Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

[GreyGeek]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

I hadn't heard about the Russian connection, but I was using Mandriva when Adam was let go, along with some of the others.

There is a lesson in this for Canonical. Mandriva's financial problems began when its board hired an individual as the CEO who had NO Linux, GPL or Free Software knowledge or experience at all. His brain was hardwired into the proprietary model and he pushed Mandriva into an Education desktop. In doing so he burned through, IIRC, $5M US, (or was it $7M ?) in one year, like it was water. Anyway, it took Mandriva several years to pay that debt off and come out of receivership, but as a viable commercial distro it never really recaptured the ground it had gained as Mandrake, or built using the club memberships. I paid for a club membership so I could access the private servers. The public ones were always slow. When the private servers slowed down I began ordering the DVD PowerPacks. But, alas, there were not enough Adams around and the quality began to slip, as you've noted. I was planning to move to another distro when they let Adam go, and began looking around when I tried Kubuntu 9.04 Alpha.

I think Mandriva's days are numbered. Unfortunately, the bad economic times is going to make it rough for some other distros too. A good Linux desktop is just too much for one developer to build and maintain alone and without much financial or hardware support. So, I suspect, we will be seeing a coalescing of distros into a few major releases: Debian, Ubuntu (Kubuntu), Fedora and CentOS (RH), SuSE (If it does well for Attachmate), Slackware, and probably FreeBSD. There are over 4,000 Linux and BSD distros. Most below the top 100 on DistroWatch's PHR counter are unknown even to most die heard Linux fans. And, PHRs are easily gamed and mean very little with regards to actual popularity. When I was using PCLinuxOS between the P.92 release and the final 2007 release there was a period of over 12 months when PCLOS held the #1 spot on the PHR list, yet aside from myself and the folks at the PCLOS forum, I never met anyone who heard of it.

It makes me wonder ... what distro would folks turn to if their favorite one went under? I think I'll set up a poll.

[gjartin]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

Mandriva's financial problems began when its board hired an individual as the CEO who had NO Linux, GPL or Free Software knowledge or experience at all.Mandriva's financial problems began when its board hired an individual as the CEO who had NO Linux, GPL or Free Software knowledge or experience at all.

Amen to that! Irc their problems began some time before; the beancounter was actually a way to "solve" the problem, but, as you say, he didn't know anything at all about what he was supposed to do.

I paid for a club membership so I could access the private servers. The public ones were always slow. When the private servers slowed down I began ordering the DVD PowerPacks. But, alas, there were not enough Adams around and the quality began to slip, as you've noted. I was planning to move to another distro when they let Adam go,

Again, you're spot on. I was a paying member (silver, i.e. Powerpack) for several years - for the the last couple of years, I saw everything crumble, but I kept on paying because I still had hope.

I think Mandriva's days are numbered. Unfortunately, the bad economic times is going to make it rough for some other distros too.[...] yet aside from myself and the folks at the PCLOS forum, I never met anyone who heard of it.

I've tried PCLOS several times - always very slick and good looking, but there was no support for my language, and only a few users here in Sweden except for me.
Re "rough times for other distros too": I think this also may be a sign of a mature market - many well known distros are actually kept alive by a rather small group of indivduals, and the software is getting more complicated from day to day.
Maybe it's not only a bad thing for the hobbyist?

It makes me wonder ... what distro would folks turn to if their favorite one went under? I think I'll set up a poll.

Very interesting idea! It could show, for example, what the most important factors are: Kde support, "bleeding edge", rpm/deb base, etc. (I found Kubuntu a bit scary because I had to leave rpm).

[GreyGeek]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

...
I found Kubuntu a bit scary because I had to leave rpm.

