Leaving Kubuntu after 4 years using it and the reason why I came running back

[Goeroeboeroe]

Edit: I changed the title, because in the end I came back to Kubuntu 8.04

I didn't know where to put this, and it has to do with an operating system so...
I really really really hate it to go back to Windows. I've used Kubuntu for four years now. 6.10 and 8.04 worked great. But 10.04 is completely unworkable for me.
The reason I take the time to write this is I hope some developers or whoever read it and maybe it helps a bit to make Linux better in future. So I can come back.
I really liked this board and the way people help each other here, before I forget to mention that.

8.04 worked great. But I build sites and Firefox was getting too old. (Just after upgrading to 10.04 canonical asked for people to test Firefox 3.5 on 8.04, grrrr. Firefox was the only reason I upgraded).
Okay, I installed 10.04 completely clean. Checksum etc. were okay. First installation went completely wrong, don't know why. Well, that can happen. Maybe I jumped on the floor the moment something was read from the cd, whatever.
Second installation worked okay. Only the nvdia-driver recommended by canonical didn't work. I didn't know it was the driver and things were so weird I couldn't even ask for help. Because I couldn't describe the problem in an understandable way. Fonts were randomly changing in size. Not all programs and not all of the time. Sometimes even the desktopfonts changed. Sometimes fonts were suddenly so small I couldn't read them. Toolbars were sometimes normal, sometimes suddenly small. OpenOffice had grey lines on the toolbars, making them hardly readable. Sizes of folders changed just like that. Etc., etc.
After getting 'out of range' errors it was pretty soon clear it was the recommended driver that caused everything. I installed the other (not recommended) driver and this problem was solved. Took me only about two weeks and three times installing again, because I changed so much settings I was not sure anymore I hadn't caused it myself.

I am supposed to write tutorials how to build sites. (By the way: I didn't contribute much to the Linux community, but my tutorials are also free in both ways and promote open standards. So it's another community, but I'm not only 'using'. And really open standards on Internet are very important for Linux too.)

I'm pretty sure if I take another two weeks or two months everything is working, but that's too much time. A small part of the problems that still exist (and didn't exist in 8.04) is following.

(For most of this things I've been searching on Internet. I had much more problems and I could solve a lot of them. Still existing problems I was going to ask here, but it's really taking too much time. And I'm pretty sure some things are just not solvable.)
* RSIBreak doesn't work. When the screen blanks out after 10 minutes, RSIBreak stops counting.
* No sound in RSIBreak.
* After rebooting I have to manually connect to Internet.
* Scrollbars are hardly visible, because they are all grey. I didn't find a way to change color. Maybe installing a completely other theme or something like that could work, but I'm afraid the other problems are starting again.
* I've a map on the desktop. To select something I have to click on it. Typing the first letter doesn't work.
* Drag and drop with Shift, Control or Control+Shift most of the time doesn't work. No big problem if it never works, but on the wildest moments it suddenly does work, even if I didn't use Shift or Control. I just drag something somewhere and there's suddenly a link or a copy. I've really taken a very long time to try this out, but it just doesn't work well on my computer. Not being able to reliable copy or move is not a small thing.
* The helpcenter doesn't work. The helpcenter itself is working, but in applications I get all of the time 'no index exists' (or something like that). Only in KDE-apps. I can't make an index, because if I choose in the helpcenter for making an index I only get a pop-up where there's nothing to choose or type.
* Shortkeys for widgets aren't working. So I have to use the mouse a lot. A whole lot.
* I get no notifications for updates.
* KAlarm has as a general setting for sound. But there was no sound. After searching for a very long time it turns out there's a setting about four levels deep in the individual warnings. Soundlevel in every new warning is zero. You have to adjust it in every warning. What's the use of a general setting if it's overruled by every warning? All this things also take a lot of time, because for example this setting was really good hidden. Couldn't find another usable alarm-program.
* There's a strange dotted square on the taskbar, making the widget on the left almost unusable. Removed the whole taskbar and every widget, but after putting everything back it's there again. Switching widgets etc. doesn't make any difference.
* Systemmonitor (a widget with three bars) gives half of the time no left bar (cpu usage) and says half of the time cpu usage is 100%. Completely unusable. (100% isn't correct, because top etc. give a different usage.)
* No sound in OpenOffice. There's a red cross in the mediaplayer and I can't change that.
* Klipper doesn't work wel. Because of the tutorials I write I sometimes have to copy 30 or something different sentences, and have to keep them a little while. Klipper was perfect. The first entrance (the one used the most) could be copied with Ctrl+ V. Now I have to open Klipper, select the first entrance, close Klipper and then finally I can use Ctrl-V. Every time again: the selection I make doesn't persist.
* Sound in Firefox is good. But not in add-ons. NoScript and Download Statusbar have no sound.
* Sounds in k3b are truncated. After about half a second they stop.
* To get shortkeys for applications working I had to change two settings in a config file. No big deal, but of course it took again some time before I found that out. Why does KDE make a very handy shortcut-system in the menu, when you have to change two settings with an editor before it works?
* Korn was a terrific mail notifier for KDE 3. There simply doesn't exist a good mail notifier for KDE 4. I use a widget, but that only gives the number of mails. Sometimes it gives a warning with a sound, sometimes not. It should give the header of the mail. Sometimes it does, sometimes not. It should give the sender. Sometimes it does, sometimes it gives completely rubbish. (Thunderbird gives the correct sender, so it's not something wrong in the mail). It was the best I could find for pop.
* After installing the not-recommend driver the fonts are better. But in Kubuntu 8.04 (and Windows) the are still far better.
* Workrave has no sound.
* I use Knotes to put to do lists on a desktop. Very handy if you work on more projects at the same time. After rebooting the font size is changed to an unreadable small size and all positions and formats are lost. I've reinstalled KNotes a few times, typed everything in completely new, no difference. It's hardly usable this way.
I could install Tomboy and mono, but I might as well go directly back to Windows if I install mono.
(If I say reinstall here of course I removed everything, also all settings etc.)
* If I connect an external harddisk or usb-stick, I get notified. After that there's not any sign there's an external thing connected, making it very easy to forget to safely remove it. Dataloss can happen. In 8.04 there was an icon on the deskop: a clear indication there was some external device connected.
Probably I can get something like that in 10.04 too, after another two days of searching and asking.
For the moment I've put a very big widget (you can't make the bloody thing smaller) on the desktop that says in text if something's connected.
* The window of OpenOffice is not completely visible. About half a centimeter at the bottom is missing. Reinstalling didn't repair that. So I can't see page numbers etc. Wait, sometimes the window is visible and I can enjoy for a few minutes page numbers.
* VMWare didn't work. I'm used to getting errors installing it, so nothing strange. Found a fix on Internet, just like in 8.04. Fix didn't work. Found a fix for the fix. That worked: I could install Windows. Just one small problem: no internet. I use it to test sites on Internet Explorer 7 (and 6, but I probably quit 6 completely for testing).
* VirtualBox worked great. Far easier than VMWare. I used VirtualBox out of the repo. Just one small problem: no internet.

I used two weeks trying to get Kubuntu to work. Of course it took also some time to learn new things. But I didn't really even started using it and I found already so many problems. I'm pretty sure if I start using it I'll find lots of other problems.

Well, that's it. Thanks for the help I got here. I really don't like to go back to Microsoft. And in some time I'm definitely going to try Kubuntu again. I even installed Ubuntu in despair, but I really don't like gnome.

Bottom line is: there are fabulous desktop effects. But KNotes doesn't keep it's settings. There are beautiful windows for notifications. But there's no usable mail notifier. That's nice if you like all that glamour, but I have to work.

