YouTube reviewers of Kubuntu

[deanr]

I quite like this guy - Chris Were. He waffles a lot but his videos plod along at a really nice gentle pace and he's never too scathing in his approach. Here's a positive review of Kubuntu 18.04:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-J0MeKpvHM

I like the guy (Derek - or DT) from DistroTube too. Have you got a particular reviewer you like/respect or find more insightful for example more than others? Seen some good (not necessarily good as in positive) reviews of Kubuntu recently?

[jglen490]

I don't think I've ever watched a Kubuntu YouTube. I liked it when I first tried it (~2006), and have stayed with it since then. Maybe Kubuntu is it's own reviewer

[woodsmoke]

Deanr

Hi, and thank you very much for posting about the review!

Three things, 2 i liked and one I DETESTED!!

He SAYS that he is a long time user of Kubuntu but he did not REALLY seem "all that familiar" with it.

Likes.
a) He really did show off the "ease of use" and he did concentrate on "eye candy" which is what a lot of people "new" to Linux itself want, but he was not talking to Windblow users he was talking to Linux users, most of which already know about the general look of Kubuntu and KDE in general.
b) He DID NOT...DID NOT...talk about it being "heavy on resources" and actually said that it is not "bloated" so I REALLY praise him for that because AD INFINITUM the talking head reviewers, who don't actually RUN Kubuntu really have to knock Kubuntu as being "bloatware" so that they can "keep their cred" about being critical of AT LEAST ONE distro.

What I did NOT like.

c) He acted as if Kubuntu and Plasma desktop, which he kept repteating over and over, was ...'oh , well, ho hum...Kubuntu is slick and all that but it really is just another Ubuntu which are marvelous and I love them and yada yada"'

He made NO MENTION of activities which is THE big thing for KDE in terms of "workflow" a term he used several times as if install a scanning program by clicking a button is some kind of "workflow".

AAARRRGGGHHHH the ONE BIG THING that really stands out about KDE is the activities!!

He didn't have to explain how to get them working, he could have dismissed that by saying he didn't have time, he could have AT LEAST have folder view and TWO activities and demonstrate how using a mousebutton or a scroll wheel...CTRL-alt-whatever, which he says that "he just loves because he is so exerienced"...no...he said NOTHING about activities OR even widgets and folder view.

So, yeah, it was ok not derogatory but if he has spent just TWO MINUTES more he could have shown activities instead of having to go back and forth because he was not ALL THAT familiar with even the settings..
aarrgghh...

BUT hey THANK YOU for the linky and mention of the review.

woodlikesactiviiiessmoke

[vinnywright]

hears one I check out some times
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmy...sKLtQ/featured

VINNY

[woodsmoke]

Hi Vinny
Thanks for the link! I have not been there for quite a while and they really have snazzed things up!

But...again...NO MENTION of activities!

woodlikesactivitiessmoke

[Don B. Cilly]

Hmm. Interesting theory about why people don't use KDE.
In the sense that, anyone who's not a complete muppet would realise it's vastly superior to Gnome, XFCE... I mean, all of them really, right?
But they are being "duped" into believing that it's "heavy on resources".

Oh well.
On my 5-year-old Celeron, CPU usage looks like this most of the time:



With conky and all ;·)
And RAM usage is hardly ever over 25% of my 8G.
I mean, it uses resources like... my user@host above.
I have 18.04 running just fine on a laptop with a single-core 1.8GHz CPU, Intel "iznogoud" graphics and 4G of RAM.

Maybe because I don't use activities

[deanr]

He made NO MENTION of activities which is THE big thing for KDE in terms of "workflow" a term he used several times as if install a scanning program by clicking a button is some kind of "workflow".

AAARRRGGGHHHH the ONE BIG THING that really stands out about KDE is the activities!!

Hi, woodsmoke - you're obviously a activities user .

