Leaving Kubuntu behind - what's next?

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 12:59 am

Okay - I've finally had it with kubuntu. It's a slick distro in many ways, and I really like some stuff about it, but there are too many things about it that are broken, or crash often, that do not have the same problems on other distros I use. Kaffeine crashes to a state that eats 100% CPU frequently, Konq crashes constantly, inserting any media causes no less than two windows to open, along with a useless dialog box, and the Network Kcontrol preferences are completely broken. This is just a list of the top of my head. Their recent KDE 3.5 packages are no great shakes either. For now, I'll probably continue using it on my lappy, but my workstation is leaving Kubuntu station this weekend. I'm kind of bummed, but what the hell -- I can compile katapult and yakuake myself.

So, what's next? Arch (very slick distro, will really miss large repos, and I have to admit that I'm much more comfortable with sys5 than rc.conf)? Kanotix (awesome repos, I wish they'd come up with a thinner install)? Debian proper (no gripes at all, other than the obvious issues associated with running sid and 3rd party repos)? Something else (what?)? I'll have to figure this out over the next few days.

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 6:58 am

Well, personally, my update last night from KDE 3.4 to 3.5 finally convinced me that Arch was the way to go..... for me, anyway.

Using Pacman was even easier (and quicker) than Synaptic, and having to learn some command line skills is far more acceptable to me than having to live with SIDs occasional instabilities.

This weekend I'm picking up a new, larger hard drive for our main PC and Arch is going on it.

Post by **Patrick** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 7:22 am

Judland wrote:Well, personally, my update last night from KDE 3.4 to 3.5 finally convinced me that Arch was the way to go..... for me, anyway.

Using Pacman was even easier (and quicker) than Synaptic, and having to learn some command line skills is far more acceptable to me than having to live with SIDs occasional instabilities.

This weekend I'm picking up a new, larger hard drive for our main PC and Arch is going on it.

Arch is nice. When I get a new laptop I think I will use Arch Linux. Upgrade to KDE 3.5 was a snap for me as well.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 9:03 am

Here's something that I think more or less sums up Kubuntu (and Ubuntu) up perfectly. This is a screenie of the w3c acid2 test with the new "KDE 3.5" packages Kubuntu offers. This is classic Kubuntu -- semi-bleding edge, and half broken. My arch box does this perfectly - the stupid mouse-ever nose even turns blue.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 11:55 am

Similar to the way Pat recommends Kanotix, I recommend SUSE

Especially their latest stable version, 10.0, is really nice and VERY slick.

Comes out of the box with a VERY polished up KDE desktop, has a very nice control center which makes configuring X and stuff like that a snap since it has a large database of monitor information with stuff like HorizSync values. Another reason I think SUSE is great for new users of Linux is that it's really good at setting up a dual boot system seemlessly, when the YaST installer probes for the hardware and stuff it sees Windows is already on the drive and will do the apropiate resizing/partitioning/formatting and set up Grub without asking the end-user any questions about which partition to resize...
I find YaST's abilities in detecting my hardware, and setting it up properly, very good, there havn't been the one time where it failed on me, always worked.

Also, a lot of people attacks SUSE and says it's slow and bloated, well then you have to explain to me why it takes only about 18 seconds to et from Grub to KDE. And for the "bloat on the desktop" my comment is that yes, there is a little more stuff than in Kubuntu, but it's not that much that it annoys me, the default package selection is in my mind very good for a non-experienced user.
Right out of the box it has a Firefox icon on the desktop which may seem obvious to a lot of geeks, but for newbies it's really important because it makes it simple for them to get comfortable with KDE.

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 11:59 am

My only issue (so far) with SuSE is that it limits it's user base more than some other distros I've tried and use due to the necessary resources it demands.

Eighteen seconds to boot up is good.... but on what hardware? Definately not on my PII - 400Mhz with 196MB of RAM.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 12:08 pm

Judland wrote:My only issue (so far) with SuSE is that it limits it's user base more than some other distros I've tried and use due to the necessary resources it demands.

Eighteen seconds to boot up is good.... but on what hardware? Definately not on my PII - 400Mhz with 196MB of RAM.

I'm gonna play the devils advocate on that one. By putting the needle on how much power you need to use SUSE, a little higher than your typical Linux distro, SUSE can enable a lot more eye candy out of the box, which gets interesting when we get to KDE 4.0 with the Plasma APIs and stuff like that.

This is the hardware I run SUSE Linux 10.0 on:

Motherboard: Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 3200+
Memory: 1 GB PC-3200 Samsung (2 x 512 MB)

Originally I only had 512 MB of RAM, but when you have Azureus, Kontact, iPodder Lemon, Gaim, Kopete running all the time, you really run out of memory quickly, which is why I upgraded to 1 GB of RAM.

I've also tested it on a Pentium3 with 256 MB of RAM, ran fine, obviously slower than on my main machine, but it ran quite nicely.

SUSE is not the distro I would use on older machines but considering that on my 3200+ machine version 9.2 took about 28 seconds to get from Grub to KDE, 9.3 took 24 seconds and 10.0 is only 18 seconds. I think SUSE has a nice job on optimizing the boot time in their 10.0 release, which might be caused by Novell opening up the development process to the public through the OpenSUSE project.