For me the most important thing is not it's free (without money), but Linux frees you from one of the most horrible companies ever existed. If I had to pay for Linux that would be no problem. But I must be able to use it. I think that's not an unreasonable expectation...

[Bruce]

Well I certainly wouldn't go running to Microsoft.

There are hundreds of Linux distributions out there.

I recently spent a couple weeks with Kubuntu, and experienced far too many problems, and spent too much time dealing with them to trust it with my data. So I just installed a different distribution of Linux.

Running rock solid with a different distribution, no problems at all.

Try another if you must. ;)

[toad]

Ditto to what Bruce said. I also stopped using Kubuntu and haven't used it for a good two years now.

But do go back to M$ if you must... I think that after four years of Linux you will find it very difficult to get used to wasting system resources on such stupid things as a virus checker, having to reboot all the time when installing something new and having to go through ALL that on a regular basis. I know it would drive me nuts and stop me from doing any actual work on the computer.

So my guess is: you'll try it, you'll get fed up sooner or later and you will do what Bruce suggested, i.e. try a different distro :)

[Goeroeboeroe]

That's a possibility. I was so fed up with Kubuntu I even didn't think of that. I know all problems with Windows, I still have a computer with XP for testing sites. But at least it works.
My biggest problem with Microsoft/Windows are not even viruses etc. It's the fact that one company almost rules the world by buying governments and people, destroying ISO, locking you in, etc., etc. Of course you can use OpenOffice etc. also on Windows. But still I don't trust the operating system it runs on.
I can live without a mail notifier etc. But some of the problems I described (and I could make the list easily much longer) make the system unusable for me.
I don't mind editing a config, if I know which one. I also don't mind spending another few days trying to get a distro to work. If I have the idea there's a chance it's going to work out in the end.
The most important thing for me is that I can run Internet Explorer 7 on it. If I can't I have to buy a third computer. I couldn't get that to work with VMWare or VirtualBox on Kubuntu. (Running IE 8 in compatibility mode as IE 7 is not good enough for testing sites, because there are differences with the 'real' IE 7. Especially in tutorials you can't have that of course.)
(Running IE 7 with PlayOnLinux or via tatanka (IEs4Linux) didn't work too. I think I can safely say I really tried Kubuntu.)

Do you have any suggestions for a distro I could try? I know 'everything' (well, nobody really can...) from building sites, but only a little about Linux. I can't judge myself for some of the problems which have to do with KDE and which have to do with Kubuntu. (And of course closed source drivers etc.)
I looked at LinuxMint but the Dutch site says:
"Because of a dispute between the members of the team this website is closed until further notice.
I will take my time to decide what to do...
Thanks for a great run"
This is, well, eh, not very encouraging.
The reason I'm on the international site of Kubuntu and not on the Dutch site with Ubuntu has also to do with problems there were over there. Maybe it's better there now, I don't know.
Not only politics here are running crazy, the whole country seems to start fighting one eachother.

[toad]

Hm, Mint would have been my first suggestion. My second: sidux

Mepis is good and I used it for a year or so. But it depends on a single developer and that is a bit shaky afaic. However, it is still going strong.

Otherwise have a look here http://www.kde.org/download/distributions.php

There is of course always distrowatch to search for kde based distros.

Best thing is to stick to debian based distros seeing your already somewhat familiar with kubuntu. Having said that, if OpenSuse or some such works on your computer then use it! Learning a different package management system is no rocket science these days. Download, run the live CD and try them until you find something that works and which feels comfortable. Oh, and let us know of your experiences :)

OT - yep, Dutch politics are not looking as rosy as they used to. Shame, but don't despair, you'll come good again :)

[Fintan]

Just my 2 cents. I have IE 7 / 8 running nicely in my xp vmware guest.

As for other distros:
I would go with mepis. It isn't as bleeding edge as Kubuntu and very stable.
http://www.mepis.org/

[Goeroeboeroe]

I'm sure if I had enough time I could get IE also running. That's the problem: I don't have enough knowledge of Linux and I also don't have enough time to solve every problem. I'm supposed to write tutorials ;D
I'm going to try Mepis. I saw they have a KDE3 distribution. Maybe that's working better for me. Thanks for pointing me in that direction.
And for me it doesn't have to be bleedy. If I can write on it, mail etc, and test sites it's enough.

[Fintan]

....and test sites it's enough.

Well, to be honest, the best way to get IE 7 / 8 running in a linux environement is to do it in a vm guest with a minimum of 256 MB RAM.

If you have a windows dvd or a HD install it is pretty simple to set up.

[Goeroeboeroe]

I've IE 8 running on a XP machine, because I also have to test Firefox, Opera etc. on Windows.
I had IE 6 running on Wine. But not everything is working, for example opacity doesn't work on Wine.
So I had IE 6 also running on VMWare and 7 also on VMWare. Worked great.
But I couldn't get VMWare to connect to Internet after installing Lucid Lynx. Since I don't need usb anymore I tried VirtualBox open source version. Also no Internet.
If that was the only problem I would have taken the time to solve it. But if you've seen my list of problems (and at this time it's already much longer again), pfffff...
But I'm going to try Mepis with KDE 3. At least then I know the problems are not from KDE 4.
If it works I'll let it know.
If you hear nothing anymore my machine got on fire after trying Mepis.
Anyway thanks for the tip.
I changed the subject from 'Going back to Windows...' etc. to 'Leaving Kubuntu...' etc. for the moment. Don't want to make Bill Gates too happy.

[Detonate]

8.04 was my last Kubuntu distro also. I just did not like KDE4. I have been running Ubuntu ever since. 10.04 is running perfectly on my system. I still hang out in this forum because I like it, the Ubuntu forum, which I visit and post in occasionally, is just too big. Too many silly postings that just annoy me. But you might try a straight Ubuntu install and see how that works for you. It works for me.

[Goeroeboeroe]

I did one desperate try installing a fresh Ubuntu 10.04. But there were two things: I saw right away why I don like Gnome (of course this is a personal thing). External devices were not mounted and none of the solutions I found (it seems to be a quite common problem) worked. If I should like Gnome of course I might have searched better and might have found a solution.
By the way: I did test harddisk and memory exhaustive, both are okay.

[tyronet2000]

I've only just installed Kubuntu, never liked Ubuntu, the colour scheme induced a queezy feeling. Nice to read how many problems I have to look forward to :'( Will probably go back to opensuse if Kubuntu is as rubbish as implied. Of course I also use Windows XP Vista and 7 as I haven't found alternatives for some windows software. Problems Irritations so far dual screen does not keep settings and there was no Games Folder by default but on the plus side Qt installed without problems and also Apache PHP and Mysql and phpMyAdmin installed without having to fart about changing permissions and altering config.inc.php so like all OS's there are pluses and minuses. I'm lucky that I only use computers as a hobbist so can change distros as often as I like also someone mentioned free and beer :)

Regards

[Goeroeboeroe]

I don't know if there are that many problems with 10.04. The fact that I had a lot of problems has maybe to do with my special machine, or with my (lack of ;D ) brains. Forums never give a good picture, because most of the people come only when there are problems.
I did upgrade to 10.04 because I was reading almost only good things about it. So I guess there are a lot of people happy with it.
I wrote my first post with steam still coming out of my ears. The problems are real, but I don't think everybody has them.