There's a big discussion somewhere (possibly on this forum) that I read about how most KDE users do not use activities because they do not know how to use it to maximise their workflow.

I've played around with it and for my particular purposes it's really not that useful. Firstly, my mind can't cope with too many things going on at the same time and secondly, for work purposes, I need everything on the same desktop. I would, however, suggest that one thing that is very much lacking is a kind of tutorial on not just how to set up activities (there are plenty of these) but one which highlights how it can be used to good effect.

[WWDERW]

In the sense that, anyone who's not a complete muppet would realise it's vastly superior to Gnome, XFCE... I mean, all of them really, right?

I'm perhaps odd man out (and being a complete muppet isn't out of the question).

There are some things that are unique to my workflow that I like to have that aren't easy to get under KDE (in some instances, I have been unable to get it working at all). Some of it might be hardware related (although it works fine in Cinnamon), some it could be that I don't know how to fix it. But when it comes to my main production rig, it's gotta be up and going quickly and be stable.

Some of the issues that I have are little ridiculous, but if it works in one DE, why can't it work in another?

I do prefer KDE over the others, but I keep flipping back and forth between KDE and Cinnamon, because there are some things that just work under Cinnamon that don't under KDE (or I haven't found a work around, but again, if one DE doesn't need a workaround and the other does well...). I'm sure hardware plays a big roll in this, but again, it's stable in one environment and not in another.

Again, I prefer KDE, but it's also a love hate relationship, particularly when it comes to my main production rig. That has to be up and running in the least amount of time and be stable. It has it's quirks (which they all do), just which quirks are the least quirksome I reckon.

[Don B. Cilly]

It has it's quirks (which they all do), just which quirks are the least quirksome I reckon.

Well, either it has or it is...
Still, I can't really think of a quirk that I haven't found a solution or a workaround to.
Even the clock hands I managed to fix (with this forum's help. :·)

[WWDERW]

Still, I can't really think of a quirk that I haven't found a solution or a workaround to.

Some I think it's hardware. Kwin is totally unusable on my main office system (works fine on the other 3 computers). It crashed every day and a half. So I have it totally off.

Lacking of some functionality in Dolphin and Ark. Kate and Kwrite as well (not just talking about the inability to elevate privileges out of the box, although that is one). This one isn't hardware related, it's limitations within the software.

Issues with the Cintiq. Having to unplug/plug back in after every reboot. Due to that, start up scripts don't work. Also, I notice that even after boot, apply an xsetwacom script, after 10 minutes it goes back to the default settings as if I had changed the settings. So I'm constantly having to reply my main script several times a day. Due to the issues of the Cintiq that could also explain why I have quirks with using Virtualbox on this rig as well. While some of the juice is figuring out what is wrong, it doesn't go well with trying to get things done efficiently.

Some of these issues can be handled by using different software (not necessarily ones that fit with the rest of KDE though), but having to install and strip out so much, it's either better to go to a DE that has all that functionality to begin with or just go ahead and go with Arch and build everything exactly how "you" want it.

[woodsmoke]

Don B City
You mentioned because maybe you don't use activities.

That may be true, but please let me suggest something.

Many reviewers, years ago, used to say..." well, an activity is "just" another form of a desktop. " thus, putting paid to the activity as a valid function.

I cannot ever remember anyone complaining about the virtual desktops being an energy drain.

So, you may be correct, but I run activities on a really, really, old, 2004 Toshiba laptop and have never had any kind of untoward energy drain.

So, again, you may be correct, dunno.

But, thanks for the coment, it IS something to consider!

woodsmoke

[Don B. Cilly]

Some I think it's hardware.

OK, but, you still realise that KDE is a better DE than the others, and if it weren't for the quirks it would be preferable, therefore you are not a complete muppet, right?

[woodsmoke]

DeanR

I could not agree more!
The setup for Neon has eliminated quite a few of the "backing and forthing" between various parts of the OS.

