Do You Agree That Kubuntu Should be Renamed - If So, What Name?

[NoWorries]

Currently the behaviour of our SABDFL has resulted in the following developments:

1. Canonical is developing an alternating X window server Mir instead of using Wayland which is being supported by all other Linux distributions,
2. Canonical has developed Unity as a GUI alternative Gnome
3. Canonical financial support for Kubuntu has ceased.
4. Kubuntu is now funded by Blue Systems.
5. There is an increase in the frustration of KDE developers with Canonical here and here
6. As pointed out by dibl

   KDE desktop productivity is perfectly possible on a Debian OS.

7. In the future, if we no longer use ubuntu repositories, it is no longer valid to have ubuntu as part of our name.
8. Blue Systems approach is that

   The Kubuntu Community will continue to decide and manage the direction of the KDE-based distro as they have done in the past.

   I hope that I am not premature in dealing with this matter, but I now believe that we, as a community, should start to voice our preference for the future.

• Do you agree that Kubuntu should be renamed?
• What is your preferred name?

I believe that Kubuntu should be renamed. I am relying on others to come up with a name which will help increase the popularity of this excellent distribution.

[whatthefunk]

At the moment, no. It is still based on Ubuntu so this discussion is a little premature in my opinion.

[PaulW2U]

Do you agree that Kubuntu should be renamed?

There's a reference to an exchange somewhere on these forums between me where sabdfl on IRC where sabdfl says that Canonical goes to great lengths to support the various Ubuntu flavours. Ubuntu GNOME and UbuntuKylin are very recent additions to the Ubuntu family. Canonical may not provide the financial support directly to certain Kubuntu developers that they used to but they provide a whole lot more in the way of ISO building, repositories, servers for websites etc.

Of course that support may change or the Kubuntu council may decide that they want to make changes but .........

At the moment, no. It is still based on Ubuntu so this discussion is a little premature in my opinion.

Agreed.

[GreyGeek]

As Ubuntu gets farther and farther out on its own limb it will, eventually, leave Kubuntu to fall off that limb by default. The question is "Do you want to wait until Kubuntu runs into the 'bridge out' ahead sign with little time to prepare, or do should Kubuntu developers begin NOW in making an orderly preparation and move to a Debian base?"

My answer to that question is YES!.

Personally, I have already made the move by installing KWheezy 1.3 on my PC and I have not been disappointed with it. In fact, I am very much impressed by it.

[Tom_ZeCat]

No. That gets confusing to people who don't follow the Linux community so closely. Rebranding can kill a product's popularity. Plus, as the other person pointed out, it's still Ubuntu-based. They renamed the REALbasic programming language as "Xojo". Now if you tell someone you wrote something in Xojo they have to ask, "What's that?"

[dequire]

The thing to remember here is - even through all the "blue-headed-stepchild" references that we have endured over the years - is that AFAIK Canonical still pays for Kubutnu developers to attend UDS and other prominent community and developer functions. We still use Canonical's servers and still use Launchpad. Still use Ubuntu's repositories for our base system. So a move away, while arguably prudent at some point, would take a LOT of work and planning.

Canonical financial support for Kubuntu has ceased

The only other financial support they ever gave was to pay Johnathan Riddell's salary, which is now paid for by Blue Systems.

My vote would be for a "not yet, not at this time" but with encouraging the beginnings of financial and operational plans to move when the time is right (maybe aligning with Ubuntu's move to MIR...). One option not ever discussed (AFAIK) would be for the Kubutnu community and dev's to merge with one of the other Blue System's supported distributions such as NetRunner OS or Mint KDE. Food for thought...

[woodsmoke]

If ok, I'll visit about a couple of people's points:

A) Tom_ZeCat said that we would lose "brand loyalty".

I agree and disagree to some extent.

a) The general premise of "losing brand loyalty" has validity

b) However there are two possible reasons why that might not be the case:

i) "Everybody knows" (in Linuxdom) about Kubuntu already so a change in name would maybe not lose that many. An example is DSL which used to be Damn Small Linux, and changed, ostensibly, to EXPAND it's reach into people who had a problem with the fish banging into the concrete and saying Damn!".

ii) New people to Linux won't know anyway and maybe a "tres kewl" name might actually be a better attractor than #buntu.

