009. I had accepted an analyst position in our system support department and needed to become profficient at the UNIX command line, so I started trying out linux distros. I purchased a Pentium III tower from Goodwill for $19 and did a hard drive install of Damn Small Linux. I tried a variety of live CDs, KNOPPIX and Puppy Linux included. My first true Linux desktop was Fedora 10 on a borrowed PC. After that I purchased my current desktop and installed Ubuntu 9.04 LTS. When 9.04 reached its end-of-life I installed Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. During this time I was using VirtualBox to try out a number of distributions. I had Debian gnome, Debian LXDE, DreamLinux Xfce, Xubuntu, openSUSE, and Slackware VMs. I tried Ubuntu 11.04, but Unity drove me nuts, and I couldn't stand Fedora with Gnome 3.

Ubuntu 10.04 was reaching its end-of-life, and it was getting time for me to upgrade my OS. I installed Linux Mint Mate, but wasn't satisfied with it, so I decided to try Kubuntu. I installed Kubuntu 12.04 LTS in January 2013, and my expectations were exceeded. KDE has a lot under the hood. I eventually ran into some issues and had to Google for solutions which lead me to this forum.

[GilGib]

My wife's Chiropractic office was using a CPM based system and wanted to access her computer remotely so I bought a Tandy1000 with a 1200 baud modem. After that I started buiding my own PC's. I really liked OS/2 but when IBM discontined it I went from Dos to OS/2 to Win98 then to WinXP. I was reading an atricle on how Win7 look's like Kutuntu 9.04 (with Screen shots). I had been thinking about install Linux for sometime before and so I installed Kubuntu 9.04 with dual boot with Winxp . I usesd to work for one of the Bell companies and I been using Unix for some time at work. Now I only use Kubuntu.

[richb]

Heathkit H89 and CPM, Zenith Z-100 and ZDOS, Various Dells with various Windows versions. Last Dell about 12 years ago and explored various Linux distros and settled on Xandros. I felt restricted in what I could do with Xandros, so tried Mepis and used it for several years. (I still administer their Forum). Became somewhat disillusioned with the release cycle and installed Kubuntu about a year ago, And here I am.

[Qqmike]

not that this is so important, but just to clarify a detail in my post, #14
http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthr...l=1#post336118

although, since many of you have been there, I know you know ...
"OK, so I'm saying money was a factor, especially as I moved out of the professional work..."
It is not so much that the MS system took a grand now and then, but that it felt like it was so overpriced. Not so much that Kubuntu is free$$ per se, but that MS is so not-free$$ and yet fraught with its own glitches and user stresses. And so on, like that.

[NickStone]

...so tried Mepis and used it for several years. (I still administer their Forum). Became somewhat disillusioned with the release cycle and installed Kubuntu about a year ago, And here I am.

I'd never looked at Mepis before so I searched for their official website (http://www.mepis.org/). It claims to be based upon Debian stable but the "latest" version is using KDE 4.5 and 2.6 kernel. I have Debian 7 (wheezy) which is stable and that has KDE 4.8 and 3.2 kernel.

I'm not surprised you left it.

[oshunluvr]

DOS 3.0 - yada, yada, yada, - Kubuntu!

[richb]

I'd never looked at Mepis before so I searched for their official website (http://www.mepis.org/). It claims to be based upon Debian stable but the "latest" version is using KDE 4.5 and 2.6 kernel. I have Debian 7 (wheezy) which is stable and that has KDE 4.8 and 3.2 kernel.

I'm not surprised you left it.

The developer rolls his own kernels and uses a version of KDE he chooses. It served me well for many years and is a good distro. I just wanted something more up to date.

[Feathers McGraw]

DOS 3.0 - yada, yada, yada, - Kubuntu!

Very succinct!

From what I can tell, many of you found Kubuntu through free live CDs

Let's hope that the free Lubuntu CDs got a few people in Munich to switch to Ubuntu instead of replacing XP with another Windows!
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/06/g...ds-on-xps-deat

Feathers