Kubuntu 18 vs. Ubuntu 19

[Don B. Cilly]

I've been playing with Ubuntu 19.04 in a MV for a few days.
Review: O. My. Dog.
I mean, it's like going back ten years - except incredibly more complicated than it was.

It's got... nothing.
Nautilus has become "Files" and it... the Windows 3.11 file manager was better.
Not only it doesn't have a terminal window, it doesn't even have an "open in terminal" right-click. And then it hasn't got... anything else pretty much.
Installing Nemo helped a bit. Not that it was easy.

About half of what I tried to install gave "Dependency is not satisfiable".
Try putting the dock in the middle of the bottom of the screen.
You have to install "Tweaks", and then they don't work because you also need "Shell extensions".
To install those, you have to install a Chrome extension in Firefox. And then it gives red "Error" boxes (totally unspecified) and half the stuff doesn't work.

Even then, the "dock" is pathetic. You can't minimise a window by clicking on the icon. So if you want to repeatedly open-close one, like to see differences and things, you have to keep moving the mouse from the bottom centre of the screen to the top right.
Every Dock alternative I tried, not only they gave Dependency is not satisfiable, adding the ppas came with warnings like:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:docky-core/ppa
This ppa is used for docky developers. Beta testing anything here is like walking into a burning building. We wont stop you, but you will probably get cooked alive.

The text editor (Gedit) is... it make vim look good.
I don't remember gedit being so bad.In fact, I'm sure it wasn't.

"Show Applications" only works full-screen.
Which is silly enough, but then if you don't choose one, you have to press "Esc" and it fills the screen with windows,

"Ubuntu software"... is not as bad as Discover, but almost.

It doesn't have widgets.
It doesn't have a wallpaper slideshow (a must for xplanet). You can install one, probably takes half an hour, or uses snap.
A "clean" installation has 14 snap loop devices.
And I haven't really tried to use it for anything "serious" yet. Just basic customisation of the basics.
If you use it for a month or so, finding your disk partitions will probably requite piping to a text file and using Ctrl-F

As I've said, moving from KDE to Gnome is like jumping of a Ducati 916 S4 and jumping onto a Piaggio Zip 50.
Still, the majority of Ubuntu users seem to prefer Gnome.
Well, I guess, the majority of people on motorcycles out there use scooters...

[jglen490]

Funny. The people who really like Ubuntu, have much the same kind of words about the Kubuntu "look and feel". I agree with you the Kubuntu is much better, but then again been using Kubuntu for a very long time and have gotten used to it. To the point that it has affected my DNA

[Don B. Cilly]

Funny. I can't think of one single thing that Gnome has which KDE does not
Except maybe the "dock". Which isn't half as good as the Panel to start with, and if you want a much better one, apt install latte-dock takes about ten seconds.

[Don B. Cilly]

Oh, and gedit.

Well, I guess they like it because it's "nice and simple"...
I touched the "Preferences" to see if I could have some sort of menu bar or toolbar in it (you can't - no location bar available either.).
Result:



And if you click Don't send, it's supposed to Relaunch the application, right?
Well, not only it doesn't, it removes it from the dock, and you have to go through that extremely annoying "Show applications" thingy and add it to favourites - again (in a Forrest Gump voice).

I don't remember Kate ever crashing, actually...

[EDIT Ah. And if you click "show details" (which is the equivalent of help-about) instead of opening the little info window, it opens Ubuntu Software (Discover equivalent) which of course now that I didn't add a PPA, says:



Which is... OK... almost... but all I asked for was the details on the app...

[jglen490]

Oh, I agree - totally. Kubuntu is far superior!

Every once in a while I'll got to the Ubuntu forums. They actually do have some and I should say SOME useful information and troubleshooting tips. the rest is just comic relief

[Don B. Cilly]

They do. Have useful information. And I would says, quite a lot actually.
Even though, and it may be symptomatic , compare the "vibe" on ubuntuforums with the one here.
But that is... because Ubuntu is "mainstream" and Kubuntu is not.
Which is... well, puzzling, isn't it.
Now, you try and find out the percentage of Ubuntu vs. Kubuntu/Neon users... it's pretty much impossible (as far as my searching abilities go).
But anybody's guess is, it's a vast majority. That use Ubuntu vs. Kubuntu.

