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    Is there a better distro than Kubuntu?

    Hi, I've joined the forum because I've just installed Kubuntu (Hoary) and I'd like to share my experiences. I'm not sure this is the best forum for my post, but you'll see why soon enough.

    I found installation fairly easy. Almost dead easy, but took me a little while how to set the swap partition. The look and feel of the UI was great too.

    However, I quickly ran into problems. Firstly I noticed how slow it was, especially screen savers. I suspect that it doesn't know how to use my graphics card properly.

    I tried the GUI to add a new user, and boy did it screw up badly. At first it refused to start up the app. I also noticed the time was wrong. It looked like a time zone issue, no worries, I probably installed it with the GMT option instead of local time. I try to change the time from the GUI. It asked for my password, then nothing. Try again... nothing.

    I don't know what I did, but suddenly those things started working. The add new user GUI displayed userid 500 or was it 501 for the new user. Whether I manually set it to 1001 or not, it would create the new user with user id 0. Naturally it had problems setting up the account, and couldn't create a home directory. The second time I deleted it, it somehow deleted root instead! (Using the adduser command worked fine.)

    Since I wanted to set up a dual boot with WXP, I scrubbed the disk, reinstalled everything, followed the kubuntu how to, everything worked reasonably OK (installing kubuntu changed Window's idea of the active partition, but I managed to fix that).

    I thought I'd try the music apps. I copied a small MP3 to a floppy and tried one of the apps. It couldn't read the floppy, complaining that it couldn't run "mdir". I tried finding "mdir" from a command prompt, no luck. I was unhappy that the system was apparently incomplete, but anyway, I mounted the floppy and opened the file, and played it. The volume was low, and I couldn't find a way from the app to fix it.

    Closed it, tried another app. Played it fine. I didn't adjust the volume. However, it crashed when I tried to quit. Oh dear, I couldn't unmount the floppy. I found the process and killed it. Still couldn't unmount the floppy. Oh well, time for a reboot.

    This time I tried to use Konqueror to browse the floppy. It tried to mount it, but couldn't do it. Sorry, I can't remember why.

    At this point, I feel like giving up with Kubuntu. It doesn't meet it's aim of being the "best" distro where things "just work", at least not yet. I don't want to give up on Linux, at least not yet, so I was wondering if anyone's experiences with other distos were better than with Kubuntu?

    #2
    well, possibly there are

    From my experience, even today one distro which works beautifully for me won't even install on someone else's computer. This can be due to anything from hardware issues all the way down to a slightly corrupted download or bad burn.

    My suggestion is (assuming you are using Hoary 5.04), is to update your system first to see if that helps at all as there were a few glitches such as you describe with Kubuntu's initial release.http://kudos.berlios.de/kf/kf.html has some info on that, and also updgrading to kde 3.4.2, info on that can be found here:http://kubuntu.org/hoary-kde-342.php

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      #3
      Is there a better distro than Kubuntu?

      Well, I don't know if others are better (after all better is very subjective) but there are of course several alternatives you can try.

      Personally I'd recomend:
      Mandriva http://www1.mandrivalinux.com
      Suse http://www.novell.com/linux/suse/select.html

      or, though I haven't really tried it, but heard a lot of good things about it:
      Mepis http://www.mepis.org/

      Have fun!

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        #4
        Is there a better distro than Kubuntu?

        Mepis is Kubuntu - the 'will always be free of charge' thing

        Mandriva uses RPM :$

        SuSE costs money unless you get: www.opensuse.com

        The only problem I have had with K(U)buntu is my sound card it doesn't work :evil:

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          #5
          Is there a better distro than Kubuntu?

          Originally posted by Patrick
          Mepis is Kubuntu - the 'will always be free of charge' thing
          Mepis and Kubuntu are both based on debian and both use KDE, but that's about it when it comes to being similar.

          Originally posted by Patrick
          Mandriva uses RPM :$
          Yes and urpmi rocks, so what's your point?

          Originally posted by Patrick
          SuSE costs money unless you get: www.opensuse.com
          So?
          Suse is available for free, what exactly are you trying to tell us here?

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            #6
            Is there a better distro than Kubuntu?

