Isn't Kubuntu more stable than Ubuntu?

[khurrum1990]

Has anyone noticed that Kubuntu has way fewer bugs and application crashes than Ubuntu? I noticed that on both 7.04 and 7.10. Maybe its KDE that works better, but KDE applications in my opinion r way superior such as Amarok, K3B, Kaffeine and stuff. They kick their gnome counter parts ***. What do u all who have used both think?

[mrgnash]

No, I have not observed the superior stability of Kubuntu.

[SunnyRabbiera]

ehh I see no real difference between Kubuntu and ubuntu, though Kubuntu 7.10 is the best kubuntu I have used so far.
There are some gnome apps I like better then KDE ones though.
I like Pidgin better then kopete, for me pidgin is infinitely better then Kopete, there is something about Kopete that I just dont like... maybe my first impressions about Kopete while it was doing the amazing Technicolor dreamcoat act back in its earlier versions (and man I HATED that, one minute its pink, then its yellow, then blue, then some color I cannot see thanks to my color scheme) threw me off
I like Totem better then kaffiene, In my opinion totem is superior to Kaffiene in several major respects, most importantly it saves my video settings as opposed to Kaffiene.
I also think synaptic is better then adept...

[peterbrewer]

I personally find kubuntu more stable. Its the main reason I use it instead of ubuntu - also amarok and a few others, but mostly the stability.

[qazwsx]

ehh I see no real difference between
There are some gnome apps I like better then KDE ones though.
I like Pidgin better then kopete, for me pidgin is infinitely better then Kopete, there is something about Kopete that I just dont like... maybe my first impressions about Kopete while it was doing the amazing Technicolor dreamcoat act back in its earlier versions (and man I HATED that, one minute its pink, then its yellow, then blue, then some color I cannot see thanks to my color scheme) threw me off
You can change kopete's theme quite easily


I like Totem better then kaffiene, In my opinion totem is superior to Kaffiene in several major respects, most importantly it saves my video settings as opposed to Kaffiene.
For DVB users Kaffeine is the best app on Desktop. Xine is superior on that field. You can install Totem-xine but still no DVB.

I also think synaptic is better then adept...
+1

[khurrum1990]

Yeah Synaptic is better than Adept and even I find Pidgin better, but other than that I think most KDE apps r way better than Gnome's. I never like Totem. I hate the scroll bar in Totem, it never woks properly. The only thing I dislike about Adept manager is that it takes longer to load and isn't as reliable as Synaptic.

[sethvath]

Why install programs with adept when you can do it much faster and easier on the console with yakuake.

There's no proven method to show which DE is more stable but kubuntu has indeed given me less problems than ubuntu.

[pelle.k]

Has anyone noticed that Kubuntu has way fewer bugs and application crashes than Ubuntu? I noticed that on both 7.04 and 7.10. Maybe its KDE that works better, but KDE applications in my opinion r way superior such as Amarok, K3B, Kaffeine and stuff. They kick their gnome counter parts ***. What do u all who have used both think?
That's funny, because kubuntu has always been known as pretty unstable kde distro. Having said that, "gutsy" is probably the most stable kubuntu release of them all.
The thing is, most kde users will agree that even though it's packed with features, it also has it's fair share of usability bugs. kdelibs and qt are, in my oppinion superior to gtk, but that doesn't mean that kde, and kubuntu in this case, runs smoother than it's gnome counterpart.

Personally, i have reported more bugs with kubuntu, than ubuntu in launchpad.

[darweth]

I prefer GNOME.

Yet Amarok, KTorrent, SMPlayer are my standard first-line programs for music, torrents, and video.

You couldn't pay me to use a gtk music player with the exception of mpd + sonata. I have tried them all!

I've enjoyed using KDE as my DE in the past, but I always drift back to GNOME. Loading extra libs and such is no problem even on my slow machine. Nor do the clashing looks bother me.

[SunnyRabbiera]

You can change kopete's theme quite easily


yes i know, in more recent versions that issue has been cleared up... thank goodness as its amazing technocolor dreamcoat bit was annoying.
I think that was kopete 0.5, the current versions are WAAAAY better.

[khurrum1990]

Pidgin looks better than Kopete though, thats a fact and it supports more protocols. One thing I dislike in it though is that it doesn't have audio and video support.

[ErwinC]

I find the KDM not stable enough. I always have trouble using KDM. II can't configure networkconnection, The screenresolution is not right and I have a lot of screenfreese... etc...
I use Kubuntu with GDM without any problems at all.

[Incense]

7.10 does feel a lot better then past versions did. I think this is due in part to KDE 3.5.8. It's been a really stable release on every system I've used it on.

[khurrum1990]

Yeah it could be due to the new KDE version. I can't wait for KDE 4 though. Any ideas when it will be in the Ubuntu repositories for upgrading? I already know that its there in the repos right now for testing though.

[Linuxratty]

Yeah it could be due to the new KDE version. I can't wait for KDE 4 though. Any ideas when it will be in the Ubuntu repositories for upgrading? I already know that its there in the repos right now for testing though.


Kbuntu is on my desk waiting to be installed..And yes,i also look forward to KDE-4.

