Kubuntu software packaging

[plasmoidelity]

Hello you!

I know, it does not look good if a new user starts being dissatisfied, but anyway, I couldn't get the informations on the web, or too much information, depending on the point of view.
I am looking for a place to ask (mailing list?) how and why the Kubuntu-team decides to use Firefox and Thunderbird instead of native running applications like Kontact and Falkon which do a better job (in other distributions). As we all know, mixing up GTK and Qt still is a kind of adventure, although it got better. From my point of view this is a real showstopper for using Kubuntu which I try to install every few years. Every major release since Plasma5 was awful (sorry). In 16.04 there was a half installed systemd and a buggy plasmashell-version. I know, there is a feature freeze on every release, but in this case it was just a bad freeze. 18.04 was better, but the account management part of Kontact was a mess trying to use WebDAV (Owncloud/Nextcloud) with it and the plasmashell missed some needed fixes which could't be ported back because of the too old qt-framework. Now 20.04 completely removed the Kontact suite running Thunderbird.
For a long year KDE-user this is just garbage to remove after a fresh installation, as I want to use KDE if I install it. So it comes, that every Kubuntu installation I tried to set up, took the same time building a gentoo-system from scratch on a atom processor. I was very happy with Plasma4 / Kubuntu and had it running until 14.04 and I am missing it as a stable and useful distribution.
I'd like to know how future plans are, as I am tired of everytime trying and being disappointed.

So what's up with Kubuntu? Is it just a «wayward son» since it was degraded to a «normal flavour»?

As this forums are officially linked, I hope s.o. could point me out to the right mailing list, wiki page or anything else answering my question.

Greetings and thanx
pl…y

(For those loving firefox and thunderbird: I do use both of them in a gtk-userspace with dwm on a FreeBSD, but I do not want to have them as a daily driver in my plasma environment. )

[claydoh]

Kubuntu chose Firefox over the more 'native' browsers because most people need a web browser that simply works works, as well as popular demand. This was in 2014, previously we used Rekonq - (from 2010 till 2013). Far more complaints about having a sh***y browser as the stock one as compared to those who demand a KDE one. By orders of magnitude. And Kubuntu is not really a KDE showcase, it is meant as a general purpose desktop with tools that people can use daily. Sorry, but Falkon really ain't it --though it has improved a lot.
Even KDE neon, whic
h IS a KDE/Plasma showcase leaves out Falkon. Hmmmm.....

Don't forget the current version of this browser is over a year and a half old. makes me feel really secure and up to date

As to Kontact, the switch away from it is because it is, well, kinda crappy these days, with slow development. The version that could have been in 20.04 couldn't even work with Gmail accounts, which, like it or not, is important to a very large number of people.
These choices were not taken lightly, and things can change back if things are fixed. You complain about it being crap, but then wonder why it was replaced?
As a two decade KDE user, even I have toi draw the line at crap that does not do the job for a wide swath of people.

Same idea with Libreoffice over Calligra Suite. The KDE office suite is useless for many users as it simply cannot, by design, save as anything other than odf formats.

Also fwiw, anything outside of KDE/Plasma et al Kubuntu does not touch. Systemd, for example. Go yell at Ubuntu

For me, 16.04 was one of the more solid Kubuntu/Plasma releases. I ran it on my two meager Atom z3735 convertible 10" laptop/tablet thingies.
Same with 18.04., running on my Atom based Chromebooks. Of course ymmv. My experience with it is no less valid than yours, but also is no more or less an accurate depiction for the wider user base, outside our own experiences.


Linky-links:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/kubuntu-devel
#kubuntu-devel on freenode, and telegram.


Also, with zero intentions of sounding negative at all, but this is not the first time this semi-rare topic has come up. Or the last I am sure.

[jglen490]

All I can say is Firefox is trouble free on Kubuntu, and has been for a LOOOONG time. I kicked Kontact and its brethren to the curb a LOOOONG time ago, also. That whole KDE PIM-like steaming pile just absorbed CPU cycles for almost not return on investment. Thunderbird with Lightning has done everything I've asked it to do since that same LOOOONG time. Complete and sole use of Plasma software is not always needed, useful, or effective.

Exercise your right to make choices under Linux

[plasmoidelity]

Thank you

Hi claydoh!
Wow! Didn't expect a detailed reply like yours, thank you very much!

Kubuntu chose Firefox…

Well, I'm using neither firefox nor falkon as default browser, I was just wondering. Firefox was a slow, overloaded and buggy thing as I last tried it. But it has improved a lot, so I just installed and tried it (version 82.0.2). Much better as I remembered. Falkon uses Qt Webengine 5.15.1, so it's not that old. The negative part of using Qt is of course living at the edge of free software and the free webkit support is bad and not a real alternative. I'm mostly using qutebrowser which is a python gui vor the Qt-stuff and it just works fine for years now.

As to Kontact…

I read about the google problem, but as I use other mail providers it was not my problem, so I just ignored it. But you're right, that could have been a showstopper for a lot of people. The slow development won't get better if it is dismissed. See the poor Amarok-porting which is still in a beta release. I thought that applications get more support if preinstalled.

You complain about it being crap, but then wonder why it was replaced?

I complained about Kubuntus Kontact, not the «normal» one. My daily driver is an archlinux and I cannot remember any problems with Kontact (besides working in sway/wayland which still requires to run it with --platform xcb). But my setup is quite simple, I think. I've got about a dozen mail addresses with 7 identities, only 4 RSS feeds and my contacts and calendars are hosted in a nextcloud. There is nothing difficult to do or to work around.

Same idea with Libreoffice over Calligra Suite…

I'm living a plaintext / latex life, so I am rarely using those office packages and cannot compare them. For my little needs, gnumeric will do

Also fwiw, anything outside of KDE/Plasma et al Kubuntu does not touch. Systemd, for example. Go yell at Ubuntu

Well, of course, that is/was an Ubuntu problem. Canonical is known for «interesting changes» to keep the adventure alive But Kubuntu has to deal with it too, as they are using it as base. The underlying system makes a difference, think about the change from evdev/libinput and a lot of users missing their mouse settings. Or the current funny keyboard-problem (in Ubuntu Budgie you can have to layouts in parallel with two indicators and have to try in which window you now have which layout).
Does Kubuntu not change anything, like apparmor, PolicyKit or similar? I thought there were more changes between Ubuntu and Kubuntu under the hood.

But as I mentioned above: I am looking for the right places to ask such questions, especially for Kubuntu; and I am more interested in the future, so I'm curious to read such decisions before they happen and why. I'm now happy to know that kubuntu-devel-mailinglist is the right one (thought it was just for the kde-developers and technical stuff, not software packages). And I do fully understand the decisions from the point of view to address as much people as possible, or to be a starting point for users migrating from other systems and not being a representative showcase for what KDE-Software can do.

Also, with zero intentions of sounding negative at all, but this is not the first time this semi-rare topic has come up. Or the last I am sure.

Thought so and searched these forums before posting, but I guess had the wrong keywords. To be honest, it is very hard to find such information while browsing the web. There are billions of blogs that try to catch readers with «difference between Kubuntu and [distro X]», but they all write the same old stuff and provide no information at all. In the beginnings of the internet getting popular it was hard to find information as it just did not exist. Nowadays it is hard to find it hidden under big datatrash of a copy&paste-society.

Big thank you for your detailed answers and aspects!