A good example is that just getting an activity set up a few years ago when I produced my "tweak" of KDE the "Kparadigm Shift "desktop" ' literally required doing some stuff "on the activity " which was done AFTER making the activity in settings etc. and then changing the "window rules" etc. To get an activity setup I spent, as I remember, the article I wrote is buried in the archives somewhere, took a PARAGRAPH of steps. Now it is maybe five steps, depending on what one wants to do.

NOBODY...NOWHERE in the development teams and in their rather "spotty" instruction guides...BECAUSE THEY USE THE CASE STUDY paradigm (that is what MS does)

EVER JUST WROTE DOWN AS A SIMPLE BALD SENTENCE in the FIRST PARAGRAPH...gotta use "case study"... THAT ...

ahem... THE FIRST THING THAT YOU DO IS MAKE A NEW ACTIVITY USING THE "yada yada". AND THEN... you setup the mouse or keyboad functions to navigate between the two activities.

AND THEN...ahem...you add another activity and THEN you set up the mouse or keyboard functions to navigate to the PREVIOUS TWO activities

and then ...ahem...repeat for the fourth ...

NOWHERE it is just BALDLY written that ...that...is what one needs to do...

NO WONDER people flounder around with it.

And again...WHY is that? It is because MS uses the "case study" approach ( it is a lawyer term, for legal "cases" ) so...If Linux is going to "look professional" WE...need to use case study...

And...(THIS IS WHAT IRKS ME THE MOST) "we already know what we are doing anyway".

And a good example is the Plasma Media Center. I mean I literally have SEEN NOBODY review the PMC in terms of using it on a large screen t.v. with a "wave in the air mouse" ... ALL of the reviews are..."well it is not a full featured, even simple media player like Amarok or a client for MPD.

The REASON for that, in my mind is very simple. It was originally intended to be used on a tablet. And that meant that it was supposed to be used full screen at all times or not used at all.

Thus it had big icons, and just three 'buttons' for images, music and video and a controller and that is it.

Just getting the thing to work "not full screen" takes something like eight total clicks and going through three screens to do it.

At the KDE site there used to be a few lines about how people would use it at a party.

Well, I did a couple of posts about it and noticed about a year later that there was some small expansion of the use case for a large screen t.v. but still it is just kind of DISMISSED...

Trying to use Amarok on a wide screen t.v. at full screen setting with an "air mouse" is just a big PAIN... because the app is intended to be used with a mouse on a pad on a desk and in front of a monitor about two feet from one's face.

The mere fact that PMC has almost NO controls except to 'view or "play" is considered to be a FAULT to a reviewer who uses Gnome. And, to repeat, they say that it is not "full featured" and so it is, by implication worthlerss.

And, it is on a destkop computer, it was intended to be used on a tablet and really... a widescreen t.v. with an airmouse is the equivalent of a HUGE tablet.

So, anyway... to get it setup so that is not "full screen" takes two "ctrl alt F9 things and then like ten mouse clicks in two screens

Just try to describe that in a review for a magazine...IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

But, on my KParadigm Shift tweak, it is literally a left click ANYWHERE on the screen to go to the activity, which would require mousing down to the panel for an activity, and there is PMC ready do go already open and tied to the activity with all of the music and images and videos as HUGE ICONS... click and the music is playing.

TWO CLICKS.

That is a really efficient use case to play music.

Try doing that with Amarok.

So, yes, I totally agree with what you stated.

I have volunteered to do REALLY CONCISE... as small and tight as can be done, instructions sets for several of these things but I have been completely ignored, and I can see why, I have argued with people over the years about a lot of things.

I'm just a user and they are the producers. So, I get the point.

But, also, another point is... I volunteered, but I'm not going to spend many hours tweaking an instructions set and have it not included.

The attitude is..."well do something and we will look at it and if we like it then we might use it". not just for me but for ANY developer.

