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- The Kubuntu bootsplash screen.
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- You’ll need to install Firefox.
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- You’ll find a Firefox installer built-into the Internet applications menu.
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- When first opening Konqueror, a menu will popup asking if you want to install plug-ins.
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- The Kubuntu 10.04 desktop.
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- The Kubuntu 10.04 login screen.
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- KDE still defaults to using the awful, sliding menus.
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- Flash wasn’t installed by default in Konqueror.
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- KPackageKit needs to be replaced with a KDE version of the Ubuntu Software Center.
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I could be wrong, but I believe Kubuntu is completely a community project and other than the logo and the repos, the project is not driven by Canonical at all.
Hi Jeff,
If you go to the official Kubuntu site and look down, you’ll find this text at the bottom of the page:
“Kubuntu and Canonical are registered trademarks of Canonical Ltd. ”
And if you look on the FAQ page, you see this:
“What is Kubuntu?
Kubuntu one of the distributions from the Ubuntu family (alongside Ubuntu Desktop and several other variants). Our Kubuntu CDs are made up of Ubuntu’s base plus KDE Software Compilation. You can get exactly the same effect by installing Ubuntu and adding the KDE Software Compilation packages (and removing the Gnome packages) from the Ubuntu archives.
Is this a fork of Ubuntu?
No, it is an official part of Ubuntu. All our packages are in the same archives.”
All of that means that users are probably going to think that Kubuntu is simply the KDE version of Ubuntu and would be as polished in all respects. Unfortunately it’s not, as I indicated in the review.
Hey Jim Lynch! do you happen to be Dan Lynch’s Brother? from Linux Outlaws? that would be so cool/awesome!
Anyways a very great review as always it was in-depth and showed everything! Kubuntu sadly seems to have its own mind of what packages they want. (mostly KDE ones?) I’m surprised not to see a video editor installed either they could do Kdenlive if they love kde apps so much.(it’s kinda buggy though) but maybe they are running out of space on the small CD they use? so thats not an option.
BTW. Fedora has said they will be using DVDs (Only about 900 MB) from now on to distribute it in KDE and Gnome Edtions Plus the huge multi installer. this means they hopefully won’t have to cut out things. I think ubuntu should consider this. CDs are now becoming a limitation sadly.
Hi JD,
No, no relation to Dan Lynch that I know of…but I do have a lot of relatives so you never know!
Thanks for the positive feedback. Much appreciated.
I agree, CDs are passe to a certain extent at this point. Too small for today’s desktop distros, for the most part. Although some of the smaller, light-weight ones are still fine on them.
wow. one of the best review i have read. very detailed and still to the point. it seems you have discovered all the flaws in kubuntu and i totally agree with you. canonicle treat kubuntu like step child whom they don’t love. there are lots of distros thriving on kde desktop, if same attention could be paid on kubuntu then they can have best of both world (well best of all the world considering xfce and lxde) this is the reason i install kde in regular ubuntu.. its plain vanilla kde so i dont miss a thing.
Are you seriously complaining about the KDE4 theme? Have you SEEN how many KDE Themes are available? There are like 20 and only about 10 of them are any good. ALL KDE4 based Distros use one of 2 themes. Oxygen or Air, period.
@ abhifx:
Actually, Kubuntu 10:04 is 1000 times better than its Ubuntu counterpart for this release. Ubuntu is completely worthless for the next 6 months, and if Shuttleworthlesses ideas for 10:10 are any indication … the next year as well.
The best KDE-Buntu is Mint KDE Edition. Mint Kde is Kubuntu derivatif with some fine tuning here and there.
The English translation for the word Kubuntu is “Krap”.
quote: Jim
I suspect I will be hammered for this review by some KDE users. But I said what had to be said. Canonical needs to make Kubuntu its own or stop releasing it altogether and just focus on the GNOME version.
Do you want me to hammer you then? You know better than that. I respect your viewpoint and the viewpoint of others. I do have some issues to take with your review, however.
I respect your viewpoint that Canonical, if it intends to brand itself with Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, and Mythbuntu, ought to take branding into consideration. Clearly they did in this release with Ubuntu. However, I am not certain just how many employees of Canonical are a part of the other four projects. I suspect it is not more than a tenth to a quarter as many, and that explains the difference in focus, at least to me.
Jim, the reason that I follow Kubuntu is that it is always the very first Debian based system that has binary packages built for versions of KDE. It is ironic. In Debian, the GNOME distribution is quite stable – and fairly clearly the preferred desktop in the Debian Stable release, but it takes a back seat in Unstable, where it can be quite erratic. Canonical’s first significant contribution to the party is that they really flesh out GNOME and help both Debian and Mint, to name two Debian-oriented distributions.
We don’t see the emphasis quite as directly with KDE because the Debian KDE packagers only release every 2-4 maintenance releases (in fact, until last night, their last release was KDE SC 4.3.4, which is 3-4 months old now. As of today, KDE SC 4.4.3 – four updates later, is FINALLY in Debian Sid.) In contrast, Kubuntu has been building updates within days of new packages, and is a reference release for KDE. OpenSUSE DEFINITELY gets the crown in this respect – it is THE release that KDE itself uses for Live CD sample releases (not too surprising, given the long time German roots).
My point in this is that Canonical focuses most of its KDE effort on building binaries early and often so that KDE Alpha and Beta testers have a platform to use. Arch, Sabayan, Gentoo, OpenSUSE, and Mandriva are the other leaders, most everyone else lags by at least a month, sometimes six months or more, in this area.