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 12:55 pm

Snarkout wrote:Here's something that I think more or less sums up Kubuntu (and Ubuntu) up perfectly. This is a screenie of the w3c acid2 test with the new "KDE 3.5" packages Kubuntu offers. This is classic Kubuntu -- semi-bleding edge, and half broken. My arch box does this perfectly - the stupid mouse-ever nose even turns blue.

<Image snipped>

To be fair, Firefox on Gnome looks pretty much the same. I haven't seen a browser that can pass this test. Internet Explorer is the worst, of course.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 1:01 pm

Gomer_X wrote:
Snarkout wrote:Here's something that I think more or less sums up Kubuntu (and Ubuntu) up perfectly. This is a screenie of the w3c acid2 test with the new "KDE 3.5" packages Kubuntu offers. This is classic Kubuntu -- semi-bleding edge, and half broken. My arch box does this perfectly - the stupid mouse-ever nose even turns blue.

<Image snipped>
To be fair, Firefox on Gnome looks pretty much the same. I haven't seen a browser that can pass this test. Internet Explorer is the worst, of course.

Well, let me show you a browser that passes:

Konqueror 3.5 do pass the Acid2 test, but it would seem that Jonathan Riddell made a mess when he made the packages for Kubuntu, I'm just guessing here.

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 1:12 pm

Tsuroerusu wrote:I'm gonna play the devils advocate on that one. By putting the needle on how much power you need to use SUSE, a little higher than your typical Linux distro, SUSE can enable a lot more eye candy out of the box, which gets interesting when we get to KDE 4.0 with the Plasma APIs and stuff like that.

True. BUT

it's to my benefit to rather run something like Arch that gives me the same amount of eye candy (or other features) on less resources with very little reduction in performance.

In this sense, Arch-like distros have better potential at reaching a larger audience (if "newbie friendliness" wasn't an issue).

And that's where the difference is... which basket you wish to put the most eggs into. Friendliness or diversity?

If I were just stepping into the OS ring, I'd be willing to pay up on hardware in order to get a "no-brainer" system running.

However, at this stage of the game, I'm looking for more diversity and am willing to sacrifice GUI tools to get it.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 3:49 pm

Gomer_X wrote:
Snarkout wrote:Here's something that I think more or less sums up Kubuntu (and Ubuntu) up perfectly. This is a screenie of the w3c acid2 test with the new "KDE 3.5" packages Kubuntu offers. This is classic Kubuntu -- semi-bleding edge, and half broken. My arch box does this perfectly - the stupid mouse-ever nose even turns blue.

<Image snipped>
To be fair, Firefox on Gnome looks pretty much the same. I haven't seen a browser that can pass this test. Internet Explorer is the worst, of course.

Well, I was referring to the fact that Konq 3.5 on Arch passes, while Konq 3.5 on Kubuntu doesn't. Why this is, I can't say, but it was something that I noticed. And as I mentioned, unfortunately, it seems to be par for the course rather than an anomaly. I really am very sad that I'm leaving Kubuntu FWIW, but the hassle you lose when installing it seems to manifest itself in other ways. Anyhow, onward and upward (or whatever).

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 3:57 pm

Judland wrote:
Tsuroerusu wrote:I'm gonna play the devils advocate on that one. By putting the needle on how much power you need to use SUSE, a little higher than your typical Linux distro, SUSE can enable a lot more eye candy out of the box, which gets interesting when we get to KDE 4.0 with the Plasma APIs and stuff like that.
True. BUT it's to my benefit to rather run something like Arch that gives me the same amount of eye candy (or other features) on less resources with very little reduction in performance.

In this sense, Arch-like distros have better potential at reaching a larger audience (if "newbie friendliness" wasn't an issue).

And that's where the difference is... which basket you wish to put the most eggs into. Friendliness or diversity?

If I were just stepping into the OS ring, I'd be willing to pay up on hardware in order to get a "no-brainer" system running.

However, at this stage of the game, I'm looking for more diversity and am willing to sacrifice GUI tools to get it.

Again, you have you remember that Arch targets a niche part of the Linux userbase, the experienced ones. SUSE tries to target everyone.

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 4:22 pm

Tsuroerusu wrote: Again, you have you remember that Arch targets a niche part of the Linux userbase, the experienced ones. SUSE tries to target everyone.

I think that's what I've been saying. However, also remember that SuSE is trying to target everyone with the right hardware... so it's in a niche market, too.

Anyway, six months ago, I would not have been ready for Arch myself. But, that's what growth is all about.

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Fri Dec 02, 2005 11:20 am

Snarkout wrote:Well, I was referring to the fact that Konq 3.5 on Arch passes, while Konq 3.5 on Kubuntu doesn't. Why this is, I can't say, but it was something that I noticed. And as I mentioned, unfortunately, it seems to be par for the course rather than an anomaly. I really am very sad that I'm leaving Kubuntu FWIW, but the hassle you lose when installing it seems to manifest itself in other ways. Anyhow, onward and upward (or whatever).

I guess I'm glad I'm not the only one. I installed Kubuntu a few weeks ago just to give KDE another shot, and I wasn't impressed. The base software installed wasn't really usable for me, and I just gave up before I could get it to do what I wanted.

Kubuntu is a fairly new distro (Ubuntu is pretty new for that matter), but I'll wait till it's a bit more polished.