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Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu
- zerathul 15y agoreally, what's the problem with installing kde on ubuntu/ubuntu server?
- TylerE 15y agokubuntu are the ones who maintain the packages. If they go away, you're either HOPING someone volunteers to package KDE in an independent repo (a pretty daunting task), or you're building it from source.
- kijin 15y agoAll those packages come from Debian anyway. As long as Debian keeps KDE in its repos, I don't see any reason for KDE packages to disappear from Ubuntu repos. Worst case, KDE on Ubuntu will become less stable due to less testing, but that could be partially mitigated by using slightly older packages.
- tzury 15y agoKDE on a server?
- arguesalot 15y agoThe reason i prefer xubuntu is the fact that Kubuntu is going the way of ubuntu by investing heavily on eyecandy, touch-like interfaces and excessive UI bloat. KDE seems to be the best overall platform for development, but the interface is trying too much to be everything. I think they should reconsider falling back to a simple clean default desktop, because they are doing a disservice to the developers of thousands of great KDE apps.
- mike-cardwell 15y agoI'm on Ubuntu 11.04 atm. I plan to upgrade to 12.04 in July (after its had a few months to bed in), but I'm weary of what to expect from their next UI update, given their recent history. Unless I hear good things, I'll be moving over to Xubuntu.
- manuletroll 15y agoSome ideas seem kind of interesting, like the HUD thingy, but I very much doubt it will be enough to bring disappointed users back to using Ubuntu. Xubuntu is quite good if you're looking for something close to the gnome 2 experience.
- mike-cardwell 15y agoThe desktop is just there to launch and switch between applications. I want it to stay simple and to keep out of my way. I've not tried Xubuntu yet, but it sounds/looks like it will be better at satisfying these requirements for me.
- a_a_r_o_n 15y ago"The desktop is just there to launch and switch between applications." If that's how you look at the desktop, then you should definitely look at Lubuntu. It's just windows and a panel. When you look at an Xfce desktop, it looks like Xfce. When you look at Lubuntu, it's just windows and a panel.
- mike-cardwell 15y agoI was unaware of Lubuntu. I will keep it in mind. Thanks.
- malnourish 15y agoI'm using Elementary OS, which is based off Ubuntu. It's simple, clean, and works very well for my purposes.
- aroman 15y agoIf you don't mind me asking, what might those purposes be?
- tzury 15y agoFollowing the Unix philosophy Write programs that do one thing and do it well -- perhaps we can assume that Canonical is willing to maintain one OS, and do it well.
- nailer 15y agoI've been wanting to hear this for a long time. Not that I like one more than the other, I just think that Canonicals effort should be towards developing, fixing and improving one UI, not four.
- levesque 15y agoI'm not sure Canonical supports XFCE in any way, and now they also no longer support KDE (financially, that is). There were hiring one guy to work on Kubuntu, that's not much if you ask me. So we're down to two (Gnome-shell and Unity), and the support of gnome-shell is almost mandatory. Unity itself is based on gnome3, so they need to help maintain and improve it. There is no harm in letting community driven efforts take place. Having a variety of desktop environments available to pick from has its advantages. For example, Xubuntu is really useful for people who need to cut down memory/CPU requirements.
- Jach 15y agoXubuntu is also really useful if you want a superior desktop UI. I'm not sure if it's gotten harder or easier to make a default Ubuntu install use Xfce4 on the very newest version, it'd be nice if that was an install-time option instead of the separate distro mess. (It used to be just sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop, but I've been out of the Ubuntu world for long enough I have no idea if they changed that and it wouldn't surprise me.) I'll be on Gnome2 until it dies, after that I'll have a full switch to Xfce4 since it's the only one that can compete with Gnome2 at the moment. I'll probably seriously experiment with various tiling managers around that time too. I'm more excited about the future developments of Wayland which I'm glad Canonical is supporting but not so much gnome3 and unity.
- 15y ago
- puzzler314 15y agoI've recently switched Linux Mint as a result of Canonical's new focus on eye candy rather than functionality (I couldn't take the new interface in Ubuntu). Have others gone the same way or is there another distribution I should look at?
- alinajaf 15y agoI stuck with Ubuntu but switch to gnome + xmonad on fresh installs. If this ceases to be possible in future releases I may take a few days and get set up with arch linux, and then automate that with chef or something similar.
- davidw 15y agoThe idea that you should reinstall every time, with Mint, makes it sound like a bit of a toy, in my eyes.
- dhimes 15y agoIt's a philosophy, not a requirement. Mint thinks you should upgrade Ubuntu that way as well. I just keep separate partitions and do a full install on the ones I need. No sweat. On the other hand, I did a "ubuntu" style upgrade to 10.04 LTS, and that worked fine, too (I run that on a netbook for their netbook interface). It took longer than a full install on Mint (perhaps being a slower machine had something to do with it), but it worked out ok.