I left because RPM was to erratic as a package manager. There were frequently dependency problems when installing an rpm package. Say you want to load package A. I'd use the KPackageKit test option to see if it returned "0" or not. If not, it usualy listed one or more other packages it depended on. Say A depended on B. I'd use the same test on B. Sometimes B depended on C. C had no dependencies but when one tries to install C it fails with a message that says C cannot be installed because some other package, D, depends on the previous version of C, which is installed. Dependency hell.

The other thing I had happen several times was the KDE version upgrade or downgrade. Say I wanted to install a KDE package, AKDEPackage. AKDEPackage requires the next minor release of KDE. Suddenly, RPM is unloading 230 KDE packages and installing 245 packages of the next KDE version release. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. A couple weeks later you want to install BKDEPackage, but didn't know is was for the version of KDE that you previously had, but which installing AKDEPackage forced you to upgrade. So you install BKDEPackage and note that it begins by removing 245 KDE packages and installing 230 packages for the previous version of KDE. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

The deb packaging system and apt-get using Synaptic or Muon as the GUI front end is MUCH more reliable and stable.

I would find it more scary for me to return to an RPM based distro.

[gjartin]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

I agree totally about the problems with rpm. But it's often scary to try something you know nothing about.
Now, I find package managing in Kubuntu very easy to handle.

[wizard10000]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

I agree totally about the problems with rpm. But it's often scary to try something you know nothing about.
Now, I find package managing in Kubuntu very easy to handle.

I too learned the power of apt after getting fairly frustrated with rpm-based distros. Interestingly, now you can install apt on Fedora but it seems kinda like a crime against nature to me

[GreyGeek]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

The package "alien" will allow one to convert deb packages to rpm and visa-versa. However, the deb packaging system is superior, IMO, to the rpm system and converting an rpm package to deb is risky. I'd rather recompile the source in Kubuntu than use alien, but most Kubuntu users don't have that option. That is why it is MUCH better for most Kubuntu users to restrict their package installation to those deb packages in the Kubuntu repositories.

[wizard10000]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

Well, I've got the desktop switched back over to Natty now and devede fixed there too but ftp still doesn't work to my leased VPS. Thinking now it might be server side because it *did* work in Natty before and this is a clean install

I learned some other cool stuff this time around. I use the same theme for applications I run as root but set the window background a different color so I can always tell when I'm in God mode - I learned while running systemsettings as root that you can inflict most but not all settings on all users by just setting them from a root login. Some settings don't change but most of them do.

I had to do this one by hand as restoring my system from a dpkg dump of Squeeze packages wouldn't do me much good - or at least it scared me enough not to do it, but I think the slickest thing I figured out this time was copying a complete chromium configuration from 32-bit netbook to 64-bit desktop and having it work

Before I installed chromium on the desktop I copied ~/.cache and ~/.config/chromium from the netbook to the desktop over an NFS share, figuring I'd at least save bookmarks and cookies. To my surprise not only did I get cookies and bookmarks, I got a full set of functioning extensions and my favorite chromium theme so I didn't have to configure anything. Very cool.

[ronnowoy]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

I tried a live CD, DVD install with the new version of Kubuntu (11.04) and, I also tried to install from a usb drive as well. Nothing worked! I have tried to install the newer version several times. I also tried to upgrade from 10.10. I have not had this many problems with a new version of Kubuntu EVER! This reminds of earlier versions of Novell Suse. I did not care for that version ether. Like I said before, I have an Nvidia card in my desktop computer. I loaded the new version on my laptop just fine (ATI video card). I might have been a little emotional in my original post but, this new version is still a version that is less than an ideal version for Kubuntu.

[gjartin]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

@ronnowoy: I've decided to keep 11.04 on my htpc for now. Since exchanging my Nvidia card for an Ati one, the worst problems are gone:

* The "snow" artefact is gone
* Mplayer no longer crashes X completely (although small hangings are common when pausing/resuming Mplayer).

Vlc still crashes when I try to save new audio settings, but that might be hardware related (going from dvi to hdmi, with the new video card).