[Goeroeboeroe]

One last joke Kubuntu pulled on me. If I'm able to finish writing this.
Preparing to try out Mepis I made a backup of home and etc to an external disk. When backing up etc it didn't make a back-up, but MOVED everything. Without asking. I swear I even didn't look at the Shift or Control-key, just dragged and dropped.
I'm even not completely sure if things really moved. Notification panel says it's moved, not copied. etc on the harddisk is about 15 MB, on my internal disk about 7 MB. But there are at least still a lot of things on my harddisk.
One thing for sure: not everybody is having this kind of problems, ohtherwise Canonical should probably not exist anymore. Must be something weird with my installation. I doubt if I can restart, so time to try out Mepis.

[MoonRise]

Truly good luck to what ever path you choose. I for one don't really tie my self to one or the other though I do make sure I have the latest Kubuntu on my machines below. I run XP in VirtualBox. I try for a linux system mostly because of my grown dislike of M$ but I don't close my mind off to them or other areas, otherwise I would not be a very effective IT Manager. So please try Sidux or Mepis first. That is the greatest thing about Open Source and the like. Choice and something you will not get with M$. Trust me. I have Sooooo many users that have Win Vista and 7 and they still have issues which goes to show you that M$ isn't always the best choice either. Go with what works I guess is what I'm rambling to :D and still frequent here.

[GreyGeek]

...
So I just installed a different distribution of Linux. Running rock solid with a different distribution, no problems at all.
....


Well, don't keep us on pins and needles! ;D Which distro did you switch to?

[GreyGeek]

@OP
Wow!

That is quit a collection of problems. My first thought was that some piece of your hardware was going toes up, but I supposed you ran the usual memory tests and checked the logs for indications of hardware or other errors.

Then I noticed in some of your posts that you run a Dutch version (BTW, your English is very good!) and my new theory is that since most of your problems are software in nature the i18n translation function (Qt's tr() function) is malfunctioning for your language. Perhaps reinstalling the Dutch language packages might help.
kde-l10n-nl
language-pack-nl
language-pack-kde-nl
language-pack-kde-nl-base
language-support-writing-nl
openoffice.org-l10n-nl
openoffice.org-help-nl
thunderbird-locale-nl
myspell-nl
language-pack-gnome-nl
language-pack-gnome-nl-base


But, then I noticed that you have decided to try another distro. Remember this... nobody gets it right all the time.

First, I could recommend Kubuntu 8.04, which you said worked perfectly for you. For one wanting a Linux desktop "to get work done" there really is no reason to be constantly updating to the leading/bleeding edge if what you have works well for you. Kubuntu 8.04 should work happily for another 4 or 5 years, or at least as long as your laptop continues running. I only ride the leading/bleeding edge because I enjoy it, as long as I can stay on the bronc. ;D (Ya, ya, I know ... the security updates. Keep a good firewall, which is default on most Linux distros, don't run as root, and don't let anyone socially engineer you into saving, marking execute and then running a bad app and you won't have anything to worry about. If you are concerned run chkrootkit and rkhunter on a regular basis, and check your output ports with "netstat -lp". You'll be fine.)

Barring Hardy, allow me to recommend PCLinuxOS-2010. It's KDE4 based and TexStar and his gang have turned out a magnificent distro. You should especially like the Admin System panel. PCLOS suffered for about a year because TexStar was blown out of Huston by the hurricane and took a year out to rebuild his life, but he is back now. The latest release was developed with him setting in the saddle and it shows. If Kubuntu didn't work so well for me PCLOS is where I'd probably be.

I would recommend Mandriva but their corporation is in a ticklish spot right now and there is no way of knowing how long they'll still be around. Still, you could run it for as long as you want because, like I said, you don't have to change or upgrade your distro every four or six months just because the distro release that often.

OpenSUSE is another excellent distro, (RPM, not deb, unfortunately) but if you are careful to keep Mono out of it you should get good results.

Some have recommended MEPIS. I used MEPIS for about a year, around the time they switched from RPM to deb and the Ubuntu repositories. I believe they've switched to the Debian repositories now, because Debian doesn't cycle as fast as Ubuntu does. Like PCLOS, MEPIS is run by one person, but IMO he is not as good a distro builder as TexStar is. It shows in the MEPIS System admin software tool and the network configuration tool. And, Woodford attempted to create a sustainable income selling MEPIS but it didn't work out, so he frequently is absent from MEPIS while he earns bread for his family.

Fedora 13, with KDE4, has disappointed some of the Fedora/GNOME users. They report the usual troubles with KNetworkManager, but it seems to be, all-in-all a good release.

Or, you could stay with Kubuntu and post more questions more frequently than you have, rather than let the pot boil until the lid blows off with frustration, posting a single msg with a couple dozen problems. But, most of your messages are from 2007, with Hardy!

Kubuntu with KDE 4.4.4 is, in my experience on my hardware, the best, most powerful and flexible Linux distro I have ever run. Unless you've got some hardware incompatibilities (which is possible when you change the kernel, video or sound drivers) I believe it can be the best on your hardware as well.

[Goeroeboeroe]

Hehe, and that was only a part of my problems!
Thanks for the compliment about my English. I always think it's not too good.
Yes, I checked harddisk and memory exhaustive.

I only upgraded because I needed the new Firefox and thought it was not going to backported to 8.04. And since I read such a lot of things about 10.04 being rock solid, stable, ..., I thought it was safer to use the new distro instead of installing Firefox 3.5 myself. Now I hate myself forever ;D
I was really fed up because I thougt canonical had made an unbelievable piece of #&%$. But I guess I was wrong. The kind of problems I have are so weird, it has to have to do something with my special configuration. That's still bad, but something completely else as delivering a piece of #&%$. Bugs (?) can happen.

I'm busy installing Mepis with KDE3 now.
When installing the nvidia-driver in Mepis I got immediately big problems. I removed it and everything went okay.
Installed it: wrong. Removed it: okay.
So I guess there is something wrong with the combination my computer/nvidia-driver.
In Mepis I used KDE3, and the problems were quite easily solved. In Kubuntu with KDE4 there were just too many problems. That's why I think the combination machine/nvidia-driver and Kubuntu and/or KDE4 make things even worse.

After my last post I was afraid something had gone wrong with backing up. I was right. My /etc folder was moved, not copied. Without any warning or question: pfff, moved. And I swear I really only dragged and dropped, nothing more. Didn't even look at Shift or Control or whatever.
My /home folder was not copied at all, though the back-up took about an hour and the notification panel said everything was going okay. Only the empty folders were backed up. Never seen that before. I didn't check after backing up, because copying went always okay. I used remove safely. But since the back-up is about 6 GB there should be some things in the back-up, even without safely remove.
Really glad I make regularly backups!
In 8.04 the exact same back-up took about 5 minutes, by the way, in 10.04 a full hour. I thought this to be strange, but thought maybe it had to do with the new filesystem, or desktop effect, or whatever. But I didn't care, just let it copy in the background or take a walk.

I guess (just a guess) that the combination KDE4 and/or Kubuntu makes things with the nvidia-driver worse.
Things like not copying and moving instead of copying, are certainly not normal. I mean, if this happened a lot canonical would probably have been burned down by now by angry users. So it must be something really strange in my machine.
(Of course there are some things that have nothing to do with having problems, like Korn not ported to KDE4.)

I'm wondering if it could be possible that the combination KDE4/Kubuntu/nvidia-driver/My-machine-with-an-apparently-powerful-mind-of-its-own can make it possible that Kubuntu gets mouse-clicks I don't give. That should explain a lot of strange things, like all of the time spontaniously changing fontsizes etc. Or moving without any question of the /etc folder. If Kubuntu 'thinks' I've clicked on moving the /etc...

