Kubuntu's New Future

[NoWorries]

UEFI worries me far more than this.

I am replying to this on a Compaq AIO with UEFI and it is working very well and to my satisfaction.

I am so glad that kubuntu is now well supported with a new owner and staff from canonical. It is great that there will no longer be road blocks in its development.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the startup logo change to the KDE Gear instead of kubuntu. This coincided with the announcement of Blue Systems being the new owners. I assume that all kubuntu users have encountered this change.

[NoWorries]

UEFI worries me far more than this.

For me all the problems with UEFI are fixed and the system that I have with UEFI is working extremely well.

I am so pleased to know that kubuntu is now in the hands of people who are dedicated to its progress and there is no one putting road blocks in the way.

After the announcement, I was pleased to see that my startup screen no longer shows kubuntu but the KDE gear wheel. I assume that everyone now has the same change.

[arochester]

Via Google +

Ubuntu UK Podcast :
We're interviewing Jonathan Riddell this evening about the latest Kubuntu news. Tune in from 19:30 UTC (20:30 UK Time) at http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/live/

[arochester]

Kubuntu Now Independent Of Canonical, To Be Sponsored By Blue Systems - http://www.muktware.com/news/3516/ku...d-blue-systems

"Kubuntu, the KDE-based derivative of Ubuntu, is entering in a new era. Blue Systems wil be sponsoring Kubuntu from the 12.10 cycle starting in May. Canonical recently stopped sponsoring Jonathan Riddell's work on KDE. Jonathan gave indications of this sponsorship when he asked during a meeting if it was OK with the Technical Board of Ubuntu if someone else sponsors Kubuntu.
What does this sponsorship mean for Kubuntu? In an exclusive interview with Muktware Jonathan Riddell told us, "Blue Systems will sponsor my time to work on it and will have a budget for conference travel (e.g. to UDS and Akademy) as well as Kubuntu promotion such as CDs or posters."

Jonathan will no longer be working as a Canonical employee. He will be leaving Canonical after the Ubuntu Developer Summit. "But I'll be working with Canonical just as any Ubuntu developer works with Canonical. I expect to keep being an important part of the Ubuntu project e.g. by being a release driver or archive administrator," says Jonathan."

[Tito]

I moved from M$ Vista (what a fiasco) to Ubuntu in Feisty Fawn, used GNOME 2.x for ages as it suited my needs and style of work. At the time I tried KDE 3.x but did not find the advantage over GNOME. When 11.04 came along with unity, I continued with 10.04 LTS, With 11.10 I tried Unity and GNOME 3, I tried but could not like tem, so I switched to Kubuntu. After a few tumbles I was able to configure KDE to my needs and so far I'm staisfied with it. Then I read about Canonical abandoning Kubuntu; here we go again, I said to myself, just when I found that KDE is fine for me I may have to start looking for a substitute. This thread however, shows that my fear may have been unfounded.
Good work guys clarified a number of doubts.

[MoonRise]

UEFI worries me far more than this.

Ditto! Though Steve Riley had a good post here recently on that so maybe there is hope going forward on that.

[Rod J]

I hope Kubuntu sticks around for some time too. I'm about to abandon Ubuntu/Unity myself and I think Kubuntu is where I want to be for the foreseeable future. I had a look at OpenSUSE (KDE) recently but I'm leery of RPM distro's as I didn't like RPM much some years ago using Mandrake/Mandriva.

[VH-BIL]

I really do not like Unity and Gnome 3. I will always be a Kubuntu user as long as it is around and stable. I hope KDE and Kubuntu is around for many more years.

[Rallye]

UEFI worries me far more than this.

[Jonas]

With a more 'sober' view on canonicals choice to sack all(!) the Kubuntu employees I don't feel this is such a head ache anymore.

With some years now running Kubuntu the precise release so far has been a joy, I don't think any alpha has been so stable (or me being cautious perhaps) Oneiric was very stable too for me in pre-release testing, only troubles then came with rolling out the beta. With that said, if Kubuntu keep advancing like it has since 8.04, in my experience, the future is very very bright!

With looking back at the KDE change from 3.5 hegemony to 4.x, 'many' ditched Kubuntu/KDE or downgraded to 3.5. Maybe the future for Kubuntu lies, user wise, in the future and path of the change to KDE 5, and that development to new market standards.

Just some thoughts...

/Jonas

[SecretCode]

got foggy about which "new Kubuntu future" thread is which.

There is a bright future for new "new Kubuntu future" threads!

[Qqmike]

I've found this thread interesting and informative. Bet others here do, too. Been on meds and got foggy about which "new Kubuntu future" thread is which. This is a good one, and I hope people will continue to insert info into it as they come across items.

[bsniadajewski]

Since, I'm assuming, KDE packages would move from main to universe (where XFCE and LXDE reside), does that mean we would see updates through the proposed and backports repos more often instead of through the Kubuntu Updates PPA?

[DaemonFC]

Personally, I think it comes down to this.

Kubuntu was becoming more attractive to business customers looking for a professional quality workstation, especially after Canonical's misadventures with Unity. Since Canonical wants to push their in-house software instead of something that is more open.....

What better way to make the Pointy Haired Bosses out there say "We need to be using Ubuntu! They have ZOMG Official Support!" than to take away the official support of Kubuntu?

Moving past conspiracy theory, what should people who want to use the Kubuntu 12.04 LTS do if they don't want to move to broken beta quality 6 month releases? Will there be another LTS to jump to in 3 more years?

[dibl]

KDE is a healthy, independent, open source project. Debian is a healthy, independent, open source project. This forum is a healthy, independent, open source project. I see no reason for alarm here. I always wondered about the ROI prospects of Kubuntu, from Canonical's perspective -- it was great while their investment continued, but it's not a charity. To the degree that folks like claydoh and jonthechidna and others are willing, this distribution has a great future.