But also...another point...I've posted that some kind of instruction sets need to be done for several YEARS...and...

Nobody ELSE has done them...

But, still people complain..."why does nobody understand our wonderful distro"

So, to add one more thing.

Here is what I do in the morning...really...

A) I get out of bed...lol...
B) go to the gentleman's room
C) Go downstairs and turn on the computer and large screen t.v.
D) the wave in the air mouse and half size accompanying keyboard are on a kind of stand between the living room and kitchen, about 15 feet from the television.
E) I go to the kitchen and start coffee and oatmeal.
F) Since the computer has nothing of import on it except music the computer has booted, I do not have login and when I step over to the half wall betwen the computer is up and running.
G) The first screen is PMC, I use the air mouse to picka song, usually something long like maybe some Strauss.
H )I use the scroll wheel to change the activity to see my RSS feeds which I have tweaked to be twice normal height and I can read them standing up at the half wall, watching the coffee at the same time. I use the air mouse to scroll down to something I want to read, I click it, it appears about 3/4 screen on the t.v. I read it.
I ) Go get coffee, watch the oatmeal for a bit
J ) The e-mails have already come in using T-Bird, I would RATHER use Kontact, so I scroll the opposite direction to the activity that had Tbird and I read the e-mails from the college, click a button, and read gmail.
All standing up and drinking coffed and eating some oatmeal from halfway across the room.
K) Usually I have already put some instand sausage patty in the microwave and it has heated but also cooled a little, I go get it,
L) Go back to the half wall and change to calendar to check the todos with a click using the airmouse while I'm finishing oatmeal and muching the sausage.
M) If I need to reply to an e-mail, I grab the half sized keyboard and sit in a chair by the half door, I also have a small side table there, I can type out a message from maybe 10 feet away and finish breakfast, or
N) I have Firefox and Duckduck Go on another activity and while I am sitting finishing coffee I use the left click menu to change to it and it is already pinned to the activity at the "news of the day" from a news website.

Please notice that I have not had to "walk to the computer" / "move the chair / put the food on the small area beside the keyboard and mousepad / grab the mouse and move it / view RSS / get up / push chair back / walk to kitchen / get sausage / walk back to computer / move chair,/ sit in chair / move mouse to e-mail /

Notice all of the PHYSICAL MOTION that I have saved by putting the activities on a large screen, and using an air mouse to navigate the large screen while DOING OTHER THINGs...

So, anyway... there is a use case for activities, going to the trouble to set up ahead of time an app on each activity, the ease of navigating to the activity / the ease of use of using the activity / and also "sitting down and using a keyboard when necessary.

Here is ONE LAST EXAMPLE...

I am the ONLY instructor at my nice college, a biotech college, that actually makes my own Powerpoint(tm) Impress Presentations to show on a projector.

The other instructors mostly use those provided by a textbook.

Their "lecture notes" that they had LOVINGLY made for decades that are on "plastic sheets" for an "overhead projector" are sitting gathering dust...

OR...for those who actually try to make their own presentations FROM THOSE WONDERFUL notes...

have fifty lines of text in a small font that cannot be seen from even the front seats by the students.

Because...they still think in terms of when they wrote on blackboards or white boards and then transferred them to the plastic sheets.

And...they have to be FRUGAL with the sheets... can't waste space.

I was fortunate when I was hired on, I had actually tried, two decades earlier to use a COMMODORE 64 with a word procedssor and a PROJECTOR in a DARKENED ROOM to give notes to students in high school...it did NOT go well, but...I had discovered something... a wordprocessor can have FIFTY SHEETS that one can scroll through on the screen.

When I came to work at the college i was taken by the head of the department to a HUGE lecture hall... THREE BAYS WIDE... seats 144 that is one hundred and fourty four, people.

The man said something like "look at this". The lectern is very large, and there were, and still are, BAYS under it to hold overhead projection sheets and there were TWO overhead projectors... because the instructors would alternately place one sheet on one projector and the next on the other projector because both could be seen on the MASSIVE white board.