Since I started with Mepis I'm going on with that, for the moment. But I've noted your other recommendations.
I didn't reinstall the language-packs, but I reinstalled several times the whole system. So an error during installation is almost impossible.
And apart from some kind of ghost changing all my settings: the fonts looked not nice too. In Mepis they look like they did in 8.04.
Anyway: I guess everybody understands Kubuntu 10.04 is absolutely unreliable for me, after moving /etc and not copying /home. Maybe I'm going to try the next version, but I let 10.04 pass.

Edit: I forget something. Because I could blew some steam here and because of the replies I've cooled down enough to go on with Linux. Thanks.

[toad]

Re your nvidia problems - try different drivers, there are about three "current" ones out there depending on your graphics card...

[Goeroeboeroe]

No, I've had enough of drivers. It's working now, and if I can't play certain games I can live with that.
I'm absolutely sure I used the right driver for my card. I'm afraid if I use a driver nvidia says is not for my card, I'm asking for problems again. For whatever reason there's at least something wrong with their driver. I really love those closed source things.

[Snowhog]

Edit: I forget something. Because I could blew some steam here and because of the replies I've cooled down enough to go on with Linux. Thanks.


Open Source - Open Minds. ;)

Any flavor of Linux is not a 'one size fits all' solution. If any particular Linux variant doesn't do what one wants with the hardware they have, there are others to try. That is the strength of Linux - variety - and as we have all heard at least once in our lives: Variety is the spice of life. Get that with Windows. :o

If all KFN was able to provide you with was a place to 'blew [sic] some steam', then a service was provided. We are a community that desires to help others "in what ever capacity" we can.

[MoonRise]

Don't worry about blowing steam. Better to let it go than keep it in. Leads to better decisions in the long run. I've been trying to get my sister to move to a Linux system for a long time and it was a NVidia issue each time that kept her from continuing. Even though I have an NVidia similar to hers I could never get it hers working. So yes a combination of hardware and KDE "flavor" could cause issue and I have seen that on many OSs. I think it also has to do with how each manufacture decides to "tweak" a chipset to make it "theirs" and even though they say it will use the same drivers my experience is there is always a small detail they leave out.

[GreyGeek]

I'm wondering if it could be possible that the combination KDE4/Kubuntu/nvidia-driver/My-machine-with-an-apparently-powerful-mind-of-its-own can make it possible that Kubuntu gets mouse-clicks I don't give. That should explain a lot of strange things, like all of the time spontaniously changing fontsizes etc. Or moving without any question of the /etc folder. If Kubuntu 'thinks' I've clicked on moving the /etc...


Maybe your "combination KDE4/Kubuntu/nvidia-driver/My-machine-with-an-apparently-powerful-mind-of-its-own" is indicative of the beginning of a sentient machine! ;) Try talking to it with your microphone... (If it answers ... RUN ... it probably already controls the electrical system in your home!!!)
;D ;D ;D

Your comment reminded me of a sci-fi book I read titled "The Adolescence of P-1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adolescence_of_P-1)". It was about a big computer that suddenly became sentient. When the book was written 4GB of RAM was considered unimaginable.

[MoonRise]

Maybe your "combination KDE4/Kubuntu/nvidia-driver/My-machine-with-an-apparently-powerful-mind-of-its-own" is indicative of the beginning of a sentient machine! ;) Try talking to it with your microphone... (If it answers ... RUN ... it probably already controls the electrical system in your home!!!)
;D ;D ;D

Machines do have a mind of their own sometimes! :o

[Goeroeboeroe]

Well, actually I was serious about my machine clicking itself.
(When I read this over I think I shoudn't forget to make an urgent appointment tomorrow with my shrink.)
Serious: I mean that for some reason 'click-events' were triggered in some randomly way. So when I only dragged my /etc to the external disk, somehow there was given a 'move'-click too.
I had sometimes fonts etc. okay, and then suddenly they changed. I mean, it really looked like somebody in my machine was changing settings. I closed Firefox, reopened and the fonts were smaller/bigger/nicer/uglier. Without me doing anything. Maybe some internal problem gave 'mouse-events' or something like that.
But I guess I'll never know. There are much too many components involved, including a closed source driver.
But too be absolutely sure I'm quitting now and going to open my machine. Maybe Hitchkock was right after all...

[MoonRise]

Have you tried a different mouse? I've had weird behavior and thought it was the USB port and turned out it was the mouse.

[Goeroeboeroe]

Yes. About the only thing I didn't check was the graphical card itself.
There's a small chance that some piece of hardware is malfunctioning, but not always. That's the kind of thing that's very hard to find. I've never had problems with my mouse before, and it's working now like it should too.

I really think it was in the combination for whatever reason. As a matter of fact: my dragging with Shift/Control/Control+Shift never worked in 8.04. No problem, because it NEVER worked. In 10.04 it started randomly working, even if I didn't use Shift or Control. That's a real problem, because copying is not reliable anymore (moving my /etc to the backup-disk in stead of copying).
Now in Mepis for the first time it works ALWAYS.
So it's just a thought, but it looks there might have been something imitating mouseclicks.
Sound is working okay now too, but that's another thing. It wasn't the missing sound that wat driving me mad, it was changing the wildest settings, everything good (though the fonts were never really good), restarting Firefox or whatever and whoops: without any dope or alcohol I saw the strangest things.
It was a nice computer for people like Lou Reed on the wild side of life. I'm too old for wild fonts, running folders and jumping toolbars (now I exaggerate a bit).

[MoonRise]

As far as sound I had to dump the entire XINE backend and go with the gstreamer backend. After finding all the library's and such I needed for that my sound works flawlessly.

[Goeroeboeroe]

I didn't really look at the sound. I know there are sometimes problems and most of the time it's not too hard to solve them. Had some when installing 8.04 too, if I remember well. But it's a bit hard to look at sound if you suddenly hardly can read what you hear. The problems with vmware/visualbox were solvable too, I guess. But without a proper monitor that's of little use. I just started with the not being connected with Internet on reboot, also a probably minor problem, when everything was distorted again.

What I forget all of the time: the settings never changed, nowhere. It was just the appearance that changed. Going to some setting I had to change it first so I could apply it, and then I could put back the correct value and apply it. And sooner or later that changed again, but not the setting I could see.
I'm not very good in Linux, but I've beta tested programs for Windows, so I know a bit what strange things can happen. But I've never seen such strange behavior.
There are programs to copy only the directory structure in Windows, so I guess in Linux you have at least 327 commandline options to do the same. I don't know them. But from my home folder was only the directory structure copied. And that took about one hour. Without any error, it was exactly the correct structure. But completely empty. I've really not the slightest idea how this was possible.
I've been troubleshooting computers for elder people. I doubt if I really had believed what happened if some of that people had told this kind of things. But this was my own computer and I've seen it myself.
I mean, I can make a mistake of course. I can make several mistakes. But even I can't make so many mistakes during over two weeks.

[handheldcar]

Workrave has no sound.I'm having this same problem, and it's the only problem I'm having. The Workrave wav files work in Amarok, and other apps such as Kontact and Firefox play sounds; but Workrave will not play sounds during breaks or in the preferences box. I know Workrave can start without the sounds check boxes checked, but all of mine are checked and enabled. The preferences volume usually works at 0%, but moving it up and down, all the way to 100 doesn't make a difference. The sounds were working in Ubuntu. Although Mepis sounds tempting, it's a slightly extreme solution to one little problem after a couple days worth of configurations. I've also asked for help on the Workrave mailing list and Ubuntu forum.

