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Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

blogs.kde.org

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Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#71

Post by levesque »

Jach wrote: post #66
levesque wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So far, I'm not a big fan of gnome3 (and Unity), but I'm going to give the gnome developers some credit and trust the direction they took. They spent countless hours thinking about what to do - I didn't.

They refactored most of gtk, simplifying many things, and in the long run, when people are done migrating everything, I believe it will turn out for the best.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#72

Post by ChuckMcM »

This comment stood out for me in that article:

If it does then we need people to step up and take the initiative in doing the tasks that are often poorly supported by the community process. ISO testing, for example, is a long, slow, thankless task, and it is hard to get volunteers for it. We can look at ways of reducing effort from what we do such as scrapping the alternate CD or automating KDE SC packaging.

This is the biggest single challenge that free software has to over come if it every hopes to challenge proprietary versions. Testing, and verifying bug fixes, and bugs, and documenting. Its not the 'fun' work of building a distro, its not the 'glorious' work of building a distro, its not something that makes people want to sit at your table during a 'con.

But the reality is the for most software products the number of people who are 'users' and the number of people who are 'developers' are generally very different, with successful products having many more users than developers. Users have no option when they hit a problem or an incompatibility but to stop using, that is their only choice. They aren't going to learn C, they aren't going to try to fetch and build a newer version of a kernel module, all they really can do is try something else.

Everything else pales in comparison to that problem.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#73

Post by bad_user »

adimitrov wrote: post #37
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 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.

     it won't be the streamlined experience that
     Unity is or Gnome was
For some reason I find the experience more streamlined on Xubuntu than on Ubuntu 11.10

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#74

Post by TylerE »

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…

Agreed. I've been running KDE 4.8 on FC16 at home for the last 2 weeks or so. Very happy with it.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#75

Post by spwmoni »

cookiecaper wrote: post #70
tbrownaw wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 concurr…

Ubuntu's target market has a very different interpretation of "a bunch of footwork" than yours.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#76

Post by Confusion »

jriddell wrote: post #58
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…

It is a literal statement and you are not reading it literally. OpenSuse is frequently but not regularly released. It also fills in gaps in KDE's offering with other software such as Yast and Firefox. Otherwise it is a good distro for KDE fans.

What is the difference between 'frequently' and 'regularly'?

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#77

Post by winthrowe »

Confusion wrote: post #76
jriddell wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a literal statement and you are not reading it literally. OpenSuse is frequently but not regularly released. It also fills in gaps in KDE's offering with other software such as Yast and Firefox. Otherwise it is a good distro for KDE fans.

What is the difference between 'frequently' and 'regularly'?

Ubuntu releases regularly every 6 months like clockwork, while on the otherhand, suse releases relatively frequently, but there is anywhere between a few months and a year or so between releases, so it can't exactly be described as 'regular'.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#78

Post by jebblue »

Canonical should consider dropping Unity and getting the Gnome people to drop Gnome 3 and then get them to come out with Gnome 4 based on Gnome 2 with some very small Ubuntu twists. Oh right, that would be all Ubuntu versions up to 11 which were successful.

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#79

Post by roopeshv »

whateverer wrote: post #45
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 a…

he said the author was trashtalking, and his comment being downvoted was the work of intolerant fanboi. what part of it did you not understand?

second. it doesn't matter if ubuntu got the spotlight in your circles, other distros are famous in other circles. europe has good number of fedora/redhat and suse users

Re: Canonical will no longer fund Kubuntu

#80

Post by malnourish »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #54
a_a_r_o_n wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The desktop is just there to launch and switch between applications." If that's how you look at the desktop, then you should definitely look at Lubuntu. It's just windows and a panel. When you look at an Xfce desktop, it looks like Xfce. When you look at Lubuntu, it's just windows and a panel.

I was unaware of Lubuntu. I will keep it in mind. Thanks.

I'm using Elementary OS, which is based off Ubuntu. It's simple, clean, and works very well for my purposes.
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