Now there may be many reasons for that.
- Ubuntu is "official", Kubuntu is not.
- Kubuntu is being "conspiratorially" disparaged as being a "resource hog" - which is horse manure, but we know the power of disparaging.
- Canonical is - or has become - one of the main departments of the Circumlocution Office - which, as far as Linux goes, I'm inclined to believe
- People prefer scooters because they are "easier to handle". Thing is, in this case, they're not, really.

It's still incredibly puzzling

[WWDERW]

I'm not totally surprised about a release in the nonLTS yr being somewhat wonky compared to a version that is(or may, you just said Kubuntu 18, didn't specify which release) an LTS. I think of these 2 releases between LTS versions as a beta release.

As to what Gnome has versus KDE. This is going to depend on the situation. Now, I do prefer Mint compared to "official" Ubuntu, so my experiences are with that. My Wacom is far more stable in Mint then it is in KDE. Now, the new Wacom frontend in either a rolling release or the 19 releases of KDE is far far more in tune with the Windows/Mac frontends. The Gnome frontend I don't think is being worked on as it picks up my Wacom, but I can only do the pen macros. I cannot do the express remote. But stability of the device overall does trump that. I have to run an unbind/bind script for the USB for the stylus to pick up. Don't have to in Gnome.

That is uniquely a KDE issue.

Ark doesn't write ISOs, while File Roller does and can't mount ISOs as a virtual drive in Dolphin (I've tried all the services available for Dolphin, none worked). I won't harp on not being able to run in elevated privileges for Dolphin, Kate etc.

Kwin also has to be disabled on my main office rig as well. It crashes every other day. Works fine on 4 other computers that I actually run Neon on, my main office rig (the most important one of them all, ironically) it doesn't.

It does also install (using the min install mind you) and take up more HD space then Mint does and that's before I cull things from Mint. I don't recall any more resource usage compared to Mint though.

Don't get me wrong, I love KDE. I prefer it over Mint (certainly over "official" Gnome), but those stability concerns (particulary when it comes to the Wacom, that's what I use day in/day out for making money, I have to have stability) do have me going, should I go to Mint or stick it out. That comes about every couple of weeks.

It's almost there and I'm sure I'm in the minority with specialized software, maybe too specialized. I love it otherwise. It's a great DE, I just wish Wacom stability was just more robust.

[Don B. Cilly]

To mount/unmount ISOs, IsoMounter works for me in Plasma 5.16:



Just make the .sh executable and copy the two files to the desired locations.
I guess you already have fuser, fusermount, fuseiso and kdialog.

To make an ISO, isn't K3b supposed to do that?
Still, it's quite easy from the CL:
mkisofs -o name.iso dirname
I guess you don't make ISOs every day...

Running Dolphin as root is not that difficult.
Running Kate as root is basically useless. What would you need it for? If you edit a root-owned file, you go to save it, it asks you for the password and voilá.

[Don B. Cilly]

There you go.
I made a little service menu to make an ISO of a directory.
Save it as Make_ISO.desktop (or whatever.desktop) in ~/.local/share/kservices5/ServiceMenus .
Open Dolphin - I mean, if it's open close it and reopen it.
You'll find it under Actions:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Service
X-KDE-ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin
MimeType=inode/directory;
Actions=makeiso;
Encoding=UTF-8
Icon=application-x-cd-image

[Desktop Action makeiso]
Name=Make Iso
Icon=edit-redo
Exec=which mkisofs; if [ "$?" != "0" ];then kdialog --icon=ks-error --title="Make ISO" --passivepopup="[Error] Please install mkisofs command and try again."; exit 1; else mkisofs -o %f.iso %f; kdialog --icon=ks-media-optical-umount --title="Make ISO" --passivepopup="[Finished] $(basename %f) created.";fi

It works just fine for me in Plasma 5.16. Install mkisofs if it isn't.

[EDIT] Maybe try it on a small directory with a subfolder or two... saves time

[WWDERW]

To mount/unmount ISOs, IsoMounter works for me in Plasma 5.16:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]8259[/ATTACH]

Just make the .sh executable and copy the two files to the desired locations.
I guess you already have fuser, fusermount, fuseiso and kdialog.

None of those have worked for me. Either it's user error (which I wouldn't rule out) or every now and again, I've noticed somethings that work on one fresh install, but the next fresh install (same base OS, not going from one version to the next, due to hopping from one distro to the next and then coming back around).

Even IsoMounter doesn't work and yes, I did the manual install and not through the Services menu of Dolphin itself.

To make an ISO, isn't K3b supposed to do that?

