
Ten Years of Kubuntu - Tsiolkovsky
http://lwn.net/Articles/635880/
======
zanny
Kubuntu is in a great place today. Five years ago KDE developers were pretty
fragmented between Mandrivia, Suse, Fedora, and Kubuntu. Today, thanks to Blue
Systems adopting Kubuntu and the general decline of most other KDE spins (Suse
lost its commercial support, Mandrivia died and got forked a bunch, Fedora
continues to be Gnome-first in a good way) my impressions from the ML and
general developer mindshare is that Kubuntu is becoming _the_ KDE distro for
the betterment of the platform, because then you don't end up with all this
wasted effort making an 80% great experience on every different package
manager, fs layout, login manager, and init stack. Kubuntu CI is pretty much
the only place one should go to develop KDE software and that means Kubuntu
and Netrunner are always going to be the core KDE distros.

And that is not bad. Desktop environments in my view do a lot better when they
have a blessed implementation. Cinnamon, Unity, and even Enlightenment have
seen resounding success because they are developed for single distros and that
focus lets them dodge the semantics of their environment and get to the good
stuff.

Kubuntu 15.04 is looking to be the first release of the distro I can be proud
of as something to show the uninitiated and get them excited about using it.
The bugs are falling down by the dozen each day and all the best of Linux is
ready for the release, its going to be a blast in my book.

~~~
notfoss
I think you are forgetting Linux Mint KDE. It is updated regularly and is
fantastic to work on.

~~~
claydoh
You forget that Mint KDE _is_ Kubuntu, if you look at the package sources ;)

~~~
notfoss
Hmm.. but the Mint team does a fairly good job of customizing KDE.

------
flavor8
KDE is a great platform, but most of the prominent distros ship with near-
default style settings, which are ugly (just look at the 15.04 screenshots,
linked from the article). It would be nice if an opinionated design team
(similar to the elementary guys) shipped a KDE based distro which was
meticulously styled out of the box.

~~~
reitanqild
Mandrake, later Mandriva used to be close to perfect IMO.

Today I guess OpenSUSE is the closest thing to what you describe.

~~~
baldfat
I feel that OpenSUSE has had the best KDE default settings and Kubuntu had the
worst defaults.

------
filmgirlcw
I first installed Ubuntu either a few days before or a few days after the
Hoary Hedgehog release. I recall using the Gnome version first and then adding
in the Kubuntu packages a few days later.

At that point, I was fairly used to Debian and I'd used some of the other
"shiny" distros at the time (like Linspire, _shudder_ ) but Ubuntu (and
Kubuntu) was one of the first distros to work with my Atheros Wi-Fi dongle
without significant amounts of pain. I mean, it was still a pain but I was
able to get it done.

Ubuntu -- and Kubuntu especially -- was my obsession for a few months in the
spring of 2005. I still remember torrenting episodes of a brand new TV show
called "Grey's Anatomy" (that had taken the time slot of my beloved "Boston
Legal") that had just debuted and watching it in variations of Mplayer in
Kubuntu. Funny. Grey's Anatomy is still around a decade later too.

These days, I only use Linux on the server and very, very rarely on a test VM,
but I have an enormous amount of respect to the KDE team and the Kubuntu team
for keeping on keeping on.

------
UhUhUhUh
There is not a single day that passes that I don't thank, silently and
sometimes not, Linux and the distros it spawned (regardless of my own
preferences). It must be clear by now that Linux OSs have recaptured and
prolonged the spirit of the "personal computer" idea, which is basically to
put the user in control of the machine, or the individual in control of
something really. I can't be thankful enough for the hundreds or thousands of
talented individuals who made that happen and still do. I think they deserve
more praise than they get.

------
ElectricFeel
Great essay on Kubuntu, Tslolkovsky! It is an impressive overview of your
accomplishments, in context, and that's perfect. I've personally tried a few
distros of Linux, originally developed by Linus Torvalds. My personal favorite
is the one I use the most. Standard Ubuntu just does it for me. KDE is ok but
Gentoo is just too lo-fi for me - I'm not interested in a product that is like
living in a halfway house instead of a real house with a roof & doors & a
working bathroom, if you get the point I'm trying to make here. I am aware
that there are people out there who cannot lose their massive social anxiety
problems & try to work on their computers. Red Hat Linux is apparently the one
that's most like Windows & I've heard good reviews of it.

~~~
stolio
> I've personally tried a few distros of Linux, originally developed by Linus
> Torvalds.

