Kubuntu, KDE Mint and Debian

[Rich Oliver]

Hi, I'm new to Linux. Perhaps as an ex Windows user part of who's motivation for switching over was to avoid Metro, its not surprising that I fairly quickly homed in on KDE. As to distribution base, I have no knowledge or experience to base a preference on apart from that Debian seems to be without doubt the biggest Desktop distro base. So Debian KDE seems the logical choice for me. However I notice there is Kubuntu, A Mint Kde version and a team that maintains the Debian Kde packages. I don't know if their are other Debian KDE teams. Is this dispersal of effort really a good thing?

I suppose I get a related question with KDE itself. Why does KDE have to have its own Application for everything? Particularly its own Office Suite?

Also related. How will the Wayland / Mir split effect things. Is Kubuntu expecting to run on Wayland by default?

[claydoh]

Well yes and no

Linux Mint basically IS kubuntu, in terms of KDE as they are using our KDE packages, so for our purposes in this thread they can be considered the same thing.

Debian tends to lag behind in terms of KDE in their stable releases (though one can run a less stable variant - *buntus are built on a "snapshot" of it).

Fragmentation happens simply Because We Can, and equally simply because people tend to Scratch What Itches Them. It is also about the people involved, which is often a neglected highlight in Linux distro land. There is definite cross-pollination, but the different projects have different goals.

So it is up to the user to seek and find what suits them, really. For good or bad, this is a truth.


As to the KDE thing, go back to the Itch that needs Scratching. It stems from the fact that different toolkits are used in the creating the code. This goes all the way back to the beginnings of graphical Linux desktops. A huge part is simply having a program look like it fits in with the desktop environment, and use the native, built-in systems provided by the toolkit/desktop environment. If one provides different programs that use different toolkits, it increases the size and amount of software needed to install and run a distro, let alone having to maintain them, or managing the different coding standards and styles used. One could also ask why Gnome has it's own program for everything - before Ubuntu took gnome to the masses, KDE was arguably the more popular and widely used Linux desktop

As to wayland and mir, well. it really is too early to say, imo, but at the moment, KDE will only support Wayland so Kubuntu will have to use it. If other, non-ubuntu distros adopt mir, KDE may support it. But this is way down the road. Wayland despite the hype is taking forever and ever to get going, and Mir is still an unknown factor right now. I don't worry about it much

[Rich Oliver]

What this means to Kubuntu
For Kubuntu the Mir switch by Canonical created quite some questions. One of those questions is answered: Upstream has no interest in supporting it and would most likely not accept patches for support. With upstream not using Mir the question is how the graphics stack for Kubuntu will look like once Ubuntu switched to Mir? The questions cannot be answered right now but it doesn’t look good.

http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blo...ir-in-kubuntu/