Be Wily and Enjoy the Progress of Kubuntu 15.10

[K-Project]

Long time since I posted, hi all.

I think next week when I'm off work, I'm going to install this gorgeous OS as my main system. Been playing with the 15.10 daily today Live, and have to say I'm massively enjoying the power of KDE again. I was going to install 15.04 when it was released, but ended up talking myself out of it after reading some comments here. But I think I'm going to jump head first this time, and early too. It's just playing so well at the moment I can't see a reason not to, and what with all this crazy Windows talk recently, it could be the perfect antidote. What have your experiences been at this stage with 15.10? Please post up.

[NoWorries]

So pleased to hear that you are, like me, enjoying the progress with Wily. I have also been toying with the idea of when to replace my Utopic system with Wily. I will probably wait for Beta 1 or 2.

My main "Gripes" with Wily are:

1. I have a HP printer and there have recently been many updates to the drivers. But every time I boot. I get the message that says
2. Limited number of Widgets. My favourites that I miss are Luna and Network Monitor. There is currently a Network Monitor but its current implementation "hogs" CPU resources.
3. The Analogue Clock does not provide the addition of Multiple time zones. This is very useful when communicating overseas - I guess I am lazy and don't want to do the mental calculations.
4. It is not possible to install Yawp. For the moment I use the Yahoo weather applet, which, btw, does not show the correct time for the weather in other places.
5. The Screen Saver is not available. I have also found a way around this which works, but the proper approach in System Settings would be preferable. This is a low priority "Gripe".

I hope that some of these are fixed soon. Otherwise I might have to learn to live with them and go for it.

I look forward to hearing from your experiences with Wily when you install it.

[K-Project]

So pleased to hear that you are, like me, enjoying the progress with Wily. I have also been toying with the idea of when to replace my Utopic system with Wily. I will probably wait for Beta 1 or 2.

My main "Gripes" with Wily are:

1. I have a HP printer and there have recently been many updates to the drivers. But every time I boot. I get the message that says [ATTACH=CONFIG]6234[/ATTACH]
2. Limited number of Widgets. My favourites that I miss are Luna and Network Monitor. There is currently a Network Monitor but its current implementation "hogs" CPU resources.
3. The Analogue Clock does not provide the addition of Multiple time zones. This is very useful when communicating overseas - I guess I am lazy and don't want to do the mental calculations.
4. It is not possible to install Yawp. For the moment I use the Yahoo weather applet, which, btw, does not show the correct time for the weather in other places.
5. The Screen Saver is not available. I have also found a way around this which works, but the proper approach in System Settings would be preferable. This is a low priority "Gripe".

I hope that some of these are fixed soon. Otherwise I might have to learn to live with them and go for it.

I look forward to hearing from your experiences with Wily when you install it.

Not tried my ancient HP 8050, so thanks for the heads up here. I'll try it today. Your other issues, yes I cannot disagree these are problems but they wouldn't put me off installing 15.10 I don't think. I do also miss the plethora of widgets too and expected to see many more at this point but it's not to be just yet. I was a bit disappointed at having to manually install dependencies to get the like of Yahoo! Weather going too, so I hope they sort that out though.

I suppose the thing I've really missed more than anything is KWin. The incredible array of not just pretty but useful desktop transitions and effects is dazzling. I'm using AMD with free drivers and intend to stay that way, and performance here is amazing. I have no need to install the non-free binary. One quick question though - would you think I would need to install Oibaf PPA here as I currently do, or is mesa more up to date on 15.10? I like the PPA but it can be a pain updating so frequently so I was hoping to avoid it on any new install. Thanks.

[NoWorries]

Sorry to say that I have not used the Oibaf PPA. I do have a system that I am currently using to test Wily and it has a Radeon HD 6310 card and for this I used fglrx-amdcccle-updates. I did select this from the list suggested by the system after the installation. I hope that when you install Wily that you do not get a black screen which in my case was caused by the wrong video driver being used and I had to get into the recovery option to fix it.

[K-Project]

Had a quick check of

glxinfo | grep "OpenGL version"

and I'm quite happy that it will be new enough once Wily final hits the servers. I would have used the proprietary blob but it proved such a headache on previous installs on any Linux that I don't bother anymore. Couple that with the fact that I'm not a massive PC gamer and only have a few Steam titles that run brilliantly with the open drivers, there's just no point chasing the non free driver any further.

I may wait like you a bit longer for the beta release before installing. I'm not sure yet. I'll see how bored I get when I'm off work next week, But Plasma 5 is so amazing, other desktops pale in comparison at the moment for me. I'm currently running Mint Cinnamon 17.2 which I have done for some time, and while it is indeed really lovely I cannot deny the draw of Plasma 5 any more!

[NoWorries]

Had a quick check of

glxinfo | grep "OpenGL version"

and I'm quite happy that it will be new enough once Wily final hits the servers.

I have never used this command. When I entered the glxinfo command on my Wily system, I had to install mesa-utils. When I did this it appears to show the installed OpenGL version.