[zlow]

For me the most important thing is not it's free (without money), but Linux frees you from one of the most horrible companies ever existed. If I had to pay for Linux that would be no problem. But I must be able to use it. I think that's not an unreasonable expectation...



It sounds like you should try a Mac.

[Goeroeboeroe]

About the Workrave sound problem: maybe you should start a new topic, because I'm afraid it's buried here under a lot of other problems. I'm pretty sure the sound problem can be easily fixed, thought I don't know enough to tell you how. My display problems were the reason I switched (for the moment).

Until now Mepis is working like 8.04 did! So I'm happy again and not going back to Windows. (Must have been in a very very very bad mood when I wrote that...)

About the Mac: I did have a Mac. I didn't like it at all. Sure, it's working great. I used it for some time just after OS X was made. It forced you to update/upgrade/uphold/up-whatever and especially it forced you to pay for the upgrades about every half a year. I had to, because I needed from some programs the newest version, and the newest versions were always incompatible with the previous OS-versions. Microsoft is evil, but at least most of the applications in Windows work in previous versions too.
I think if Apple had the power, it would be even worse as Microsoft.
That's what I like about open source and open standards etc.: it's very hard for one person or company to become a dictator. I really believe if open standards, internet, etc. are used in the right way, it can help bringing people together. But you don't bring people together by censoring the way Apple does with for example the applications they allow on their hardware.

So I'm really really really happy I can go on with Linux and start doing some work again.

[handheldcar]

About the Workrave sound problem: maybe you should start a new topic, because I'm afraid it's buried here under a lot of other problems. I'm pretty sure the sound problem can be easily fixed, thought I don't know enough to tell you how. My display problems were the reason I switched (for the moment).

Until now Mepis is working like 8.04 did!Okay, thanks, I'll do that. Now, Mepis is sounding even more tempting :( :P

[Goeroeboeroe]

Mepis had also some problems. I think that's pretty normal when installing a complicated os. Windows has too, but you don't notice that because it's already installed.
In Mepis I made two passwords. And I couldn't log in anymore after restarting. Turned out the keyboard lay-out was changed, and I used some special characters. But that's the kind of normal things, I guess.
(Since this was right away beginning installing, I simply reinstalled, used abcdefgh as password, and changed it later.)

[67GTA]

I just came back to Kubuntu after two years of Opensuse. Opensuse is definitely more polished, but the package management is too much trouble. I had to keep no less than 5 repos to get what I can get with 2 in Kubuntu. None of the repos are in sync, so you are constantly having to make sure you don't break something. Multimedia is a major PITA because of this also. Opensuse's multimedia apps are intentionally crippled so they can't play restricted media. You have to install your multimedia apps from the packman repo to get full codec support. Then you add a repo to update your kde version or you get an update from opensuse, amarok gets pulled in from that repo, and your music files stop playing. You can imagine the constant headache.

[apachelogger]

I Opensuse is definitely more polished

I would not particularly mind examples, so that one can improve Kubuntu :)

[Bruce]

openSUSE works.

In Kubuntu my experience over a couple weeks of giving it a try.

Akonadi crashed at every other logout.
The boot splashes disappears or is at a 1982 resolution if you change a driver.
Configuration of running services is not a simple thing, stopping running services is not a simple thing. Package management is a mess and is lacking many features and capabilities lacking in Kubuntu.
Power management doesn't work reliably and doesn't behave as expected. (Kubuntu no matter what setting I changed my processor would speed would slow down while plugged in, even though I explicitly set it not to when plugged in.)
I often had force shutdowns and reboots because the system would hang on shutdown. The system could easily be shutdown or rebooted via CLI, indicating it was something to do with the KDE implementation in Kubuntu and it not interacting with system correctly. No log files anywhere indicating a problem.

Ibus errors when running simple apps, such as Ooo and or skype. No I do not use a foreign language, but the only way to avoid the constant errors was run ibus at each boot.

Boot loader/grub configuration..............no real easy GUI way to do it, two files to edit or edit one and run a command to change the other, and if you happen to have removed entries you didn't want they will be over written.

There were more things, but I uninstalled so remembering each one specifically at this moment without having the OS running anymore is difficult.

In short here were my experiences. It felt like Kubuntu is hodgepodged together on-top of a system it wasn't intended to run on.

I only use KDE, and have used and or tried most KDE distributions available over the years dating back to KDE 1. Kubuntu is by far one of the worst implementations of KDE I have seen.

[The Liquidator]

I Opensuse is definitely more polished

I would not particularly mind examples, so that one can improve Kubuntu :)


I don't consider myself qualified to make any comment myself - I've used only Kubuntu for the last 4 years so would not actually know what other KDE distros are better and why.

However there is one suggestion I could make: In the current version of Linux Format in the UK Ubuntu gets a 9 out of 10 score whereas kubuntu gets severely criticized, with no reason to use that over any other "vanilla" KDE distro, suggesting that kubuntu receives little, if no, attention. Reviews like that from supposed allies must cause damage. Perhaps if you as one of the developers were able to speak to the editorial staff, that might help. Firstly, to get a full explanation as to why they say what they do, so that you can do something about it, and secondly to get the message out that something is actually being done to improve things. Don't know how that would square with your role though, especially as Jono Bacon writes for the mag!

[sixonetonoffun]

Don't hold back Bruce lmao!

On the other side of the coin as a user, Kubuntu has going for it Buntu repositories. Which are really well maintained overall.
Users can ride the bleeding edge with the dev releases or stay on the saner side with the "LTS" releases.

The default KDE configuration seems to be to blame for a lot of issues I see here. Akonadi just isn't finished thats all there is to that. Its limping along but it will improve. But Neomuk/Strigi shouldn't even be activated by default. (Mepis doesn't) just because its there doesn't mean it should be a default. I'd rather see one post about how to enable it then 50 on how to tweak it or disable it!

Devices and drivers are easier to find and install in Kubuntu then any other Debian based distro I've tried. Better then Debian for a user who isn't interested in learning the niceties of rebuilding kernels and kernel modules every time they need to get into a different driver. Isn't flawless and isn't all Buntu the people posting the launchpad repositories like ~xorg-edgers and samrog131 provide a lot of fixes for users like me.

Grub2/Plymouth splashy sux! Sorry guys but I'd rather wait for a couple extra seconds and get slow stable boot that I can manage to edit to my preferences. (I'm sure this will improve but it is a little bit of a learning curve + overkill IMHO) Really hope to see some kind of GUI for this soon!

All the pieces are here kde 4.4.4 would have been a much better LTS release but... its here now. Hope it gets into the spins soon it'd be silly not too!

I'd like to see more attention to configuring but really other then a few little breakages I created myself I'm happy with the stability and usability of Kubuntu 10.04 here.

Other kde distros are having kde issues too its not just Kubuntu though I still maintain more attention to the default install could save a lot of headaches.

But WTF to I know anyway they are the experts after all.

I would like to know where is my working preload!!!!!!! I miss it much...

[Goeroeboeroe]

After working for a few days with Mepis, I've seen Mepis has some small issues too. Like probably every distro.
I liked 8.04 a bit more, but also because I was used to it. Anyway, I can do some work again finally. I'm still busy installing XP on VirtualBox. I only use it for IE 7, but installing XP for only IE 7 takes more time as installing the whole Mepis... Virusscanner, firewall, anti-spyware, defragment, cleaning register, update-boot-update-boot-update-boot-something went wrong the update was not installed restart-update-whooah!
Overall I think Kubuntu is a nice distro. I've used it from 6.04 without any big problem. 10.04 + nvidia-driver+ KDE4 + my machine (+ my head?) just is a bad combination, I guess.
When starting with 6.04 I tried some distros, and Ik liked Kubuntu the most.