Obviously, there are big issues with (at least some) Nvidia cards. Some of those issues (like the snow) was present with 10.10 as well, though.

[Sigra]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

Sucks to be you, Kubuntu 11.04 is flawless, stable and works great for me, Keep up great work Kubuntu Team!!!!

[gjartin]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

Sucks to be you,

Isn't that exactly the kind of thinking that keeps humankind on top!

[erigais]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

You went with an HP, that's what you did wrong. 8)

lol, as a former hp employee that use to do post-runin for them, i have to say i agree, ive seen them push units out so hard and so fast that if by some glitch of the system they made it past post run-in with no image they would be sent(meaning the customer had no os!). the general unspoken rule there is, quantity over quality.

[Mark]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

Hmmm, I've had four Compaq puters including two that I'm still using and I've never had any
any problems (other than not having enough slots and ports on the m/b) I use pci-X nvidia
geforce 8500 in my main machine and have never had an issue until, you guessed it, 11.04.
8)

[Mark]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

Well wouldn't you know it! As soon as I posted the last post I closed firefox, opened up sauerbraten
to play and just got started in a game and my video went to crap and my system locked up.
Had to do a hard shut down and it just wouldn't boot up anymore. My geforce 8500 card bit the
dirt. now I'm on the on board graphics. But I went to new egg and already ordered a new GT 430.
I hope it works.

[ronnowoy]

Re: Kubuntu 11.04 sucks

I want to make something clear to the Kubuntu team and those of who love what they have accomplished in a short period of time. I love Kubuntu! I have chosen it for all of my computers. I have an admiration for what the Linux community has gone through with the lawsuits and attacks from Microsoft. I am glad that it is still around and viable. I always have high hopes and great expectations for every release from the team whether it is a LTS version or whether it is a normal in-between release. I migrated from the Windows world about four years ago and I am constantly mocked by my brother-in-law about using a Linux distribution. He is Mr. Microsoft. I find myself not only sticking up for my OS of Linux but, selling how much better Linux is in so many ways than Windows. I should expect more from every distribution of Kubuntu!

We as a community should have the courage to bring to light something that is not right about every release and keep an open mind when others express the problems. I will admit that my initial response in my post was too emotional. I regret posting that now but, I care a great deal about Linux becoming a serious contender to Microsoft. I want to see a greater share of the market (1%) than what Linux has now because, it is a great product. I want everyone to enjoy the benefits that I have enjoyed. When people on this forum are in complete denial or, refuse to listen and question the product (that has been released) then, how can Kubuntu ever be considered a serious contender with any OS? IF KUBUNTU IS TO EVER BE CONSIDERED A SERIOUS ALTERNATIVE TO MICROSOFT THEN, THE COMMUNITY HAS TO ASK AND ANSWER SERIOUS ISSUES CONFRONTING IT. Examples of this are; 1.) Next to no marketing promoting this product. 2.) Continued lack of proper commercial hardware driver support. 3.) Lack of universal industry software support (even though this has improved greatly. 4.) Continued lack of consistency by releasing lack-luster product releases from time to time which does hurt the public image. 5.) User friendly software that does not require a knowledge of Linux (Yes, this is dumbing down the process for the general public which has also improved).

If everyone here on this forum is o.k. with having a small niche market share then, keep expecting the status-quo as acceptable, keep justifying the mistakes and product regressions as the norm, keep releasing large amounts of product releases that have unresolved issues as acceptable, and keep using excuses as the reasons instead of accepting some amount of responsibility for the short-comings for problems that continue. I post here because I CARE! I want to see the best for Kubuntu and Ubuntu in general. I am not oblivious to the roadblocks that the industry and Microsoft puts in front of us but, if we want to REALLY COMPETE then, we have to find a way into the hearts and minds of the majority of computer users. So, in response to a couple posts ago that said, " It sucks to be you," I say, it must be horrible to be you, a individual in denial and so closed minded.