K3B truncates file names, which depending on what I'm packing into that ISO breaks links to install files or to web apps etc. Oddly enough, it truncates those names without warning that it is or without the ability to say "Don't truncate (or something similar)". If it allowed me to stop from truncating that would be fine.

Still, it's quite easy from the CL:
mkisofs -o name.iso dirname
I guess you don't make ISOs every day...

Everyday...no. Frequently...yes. It's how I backup files. Not just optical drive files, but files on my NASs as well.

To me, it's really easy to select what I want, right click, compress, click ok and done. Sometimes I don't want everything in the directory

Running Dolphin as root is not that difficult.
Running Kate as root is basically useless. What would you need it for? If you edit a root-owned file, you go to save it, it asks you for the password and voilá.

As far as Kate goes that would be great, if some pop came up between my clicking save and a msg stating "The document could not be saved, as it was not possible to write to ... Check that you have write access to this file or that enough disk space is available". For small things, I use Nano.

There you go.
I made a little service menu to make an ISO of a directory.

Thank you. Worked like a charm, nothing else needed to be installed.

I think this is perhaps my biggest failing and to being adapt to doing stuff like this. Bash scripts, passable, at least for me, maybe not the best for others to use. But really the only type of programming I can even laughably handle is HTML, CSS and JS (and 2/3s of that are really markup languages and not many consider that programming).

Thanks again, that worked without issue.

[Don B. Cilly]

As far as Kate goes that would be great, if some pop came up between my clicking save and a msg stating "The document could not be saved, as it was not possible to write to ...

But isn't it just what it does?

[Don B. Cilly]

Ah
And this is probably just as easy in Ubuntu so we're off-topicking even more, but,
you say you can do bash, JS, and CSS.

Look again at how dead simple that desktop file is. I'd never made one before today, and I can't program much at all.
To make your own, just change that one.
All you need is
MimeType , which is the type of entry you right-click on.
Actions(s) (separated by semicolons ( which call [Desktop Action(s)]. Under which
Name= is what pops up on right-click
Icon= is the little icon next to it.
Exec=which mkisofs... mkisofs is the command you want to use, which checks it's in the $path. The rest is boilerplate error-checking, except, of course
else mkisofs -o %f.iso %f; where %f is the item you right-click on. (and the name(s) and error command name(s)
For a list of mime-types, variables, icons, etc, just google.

So you can just make your own Dolphin actions just the way you like them

[WWDERW]

But isn't it just what it does?

[ATTACH=CONFIG]8261[/ATTACH]

Nope. I do either ctrl+s or file -> Save and it just pops up the dialog saying that I don't have permission or enough space yadda yadda yadda.

Every now and again, I have to wonder if when I do an install and something works, but then I do another fresh install (same hardware, same OS version (not even a difference of 18.04.01 versus 18.04.03)), that same function just doesn't want to work.

Ah

Look again at how dead simple that desktop file is. I'd never made one before today, and I can't program much at all.
To make your own, just change that one.

I'll have to look into that. Thanks!

Only desktop files that I'm used to putting together are the ones that go in /usr/share/applications as I use a lot of portable programs and different DEs have different methods (via GUI anyway) of creating those, so it was just simpler for me to create my own desktop files that I transfer around just installs.

[Don B. Cilly]

Well, it's not supposed to go yadda yadda yadda .
Not on KDE, it doesn't. On Gnome, all the time

What it's supposed to do (on K18+ anyway) is what I've shown.
Anyone can confirm

If it says:
"It doesn't, 'n you can't!
I won't, 'n it don't!
It hasn't, it isn't, it even ain't 'n it shouldn't
It couldn't! It wouldn't"
He told me "no, no, no!"
I told him "yes, yes, yes!"
I said: "I do it all the time
Ain't this boogie a mess!"

(Frank Zappa - Stinkfoot)

Then you either got a broken install or you're using Gnome

[WWDERW]

Well, it's not supposed to go yadda yadda yadda .
Not on KDE, it doesn't. On Gnome, all the time

Ha.

Just out of curiosity, what has caused this hatred towards Gnome?

Then you either got a broken install or you're using Gnome

Could be a broken install, or it could be the hardware configuration that I'm running for some things. Like Kwin, it runs just fine on 4 other computers that I have Neon on. Nouveau works just fine on my single and dual monitor setup, but on the 3 monitor main office rig, I have to use Nvidia. Just don't know, although for some things, I'm leaning towards hardware (and I'm not even on the latest and greatest, the youngest part is 4 yrs old).