What was your path to Kubuntu?

[oshunluvr]

Ok, more info: 1980's - brief stint with an Apple II, switched to PC's, never liked MS Windows, loved OS/2, 1990's - it died, looked for alternative, Mandrake 7-8-9, PCLinuxOS, Kubuntu.

Dabbled with about 10 other distros but none of them stuck. OpenSUSE, Fedora, Sabayon, Arch (for like a minute), etc...

[oshunluvr]

Honestly, Kubuntu is currently the best of many worlds: Debian package management, KDE (I never could stand Gnome and the other DEs weren't cool or functional enough), good community, TONS of packages, close enough to the bleeding edge without getting a fatal wound.

I there were a distro out there that did all the above, I'd consider it.

[jlittle]

Professionally, CP/M, Unix, Vax VMS, back to Unix (mostly HP-UX and IBM AIX), linux in an Agile shop where every developer had to use the exact same set up and the same login, with the Gnome DE, but I found KDE was also installed, and no-one else used it, so it was ok for me to... <hush>change settings! And I was hooked. Looked around for well supported distro with KDE for home, and through a friend found Kubuntu.

Regards, John Little

[GreyGeek]

Was using SuSE from ver 5.3 in the fall of 1998 because it was released with KDE 1.0 Beta. Stayed with it until Novell bought it. Tried Knoppix, Mandrake, LibraNet, PCLinuxOS, and then Mandriva for a year or two. Had problems with 3D and getting Stellarium to display properly. Was working with the xorg guy to get the i815 driver to work properly (Mandriva automatically selected that driver.) Saw a story about Kubuntu switching to KDE 4 with their 9.04 release and tried out the alpha. It chose the i915 driver and Stellarium was well behaved. The Kubuntu 9.04 Alpha was Mandriva release quality. (Mandriva was having financial difficulties). I switched in Feburary of 2009 and stayed every since.

[Rod J]

From the beginning: I first became interested in computers around 1982 with the introduction at work of a Compugraphic EditWriter typesetting machine (I'm originally a typesetter by trade ... a Linotype operator). I was fascinated by the technology at that time, the EditWriter used huge 8 inch single sided floppy discs that stored a whopping 160Kb. When I had saved enough I bought my first PC a TRS80 clone (Dick Smith System 80) using LS-DOS (I think) with two 5.25 floppy drives. Next PC was a Commodore XT compatible running MS-Dos 3.3 and it had a huge 10Mb hard drive! When you think back to those days it seems incredible how small (in memory, permanent storage and CPU performance) those systems were! Then I bought a Celeron 500 PC running Windows 98 and soon after I had a look at Red Hat 6.4 via a CD that came with a book about Linux (still got the book). I dual booted with that for a short while then discovered Mandrake. I dual booted Win98/Mandrake for some time.

My brother thought I was crazy playing around with Linux back then (still does!). I remember live booting Knoppix at that time also (first time I had seen a Debian based distro and I was quite impressed with APT over .rpm). Next PC (still my current main machine a Core2-Duo 1.86Ghz with Windows XP). More recently I discovered Ubuntu 8.04, then 9.04, 10.04 LTS (all clean installs) and dual booting with WinXP. While using 9.04 I started using Linux more than WinXP and by the time I got 10.04 I had decided to switch to Ubuntu as my main os. Then Unity came along and I tried to like it but couldn't ... discovered Kubuntu 11.04 and loved it! KDE has sure improved heaps since the Mandrake days :-).

I'm sticking with Kubuntu 12.04 LTS till the next LTS comes along or I get new hardware. Although I still have WinXP on this PC I very rarely boot into it.

[NickStone]

...When you think back to those days it seems incredible how small (in memory, permanent storage and CPU performance) those systems were!

The important thing is they worked, very very rarely crashed (if they crashed at all)

[NickStone]

...When you think back to those days it seems incredible how small (in memory, permanent storage and CPU performance) those systems were!

The important thing is they worked, very very rarely crashed (if they crashed at all)

[Detonate]

My experience with Linux began in 2006. At that time, I was given a broken computer, I can't remember what. I already had a computer running XP. I determined the broken computer had both a bad hard drive and something was wrong with the motherboard. The computer had been running Win98. I got the hardware repaired but I did not have and OS for it. I can't remember how I heard about Linux, but I decided to give it a try. After all, it was free, what could I lose? So I ordered the CDs of Fedora 4 as I was still on dial-up at the time. I almost abandoned the project being totally mystified by the installation procedure, but I persevered. During the install I chose KDE as my desktop. I got a lot of help from the Fedora forum or I would have given up, but i did get everything up and running. I don't remember when I switched to Kubuntu, but I did it just to try it out. I discovered that I much preferred apt over yum, and that is what caused me to completely switch over. I have played around with many other distros since then, but I always seem to come back to Kubuntu. I left Kubuntu for quite a while and switched to Ubuntu when KDE 4 came. I am finally getting the hang of KDE4, but I still fondly remember Kubuntu 8.04 as one of the greaest distros ever.