B) ALSO... I agree that we are under no great pressure, "now" from the discussions in other threads,

but for me, I'm always about being proactive.

We could.. ....maybe have a "contest"....

.....and folks put up their suggestions and then the suggestions go into a poll, or maybe several polls if there are a lot of suggestions and the top....oh......twenty....

winners ...get a real physical "prize/ gift certificate/ pizza/ coffee shop/ whatever" so that they think long and hard so the suggestions are really good....

C) then when the time comes, if it does, then there would be a "pool" for the community to decide on, and then the council could take that voting and make a final decision on a couple and put them back to the community

and then a decision could be made in an ORDERLY manner.

D) There "could" be.............. a BANNER placed at Distrowatch........... I placed such a few years ago when i released the Calypso project that could be made to attract attention to the change and the new name ....I got thousands of hits from just a month's display for a very reasonable cost.

So....I can see both sides.

woodsmoke

[Feathers McGraw]

Something that hasn't come up yet: Kubuntu isn't a particularly easy word to pronounce!

Compare the name to something like Netrunner, and think about the conversation you're going to have with your non-technically minded friend when they ask you about "that thing you could put on the computer that doesn't get viruses". How long is it going to take before they switch off when you start using strange sounding words... vs Netrunner, which is easy to say/remember, and sounds pretty cool.

It's been said already, but I agree that anyone who cares would realise pretty quickly if the name was changed.

Having said that, I'm not sure the name matters really, so long as we stick together

Feathers

[claydoh]

This has been discussed in the past, both here and amongst the Kubuntu team itself.

One thing to note is that I do not think that xorg is going away altogether, at least not for a while. Other "flavours" will need some non-mir display server(s) to use, and it is quite likely that simply merging whatever is in Debian at the time Ubuntu merges their packages with theirs. We have quite a while before we have to worry about this, to be honest.

[Teunis]

Neither do I see a pressing need to rename Kubuntu.
As a Dutchman I might be privileged to be multi-lingual be I really can't see ANY issues with the pronunciation of a simple word like Kubuntu, this contrary to Ubuntu that the average USA dweller can really mess up . (Check out the 'great vowel shift')
Reading this forum I notice investigations into a different base for 'our' distro of choice are well under way, the obvious one would be a Debian, maybe Siduction?
Mint can't be of help, it's based on the same Ubuntu, besides when they broke away from Ubuntu they did consciously NOT go Kubuntu.

Speaking for myself I would have no problem with putting Wayland on top of X, especially using my computer for Multi-Media I see the shortcomings of X.

Finally, let's not forget Canonical is still paying for the servers with the Kubuntu repositories, even though many mirrors pay their own bandwidth it's still a non-trivial contribution!

[SantaFe]

Aw shoot. I was hoping we'd call it George. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JlVqfC8-UI

[NoWorries]

Very enjoyable video. George has other connotations here down-under. I have only just found a previous discussion on other names for Kubuntu on this forum.

What about the name BlueLinOS ?

[Tom_ZeCat]

Very enjoyable video. George has other connotations here down-under. I have only just found a previous discussion on other names for Kubuntu on this forum.

What about the name BlueLinOS ?

I'm for changing Kubuntu's name, but if they did change it, BlueLinOS would be a really good choice. One great thing about Linux is that you have so choices for a distro. I used to use Ubuntu 8.04 on my jukebox PC (not my main PC -- still used Windows for that). However, when I saw the latest Ubuntu, I went eeeewwwww. I really don't like regular Ubuntu's interface with that icon bar to the left. Kubuntu was a great choice for me. I like Kubuntu/KDE way better than Ubuntu and Unity. If I didn't use Ubuntu, I would probably use Mint/KDE.

But BlueLinOS is a name that does fit pretty well.

[Simon]

William Shakespeare wrote, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

Meanwhile... my Kubuntu 12.04 LTS is still cooking along and it will be some time before I swap spit with anything else. If or when this effects the 12.04 LTS I might move into a Debian. I am not an expert but it has been my understanding that all forms of Linux has its roots in Debian?

Oops almost forgot. IF you must rename it... "K OS" is better so you are not linking it to any distro that people might abandon in the future.

[Feathers McGraw]

Not all forms have Debian roots.

See the family tree images here:

http://futurist.se/gldt/

Feathers