Xenial Is Looking Better

[jglen490]

Yeah, that's my point ... it IS set to Breeze NOT Breeze Dark. But the dark theme persists in Firefox ... weird.

When I first changed to Breeze Dark it didn't seem to fully change (the panel was messed up somehow) then I switched back to Breeze and everything is as you would expect except Firefox. It's got me scratching my head It may be some bug in VirtualBox. When I first created this Virtual machine I had 3D acceleration turned on and that really didn't work well with parts of the desktop being invisible like the panel completely hidden and started applications not appearing at all. Then I remembered I had this problem with my K15.10 virtual install too. Disabling the 3D acceleration fixes that problem.

For the basic screen theme, I'm using Oxygen, but I customized some of the attributes to use some Breeze features. As for Firefox I'm using Nautipolis for Firefox and Thunderbird is using Nuvola for its theme.

I've tweaked a few things here and there, looking for a little more shape in the tabs, icons, and task bar. Not knowing exactly what to look for and where, but just being curious and poking around. Apparently KDE has decided to not keep certain options and adjustments in the same Systems Settings locations that were in Trusty, and that has been slightly maddening, but educational, too.

Your screen, Rod J., looks pretty good; I'm not a big fan of all things dark, but some contrast and color among displayed elements is always a good thing. Visual variety adds to the interest!

[jglen490]

Just a general observation, and maybe either meaningless or I'm being "Capt. Obvious".

I've been using Kubuntu since mid 2006, and up until recently using the distribution update option has generally worked well. But after Kubuntu 10 (or thereabouts) the only reasonable option seems to be a clean install. As I recall, 12.04 wasn't too bad with an in-place up update from 10, but 14.04 and now 16.04 really only seem to work well with a clean install. That seems to be confirmed (mostly) by reading the various Post-Install threads here in Xenial.

For a long time I've kept at least two partitions (/, /home) and with Trusty 3 partitions on two drives (/, /home, /home/multimedia), so a clean and custom install works well, but also creates issues with the need to pull in and install packages for non-standard programs. Maybe I'm just getting older and have a more idealistic view of past events. I don't really mind, since I can actually take a fresh view of what may actually be important for my computing experience, which the view does change as I get older.

Anybody seeing this, too? Or maybe there's a real reason my sons are keeping a closer watch on me!!!!

[Snowhog]

When Kubuntu moved from KDE3 to KDE4, there were significant differences. When Kubuntu moved from KDE4 to Plasma, there were significant differences, so yes, your observation is correct.

[DrGeoffrey]

Just a general observation, and maybe either meaningless or I'm being "Capt. Obvious".

I've been using Kubuntu since mid 2006, and up until recently using the distribution update option has generally worked well. But after Kubuntu 10 (or thereabouts) the only reasonable option seems to be a clean install. As I recall, 12.04 wasn't too bad with an in-place up update from 10, but 14.04 and now 16.04 really only seem to work well with a clean install. That seems to be confirmed (mostly) by reading the various Post-Install threads here in Xenial.

For a long time I've kept at least two partitions (/, /home) and with Trusty 3 partitions on two drives (/, /home, /home/multimedia), so a clean and custom install works well, but also creates issues with the need to pull in and install packages for non-standard programs. Maybe I'm just getting older and have a more idealistic view of past events. I don't really mind, since I can actually take a fresh view of what may actually be important for my computing experience, which the view does change as I get older.

Anybody seeing this, too? Or maybe there's a real reason my sons are keeping a closer watch on me!!!!

I second your advice for a clean install. Although I don't have your depth of experience, clean installs have a way of cleaning out the various experiments. And it seems almost everyone who uses Linux likes to do a little experimenting every now and then.

With regard to your partitioning scheme, I've hit upon one that really, really, works well for my family. To wit, one partition per installed distribution, and one data drive. A customized fstab points the Documents directory to the data drive, and a customized Thunderbird profile allows the data drive to maintain the same profile across all distributions. One caveat: Be careful to use the same user ID across all distributions, else you will encounter permission problems.

This approach allows me to use the same data partition for Kubuntu, Neon, and Mint, which gives me 2 immediate backup distributions should an update go wrong (a real time saver when at work or for my BW's lappy).