Sorry Kubuntu, I've Switched to Ubuntu

Submitted by David Grant on Fri, 2008-06-13 02:39

I've used Kubuntu for a long time. In fact I had never used plain Ubuntu except for once a long time ago on an old laptop but then I promptly removed it because it caused the laptop to overheat badly (it was painful on the thighs) and so I went Gentoo, my bread-and-butter distribution. I never liked Gnome for some reason. I never had good experiences with Gnome in Debian or Gentoo. KDE always seemed to work a lot better out of the box. It might be because KDE is an all-in-one solution whereas Gnome is a bit more modular and made up of metacity, gnome-panel, nautilus and a bunch of applets. I remember trying out Gnome in gentoo and metacity wouldn't start, or it would crash spontaneously. Not Gnome's fault, but it's a problem that just would never have happened in KDE.

Ubuntu has fixed all that by focusing on Gnome and ignoring all other desktop systems and window managers and making it work great out-of-the-box. Gnome is nothing like I remember it being. Kubuntu allowed me to continue using KDE, which I was used to but unfortunately I think Kubuntu has fallen behind Ubuntu. The biggest factor here is probably Ubuntu's far larger user base. More users reporting bugs and more developers eating their own dogfood. 90% of all Ubuntu tips & tricks and how-tos on the web are for Ubuntu, not Kubuntu. A few things turned me off Kubuntu in the last while:

  • Totally broken X config in KDE Control Center (mangles xorg.conf file badly, had to use nvidia-config or "dpkg-reconfigure xorg-server".
  • Documentation on the web is almost always Ubuntu-specific and relied on going to menu items that just aren't present in Kubuntu (at least not out of the box).
  • Not easy to set up Compiz on Kubuntu Gutsy (at least if you upgrade from Edgy). It's easy to set up in Ubuntu Gutsy or Hardy.
  • Bad experience with KDE 4. I tried it a few times after it was released and it felt like a piece of alpha software. Was hoping for a better experience but it was buggy and I don't think Kubuntu has the resources behind it to perfect it like Ubuntu does with Gnome.
  • Auto-mounting had been good in Kubuntu but once in a while I have problems (not able to unmount, devices spontaneously unmounting themselves, etc.... I have never had a problem in Ubuntu so far and I enjoy the fact that I don't get that annoying pop-up after I plug something in in Kubuntu or Windows.

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Comments

Denis Andreev (not verified)

Sat, 2008-06-14 05:13

I hardly know this disappointment fillings your get from other distros after Gentoo. God knows how much I liked my Gentoo. But. It's time to move over it. No comments. Ubuntu is huge mass factor. It's not perfect, but millions of zealots make it better. I have issues with laptop heat, ATI drivers, kernel updates, Xorg crashes, hibernation & suspend and etc. And it's always fixed in next rolling update from Canonical. Personally, I don't like KDE anyways, so Kubuntu don't bother me at all. But I think you shell backup your apt packages database in case of disappointment. GNOME and KDE is more `tase-preferable` not `logical-preferable`.
As for me, I moved to Arch distro. Can't recommends it for now, it's to early at this moment.

drifterboy (not verified)

Sun, 2008-06-15 13:46

Kubuntu, is the crappiest of all KDE crippling rebranding. The only way to get things right with KDE is to build it on your own I guess.

Kylea (not verified)

Sun, 2009-01-04 20:20

I invested 2 1/2 months getting Ubuntu 8.10 64 working - its my default OS now - only two complaints: 1. Bluetooth is not right, fortunately for me I have a work around that works - I have to leave the Bluetooth radio off until it boots - then it works. 2. Skype and Pulseaudio - what a mess - have to kill Pulseaudio then restart it and then Skype will work - as long as nothing else is using the sound card.

This points aside its great. Also run VirtualBox 2.1 (current) to run XP and I experiment with Kubuntu 8.10 64 Bit. Its ok - bluetooth is broken - got it to work once.

However I built a 32bit 8.10 Kubuntu for the wife and 16 year daughter and its great - its fast - was simple to install, everything worked and it looks great. Only had one pain - getting the z55 printer driver installed for my Lexmark x5150 printer. Thats done.

So have another look I think the 32 bit version is pretty good.

Warning - do not try and install version 3.x of Open Office - does not work - stick with 2.4

Mike (not verified)

Sat, 2009-01-24 17:30

Do you have any advice on getting x5150 to work for me. I have Ubuntu Intrepid 64 bit and have tried over and over. Some of the forums have advice on downloading the z55 driver, which I have done. I extract the CJLZ55LE-CUPS-1.01.TAR.GZ to a file called lexmarkz55-CUPS-1.0-1.gz.sh. Then all heck breaks loose and I try something called tail -n or something and a get strange looking symbols in the terminal. Any help would be appreciated, I have been using Linux for about a year and this seems to be unsolvable for me. Thankyou

David Grant

Sat, 2009-01-24 20:19

Check out: http://openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Lexmark-x5150

And of course http://localhost:631

Anonymous (not verified)

Tue, 2010-01-05 07:41

Dear Mr. Mike.

I have other issues with Kubuntu but specifically about Lexmark printers. I have a Lexmark X5470 4-in-1. I does not work with ANY form of Linux and I have about 8 of them.

It seems there are no Linux drivers for the older units and they appear to NOT be CUPS compliant. I have tried everything including downloading some other Lexmark Linux drivers. They won't install.

From what I have been able to find out is that the electronics are so minimal that they depend on the computer to do most of the work and the software is written for Wndows or sometimes Windows and Mac.

I have been told by people far smarter and more experienced than me to simply forget about it and go buy a new printer.

This is probably not what you wanted to hear but it seems to be the way things are.

moatsad (not verified)

Mon, 2009-11-30 16:09

one thing I found out about Kubuntu is that GIMP works with our Genius tablets , no amount of manual configuration could get it to work without lag under Gnome, but works beautiful under Kubuntu. So we have 1 box out of five in the house running Kubuntu, I prefer Xubuntu , the rest are Ubuntu

Anonymous (not verified)

Tue, 2010-01-05 07:50

I have recently downloaded Kubuntu 9.10. It installed without incident but when it booted up it locked up. It does this every time. It will not run. I have reinstalled it and tried all of the options "acpi=off", "noapic", "nolapic" etc. The results are the same, I get to the splash screen and it freezes.

I like the KDE desktop, my other versions of Linux are all running KDE without any problems.

Regular Ubuntu and Debian 5 install and run with no problems at all. It's only the Kubuntu that is user unfriendly.

Is anyone else having this problem?

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