            I like suse and thats what I have on my laptop. Never had any problems with drivers. Everything works great.

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              #7
              Is there a better distro than Kubuntu?

              At the moment I am running suse 9.3 (got it for free) but it does not reconise my wireless netword card so I am soon going to scrap it. I am going back to kubuntu once the new breezy version has been released. btw, does anyone know that exact release date for the breezy release?

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                #8
                Is there a better distro than Kubuntu?

                Thanks for your responses. I guess I'll try Mandriva and MEPIS if I can hold of them and see if they work better.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Is there a better distro than Kubuntu?

                  Originally posted by Raichu
                  Thanks for your responses. I guess I'll try Mandriva and MEPIS if I can hold of them and see if they work better.
                  First off, you wrote very well in your comments and I think this forum is consisted of many individuals like yourself who cares about free choices, freedom in computing and Linux.

                  I'd strongly recommend both Mepis and Kubuntu. As comparison and reference you can look at the #2 PC's specs at the following link.

                  http://linuxjourney.blogspot.com/200...y_archive.html

                  I have Kubuntu 5.10.rc on #2 PC and everything I want works or has an easy workaround including amaroK with mp3, samba network, etc. (amaroK never worked this good on my previous installations, I'm using v.1.3.1). One little note though, Firefox was faster on my Debianized Mepis than it is on my new Kubuntu. I guess Firefox needs some tweaking under Kubuntu.

                  I also posted my repository list at the following link, if you like to upgrade to KDE 3.5 beta. (looking forward to official 3.5)

                  http://linuxjourney.blogspot.com/200...ntu-510rc.html

                  If you want to try multiboot [Kubuntu, Mepis and WXP], take a look at this.

                  http://linuxjourney.blogspot.com/200...ubmenulst.html

                  Good luck.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Is there a better distro than Kubuntu?

                    I've ended up installing Fedora Core 4 since I'll be getting an upgrade to that at work as well. Compared to kubuntu so far...
                    • the installation was about as easy (except it crashed half way through so I had to restart and reenter all my customizations again)
                    • setting up the dual boot with XP was considerably easier with FC4
                    • the look and feel of the KDE UI was terrible compared to the slick appearance of Kubuntu--that's one thing I'm going to miss
                    • a few bugs here and there, probably better than Kubuntu but too early to tell
                    • much more software came with the FC4 disks

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                      #11
                      Re: Is there a better distro than Kubuntu?

                      Also add that you have to d/l all the 4-5 ISO files, while kubuntu comes only in one ISO
                      cheers!
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                      «•´`•.(¸.•´(¸.•* *•.¸)`•.¸).•´`•»
                      Reg. Linux User # 400637

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                        #12
                        Re: Is there a better distro than Kubuntu?

                        Another distro worth a quick look is the superfast Yoper, again a single CD distro and is optimised for 686 processors. I run it on my wifes old P2 300 laptop and flies in comparison to any other distro. It can be picky on hardware and it is RPM based and isn’t updated very much, you’ll either love it or hate it (bit like Marmite )
                        KDE 3.5 RC1 and Dapper Drake....waiting for it to implode

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                          #13
                          Re: Is there a better distro than Kubuntu?

                          I like Kubuntu 5.10, but SuSE 9.3 is also very nice if you like RPM based distro..

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: Is there a better distro than Kubuntu?

                            Since I started using GNU/Linux in 1998, I have been using several distros. Here is a list in rough chronological order, not limited to desktops.

                            - Debian
                            - RedHat
                            - Mandrake (not since it has been renamed to Mandriva)
                            - FreeBSD
                            - SUSE
                            - Gentoo
                            - Arch Linux
                            - OpenBSD
                            - Kubuntu

                            I have yet to find something better than kubuntu for my desktop installations. Atm I am using Debian and OpenBSD on my servers, although ubuntu-server would probably do fine, as well.
                            I have tested SUSE 10.0 on my laptop, but it did significantly worse than kubuntu.

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                              #15
                              Re: Is there a better distro than Kubuntu?

                              What kind of laptop do you have, since I was planning on putting SUSE 10 on mine?

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