[oldos2er]

In a word, Unity. I'd briefly looked at Kubuntu when KDE 4.0 first came out, but it was not really ready for prime time then, in my opinion. When Ubuntu went to Unity as the default desktop, I switched to Kubuntu and have been mostly happy with it. I did take a couple small detours to try Opensuse and Netrunner though.

Edit: Evidently I didn't go back in time far enough. First home PC we owned was a 386SX with, um DOS 2 or 3, dont' really remember. That was 1990. Kept upgrading hardware and software, had a 486 with Win 3.1 around the end of 1993 when I decided there had to be something better than Win 3.1 around. Found OS/2, used it for many years. After a failed attempt to install Slackware around 1996 or so I gave up on Linux until installing Ubuntu in 2007, and I've used Linux exclusively since.

[tek_heretik]

@Teunis...I get a kick out of your profile pic, I'm never sure if it's your av or one of the tiny red ants this apartment building is plagued with crawling on my monitor screen, lol.

[Simon]

I was raised in a "Windows" house, meaning that my father played a pivotal role in selecting the OS. I recall Windows 95/98 and then we jumped directly into XP as soon as it came out. I never cared for Vista and at the time I was into other things. By the time I started college, I began looking at Linux for special projects and needed a cheap effective OS. I dual booted XP/Kubuntu for almost 2 years before I completely dropped the XP. Mainly my XP took a dump one day and I lost data, then I couldn't get the XP to register something went wrong with my OEM key. Enough was enough so I saved as much as I could using Linux Kubuntu CD and went with the full install instead of the dual boot.

Everyone kept saying that Linux is something for geeks with neck beards. I might be a geek, I am no programmer. I am a medical college intern majoring in genetics. When I tell all my friends at college and the hospital they think I am some computer guru. But far from it, I have told them it is less painless to run any Linux distro over Windows any day of the week.

[charles052]

I used to be a power user. My computers worked like dogs and Windows was not up for the challenge. Tired of constantly having to reinstall and fixing Winblows, I decided to try Linux. Went with Ubuntu for a while, starting at 7.10. I liked it well enough, but it wasn't as functional as windows (or at least I didn't think it was, I was still a newb and didn't know all the programs Linux had available).

I tried a few other distros before finally settling with Kubuntu. Don't remember what gave me the urge to try it out, but I love it. It just works! Yeah, I have to do a little more than Windows to get some things the way I want them, but when it's done, it's usually done and I never have to worry about it again. The only exception is flash. I have to reinstall it manually after each update, but that's no biggie.

The last thing on my bug list is finding a way to convert .264 and matroska (mkv) video files to dvd without hassle. So far, I get nothing but disaster from screwy aspect ratios, choppy playback (leading to freeze ups), to unsynchronized audio. I'm using avidemux and it seems to do okay, but audio sync is the biggest issue with it.

Oh, and I'm still a Windows user. My laptop runs 7, but I only use it when I'm on the road. When I'm home, it's usually sitting collecting dust.

[MoonRise]

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

Well said!

[tek_heretik]

The last thing on my bug list is finding a way to convert .264 and matroska (mkv) video files to dvd without hassle. So far, I get nothing but disaster from screwy aspect ratios, choppy playback (leading to freeze ups), to unsynchronized audio. I'm using avidemux and it seems to do okay, but audio sync is the biggest issue with it.

DVDStyler, great program, but if you still have an older computer, shut the screensaver OFF and do not do anything with the computer while it's processing, I found on older computers (single core anything) the quality suffers if you disturb the process. I changed the settings defaults to 16:9/720p, NTSC (my region) 720x480, plays great on my home (livingroom DVD player). I also have DVDStyler set to just create ISO and no preview, you can preview the ISO with VLC before you burn. Make sure you have HDD/SSD room for the temp file and room to write the finished ISO (8-10GB total-ish), then burn the ISO to optical disk using K3b. If I can make perfect DVDs everytime, so can you.

[charles052]

DVDStyler, great program, but if you still have an older computer, shut the screensaver OFF and do not do anything with the computer while it's processing, I found on older computers (single core anything) the quality suffers if you disturb the process. I changed the settings defaults to 16:9/720p, NTSC (my region) 720x480, plays great on my home (livingroom DVD player). I also have DVDStyler set to just create ISO and no preview, you can preview the ISO with VLC before you burn. Make sure you have HDD/SSD room for the temp file and room to write the finished ISO (8-10GB total-ish), then burn the ISO to optical disk using K3b. If I can make perfect DVDs everytime, so can you.

Hmm... I was using Devede. It works terrific on every other file and the windows version works great on .264. MKVs are a pain on either of them.

I'm installing dvdstyler now, will let you know how it turns out.