Kubuntu 16.04 review from Everyday Linux User

[oldgeek]

A rather negative review of Kubuntu 16.04 appeared today in the Everday Linux User website:

http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/201...review-of.html

Discover comes in for the most criticism. In my case, it seems to be working well now, but then again I've got Plasma 5.8.

[Rod J]

I was surprised that Discover indeed has the search malfunction here too in K16.04.1 (it shows how much I use the Discover app as I am a big fan of the full Muon). Can't believe this bug hasn't been fixed yet. I install everything from Muon or terminal and hadn't actually tried the search function in Discover. It's not a very good look for newbies to strike that bug almost immediately after a new install. Bad that this is also an LTS release, I would have thought it would be fixed by now without having to upgrade Plasma which isn't something you would consider lightly.

[2muchcoffeeman]

I thought it was just me. But Discover has been essentially useless because of its non-functioning search.

[woodsmoke]

This line and Window's 10 at the college just provoked me to restate what I said in another post:

I have to admit I have a love / hate relationship with Kubuntu. On one hand it has some really good applications which are provided as part of the desktop environment but Plasma or not the KDE desktop just feels clunky to me.

Windows 10 is a furtherance of the flailing about of Microsith to get a GUI that will vertically move from phone to desktop.

It is literally still a hybrid of clicking a big square window with the name of an app on it, or literally doing command line searches for an app that doesn't fit on the desktop.

And that is what the "reviews" are generally about.

But to me the really irritating thing is that the TEXT of the "left application menu panel" has progressively gotten smaller and smaller and smaller....it is literally down in the 9 point range....smaller than what you are viewing here....maybe 8 pt.

it is so hard to read that the gui is black with white text...

another quote:

opened it using Windows Explorer

He is USING Windblows...which is fine, but if it is Win10 then that says a lot...

......the guy said "klunky"....and that says it all about HIS desktop preferences.

Gnomish, small, small, smalllllll panels, even smaller application menu than the classic...we are not talking Unity, but gnomish... he probably loves it...

The whole "thing" about the KDE app menu is that is LARGE... with large text, but to him it is "clunky"...

and to the people that like to have a completely empty desktop, no panel, no nothing except maybe Conky, and right click on the desktop, "Gnomish" is "old". KDE is clunky. and Unity is just UGH...

I really do NOT like reviews that take the tack of bashing "appearance"..........I mean the first thing in the obligatory review is whether or not they like the WALLPAPER!!!

Now , yes, even KDE has wallpaper contests but HOW in any kind of sensical world is the wallpaper of any relevance....everybody immediately changes it..

Ok...I can see the whole thing about the "theme" fitting with the wallpaper and if the wallpaper color is changed too much then one might not be able to see text or whatever but..

and It isn't as if one can NOT change theme colours with the click of a button, duuhhh

As "linux" moves more and more mainstream....I wonder just which GUI the "average new user from Windblows" is REALLY going to latch onto... hmmmmm...

P.S.....

was hoping Kubuntu would pick up on the fact that I have Windows installed but it simply gave me an option to install to the entire disk or something else.

apparently he knows nothing about manually setting partitions... or.... automatically dividing..

"something else"? and this is a guy that says that he is enough of an expert to explain to a WINDOWS audience about Kubuntu...

AND....sell Kubuntu installed on a USB... lol

PPS:

With Kubuntu it is command line all the way and searching forums for solutions.

Apparently he did not see the button about installing third party stuff...

and...

Is there ANYBODY at this forum that thinks that the old woodsmoker is a command line guy?

I NEVER touch a command line except when I want to do it for fun or for some obscure thing

now yes I don't use Discover and automatically install synaptic.. bur really..."command line all the way"?

woodlikesKDEsmokebutthenI'm70yearsoldandhaveglasse ssmoke lol

[GreyGeek]

That seemed to me like a stock review (once every two years! ) by some one looking for excuses to ding KDE and Kubuntu. He is probably aware, if he is as knowledgeable about KDE as he claims, that regardless of the distro they all use the same KDE Plasma5. So every distro running the same point release usually exhibits the same bugs and is usually patched at about the same time with the same patches.

I certainly did experience the same Discovery problems as the reviewer did after installing Kubuntu 16.04. And I noticed that Discovery behaved the same way in other distros I tested as a guest OS, at the same point release. Checking other forums and bugzillas the Discovery problems were widely reported.

The reviewer also fails to mention that no one freezes their installation at the *.0. release. Although a Discovery patch wasn't in the 16.04.1 update, many other bug fixes were, and updates, patches and such continue to pour down, improving not only Kubuntu but all other distros that have KDE as a desktop.

The reviewer also failed to mention the major reason for the rocky start by so many distros that installed Plasma5. Just like between KDE 3 and 4, there was a MAJOR paradigm change between KDE 4 and 5. The reason? The QT API underwent the change, so the KDE devs were forced to follow. Secondly, Kubuntu switched from Upstart to Systemd, a good move, IMO Thirdly, Ubuntu moved to Mir to facilitate its Unity form factor agnosticism. Kubuntu uses Wayland and switched from lightdm to sddm, which can give problems for users who upgrade rather than do a fresh install.

Lastly, the "distro that is not", Neon, is demonstrating how fast and stable a bleeding edge a KDE distro can be when it uses the same libraries and point release the devs are working on. Back porting can be slow.

I have nits to pick here and there, but nothing that gets in my way. I avoid them subconsciously. Every OS has that problem.

I am running Kubuntu 16.04 fully updated and it is the best and fastest OS I have ever run. Kudos to both the KDE and Kubuntu dev teams!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[dequire]

I might be missing something, so correct me if I'm wrong. The Discover application attempts to be an "application store". It's for installing "applications", not packages. So expecting to discover (see the pun there?) a package like "kubuntu-restricted-extras" is both unrealistic and unfair. That's what package managers are for, after all. Which Discover is not a package manager.

