I have installed Mint - GNOME version on my small netbook. The choice of Mint was due to the user experience disaster that Unity is. The choice of GNOME was due to the limited screen space on the netbook plus the feeling that the KDE netbook desktop was not mature enough.
I have to say that each day I get more and more fond of Mint. Latest pleasant surprise: for a year I've been booting Windows just to add/remove music and files to my iPad. I read that it was somehow possible in Ubuntu, but certainly not in the defaul configuration. What is strange is that iPods work well in KUbuntu, especially with Amarok. But iPads, no joy. Surely, there are a few packages here and there missing, and fiddling enough I could be able to make it all work.
Guess what? Mint comes built in with all the necessary stuff for iPad plug and play functionality. And all the audio and video codec stuff that is not in Ubuntu by default because of legal issues in the US and maybe other parts of the world, none of them where I live.
In summary, in their last few releases, Ubuntu and KUbuntu have not delivered the user friendly, sane defaults Linux that I was expecting. Speaking of releases, to be honest, I've reached the point in my computing where I don't feel the need to have something updated each six months. I only need the updates when my computer does not do something I want it to do. Which, at this point, is very little, except perhaps the iPad stuff. Perhaps there will be a time when I need to upgrade the kernel because some of the development software I use does not work, but this is going to be certainly a much longer update cycle than the six month carousel.
I understand that this happens for a number of reasons: limiting the included packages because of space or legal restrictions. Attempting to lure the smartphone generation with Unity. Not having enough resources to support multiple desktop environments. Releases with critical issues get... well, released just to keep with the six month cycle. Trying to become profitable by morphing into some TV set top box software. Or smartphone software. I'm not angry at Canonical, they can do whatever they please to do with their work and their money. And I cannot certainly influence their direction.
So I feel I no longer enjoy the Ubuntu experience. Or KUbuntu. It is time to switch off. I like KDE better than GNOME, so I prefer to use something KDE based. KMint is a possibility.
My doubt is whether to switch to bare bones Debian or something downstream. From what I heard, Debian is not as hardware friendly as Ubuntu, in the sense that you may need to do separate installs for graphics or other stuff. But I'm happy with those one-offs, as long as they don't break each six months.
What are the pros and cons of each option. Anyone knows what are the contributions that KUbuntu gets over the standard Debian KDE build, which I guess, would impact Kubuntu based options such as KMint?
I have to say that each day I get more and more fond of Mint. Latest pleasant surprise: for a year I've been booting Windows just to add/remove music and files to my iPad. I read that it was somehow possible in Ubuntu, but certainly not in the defaul configuration. What is strange is that iPods work well in KUbuntu, especially with Amarok. But iPads, no joy. Surely, there are a few packages here and there missing, and fiddling enough I could be able to make it all work.
Guess what? Mint comes built in with all the necessary stuff for iPad plug and play functionality. And all the audio and video codec stuff that is not in Ubuntu by default because of legal issues in the US and maybe other parts of the world, none of them where I live.
In summary, in their last few releases, Ubuntu and KUbuntu have not delivered the user friendly, sane defaults Linux that I was expecting. Speaking of releases, to be honest, I've reached the point in my computing where I don't feel the need to have something updated each six months. I only need the updates when my computer does not do something I want it to do. Which, at this point, is very little, except perhaps the iPad stuff. Perhaps there will be a time when I need to upgrade the kernel because some of the development software I use does not work, but this is going to be certainly a much longer update cycle than the six month carousel.
I understand that this happens for a number of reasons: limiting the included packages because of space or legal restrictions. Attempting to lure the smartphone generation with Unity. Not having enough resources to support multiple desktop environments. Releases with critical issues get... well, released just to keep with the six month cycle. Trying to become profitable by morphing into some TV set top box software. Or smartphone software. I'm not angry at Canonical, they can do whatever they please to do with their work and their money. And I cannot certainly influence their direction.
So I feel I no longer enjoy the Ubuntu experience. Or KUbuntu. It is time to switch off. I like KDE better than GNOME, so I prefer to use something KDE based. KMint is a possibility.
My doubt is whether to switch to bare bones Debian or something downstream. From what I heard, Debian is not as hardware friendly as Ubuntu, in the sense that you may need to do separate installs for graphics or other stuff. But I'm happy with those one-offs, as long as they don't break each six months.
What are the pros and cons of each option. Anyone knows what are the contributions that KUbuntu gets over the standard Debian KDE build, which I guess, would impact Kubuntu based options such as KMint?
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