- nickolai 15y ago
- andrewcooke 15y ago"[...] a regularly released community-friendly distro with a strong KDE focus. There is no other major distro out there that matches that description [...]" Then WTF is OpenSuse? http://www.opensuse.org/en/ http://www.opensuse.org/en/ This makes me really mad. OpenSuse is a major distro and has supported KDE for years. It's not so popular in the USA, but is pretty big in Europe (I have used it for years and it rocks; so does KDE). I don't see how the quote above is excusable. Before reading that you had my sympathy, but if you're going to trash-talk the rest of the community then good riddance. [I just noticed some people are actively downvoting this comment. Just how far does mindless Ubuntu fanboyism and intolerance of alternatives go?]
- oinksoft 15y agoMandriva and its descendant PCLinuxOS also fall into this category. I believe Mandriva is relatively popular in Europe also, being used in government and such.
- freehunter 15y agoOff topic, but PCLinuxOS is really just a terrible name. It's so horribly generic. It sounds like "Windows Antivirus 2012".
- oinksoft 15y agoIt seemed surprisingly popular ca. 2007 before people figured out that they were, I shit you not, tampering with the DistroWatch numbers by spoofing hits. A decent distro though, and it was a little more usable than Mandriva at the time.
- jriddell 15y agoMandriva is less frequently released and like suse fills in gaps with their own technology such as system control centre. They have also been very bad at creating a community which leads to forks like PCLinuxOS and Mangia
- 15y ago
- markokocic 15y agoI don't understand what is the problem. I installed Ubuntu multiple times just to uninstall Gnome and install KDE as a first step after install. Never bothered to actually try KUbuntu. Is this method of installing KDE still supported, or they are dropping support for KDE completely.
- kijin 15y agoThey're just making Kubuntu more like Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Edubuntu, etc. All those other derivatives have been doing OK without official support.
- sho_hn 15y agoAdd to that that Jonathan Riddell (the sole Kubuntu developer Canonical was funding, which they now cancelled, which is what this announcement is about) had been off the Kubuntu rotation for about one release cycle in the recent past already, working on Bzr instead. The Kubuntu folks still managed to make their release just fine.
- adimitrov 15y agoThey will probably not drop the KDE packages (that'd be idiotic, tons of people use, say Amarok or Kopete or whatnot) — but it won't be the streamlined experience that Unity is or Gnome was, Ubuntu icons everywhere and whatnot. It'll just be closer, or even identical to upstream KDE (or rather, Debian's version of upstream KDE) with few modifications on Canonical's side.
- Karunamon 15y agoCanonical is not a stranger to idiotic business decisions.(See also Unity and their subsequent losing of ground to Mint) That, combined with their utter inability to take community feedback into account, really makes me wonder whenever they do something like this. It's like traditional logic doesn't apply.
- reuser 15y ago
- amirf 15y agoIt's always sad to see a project failing. There are other alternatives, both to a KDE linux distro (i.e: openSUSE) and gnome/ubuntu (mint being my favorite). It's a business decision I understand, they want to shift focus completely to ubuntu, especially since they are losing a huge user-base over their last gnome3 releases.
- bratsche 15y agoIt doesn't mean the project is failing. Kubuntu had only a single developer from Canonical, and numerous other developers. This just means that Canonical doesn't feel like funding a KDE desktop anymore with that one developer. It doesn't mean the project is ending or anything.
- amirf 15y agoYou're right, but it means the project will (probably) become less stable. One less full time individual probably means less testing and might require you to use older packages or build them yourself.
- lawnchair_larry 15y agoThat's a shame. I never liked KDE since I first tried it about 15 years ago. Unity and Gnome 3 are so bad that on my latest ubuntu install, I decided to see if KDE was fixed yet. It's now my primary desktop environment. There are a few issues with it, but I felt like it was far better than the alternatives.
- brainsqueezer 15y agoI liked that mix o Debian base + latest KDE + some Ubuntu graphical extras (printer, package update, etc). KDE needs it's own distro focused on a great KDE user experience. Sorry for Mandriva and others but for me I need something based on Debian. My real opinion is that KDE should make itself a distro to get a good vertical integration.
- ChuckMcM 15y agoThis comment stood out for me in that article: If it does then we need people to step up and take the initiative in doing the tasks that are often poorly supported by the community process. ISO testing, for example, is a long, slow, thankless task, and it is hard to get volunteers for it. We can look at ways of reducing effort from what we do such as scrapping the alternate CD or automating KDE SC packaging. This is the biggest single challenge that free software has to over come if it every hopes to challenge proprietary versions. Testing, and verifying bug fixes, and bugs, and documenting. Its not the 'fun' work of building a distro, its not the 'glorious' work of building a distro, its not something that makes people want to sit at your table during a 'con. But the reality is the for most software products the number of people who are 'users' and the number of people who are 'developers' are generally very different, with successful products having many more users than developers. Users have no option when they hit a problem or an incompatibility but to stop using, that is their only choice. They aren't going to learn C, they aren't going to try to fetch and build a newer version of a kernel module, all they really can do is try something else. Everything else pales in comparison to that problem.
- jebblue 15y agoCanonical should consider dropping Unity and getting the Gnome people to drop Gnome 3 and then get them to come out with Gnome 4 based on Gnome 2 with some very small Ubuntu twists. Oh right, that would be all Ubuntu versions up to 11 which were successful.