No, you shut up -- Drama at 11:00.

[SteveRiley]

Fri 18 Oct -- SABDFL announces name of 14.04, trashes Mir dissenters and has a temper tantrum
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295

Fri 18 Oct -- Aaron Seigo, from KDE, challenges SABDFL to a public debate
https://plus.google.com/107555540696...ts/76Nd9RSTZWp

Sun 20 Oct -- Martin Graesslin, KWin developer and one of the targets, dissects and unpacks several of SABDFL's claims
http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blo...rce-tea-party/

Sun 20 Oct -- Lennart Poettering, PulseAudio and Systemd dude from Red Hat, wonders if he's also a target
https://plus.google.com/115547683951...ts/8yEgHgDP2xa

Fri 1 Nov -- Siego urges people to abandon Ubuntu and Canonical
https://plus.google.com/107555540696...ts/5Zie4hjCBBJ

Fri 1 Nov -- Graesslin summarizes his critics and fires back: "From now on I will act as if Ubuntu doesn't exist any more.... I will reduce my interaction...to the bare minimum I have to do to support Kubuntu as part of my job."
https://plus.google.com/115606635748...ts/KAPGX3pHR2H



Meanwhile, Debian debates whether to switch from SysVinit to Systemd or to Upstart
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux....general/187624

[Simon]

You know I am not a programmer or a politician but these guys (all of them) seem to be both. What horrid creation... but if you hang in as many gaming forums (as I do) you recognize the griefers and trolls for what they are. They look like a lot of those kids that shout on the forum threads. For example;

This game sucks I quit, WoW is tons better and I can PvP with real players not losers like you!

This childish banter sounds a lot like what I read from their blogs. They might as well have been adding troll faces to their pages.

[dibl]

Too bad -- the situation with *buntu has been deteriorating for some time. It was always hard for me to understand Shuttleworth's enthusiasm for the project, in light of his business orientation. Maybe the lack of profitability is getting tiresome for him.

Meanwhile, Debian debates whether to switch from SysVinit to Systemd or to Upstart
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux....general/187624

I have been booting systemd on 6 Debian systems here for about 6 months now. Other than a minor glitch with an acpid upgrade, it has been a trouble-free experience -- I expect Debian 8 will either offer systemd as an option, or make it default.

[GreyGeek]

Too bad -- the situation with *buntu has been deteriorating for some time. It was always hard for me to understand Shuttleworth's enthusiasm for the project, in light of his business orientation. Maybe the lack of profitability is getting tiresome for him.

I suspect you are correct in your suspicions about Shuttleworth's tiredness. Microsoft still has an effective lock on the OEMs desktop despite Win8's failure, and it doesn't look like Unity is making any significant inroads into tablets or smart phones. The world wide economic depression isn't helping things. When he announced that he was dropping Kubuntu and the other step kids, altering the development cycle and building his own GUI desktop, I predicted that the five year plan was significant. I stated that it was Shuttlesworth stating indirectly that he is giving Ubuntu five more years to be successful and if it didn't capture a significant part of the market by 2017 that he would shut Canonical down and abandon Ubuntu. He has three years to go and things are not looking good for his plan, even though things are looking good for Linux in general.

With this in mind I believe it would be wise for System Blue to immediately begin the move to Debian as the base for Kubuntu, and bypass the middleman, Ubuntu. It would be better to do the move in a logical manner over the period of the next year rather than wake up some day to the announcement that Ubuntu has shuttered its site and Canonical has layed off its employees and shut its doors. The move may be inevitable as Ubuntu moves farther and farther away, creating a base which would be more difficult to modify to support KDE than it would be to upgrade the Debian KDE release.

I have been booting systemd on 6 Debian systems here for about 6 months now. Other than a minor glitch with an acpid upgrade, it has been a trouble-free experience -- I expect Debian 8 will either offer systemd as an option, or make it default.

A week ago I made and booted a Debian 7 KDE DVD and ran my laptop for the entire day. It featured KDE 4.8.5, IIRC, and ran very smoothly all day. I seriously considered reformatting my Kubuntu partition and installing it, but decided to wait for a while. I've come to the opinion that it is not IF I switch to Debian, but when.

That said, there is something else that needs to be said as well. Kubuntu is about KDE MORE than it is the underlying Ubuntu base. That means that this forum is more about KDE than it is about the underlying Ubuntu base. In fact, IMO, this forum is essentially a KDE forum. IF the switch to another distro base takes place the name "Kubuntu" would become a misnomer, and "Kdebian" doesn't roll off the tongue as easily.

Personally, I believe it is only a matter of time before Ubuntu & Canonical move to the infinite bit bucket in the sky. Perhaps a discussion on what this forum should renamed to should begin?

[dibl]

A week ago I made and booted a Debian 7 KDE DVD and ran my laptop for the entire day. It featured KDE 4.8.5, IIRC, and ran very smoothly all day.