[MoonRise]

update-boot-update-boot-update-boot-something went wrong the update was not installed restart-update-whooah!

;D ;D ;D ;D

[Bruce]

update-boot-update-boot-update-boot-something went wrong the update was not installed restart-update-whooah!

Scrub a dub dub Three Men In A Tub,
And who do you think they be?
The butcher, the baker, the Microsoft maker
Scrub 'em up, one, two three! ;D

[Goeroeboeroe]

I thought to get some sympathy and love and understanding here, installing Windows ;D This was a good moment to reinstall the whole thing, it was getting too slow.
Ah, well, Linux users, just jealous. You know, Windows is such a sophisticated, sensitive, good willing, lovely system, it's quite logical it sometimes gets a nervous breakdown. That only proofs it's lovely sensitive. If I sneeze it's got a virus, but so do babies. And everybody loves babies.
Linux even doesn't have a registry, that fabulous invention made by the pharmaceutical industry to sell tranquilizers. Linux only thinks about itself, not about other industries like social Windows does. Think about all the jobs Windows gives to antivirus-companies, criminals, criminal-fighters, ...
In four years of Linux I never ever had one big issue (except not being able to install 10.04). That's the ultimate proof how hard and anti-social Linux is. Nothing can destroy it. Totally unfeeling.
If I think about the time I was repairing systems for elder people... Really nice how Windows showed them it also had weaknesses, so the elder people didn't feel too sad about not being completely healthy themselves anymore.
Glad installing can happen in the background. Just installed the update for the update for servicepack 3, which was the update for ... Now I'm going to do a sundance to get some help from above so everything keeps going well. A sundance is the kind of sophisticated technique Windows understands best, I guess.

[MoonRise]

If I sneeze it's got a virus, but so do babies. And everybody loves babies.

Actually that is really a good analogy there. I like that! :D

[apachelogger]

Akonadi crashed at every other logout.

What I find interesting about this is that there is no bug report about it? This is particularly interesting because I am the one trying to resolve Akonadi's current deployment issues in Kubuntu, so I suppose I should know about this type of defect if it were brought to our attention at some point.



The boot splashes disappears or is at a 1982 resolution if you change a driver.

That is a genuine problem with graphics drivers on Linux. That however is a problem at large and not just specific to Kubuntu it might however very well be that you only experienced it on Kubuntu because of two very factors. First of all Kubuntu and Ubuntu at large is trying to provide the smoothest desktop experience we are capable to provide, which also implies boldly going where no one went before and expose new ways of using existing technology or use new technology to begin with. Now since I think you are refering to 10.04 you are
perhaps experiencing issues with plymouth which is a (considerable) new software, not just in Kubuntu. So any and all issues with it should be brought to the attention of the developers by reporting appropriate bug reports. I can assure you that the bootsplash works just fine on all machines I do have access to, and I suppose this is the same for about every other developer of Kubuntu and Ubuntu. But we are only so many and largely exceeded by the amount of available hardware setups in the real world. Without actual field feedback it is close to impossible to provide a smooth boot experience on as many systems as possible.



Configuration of running services is not a simple thing, stopping running services is not a simple thing.

This claim I cannot understand at all. Almost all core supported services are (if feasible) configurable via simplified configuration files in /etc/default/. Granted we do not provide graphical applications to do this, but this is because of a general design decision of having sane defaults. Further more you can of course configure any system service in the regular way for the particular service (like say Apache configuration).
As for the stopping, perhaps you did not know about the following:
sudo stop service
I do not think it can get much more intuitive or simpler than that. Again I have to mention that this will not be possible via a graphical application of the default setup, also for a general attitude that one should not have services installed that one is not going to use (this is also in line whith our no-open-ports by default philosophy, which is by the way one of the reason we do not ship a SSHD by default).



Package management is a mess and is lacking many features and capabilities lacking in Kubuntu.

For example?
You might get some general informaton on the state of package management at http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=3099377.msg233239#msg233239
Also only today one Kubuntu Developer started playing around with a possible package manager that ought to fill the gap between KPackageKit and Synaptic. Not promising anything though :)



Power management doesn't work reliably and doesn't behave as expected. (Kubuntu no matter what setting I changed my processor would speed would slow down while plugged in, even though I explicitly set it not to when plugged in.)

This sounds like a serious problem of the ACPI subsystems in combination with your hardware setup. I hope you reported bugs about this before moving on, as mentioned above any bit of bug information on hardware issues can help grately.



I often had force shutdowns and reboots because the system would hang on shutdown. The system could easily be shutdown or rebooted via CLI, indicating it was something to do with the KDE implementation in Kubuntu and it not interacting with system correctly. No log files anywhere indicating a problem.

Generally speaking this should of course not happen :) Well, really it should not, since KDE's logout mechanism has timeout termination builtin which should (in theory) kill processes that do not want to quit on themselfs. Keeping that in mind I would however think that it was problem with X and/or the graphics driver that you were experiencing. If X goes down or gets stuck before the desktop manager can deploy the shutdown or reboot command the machine will be stuck in this state. This is because the desktop (be it KDE or GNOME or anything else) can generally not invoke those commands directly (after all you will also need to do it via sudo on a terminal), so what is really going on is that the desktop will logout and delegate the display manager to carry out the shutdown or reboot. I hope this was reported too, because since the machine got stuck, the only way an unexperienced user can resolve this is via hardware reset.

(For everyone who is interested, the desktop-delegates-shutdown-to-desktop-manager process is also the reason that KDE will not offer these options in its menu when GDM is configured as display manager.)



Ibus errors when running simple apps, such as Ooo and or skype. No I do not use a foreign language, but the only way to avoid the constant errors was run ibus at each boot.

First of all those are warnings and not errors. Yes they are inconvenient, and they are going to be gone in Kubuntu 10.10. For Kubuntu 10.04 the choice was either not having those warnings or not having working setups for input-method dependent languages. I hope this is an understandable decision though.



Boot loader/grub configuration..............no real easy GUI way to do it, two files to edit or edit one and run a command to change the other, and if you happen to have removed entries you didn't want they will be over written.

Boot loader configuration and easy GUI are mutually exclusive things unless you have the GUI backed up by artifical intelligence that takes care of not breaking things. :)
The question is of course why one would be wanting to edit the GRUB2 config to begin with, since generally the idea is to have the default setup cover like 99% of all cases. If that is not the case then the defaults might need tweaking. Clearly at the point where we need a GUI for 1% of possible setups something is very wrong from an efficiency POV. Also, you have one file to edit, which is /etc/default/grub and it tells you there what command to run afterwards.
We also had a graphical application for GRUB, it however arrived only shortly before we switched to GRUB2 and ever since no one felt the compelling need to port it. So if someone were to do that, I am quite sure we would offer it again, but probably not in the default installation.



In short here were my experiences. It felt like Kubuntu is hodgepodged together on-top of a system it wasn't intended to run on.

I agree, Kubuntu does not seem to be made for you hardware, especially your graphics card.

[apachelogger]

However there is one suggestion I could make: In the current version of Linux Format in the UK Ubuntu gets a 9 out of 10 score whereas kubuntu gets severely criticized, with no reason to use that over any other "vanilla" KDE distro, suggesting that kubuntu receives little, if no, attention. Reviews like that from supposed allies must cause damage. Perhaps if you as one of the developers were able to speak to the editorial staff, that might help. Firstly, to get a full explanation as to why they say what they do, so that you can do something about it, and secondly to get the message out that something is actually being done to improve things. Don't know how that would square with your role though, especially as Jono Bacon writes for the mag!