The tool for installing software in Kubuntu is called Discover which is yet another graphical package manager.

NOT! Discover is an application store, complete with online KDE Store integration and a list of...you guessed it: applications. Not packages. It's fantastic at what it does now in 5.8 that it appears to be working. Muon is the KDE package manager, also cleaned up and working well in the last few KDE iterations. If the author would have used Muon, then criticized KDE (and Kubuntu) for all of this being potentially confusing to a new user, I could agree somewhat there. I would also argue that a distro should only come with an application store, not a package manager, good as Muon can be. If you want a package manager, and can justify why you need one, you already know how to install it. I think that's fair. That was not the case here, however.

It is however fair to criticize a few related things:

- I saw in the screenshot that the author tried to install the game 'teeworlds', which as not found in Discover. If indeed that application didn't show up in Discover, that would warrant criticism. However, when I searched for teeworlds in Discover on my stock Neon installation, the game showed up just fine.


This may be due to the fact that I'm running Plasma 5.8, which I'm sure is not backported to Kubuntu yet.

- It's still confusing to users that for a KDE package manager, they have to install and use Muon, if it's not already installed. I'm looking at this as a 1st time Linux user would likely look at it. There's nothing anywhere that explains what a package manager is and why one might want to use one. However, I would argue that if one knows how to install and use a package manager, they can certainly use the command line to install packages. i.e. if a person knows that in oder to use mp3 files and other restricted formats, they need a certain package. And they know what it's exact name is, are you telling me that that person would need an application to install it? And that the job of carrying this out for the user should be a software (application) store? I think not. Package managers are not for new users. The author's insistence that they are (in this case to play A/V in restricted formats), and then to attempt to use the wrong tool for the job, is not really fair, IMHO. The fact that there's a whole screen on the installer asking of you want these non-free packages installed, as well as why one might well want them, rules out the excuse to criticize the distro if you decided not to install them during the install process.

- I will agree that Skype and Steam should both be readily found and installable by Discover. In my test neither was. That's fair criticism.

- I have never had a crashing issue with Spectacle, nor could I reproduce the authors issues with the app. Clearly the screenshots for this post were successfully made using Spectacle.

- I've only ever installed Chrome via the web, on countless machines, and never had an issue with missing packages in order to get it running properly. Ever. A quick search for "Chrome" in Muon yielded two extra packages that were not installed by default, which appears to be for installing different versions of the "freshplayer plugin". I have never installed these packages and use Youtube, Netflix, and friends just fine. Am I missing something?


The only real criticism in the end that I can agree with is that more education needs to be done in the area of defining what Discover is and why it's not a package manager. The rest seems like a pretty good review of Kubuntu by someone who is clearly biased against KDE.

[2muchcoffeeman]

I'm looking at this as a 1st time Linux user would likely look at it. There's nothing anywhere that explains what a package manager is and why one might want to use one.

This.

[GreyGeek]

.... I'm looking at this as a 1st time Linux user would likely look at it. There's nothing anywhere that explains what a package manager is and why one might want to use one....

I own an iPhone 6. The "manual" for all of the Apps Apple supplies isn't readily available. One has to know where to find it, and then how to use it. Many of the apps from the app store do not have manuals with them either. The basic idea of the GUI app is that it "should be" easy to use without the need for a manual because designers follow protocols as to what each control should do. Most users figure it out.

Even then, some users find uses for which there is no indication that the app can be used that way. Take Gwenview, for instance. If you run it and use the standard File -=-> Open and then browse for a file you will find that the file filter shows only those files that Gwenview is "supposed" to handle, images. You can't edit Gwenview's filter to show video listings, so what you won't see listed are video formats. If you use Dolphin and right mouse on a video file you won't see Gwenview listed as a player. However, if you take the "Other app" option and then browse to Gwenview it WILL open the video file and play it. I never knew that until someone else mentioned Gwenview as a video player yesterday in another thread!

The problem comes when an obvious function doesn't work the way it is supposed to work, as in the case of Discovery or Muon's search. It's not that people can't figure it out. It just doesn't work the way it obviously should work. After a while, hopefully, a patch will fix it.

These problems are not Kubuntu problems. They are sometimes not KDE problems if the malfunctioning app isn't part of the KDE metadata that controls what gets installed.

So, I still feel that the "review" was essentially a drive-by shooting by an individual who has no skin in the game (he didn't and doesn't use Kubuntu or KDE). In two words: click bait.

[oldgeek]

Actually the website is pretty interesting for those, like myself, are not programmers and just like to see what's out there. There are also some turorials for some of the problems new users may find. The Discover problem has been amply dealt with in this forum and seems to be finally getting on its feet. I don't use Amarok--never have liked it much--but that's a matter of choice. The reviewer is obviously sold on Linux Mint, which I use along with Peppermint on my netbook. That's his decision--it is a nice distro. However, he has led me to try some bombs, like antiX which I couldn't get to work on my vm. Bodhi was another waste of time, as it kept freezing up. I can't call myself a 'newbie' any more as I can tinker with Linux more than I ever did with Windows, but given the reviewer's attempt to judge a distro's performance by what a new user needs, I think he makes some valid points--which, as I said, have been covered here as well. But I've been sold on Kubuntu since I joined this forum so I'm not at all likely to change my mind because of one negative review. Still, for an LTS release Kubuntu 16.04 seems to have had a more troublesome birth than anything since the changeover from Plasma 3 to 4. And 14.04 was for me the best release I have used since 2009.