With my system, when I had trouble with the video driver, I issued the command

sudo lshw -C display

and this shows the display hardware. From this, I used Neon, which is the package I install first after a new system installation, to find the drivers that will work with this hardware.

One action that I also have to do after a new installation, as well as installing neon is to Configure Software Source. The first is to get a local and fast source for downloading packages. Next is to check that the Other Software source of Canonical Partners is selected. After doing this I can do all the updates in a more timely manner.

[NoWorries]

For some time now I have been finding that when I do a sudo apt-get update that it takes a long time and I tend to go and do something else while it is slowly downloading all the new packages that can be installed.

In terms of time, I find that it takes over 20 minutes to finish the update, ie

Fetched 21.3 MB in 21min 2s (16.9 kB/s)

I am on wireless connection which is rated by the Network Manager as 65 MBit/s. The connection to the outside world is via optical fibre and the plan that I am on is 25 MBit/s download and 5 MBit/s upload.

Does anyone know of a site that gives a better rate than what I am getting. My system mirrors though to ubuntu in this way

http://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/ubuntu/ubuntu/ wily/main

.

Either I am snookered when it comes to updates or is there some way to get a faster response.

[claydoh]

Try switching to a different server, or even the main ubuntu server, you do this in Muon's Settings >> Configure Software Sources . There is also an option to have it find the fastest (at the time) server for you.

[NoWorries]

Try switching to a different server, or even the main ubuntu server, you do this in Muon's Settings >> Configure Software Sources . There is also an option to have it find the fastest (at the time) server for you.

Thanks for your reply. The one I have is the fastest one that Muon gave me to use when I used Configure Software Sources.

I am wondering if you experience a similarly slow response as I do. For Vivid, I measure the update process taking 11s using wireless.

[claydoh]

Thanks for your reply. The one I have is the fastest one that Muon gave me to use when I used Configure Software Sources.

I am wondering if you experience a similarly slow response as I do. For Vivid, I measure the update process taking 11s using wireless.

I do not have an overall problem with speed, though like any server, it can be slow sometimes.

I find that using the tool to find the best server does work, but the individual server selected can go from great to terrible on a day to day basis, so I would have to constantly use the tool to find another one. I just keep it to the main server for my country (US ) as set during the install. You might try going back to that, or even to the overall Main ubuntu server.


I also find that the ppa servers, which are not spread out all over the world like the standard repos are, can often be terribly slow sometimes, so if you are using any, that could be a slow point.

[NoWorries]

Today there were Network Manager updates and the speed increased. Now I get the following result

Fetched 21.3 MB in 5min 13s (67.9 kB/s)

which is better than 21minutes.

I have been using the wireless modem on this computer for all the above results. So I decided to use a TP-Link modem that has a USB connection. When I use this modem I get the following speed improvement

Fetched 21.3 MB in 26s (816 kB/s)

This is definitely approaching the speed of light!!!!

It now looks like the combination of the Network Manager updates and using the external modem solved the problem. I will do a few more checks tomorrow to confirm these results before I decide what WiFi modem to stop being connected.

Thanks claydoh for giving me the motivation to find a solution to this problem that has been plaguing me for some time now.

[xennex81]

I am so happy not to be using linux at this point, that I'm almost about to start using linux again. I guess Linux is just a myth and my happiness is unwarranted.

Currently just orchestrating the Events of a debian VPS.

[NoWorries]

I have reason to celebrate the progress of Wily. Being Monday morning in Australia and Sunday evening in the USA, I just decided to see if there were any updates and to my surprise there was a truckload of them. I am not sure if this was done on Sunday, but the updates included Plasma updates. To keep tabs on progress, I record the KinfoCenter screen shot. On the 23 July, it showed

After this mornings updates, 17th August, a comparison with the July one shows the progress.


With the Plasma update, I get the impression that it is slightly faster. My main measure of performance is the task bar which is now written correctly on startup. Before, the System Tray would firstly be written on the left side and then migrate to the right side soon after.

My HPLIP Status still does not find any System Tray.

Currently, sddm seems to be the main application that is using a large percentage of resources on this low powered PC. That is 69% for:

/usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/sddm/:0 -nolisten tcp -background none -noreset vt7

[ronw]

It's trivial, but I'm glad to see a readable way to display the date and time in the panel.

[gnomek]

Today I tested Wily and I noticed:

1. In system settings → Password and user account → Change password option shows error: "the internal program "kdepasswd" could not be found." It needs to be installed manually. I guess it should be installed by default as dependency.

2. Muon package manager is not installed by default. Hmmm, I can install it myself, no problem, but I think it would be better if it was available in default set of programs that come with installation. More advanced users need it anyway.

3. I noticed that there is a trend to make Kubuntu simple by replacing old good full-featured apps with simple one, for example compare kuser with new Plasma 5 user manager options or lightdm with kdm - lightdm can't autologin after logout (only after system restart). But it can become not simple but simplistic.

4. qtcurve is not installable - very bad, I hope it just wasn't packed yet for Wily and not abandoned. In my opinion qcture gives a lot more than breeze (at least so far).