I said something like..."okaaay...that IS cool"...( chuckle chuckle when i was giving a presentation at a National Sicence Foundation meeting we had a similar setup provided ) but... I don't have any sheets can I have some?

BUT, I was "looking around and I saw, hanging from the ceiling a PROJECTOR...

And I asked..."what is that?" And he said..."a projector for Powerpoint(tm) slides."

And I said something like "Can I use that insterad of the overhead projector?"

I have NEVER SEEN a person's face light up that much before!!!

And he walked over to me and put his hand on my shoulder and said "YES, and you will be the ONLY instructor doing it"...

the instructors were using "overhead projection sheets" provided by the companies... or their own...

So, I thereupon went and purchased my first copy of Powerpoint 2000(tm) and made my first lectures over Christmas vacation...

BUT...and I am ALMOST FINISHED !!! LOL...

MS had shoved the app out the door a few years earlier with NO CLUE ABOUT HOW TO USE IT... the instruction book (laughingly so called) was about a quarter inch thick... really...there were NO instructions...

But there were two really good items...

a) how to take a photograph and "blur" it in Paint to use for "backgrounds" , the "master slide" and...

A simple sentence something like this.

"The user has an unlimited number of slides that are navigated using only a mouse button or the arrow keys on the keyboard. So, since the user has an unlimited amount of slides, it is recommended that only one sentence be placed on a slide with a possible accompanying image".

WOAH!!!! I WAS BLOWN AWAY...as the Fonz used to say on Happy Days..."CORRECTAMUNDO!!!!"

I made MONSTER presentations with just one sentence and a possible image on each slide, loaded the lectures onto a cd and never looked back.

And today...the other instructors "just do not get it"... The head my department when he came in to evaluate me was just sitting on the last row smiling and about fifteen minuters later left.

But...the point here is...

NOBODY has actually EXPLAINED with use cases etc. and instructions...the MASSIVE ADVANTAGES there are to using activities.

AND the VERY last thing...

When I first saw Kubuntu one had a button one could click to put the desktop into what was called "newspaper layout"... it was supposed to "corrall" stuff into three "columns" on the desktop.

it was just... worthless... but, I think, because I read some reviewers who asked..."WHAT is the use of this?"

There were two other ways that one could set up the desktop, and they were intended to be used on activities...

that the POOR EXPLICATION of the use cases for the setups were NEVER fully, or even partly, explained.

There was a few breezy sentences like: "hey, you could put stuff into columns using this setup" and that was it...

I think that, at least in part, THOSE INITIAL THREE "setups" for use in activities... were, at least in part, the "reason" for reviewers, who ...were USED TO GNOME... saying "Kubuntu / KDE is hard to setup and hard to understand".

There is a story about Hannibal trying to cross the Alps and he was going to have a general go AROUND the Alps and do a surprise attack from the side AFTER he received a message from Hannibal. So, later Hannibal was ready to go DOWN the Alps and sent the message, but because of a horse that went lame, there is a kind of poem about it, "for want of a shoe, a horse was lost, for want of a horse a message was lost, for want of a message a war was lost"...

But... KDE's activities really ARE a wonderul time save, but the "message" has "been lost" "been buried in case study presentation" been just "never done"...

and so ...GNOME people very rightly say... "KDE seems to be very hard to set up".

And Kubuntu stays down around fifty on DistroWatch.

So, yeah, I agree with you completely.

woodsadsmoke

[WWDERW]

OK, but, you still realise that KDE is a better DE than the others, and if it weren't for the quirks it would be preferable, therefore you are not a complete muppet, right?

I still prefer KDE over the others. With the latest iterations it has even more features for the Wacom driver (it's GUI frontend is on par with the official Windows/Mac ones, Gnome one is lacking, even more so since development seemed to have stall).