I will look into this. Unfortunately we get this a lot. Way too many "reviewers" judge the amount of work put into a distribution by the amount of branding applied or "custom" solutions brought into. Which is really unfortunate because we deliberately do not change KDE's branding and artwork (at best we tweak it a bit ;)).

Thanks for the info though :)

[apachelogger]

The default KDE configuration seems to be to blame for a lot of issues I see here. Akonadi just isn't finished thats all there is to that. Its limping along but it will improve. But Neomuk/Strigi shouldn't even be activated by default. (Mepis doesn't) just because its there doesn't mean it should be a default. I'd rather see one post about how to enable it then 50 on how to tweak it or disable it!




Grub2/Plymouth splashy sux! Sorry guys but I'd rather wait for a couple extra seconds and get slow stable boot that I can manage to edit to my preferences. (I'm sure this will improve but it is a little bit of a learning curve + overkill IMHO) Really hope to see some kind of GUI for this soon!

Well, they are both relatively new technologies, so it will probably still take a bit until GUIs appear, though I am quite sure they will (they always do ;)). GRUB2 however is relatively simple. Just few it as a series of scripts that put together will result in a config file. In any case I should hope that the settings in /etc/defalt/grub should be all you need. If you want to change the appearance a bit there are some guides I have seen floating around on google, also I think Dell made a package to brand GRUB2 a while back already. For Plymouth I do however agree, it is massive if you just want to do a bit of customization, on the other hand it allows developers for much greater flexibility in boot splash creation and boot experience at large. I personally would say that at least from the graphical point of ivew plymouth is a vast improvement over usplash :)



All the pieces are here kde 4.4.4 would have been a much better LTS release but... its here now. Hope it gets into the spins soon it'd be silly not too!

Yeah, we are trying to land it for the ISO updates. Not a particularly easy thing to do though, since we do not want to introduce any regressions, which is unfortunately not always provided for KDE's minor updates.



though I still maintain more attention to the default install could save a lot of headaches.

Any particular suggestions?



But WTF to I know anyway they are the experts after all.

A lot I would say :) You'd be surprised how many times a bit of common sense defied class book engineering...

[The Liquidator]

@apachelogger
I don't think I'm in danger of contradiction when I say it's very nice that you have come here and contributed and long may you continue to do so. This dialogue can only lead to progress.

[Bruce]

Well those are all nice excuses, and convenient that they are just simply explained away. Doesn't do much for confidnce and is about what I expected to hear. ;)

If you think my problems with Plymouth are unique, then you haven't been looking into things much as the Internet and google are loaded with problems regarding it and pile of convoluted work around.

My hardware works incredibly well with "Linux". No problems with my hardware. All my drivers and hardware are currently working flawlessly on another distro. I have never had another distros boot splashes completely disappear or go from high resolution to a dismal 640x480, not even back in 2000 with RedHat 7.0 did that happen.

As for the starting and stopping of services I am well aware of how to edit configuration scripts, and start and stop them via the CLI. There is no excuse in the year 2010 for not having a graphical way of doing simply. Especially on a distro that claims to be "user friendly". There are no such things as sane defaults anywhere on any distribution that fit all users so well that there is no need for such utilities. Don't fall into that gnome mentality of removing or not implementing useful tools because you think your defaults are so good no one would need such a utility. The best defaults are ones that can be changed easily with a good tool designed for the job.

I found the akonadi crash on logout strange also, I didn't bother taking the time to report it, because I need a stable system that I can trust and uninstalled Kubuntu and installed another distro.

Same goes for the shutdown reboot hangs. Simply can't be bothered with taking more then the couple weeks I worked through the issues.

Then there was the package management, I had to use older versions of ffmpeg to do some of the work I do because ffmpeg was broken, that was no big deal it isn't the first time I had to such a thing. The thing that was a pain was when I went to lock the packages I installed so the wouldn't be changed or updated. There was no way to do it. So off to google I went again, only to discover I had to create and edit a file and pin the packages in that file. A simple right click in another distro and I lock packages.

As for open ports, how does samba work without an open port? For that matter a few of them have to be open for samba to work. Or ftp, or any of the other network services?

I absolutely love KDE, and have been using it faithfully for more then a decade now. I can honestly say if Kubuntu were my first and only experience with KDE, I would likely have never used it again.

I have a spare machine I am getting ready to set back up, dual processor tyan server motherboard with 8 gigs of ram, I will likely test on that system as I don't have to "rely on it" right now for anything other then testing junk on it. I know all it's hardware is 100% Linux compatible and has no issues. It is the perfect machine for experimenting.

I'll see how things go on that.

[GreyGeek]

.....
GRUB2 however is relatively simple. Just few it as a series of scripts that put together will result in a config file. In any case I should hope that the settings in /etc/defalt/grub should be all you need. If you want to change the appearance a bit there are some guides I have seen floating around on google, also I think Dell made a package to brand GRUB2 a while back already.


It's SUPER of you to drop by, apachelogger, and I hope you make KubuntuForum a regular stop. But, being an old, retired programmer I understand that a properly filed bugzilla report is a more appropriate place for bug reports than trying to glean valid information from complaints or whines in a forum. But, since you are here ... ;D ....

GRUB was easy to configure. All one had to do was edit /boot/grub/menu.lst.

GRUB2 is easy too, except for newbies and those not comfortable editing configuration files. Specifically, in GRUB2, there is no easy way to specify the order of bootable partitions displayed in the GRUB2 menu. In order to change the default boot partition one must edit /etc/default/grub and change "GRUB_DEFAULT=0" to some other value and then manually run update-grub. The value for "GRUB_DEFAULT" is determined by the user by counting the "menuentry" position that the desired partition was associated with in the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file, which contents the user cannot explicitly control without rewriting a series of scripts. There use to be a GRUB editor in systemsettings but it was removed because it confused GRUB with GRUB2 and could not edit either menu.lst or grub.cfg. A GUI editor for GRUB2 should be added to systemsettings.

This probably isn't in your bailiwick, but the xserver configuration is another area which could benefit from an GUI configuration tool, similar to XFDrake. For some hardware HAL, udev, upstart, or what ever, never figures out what to do with some video chips and the user is left with a black screen and nonfunctional keyboard and no xorg.conf file to edit. When that happens to PCs on which I am installing Kubuntu I boot a PCLOS LiveCD and use its GUI tool to configure their video chip and then copy the xorg.conf file to their HD partition. Then I edit that file. I haven't found a tool in Kubuntu that reliably creates an xorg.conf for the user to edit. Even then, most users do not know how to edit xorg.conf, so a GUI tool is their only hope.

Finally, my avahi daemon had not been giving me any problems. On Monday, June 14, 2010 the following applications were updated or installed:


Installed: linux-image-2.6.32-23-generic, linux-headers-2.6.32-23, linux-headers-2.6.32-23-generic, linux-image-2.6.32-23-generic, linux-headers-2.6.32-23, linux-headers-2.6.32-23-generic
Updated: libc6-i386, libc6-dev, libc-dev-bin, libc-bin, libc6, libc-bin, linux-generic, linux-image-generic, linux-headers-generic, libc6-i386, libc-dev-bin, libc6-dev, linux-image-generic, linux-generic, linux-headers-generic, libc-bin

On Wednesday, June 16, 2010:


Updated: libusb-0.1-4


After a boot up on Wednesday afternoon I began getting 4 to 6 warning message about the avahi daemon crashing. After I close them avahi remains installed and functioning. I usually don't concern myself with warning messages because subsequent updates usually eliminate the messages, but since I know you are specifically working on avahi at this time I will, the next time I boot and the messages appear, follow through with filing a bug report on them.

