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Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

blogs.kde.org

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Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#61

Post by cookiecaper »

pgroves wrote: post #40
andrewcooke wrote: post #16

"[...] a regularly released community-friendly distro with a strong KDE focus. There is no other major distro out there that matches that description [...]" Then WTF is OpenSuse? http://www.opensuse.org/en/ This makes me really mad. OpenSuse is a major distro and has supported KDE for years. It's not so popular in the USA, but is pretty big in Europe (I have used it for years and it rocks; so does KDE). I don't see h…

Kubuntu is not Ubuntu. It is a complete distro with KDE as the default desktop. In the future, KDE support will still be in Ubuntu, as much as it is in Opensuse. Opensuse allows you to pick which desktop to use [1]. OpenSuse is not a "KDE distro." [1] http://en.opensuse.org/Product_highlights

Puh-leese. Kubuntu and Ubuntu are the same distribution. They just replace your boot screens when you install kubuntu-desktop instead of just installing another DE.

I've always been annoyed at Canonical's packaging of different DEs as if they were entirely different distros.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#62

Post by brainsqueezer »

I liked that mix o Debian base + latest KDE + some Ubuntu graphical extras (printer, package update, etc). KDE needs it's own distro focused on a great KDE user experience. Sorry for Mandriva and others but for me I need something based on Debian. My real opinion is that KDE should make itself a distro to get a good vertical integration.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#63

Post by calloc »

andrewcooke wrote: post #16

"[...] a regularly released community-friendly distro with a strong KDE focus. There is no other major distro out there that matches that description [...]" Then WTF is OpenSuse? http://www.opensuse.org/en/ This makes me really mad. OpenSuse is a major distro and has supported KDE for years. It's not so popular in the USA, but is pretty big in Europe (I have used it for years and it rocks; so does KDE). I don't see h…

PC-BSD is KDE based. Then again I guess FreeBSD isn't just a distribution of Linux and doesn't count.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#64

Post by cookiecaper »

davidw wrote: post #56
Scaevolus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sell support contracts.

My impression , with no basis in actual facts, is that they spend more than they take in. How many zillions of users do they have, and how many of those actually need support from Canonical, especially when they can get varying degrees of support from anyone with Linux knowledge.

Ubuntu Server is becoming more and more popular. While the Red Hat "wait five years between releases" model works for some applications, it is actually not very good for people developing new web-based programs. There is a lot of appreciation for a server-style OS that updates more frequently (semi-annually in Ubuntu's case), and Ubuntu offers contracts (supposedly) comparable to what you would get with RHEL so you can still keep the CYA business guys happy (and get support, I guess, if you need it).

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#65

Post by rbanffy »

calloc wrote: post #63
andrewcooke wrote: post #16

"[...] a regularly released community-friendly distro with a strong KDE focus. There is no other major distro out there that matches that description [...]" Then WTF is OpenSuse? http://www.opensuse.org/en/ This makes me really mad. OpenSuse is a major distro and has supported KDE for years. It's not so popular in the USA, but is pretty big in Europe (I have used it for years and it rocks; so does KDE). I don't see h…

PC-BSD is KDE based. Then again I guess FreeBSD isn't just a distribution of Linux and doesn't count.

It's certainly a "Linux-like operating system" ;-)

(burn, karma, burn)

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#66

Post by Jach »

levesque wrote: post #57
nailer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been wanting to hear this for a long time. Not that I like one more than the other, I just think that Canonicals effort should be towards developing, fixing and improving one UI, not four.

I'm not sure Canonical supports XFCE in any way, and now they also no longer support KDE (financially, that is). There were hiring one guy to work on Kubuntu, that's not much if you ask me. So we're down to two (Gnome-shell and Unity), and the support of gnome-shell is almost mandatory. Unity itself is based on gnome3, so they need to help maintain and improve it. There is no harm in letting community driven efforts…

Xubuntu is also really useful if you want a superior desktop UI. I'm not sure if it's gotten harder or easier to make a default Ubuntu install use Xfce4 on the very newest version, it'd be nice if that was an install-time option instead of the separate distro mess. (It used to be just sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop, but I've been out of the Ubuntu world for long enough I have no idea if they changed that and it wouldn't surprise me.)

