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Considering Trying KDE Again With Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy”

So I keep hearing all these great improvements coming down the pipe for KDE and v4.0. I know much of it is available in the repositories and while considered beta at this stage when have I been afraid of a little bleeding edge? I’ve been running Ubuntu 7.10 since the second alpha release. I’m a sucker for punishment and like to help squash the bugs before they get to the rest of the world.

Some of you might remember my Week with KDE a while back. I gave it a try and the community response was really overwhelming. Submitting tips and programs to look into. How to deal with changes one environment to the next. I did appreciate all that help.

For the term of Ubuntu 7.10 I am considering running KDE. I am thinking about this for a few reasons:

Few (if any) of my tutorials directly address the KDE crowd. I feel like I may be leaving out part of the user-base while just focusing on one.
This will really force me to use KDE instead of just looking for the light at the end of the tunnel in a week-long stint.
Perhaps I can help improve KDE with continued bug submissions.

I haven’t completely decided to make this move.. I guess right now I’m just thinking aloud. If anyone has any suggestions, words of wisdom, links to “learning KDE”, etc I would appreciate it. Also if anyone has pointers to installing the KDE 4.0 stuff I would be interested in looking into that. With the final release of Ubuntu 7.10 coming in just a few short weeks I don’t have a lot of time to sit on this decision.

What are your thoughts on me (and this blog) switching to using and documenting KDE until Ubuntu 8.04?

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Post a comment — Trackback URI RSS 2.0 feed for these comments This entry (permalink) was posted on Sunday, September 30, 2007, at 10:27 am by Christer Edwards. Filed in KDE.

14 Comments

troll

What you failed to realize is that it doesn’t matter that you got “good community response and tips to look into”. Things should work out of the box for the ordinary things. Don’t try KDE again, you’ll be better off.

Posted on 30-Sep-07 at 11:22 am | Permalink
nixternal

so far a majority of tutorials could be used cross DE just by changing a word here or there. you really want to learn KDE, hang out with Jucato on IRC for a bit. Even though he considers himself a “newb” in a sense, he is an absolute KDE genius. Somehow, someway he tends to know just about every little nook and cranny, more so than I do.

Posted on 30-Sep-07 at 11:42 am | Permalink
montag

Great!

Posted on 30-Sep-07 at 11:49 am | Permalink
Olaf Lieser

Absolutely, go ahead with KDE 4! It deserves as much attention and love as the Other Popolar Desktop Environment.

Posted on 30-Sep-07 at 11:49 am | Permalink
nik0

I would like to welcome you onboard and joining us in improving kubuntu. You know of course that Gutsy will have the kde4 beta 3 as an option , while defaulting to kde 3.5.7.

Posted on 30-Sep-07 at 12:13 pm | Permalink
Jakob Petsovits

As a big KDE fan (although not as hype-spreading as others), I propose you hold off your 6-month KDE period to the 8.04 to 8.10 cycle. (Including the upgrade to KDE 4.1 when it happens during that time.) And the reason for that is that I want you to get the Good KDE Experience ™ instead of the freshly baken one.

KDE 4.0 is indeed great from a technological point of view, tons of breakthrough improvements on the base library front, the artwork, the usability, and a certain number of applications.

However, my impression is that the KDE community is currently too busy with getting the whole stuff running without serious regressions at all, so you won’t get to see most of the nifty innovations in KDE 4.0. Apart from Plasma, KDE Games and KDE Edu maybe, whereas the major part of the user visible work and porting of third party KDE applications will rather happen around the 4.1 release. KDE 4 is getting there, but at the moment it’s still heavily under construction.

So, while I don’t want to communicate that it’s not a good idea to have KDE 4.0 running (I’ll certainly be doing so) I’m saying that if you only plan to spend one Ubuntu cycle on KDE 4, it should be the Hardy one instead of Gutsy.

Posted on 30-Sep-07 at 12:25 pm | Permalink
troll

If you have to learn explicitly an environment and actually ask for suggestions to get the basic things working.. The environment is inherently broken. Save your effort, stay off KDE.

Posted on 30-Sep-07 at 12:27 pm | Permalink
Joe

I just switched from KDE to Gnome.

(And I see no reason to go back again. At least for now.)

Posted on 30-Sep-07 at 1:11 pm | Permalink
martin

If you want to look at KDE4 you should wait for gutsy+1 because KDE4 is very alpha at the moment. the kde people are doing quite some heavy lifting….

Posted on 30-Sep-07 at 1:21 pm | Permalink
Jeff Schroeder

Please don’t stop with your gnome posts. Why not switch every month or so? That would actually be pretty cool.

That way, you don’t alienate either community.

Posted on 30-Sep-07 at 2:09 pm | Permalink
Nathan R. Hale

I’m seriously considering a long term switch to KDE4 as well…though I’ll probably wait till it’s the official flavor for Kubuntu. The progress they’re making looks simply amazing, and it many ways superior to what GNOME has coming down the pipe. Neverless, I’m a longtime GNOME fan & advocate…so I guess we’ll have see!

Posted on 30-Sep-07 at 6:02 pm | Permalink
Jame

Remember KDE4 is beta at the moment, so don’t be surpised when it falls over.

My advice is to run up a VirtualBox instance of Gutsy + KDE4 (download Kubuntu Gutsy ISO, install it in VirtualBox and follow the KDE4 instructions here: http://kubuntu.org/announcements/kde4-beta2.php, specifically the last point to run it as a full session. tip: choose a > 4GB virtual disk ) and tinker away without touching your current system. A quick “$ aptitude upgrade” in the virtual system will keep you abreast of KDE4 changes.
Even better, if you have a dual monitor and the VirtualBox guest additions installed you can run your current DE environment and Gutsy + KDE4 side by side – great for reviewing the different approaches to functionality in Gnome and KDE.

As for the remarks that our helpful “troll” supplies, people have the freedom to choose whatever desktop they want, be it KDE, Gnome or XYZ. Childish and churlish remarks do nothing to improve the perception of Free Software and the people that make up the community. If you have nothing positive to provide I suggest you just get over whatever is eating away at you inside.

All desktop environments have their problems, but nothing good is achieved by failing to implement or partake in a positive improvement process.

Posted on 30-Sep-07 at 8:38 pm | Permalink
Wolfger

I’m looking forward to seeing more KDE stuff on your blog!

Posted on 01-Oct-07 at 10:04 am | Permalink
nosrednaekim

hey… if you have any KDE specific problems, feel free to come over to #kubuntu in IRC like nixterminal said. Very helpful and a bit more laid-back than the official ubuntu channel

Posted on 04-Oct-07 at 1:35 pm | Permalink

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