I therefore consider your review this time a bit too strongly tilted to the visual effects, which we all know are easy to modify. I do respect your view on branding, and if they had more time and money to spend, it might be nice to throw more into Kubuntu and Lubuntu. In time, that may happen. Curiously, Xubuntu, while not heavily branded, generally has the best appearance, from an artistic viewpoint, of any of the releases. I’ve not seen strong branding there, either, though, at least not in the past. I’d like to read your viewpoint on that.
A 2.5/5, simply based on weak branding is not what the average consumer cares about. How does it work? My experience throughout the Alpha and Beta test cycle suggests that this release works every bit as well as Ubuntu. The only thing it lacks are those small points. A 3.5 rating at the least is a more reasonable rating, considering that the installation is trivial, the packages you want to add are omitted only for space reasons to fit on a CD instead of mandating a DVD. Grabbing the Ubuntu Package Manager, or for that matter, low level tools, such as gdebi or aptitude, are only as far away as a kpackage, dpkg, or apt-get installation request.
I’ve been using Kubuntu 10.04 since the first alpha release and I found this article boarder line bashing of KDE. Yes, Mr. Lynch we understand you’re fascination with ubuntu’s radical ideas to implement in an LTS release. Kubuntu and Xubuntu seem to really be the sane releases for a Long Term Support release. I’m rather glad my buttons remain on the right also the “pivotal” branding. Well, in all honesty I’m quite happy its not thrown in my face ever 3 seconds on ever little program I click. Kubuntu is a find example of how an LTS is done. Ubuntu’s Radical Design changes and beta state programs (i.e. Ubuntu One,Ubuntu Music Store,Me Menu,etc…) might very well come back to haunt them.
Social media apps? KDE4 has plenty of plasmoids (installed and some enabled by default on the desktop by kubuntu) for social media … unfortunately, we’ve been over-fed with apps, apps, apps for everything and with KDE4, we need to change the perspective a bit and look at the plasmoids too.
Right-click on the panel -> Panel Settings -> Add widgets… -> then add the plasmoids you want or download from the internet (the add plasmoid dialog lets you do this automatically).
Cheers.
My most important things in a distro, and so what I look for when reading a review, are, in approximate order
-ease of installation
-hardware recognition (especially for older machines)
-stability
-ease of use
-performance
As with most Linux users, the default wallpaper and theme are quickly changed, unwanted software is quickly deleted and programs and settings are tweaked. The default looks aren’t important and seeing the company name is completely unimportant to me.
Among the software that I quickly deleted when trying Karmic were any IM software, all games and Ubuntu One. I don’t care about social networking software. Reasons that I didn’t intend to use Lucid included the move of the title bar buttons (and in particular the “not a democracy” comments which while true seemed unnecessarily provocative), the emphasis on Ubuntu One, the increased emphasis on social networking (Me Menu and Gwibber) and my increasing unease with of Mono. A video editor was completely unimportant to me. Much of what I didn’t like was just added bloat, of course, and can be changed in Ubuntu.
Reading this review, there is nothing written to complain about ease of installation, little about ease of use and nothing about hardware recognition, stability or performance. What the reviewer disliked were:
-lack of branding (not an issue for me at all-nothing to do with the things I’ve listed as important to me)
-login screen not branded (no problem here)
-desktop doesn’t resemble that of Ubuntu (frankly it looks fine to me, though I’d change it anyway-dull and bland has never bothered me, I used to change what I considered the horrible Ubuntu wallpaper first to a solid blue, then later put pictures up)
-dislikes the blue wallpaper (see above)
-no ubuntu software center (I’ve always been happy with Synaptic)
-Kpackagekit ugly and non-intuitive (no examples given, no stability problems mentioned, doesn’t say anything detailed about how it works-though it has come in for criticism elsewhere as well and some merely install Synaptic)
-software selection -lack of PiViTi (I’d delete it anyway)
-flash not installed by default (it never has been in Ubuntu, either, and that is common in many distros. Wouldn’t all Kubuntu users immediately install Kubuntu-restricted extras, or those elements they want if they don’t want them all?)
-different desktop theme than ubuntu (I don’t understand why that is a problem)
-no F-Spot or Gimp (fine for me, I’ve always uninstalled both anyway and in ubuntu just used Gthumb-it’s easy to install from repositories the program you want)
-no Gwibber, no Ubuntu One (more unwanted software I wouldn’t have to delete)
-title bar buttons on the right (where for those who haven’t been using Macs, is where they are easiest to use-perhaps Kubuntu, though not Ubuntu, listened to all those complaints about the move and acted in a democratic fashion)
Obviously branding and default looks are very important to the reviewer. Strangely, to me, many of the things the reviewer disliked are things I favour and about which I dislike the handling given by Ubuntu. I agree that the default software selection isn’t consistent with saying that there is software for all usual needs, but faced with the problem of getting everything into a CD using KDE, the default choices seem reasonable to me.
My 2 cents:- I agree with the theming of the ubuntu’s. Change window manager and apps but at least keep the same colours, wallpaper and Icons, a little consistency please… and that goes for xubuntu too. I recommend PCLinuOS for KDE. Personally i’ll wait for Mint.
Kubuntu has always been a piece of Crap… I thought this version might be much improved since they announced project timelord… pfftttt. think they just did that for a publicity stunt to try and shake off the bad reputation kubuntu has…
I don’t understand how the Kubuntu devs even though they have limited resources can’t even put out a decent Kde distribution! Even Linux Mint Kde edition blows kubuntu out of the water, and there is only 1 guy working on it!
Kde Fans… I recommend you use ArchLinux, OpenSuse, Mandriva or PClinuxOS