Is there some _Intro To Linux_ we can point just people to in order to avoid
things like this? The "GNU slash Linux" conversation is wearing pretty thin
but it should be common knowledge at this point that the GNU project did 10
ten years of work so Linus could add the kernel and have it be the first
completed system.

Should we point to Revolution OS
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw8K460vx1c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw8K460vx1c))?

Should we point to GNU's page about the issue ([https://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-
and-gnu.html](https://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html))?

Without getting into any finger-pointing, it's just history and we should all
know it.

~~~
amyjess
And GNU zealots persistently deny that Linux became successful because of
XFree86 and Apache, neither of which GNU had anything to do with.

~~~
stolio
Grow up. There's a world of difference between being a zealot and pointing out
that Torvalds didn't clone the Unix system _in a year._ He built the kernel,
he did it well and he deserves credit for it. For the same reasons he deserves
credit the GNU project deserves credit for their contributions.

 _edit: Really. This is a thread celebrating 10 years of Kubuntu. Kubuntu 's
downstream from Debian, probably 1/2 - 3/4 of their packages are untouched
from their state in the Debian repositories. Debian was sponsored by the FSF
(Richard Stallman's foundation) back in the early 90's. Good for Kubuntu, I
wish them the best. I also think it's important to recognize the others who
have made projects like this possible. It takes nothing away from Kubuntu._

------
giancarlostoro
I enjoy Kubuntu and use it's cousin / child, Netrunner. Ships with all (most
anyway) the things I wish Kubuntu shipped with, but a little extra I don't
want, but that's ok, it's easier to remove things (Firefox addons) than
waiting for the updates and what not. It even lets me use the "Windows Key" to
open the KDE Menu, or at least their version of it, which is something I'm all
too accustomed to from Windows. Been running Netrunner (Kubuntu derrived) for
months now, on my main Desktop and my school Laptop.

I used to love KDE when I first used Linux because of Slackware, back before
KDE4. It was adaptable to whether I wanted a Windows feel, Linux feel, or Mac
feel. It still delivers in that aspect, and now it's much more mature looking.

~~~
joshuapants
I never quite warmed up to KDE. I think the problem was that it was a
"Windows-like" interface but it never felt quite the same as Windows. I found
it easier to adapt to GNOME, precisely because it was different than what I
was used to.

I did try the beta of Kubuntu with Plasma 5, however, and it seemed nice. I'll
have to try it again sometime.

~~~
Consultant32452
I've heard comments like yours before but this time it made me consider the
other side of it. I wonder if your reaction is due to being a power user. If
you've been a Windows power user for a while you're probably accustomed to
doing things like setting PATH or other environment variables,
installing/uninstalling things, starting and stopping services. If you have
something that's a little "too much" like Windows but things are in a
different place, that may be worse than starting from a mental framework of
"completely different now." Particularly, I wonder if it is easier for nearly
computer illiterate people to transition from Windows to something very close
to Windows, or something else entirely.

~~~
giancarlostoro
I've been in both sides, but you're right to some extent, one of the main
things I need is supported by Gnome 3 by default, the "Windows key" whenever I
press it, I expect either a dashboard or a menu bar where I can start typing
whatever application I want to run, honestly that speeds up my workflow on
Windows and Linux (where it is supported), instead of browsing through
categories and reading through the list of software, I just press "windows",
type what I want to use "Visual Studio", "Qt Creator", hit enter, and move on.
That is my main thing, I do enjoy tiling windows. I know there's wonderful
tiling managers, but they get more in my way than anything. If I can't get
used to it in an hour I just wont bother.

------
eitally
I haven't tried in about two years, but I tried every six months for a few
years before that (basically every time Ubuntu pushed a new release I'd try
Kubuntu first). I really wanted the advanced configurability of KDE compared
to Gnome and then Unity ... but something always either didn't work or just
frustrated me to no end and I reverted to Ubuntu. A lot of my friends have
switched to Arch now, which similarly seems to "just work" and does a much
better job of keeping packages updated than Ubuntu does.

~~~
dguaraglia
That's my experience too. For some reason the desktop after startup looks
amazing... but as soon as I start playing around with the applications I get a
lot of crashes, things in the desktop that don't make sense and general
slowness.

I think I've made this comment before, but it almost feels like new KDE
releases are optimized for screenshots: it _looks_ great, until you click on
something.

------
bakoel
Kubuntu is very hard because use KDE.