I've been using KDE since 1.0 beta in 1998 and my last remaining significant complaint with KDE4 was that activating the desktop slowed my accelerated video by a factor of 2. That problem has been addressed and I now keep the desktop active all the time.

Kubuntu 10.4 is the BEST Linux/KDE4 distro I have ever used. Thanks again for dropping by, apachelogger, and keep up with the good work. 8)

[Goeroeboeroe]

The thread went in a different direction, but since I started it some time ago saying I was going back to Windows, then changed it in saying I was quitting Kubuntu, and finally came back to Kubuntu, I think I should also tell why I came back.
I'm no Linux-expert at all. I simply don't have the time to become one.
I tried Mepis. It has much much more issues than Kubuntu 8.04. There was something strange with the characterset, so it couldn't copy anything with an accent in it. Tried changing some locales etc., didn't work. Probably something simple if you know what to do.

I didn't know there were 'new' versions of Kubuntu 8.04. I thought I had to install something two and a half year old, so completely outdated. There happened to be 8.04.2. If I had known that, I had installed that right away.
I did now. And everything is working like it should. And like it used to do. So in april 2011 I hope 10.04 is working for me...

There are three small issues I can live with. Probably they can be solved too, but I've become a bit paranoid to change a working system.

Internet doesn't start automically after restart. Only when I turn power off completely. So once a day I have to login the router: just three clicks. I have a customized hosts file to keep all kind of rubbish out. If I change something, doesn't matter what, in network settings my hosts file gets completely mixed up and dns isn't working anymore. But I can live with one time a day logging in and clicking four times.

Firefox is stuck on version 3.0. But at least it works and a working 3.0 is far better than a not working bleeding 3.5.2. For writing tutotials on making sites I don't need the newest versions, because you can't use the newest things anyway, because lots of people run elder browsers (or the ugly monsters Microsoft wrongly dares to call a browser).
The whole thing started with me wanting to update Firefox because of security reasons. Well, I'll take the security risks. Probably 99,99% of the security risks have to do with Windows anyway.
I've searched for people updating Firefox themselves, but the results are very, very different, with lots of people running into problems. And I've had enough for the moment ;D

I don't run nvidia-driver. If I do, I get with some programs the 'out of range'-error. (Programs that suppose the screen is 800x600, or something like that.) I've had that before and I know you can fix that, but without this driver I only can't play three games, so that's no big deal. And for some reason I become a little nervous when I hear 'nvidia-driver'

One very good thing: I changed from VMWare to VirtualBox. For me far, far better and easier. That's really something nice this adventure gave me.

When I started using Linux I choose Kubuntu because I thought it was the best for me. Well, it's still at least better for me than Mepis. Why 10.04 is such a complete disaster for me I don't know, but it certainly must have to do something with just my machine or something like that, otherwise it would be completely useless for everybody.
Anyway, I'm really happy to have 8.04 back. Except for these three small things everything's working like it should. My fonts look like they used too: I can read them!!!

Edit: @GreyGeek: I didn't ask anything for two year because I didn't have any issue with 8.04. So I didn't have to ask anything. Didn't give much answers too, but that's because I'm no Linux-expert at all.

[The Liquidator]

Firefox is stuck on version 3.0. But at least it works and a working 3.0 is far better than a not working bleeding 3.5.2. For writing tutotials on making sites I don't need the newest versions, because you can't use the newest things anyway, because lots of people run elder browsers (or the ugly monsters Microsoft wrongly dares to call a browser).
The whole thing started with me wanting to update Firefox because of security reasons. Well, I'll take the security risks. Probably 99,99% of the security risks have to do with Windows anyway.
I've searched for people updating Firefox themselves, but the results are very, very different, with lots of people running into problems. And I've had enough for the moment ;D



It might be worth you taking a look at Google Chrome, which is winning a few converts.

http://www.google.com/chrome?platform=linux

[Goeroeboeroe]

Thanks for the tip, but I have Google Chrome and Opera installed for testing (and IE 7 on VirtualBox and Safari/IE 8/Firefox 3.5 on a Windows machine). But since I mainly develop in Firefox on Linux I thought it was a good idea to update...
After working with DOS/Windows from the very beginning I can really say working on Linux is far, far, far, far more pleasant than it ever was on Windows.

[The Liquidator]

If you want an up to date version of firefox on Hardy, you might find ubuntuzilla to be very useful.

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ubuntuzilla/index.php?title=Main_Page

[miKeyBabid]

as far as your issues with firefox go : have you tried just downloading the tarball ? you don't need to install anything - it'll just work. I use this method on my puppy linux system, sinve I don't want bother compiling firefox from source and bloat my system too much. you can get the tarball from here (http://www.mozilla-europe.org/fr/firefox/) (make sure you download the tarball and you might need to choose another language), extract the tarball, and then enter the new firefox directory and click on the "firefox" file, which should open up your new firefox 3.6.3 browser.

Hope this works for you (if you haven't already tried it that is)

[Goeroeboeroe]

Thanks for the tips about Firefox, but it's really no issue for me. I suppose the possible security risks are (almost) only for Windows. And for what I do I don't need the newest version. I've read also Canonical is asking beta testers for Firefox 3.5 on 8.04, so in some time there'll probably an update.
I have been looking to update myself, but I've read too many posts from people running into (big) problems doing that. And since I really don't need the latest version, why should I risk it?
I only updated to 10.04 because I had read lots of times it was so stable, fantastic, bugfree, ... It probably is, but not on my machine. I choose the LTS because I don't need the newest versions of OpenOffice, Firefox, Gimp, ...

Edit: it's already 3.6.3? I'm getting old before I even have time to notice it.

[miKeyBabid]

And since I really don't need the latest version, why should I risk it?

no reason at all I guess :) although there's no risk that i can think of : if you doesn't work for you as a solution you just delete the directory from your home folder, since you never actually install anything on your system. But whatever works best for you!

mike

[javabiz]

Goeroeboeroe
Don't give up on Kubuntu 10.04. I've done three upgrades from the prior version on three diff computers and it works fine! btw if you do development, I'm sure your aware of Opera which will not only solve your email problem but has a knockout developer tag. To get it, click on Menu button and SHOW MENU BAR (if it is not there). From the menu bar, click on View and Developer Tools. There are cool things here like Opera Dragonfly!

To install, use Firefox and goto www.opera.com and download using the deb installer option. We're talking a very fast browser here... Opera 10.60.... the best yet!

[Goeroeboeroe]

Thanks for your reply. But I'm really happy with 8.04, so why should I upgrade before I have to? Besides, I'm pretty sure there's something with my machine that's fighting with 10.04. And since my machine is over about five years old, I'll probably have a completely new machine when I have to switch. So I'll probably have less problems, or none.
I do have Opera (en Chrome, and on Windows more browsers) to test, but I really prefer Firefox for development, because it has extensions that are (far) better than Dragonfly.

[GreyGeek]

.....
After working with DOS/Windows from the very beginning I can really say working on Linux is far, far, far, far more pleasant than it ever was on Windows.


You hit the nail right on the head!

After programming almost 40 years I told my employer that I was going to work until I was 70. The primary reason was that a few years before I had switched from programming in a Windows environment to a Linux environment and it brought the fun back into programming. Nearly losing my wife because of her heart problems interrupted that retirement date, and I continued for only 6 more months.

BION, it was much easier and faster programming on Linux using Kate and Kdbg than it was using MSVS C++.