Switched to Kubuntu finally

[drakeoutlaw]

When I first installed Ubuntu Breezy in my Sony Vaio last year I thought I would give a full year to learning Gnome. But it has been really painful and frustrating.

In trying to decide wether to switch to the kde-desktop I weighed a lot of pros and cons.

But the decision to switch was made when I learned that current Slackware ships only with KDE. I have been a long time Slackware user and great admirer of Patrick Volkerding because my first intro to linux was with his book and Slackware. If KDE is his choice then its good enough for me.

Gnome has proven to be ... well, tedious to say the least. The registry-like gconf is a major pain. Samba integration in Nautilus really really sucks. And I really hate the inability to simply scroll the terminal line by line using shift+up-arrow. Took me 4 days to configure Bluetooth-gnome. Wifi with wpa and network manager was another nightmare. Worst of all you can't do multisession CDs in gnome cd burning software. K3B on the other hand is superb for multisession.

Simply doing sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop did the trick. Smoooth is the best word to describe Kubuntu. No more M.C. Hammer (Can't touch this).

The only thing I like less in KDE is Adept. But I'll get the hang of it. its not as bad as GConf.

[gavinjb]

Re: Switched to Kubuntu finally

I have recently installed Kbuntu and found KDE a joy to use in comparison to gnome or Windows, its nice to have a Windows environment which you can configure what you want and are not limited by what the developers think you should do. But I would avoid Adept if you can and use apt-get to install synaptic package manager

[askrieger]

Re: Switched to Kubuntu finally

Welcome to Kubuntu! If you run into any snags, remember this site.

As I understand it, PV gave up on Gnome because it was too much of a moving target in terms of interfacing and usability for an (effectively) one man distro like Slackware. I remeber reading his comments on the web somewhere (probably Slashdot) sometime ago (a year ago, perhaps).

Gavinjb already gave you the first piece of advice that I'd offer. Use Synaptic instead of Adept. Adept is regarded as alpha software by the Debian project, and I can assure you that Synaptic works flawlessly under Kubuntu. Adept has been improving, though, so it may be usable in Feisty. Personally, I also use Streamtuner, daily and a few other Gnome apps occasionally.

The other thing I'd mention is that you can use almost all Gnome apps in Kubuntu, if you have the GTK libs installed. The great thing about Debian based distros, is the fact that you don't have to worry about that. When you install a Gnome app in Kubuntu or a KDE app in Ubuntu, it automagically installs all the libraries that you need to run it. Therefore, if you're running Synaptic, you'll have to add very little more to run any other Gnome app that you like. In addition, there are a bunch of very nice apps, that don't use either the Gnome or KDE framework (actually, they run under X). These include things like Emacs (the world's greatest editor), and Gnucash. The other nice thing about Debian based distros is the fact that you have approximately 20,000 packages to choose from.

[HymenBuster]

Re: Switched to Kubuntu finally

yea i used ubuntu b4 but im still very neewb. can u tell me how i can start using the synaptics thingy?

[askrieger]

Re: Switched to Kubuntu finally

Start a konsole (K->System->konsole) then type the command "sudo apt-get synaptic". Then, when you want to install anything else, simply find "Synaptic Package Manager" under System on the K menu. Use the buttons at the bottom of the left column to choose how you want to classify the listed packages, or the search button at the top if you know what you're looking for. The really nice thing about Synaptic is that (unlike Adept) it will ALWAYS show you what it's going to do and ask you whether you really want to do that. It's saved me from stupid mistakes on countless occasions.

BTW "Synaptics is a company that manufactures touchpads for laptops. The package manager is called "Synaptic" (no final 's').

[Just John]

Re: Switched to Kubuntu finally

"The other nice thing about Debian based distros is the fact that you have approximately 20,000 packages to choose from. "

Well, unless you have been weened on a diet of windows for so long that you think that the only way of eating is via being spoonfed!

The sheer volume of add ons and the sheer scope of the versatility, adaptability and changability of (K)ubuntu are what make it both attractive and intimidating.

Luckily programs like synaptic, adept and automatix do take a bit of the bother away - it's just a question of how much you think someone else should have a say as to what you need!

Making up your own mind can seem such a challenge after having "somebody better informed" do it for you for so long!

[askrieger]

Re: Switched to Kubuntu finally

Making up your own mind can seem such a challenge after having "somebody better informed" do it for you for so long!

The problem is not simply that M$ (as a corporation) thinks that it's better informed. To my mind the problem is that they regard the user as a sheep to be sheared. And, it's not just the users. M$ seems to make a habit of picking off one or more classes of Independent Software Vendors in each edition of windoze. (Do you recall a product called Netscape?). This time it seems to be the vendors of security software.

Fortunately, though, all that is irrelevant to a discussion of KDE and Gnome.