Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

blogs.kde.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 86 posts

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#41

Post by sho_hn »

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.

And actually, increasingly, a distro you wouldn't have expected on that list only a few years ago given Red Hat's usually Gnome-focussed efforts: Fedora. Their KDE team is highly competent and hard-working, and has produced a very strong KDE CD for some time now.

Folks from the KDE team have also popped up on the distro's board of directors and engineering committes, which are voted offices. And Red Hat has several paid employees working on KDE/Qt stuff at least part-time.

Fans of KDE definitely shouldn't dismiss Fedora automatically anymore, especially if they otherwise have a strong appetite for Fedora's usual virtues (closeness to upstream, package freshness). It's a really good KDE binary distro these days.

(Disclaimer: I'm a KDE developer, but KDE of course remains highly committed to distro neutrality, i.e. the above are my personal views as a Fedora user, not as a representative of KDE. And I'm not involved with Fedora development.)

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#42

Post by reuser »

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…

That was written by Jonathan Riddell, who worked on Kubuntu. I am fairly certain he is not trash-talking KDE and I am also fairly certain that Ubuntu is not using him as a mouthpiece to trash SUSE.

So it isn't necessary to get very hot toward Ubuntu on account of it. Maybe Riddell misspoke. I seriously doubt anyone is trying to be mean to SUSE, let alone all of Ubuntu doing so through people who were working on Kubuntu.

I think it's just gratuitous to blame "mindless Ubuntu fanboyism and intolerance of alternatives" for this sort of illusory perceived slight. I like your posts, but I don't see why you would get this angry. Ubuntu is also an alternative, so clearly is SUSE, if you think Jonathan Riddell is picking on SUSE you can just ignore him.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#43

Post by sho_hn »

kijin wrote: post #31
markokocic wrote: post #30

I don't understand what is the problem. I installed Ubuntu multiple times just to uninstall Gnome and install KDE as a first step after install. Never bothered to actually try KUbuntu. Is this method of installing KDE still supported, or they are dropping support for KDE completely.

They're just making Kubuntu more like Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Edubuntu, etc. All those other derivatives have been doing OK without official support.

Add to that that Jonathan Riddell (the sole Kubuntu developer Canonical was funding, which they now cancelled, which is what this announcement is about) had been off the Kubuntu rotation for about one release cycle in the recent past already, working on Bzr instead. The Kubuntu folks still managed to make their release just fine.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#44

Post by geoffw8 »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #4
arguesalot wrote: post #2

The reason i prefer xubuntu is the fact that Kubuntu is going the way of ubuntu by investing heavily on eyecandy, touch-like interfaces and excessive UI bloat. KDE seems to be the best overall platform for development, but the interface is trying too much to be everything. I think they should reconsider falling back to a simple clean default desktop, because they are doing a disservice to the developers of thousands…

I'm on Ubuntu 11.04 atm. I plan to upgrade to 12.04 in July (after its had a few months to bed in), but I'm weary of what to expect from their next UI update, given their recent history. Unless I hear good things, I'll be moving over to Xubuntu.

Or do what I did, and install your own window manager :) Got awesome running and very happy at the moment.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#45

Post by whateverer »

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…

You called a mistake 'trashtalking' and then went on to claim that it was the work of the intolerant Ubuntu fanboys. Your comment was pretty crap in that respect.

Putting that aside, it's true that Ubuntu has completely taken away the spotlight from other Linux distros, which runs counter to the anti-monoculture argument which was commonly thrown around in previous years by Linux... advocates. But even as a user of another distribution, I don't really mind.

Ubuntu and Canonical as figureheads in the Linux community make it a much more tangible alternative than the previous cloud of distributions recommended to everyone, with ever changing dominance. It's seen as a rival on par with the proprietary OSes and the fact that it's projected that image for four years now only strengthens the position of the entire lot.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#46

Post by reuser »

Karunamon wrote: post #38
adimitrov wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will probably not drop the KDE packages (that'd be idiotic, tons of people use, say Amarok or Kopete or whatnot) — but it won't be the streamlined experience that Unity is or Gnome was, Ubuntu icons everywhere and whatnot. It'll just be closer, or even identical to upstream KDE (or rather, Debian's version of upstream KDE) with few modifications on Canonical's side.

Canonical is not a stranger to idiotic business decisions.(See also Unity and their subsequent losing of ground to Mint) That, combined with their utter inability to take community feedback into account, really makes me wonder whenever they do something like this. It's like traditional logic doesn't apply.

I'm not angry that Canonical has not dedicated a staff member to Lubuntu or Xubuntu, why should I rage over Canonical not having a staff member dedicated to Kubuntu? The community is doing a fine job.

I have no problem with Unity and if I did, I have no problem installing Xfce either.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#47

Post by cenuij »

sho_hn wrote: post #41
cenuij wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And actually, increasingly, a distro you wouldn't have expected on that list only a few years ago given Red Hat's usually Gnome-focussed efforts: Fedora. Their KDE team is highly competent and hard-working, and has produced a very strong KDE CD for some time now. Folks from the KDE team have also popped up on the distro's board of directors and engineering committes, which are voted offices. And Red Hat has several p…

Thanks, that's good to know. I'll make a point of giving it a "spin" so to speak, so I can be confident to recommend it alongside the others I mentioned. I really should anyway since there's many a package on our build service (openSUSE) using fc15/16 as build targets.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#48

Post by lawnchair_larry »

That's a shame. I never liked KDE since I first tried it about 15 years ago. Unity and Gnome 3 are so bad that on my latest ubuntu install, I decided to see if KDE was fixed yet. It's now my primary desktop environment. There are a few issues with it, but I felt like it was far better than the alternatives.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#49

Post by davidw »

Karunamon wrote: post #38
adimitrov wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will probably not drop the KDE packages (that'd be idiotic, tons of people use, say Amarok or Kopete or whatnot) — but it won't be the streamlined experience that Unity is or Gnome was, Ubuntu icons everywhere and whatnot. It'll just be closer, or even identical to upstream KDE (or rather, Debian's version of upstream KDE) with few modifications on Canonical's side.

Canonical is not a stranger to idiotic business decisions.(See also Unity and their subsequent losing of ground to Mint) That, combined with their utter inability to take community feedback into account, really makes me wonder whenever they do something like this. It's like traditional logic doesn't apply.

> Canonical is not a stranger to idiotic business decisions.

Do they even make money? They provide a bunch of free stuff, so I'm not sure how the recoup it.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#50

Post by gsa »

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

Just to be clear, the DVD setup does allow you to pick the desktop you want, but KDE is selected by default.
Post reply on HN