Of course the current official release of Debian is famous for stability, but that KDE version reflects the other aspect of stability, i.e. aging software. Being somewhat a glutton for punishment, I run the sid branch, which gets me KDE 4.11.2 today, along with the occasional "unexpected event". Actually, with six systems in the house, you know it can't be all that unstable, regardless of the official branch name. ;-)

[richb]

@GreyGeek
Your recommendation makes a lot of sense to me. I would presume a Debian based "Kubuntu" can have the advantage of KDE upgrades to latest version just as Kubuntu does now. It may be premature to switch bases at this point but not too early for initial planning. I wonder what the Kubuntu developers are thinking about all this churn going on?

[GreyGeek]

Of course the current official release of Debian is famous for stability, but that KDE version reflects the other aspect of stability, i.e. aging software. Being somewhat a glutton for punishment, I run the sid branch, which gets me KDE 4.11.2 today, along with the occasional "unexpected event". Actually, with six systems in the house, you know it can't be all that unstable, regardless of the official branch name. ;-)

I had tried Debian several years ago and was familiar with its three tiers of release. At the time I was all about bleeding edge stuff and the fun of bug hunting, etc... But, in my old age, I find that the bugs can out run me and my shooting skills aren't what they used to be. So, I am satisfied with a sedate platform, which is why I am staying with the 12.04 LTS (or Deb 7 KDE if I move there). While I am currently running KDE 4.11.2 on Precise, I found very little difference between 4.8.5 and 11.2, at least in how I use them.

Being that even IF I switched to Debian 7 KDE I'd still be running KDE and problems that arise would most likely be KDE based, this would still be the forum of choice. Calling it "Kubuntu" after Ubuntu has branched into an OS on which it would be too difficult to continue basing Kubuntu on, suggests that both a distro and forum name change is on the horizon.

However, one thing that should never change is the social etiquette of this forum. During the nearly FIVE years (my how time flies) I've been a member of this forum replies like "RTFM" or discussions that debase into personal insults and name calling have never been tolerated, regardless of how "hot" the topic, and "hot" topics were never censored or banned. Also very nice is the fact that users of Windows can get their questions answered here politely as well. It is a forum I never plan to leave, regardless of what happens to Kubuntu, because I will always be using KDE as my desktop. The reason is simple. It is, without a doubt, the best desktop available on a PC today.

[geoaraujo]

I would presume a Debian based "Kubuntu" can have the advantage of KDE upgrades to latest version just as Kubuntu does now.

Like Kwheezy?

[richb]

Like Kwheezy?

Not quite as according to your link it uses KDE 4.8.4. But no doubt it can be upgraded to 4.11.2. I do not know if it is as easy to do as with Kubuntu, which has been a no brainer.

[Simon]

Personally, I believe it is only a matter of time before Ubuntu & Canonical move to the infinite bit bucket in the sky. Perhaps a discussion on what this forum should renamed to should begin?

Come on Kubuntu and Ubuntu and the flavors will be around when the Earth hurls itself into the sun... next week. But in the meantime I vote on calling it "Simon's Awesome Forum of Awesomeness"

Sorry, I couldn't help it. But seriously, just because those trust fund babies pull up roots doesn't mean that Ubuntu is going to take a dirt nap. People will continue to work on something new every day in KDE and Ubuntu because they have grown familiar with the system. Next week some developer will geek up something new for the USB or some one will add a ash tray to the recycler. Life continues...

[GreyGeek]

There is always the possibility that one or more developers would fork Ubuntu and continue its development as it was before Unity, just like some stayed with KDE 3.5.x ("Trinity", which is based on Debian and several other distros. If anyone will switch Kubuntu to a Debian base I suspect that it will Blue-Systems who does it. What would they call it? KDEBlue or BlueKDE? (Certainly not KDEBS) And this forum? BlueKDEforum.net?

[Snowhog]

Whether or not Mark Shuttleworth decides at some point to declare an end to 'Ubuntu', that would not be it's demise. Couldn't be in fact. He doesn't 'own' anything other than the name. The kernel isn't his (that belongs to Linus). The developed software isn't his; it's all open source. Everything, other than the names, registered to Canonical, belong to humanity.

[NickStone]

If your interested in using a debian based distribution using KDE and based upon the testing branch you'll find them here

http://distrowatch.com/search.php?os...&status=Active

[bsniadajewski]

Whether or not Mark Shuttleworth decides at some point to declare an end to 'Ubuntu', that would not be it's demise. Couldn't be in fact. He doesn't 'own' anything other than the name. The kernel isn't his (that belongs to Linus). The developed software isn't his; it's all open source. Everything, other than the names, registered to Canonical, belong to humanity.

This. "Ubuntu" will still be around. Heck, the name might even be kept. (I don't know about whether the names become PD after the hypothetical demise of Canonical or not).

[claydoh]

I have to agree. The community structure surrounding Ubuntu would still stand if there was no Canonical, so it would not be a huge undertaking to keep the distro alive and kicking from that standpoint.