I'll be on Gnome2 until it dies, after that I'll have a full switch to Xfce4 since it's the only one that can compete with Gnome2 at the moment. I'll probably seriously experiment with various tiling managers around that time too. I'm more excited about the future developments of Wayland which I'm glad Canonical is supporting but not so much gnome3 and unity.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#67

Post by cenuij »

jriddell wrote: post #59
oinksoft wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mandriva and its descendant PCLinuxOS also fall into this category. I believe Mandriva is relatively popular in Europe also, being used in government and such.

Mandriva is less frequently released and like suse fills in gaps with their own technology such as system control centre. They have also been very bad at creating a community which leads to forks like PCLinuxOS and Mangia

I don't quite understand what you mean by "fills in gaps". There are no gaps, YaST on openSUSE is provided in addition to pretty much what anyone would expect on any distro.

Edit: I see what you meant in a comment later/earlier in this thread.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#68

Post by tbrownaw »

cookiecaper wrote: post #61
pgroves wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kubuntu is not Ubuntu. It is a complete distro with KDE as the default desktop. In the future, KDE support will still be in Ubuntu, as much as it is in Opensuse. Opensuse allows you to pick which desktop to use [1]. OpenSuse is not a "KDE distro." [1] http://en.opensuse.org/Product_highlights

Puh-leese. Kubuntu and Ubuntu are the same distribution. They just replace your boot screens when you install kubuntu-desktop instead of just installing another DE. I've always been annoyed at Canonical's packaging of different DEs as if they were entirely different distros.

I've always been annoyed at Canonical's packaging of different DEs as if they were entirely different distros.

You mean they aren't? Really, how often do you have to go mess around under /etc ? A different DE is probably the biggest user-facing change you'll get.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#69

Post by wheels »

cenuij wrote: post #22
andrewcooke wrote: post #16

"[...] a regularly released community-friendly distro with a strong KDE focus. There is no other major distro out there that matches that description [...]" Then WTF is OpenSuse? http://www.opensuse.org/en/ This makes me really mad. OpenSuse is a major distro and has supported KDE for years. It's not so popular in the USA, but is pretty big in Europe (I have used it for years and it rocks; so does KDE). I don't see h…

I couldn't agree more, that's a pretty "wtf" statment to make. I think it demonstrates the growing disconnect between Canonical and the Linux community. In fact I'd go so far as to say that very few people think of Kubuntu when they think about KDE on Linux. openSUSE, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, Arch are the go-to's for KDE on Linux.

Wrong.

While there are a lot of Canonical folks that don't have backgrounds in upstream projects (more so than at other major distros), Jonathan has been involved in KDE since long before he worked for Canonical and is old friends (and still in frequent contact) with many of the top tech folks at SUSE.

You're reading way too much into that.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#70

Post by cookiecaper »

tbrownaw wrote: post #68
cookiecaper wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Puh-leese. Kubuntu and Ubuntu are the same distribution. They just replace your boot screens when you install kubuntu-desktop instead of just installing another DE. I've always been annoyed at Canonical's packaging of different DEs as if they were entirely different distros.

I've always been annoyed at Canonical's packaging of different DEs as if they were entirely different distros. You mean they aren't? Really, how often do you have to go mess around under /etc ? A different DE is probably the biggest user-facing change you'll get.

Of course they aren't. One of the coolest things about desktop Linux is that you can easily use whatever DE suits your fancy without having to do a bunch of footwork.

Packaging these as different distributions sends your users red flags about compatibility and ease of use. It makes people think they have to change their computer completely if they want to try something new. It makes them think they can't have concurrent DE installs if one user prefers XFCE and another prefers KDE and another prefers Gnome. It makes them look for "Kubuntu packages" instead of "Ubuntu packages" even though the distributions are binary compatible.

There are a lot of implications of pretending like you're a whole different OS when you're just a different default DE.

And I "mess around under /etc" frequently, probably multiple times per week.

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