[-grubby]

I tried Kubuntu 7.04 *barf*, I tried Kubuntu 7.10 and thought it was decent, but it crashed much more than Ubuntu does and I found myself changing a lot of the default programs

[khurrum1990]

I don't know why Kubuntu didn't work for u. For me Ubuntu 7.04 was awesome, Kubuntu 7.04 was ok. Then when Ubuntu 7.10 came out, it had too many bugs for me, I tried Kubuntu 7.10 and its awesome.

[SunnyRabbiera]

7.10 does feel a lot better then past versions did. I think this is due in part to KDE 3.5.8. It's been a really stable release on every system I've used it on.

yeh that is a factor I think, but KDE 3.5.6 was not bad at least when it concerns PClinux.
but I can see the obvious issues with KDE versions before that

[khurrum1990]

Changing topics a bit, what do most people think about Sabayon Linux?

[maniacmusician]

yes i know, in more recent versions that issue has been cleared up... thank goodness as its amazing technocolor dreamcoat bit was annoying.
I think that was kopete 0.5, the current versions are WAAAAY better.

But Pidgin is still a better looking client, and seems to perform better in general at this point. I'm pretty sure that Kopete hasn't had much developer activity as of late and that's probably the reason for its current state.

I've been a KDE user for a while, and I enjoy it for the most part. I've found myself liking Kubuntu less and less, though. That's also probably due to the limited resources we have compared to Ubuntu. As for 7.10, though it's been better with stability issues and such, I found myself disliking some of the features that they put in and feel like they've made a few mistakes.

For instance, the version of Dolphin that they've decided to make the default file manager. It's the KDE3 version of Dolphin that's been hacked to try and include some of the features from the KDE4 version. While it's a valiant effort, I feel like it's not holding up very well. My efforts to apply system-wide "view" settings on it have consistently failed and I find the large icons that I'm stuck with to be pretty annoying. It's also just not as pretty or functional as the KDE4 version that's in trunk right now.

They've also decided to include a premature version of strigi in Kubuntu, which also seems to be a mistake. The tool just irritates me in many ways, since it's not integrated into the system (and it wasn't supposed to be in KDE4), so I felt like trying to incorporate it in there was another mistake.

I can understand why the Kubuntu team took these actions; I mean, Dolphin and Strigi are popular buzzwords because of KDE4, and they probably felt some pressure to include them with 7.10. In fact, I remember that they even conducted a poll in the forums, asking users if they would rather have Konqueror or Dolphin in 7.10; the users, largely unaware that Dolphin in KDE3 != Dolphin in KDE4, voted en masse for Dolphin. I felt like this was one of the times that the developers should have had the the foresight to see the problems it might incurr and stick with Konqueror, which is much, much more capable in KDE3.

This wasn't supposed to be a *look at me, I'm whining* post. I do understand the decisions that the developers made, and I also understand that I'm in no position to blatantly criticize their efforts, since I've never been directly involved in development. I know that they try very, very hard, and that they are limited by many inconvenient constraints, the largest of which may be lack of funding and lack of active developers, at least in comparison to Ubuntu. As such, I really respect their efforts and I hope that next summer, when I'm not as busy with school, I'll have more time to chip in and at least help indirectly with development, such as communicating with upstream and helping to make better decisions on the mailing lists and IRC.

With that said, I have installed Gnome on my laptop and I'm really pleased with it. Though it's slightly less stable at the moment due to the goals of Gutsy, one of which was to include more experimental features and make the user experience more cosmetically pleasing and seamless...I feel like they've done that pretty well. In fact, my only real complaint with it is that I can't find an easy way to set keyboard shortcuts for all my applications like I can in Kubuntu. It's really satisfying to be able to punch in a quick 3 or 4 key combination to launch an app, rather than navigating through the menus using the mouse.

Though I also prefer the Qt toolkit overall as compared to GTK, I've had to come to terms with the fact that the window decorations in Gnome are superior to the ones in KDE for the most part, and this mostly just has to do with the deficiencies of Kwin's windeco infrastructure. I don't know if they're specifically overhauling that part of KWin for KDE4, I certainly hope they do.

Felt good to get that out :)

[Erik Trybom]

I had a lot of trouble with Kubuntu 7.04. Random freezes and innumerous crashes. At last I got tired and installed Debian instead. I definitely think Ubuntu 5.10, 6.06 and even 6.10 were better in terms of stability.

Haven't tried 7.10 but I can imagine it has improved.

[ComplexNumber]

`
Has anyone noticed that Kubuntu has way fewer bugs and application crashes than Ubuntu? I noticed that on both 7.04 and 7.10. Maybe its KDE that works better, but KDE applications in my opinion r way superior such as Amarok, K3B, Kaffeine and stuff. They kick their gnome counter parts ***. What do u all who have used both think?
very much the opposite. on kubuntu, i get at least about 10-30 crashes per week(sometimes about 3 or 4 or more in 1 day), whereas on ubuntu i would be unlucky to get a crash more than once every 5 or 6 months. the crashing on kubuntu is not a problem of kubuntu, but more a problem with kde, as these typical random crashes can be seen equally over all distros. the problem is more to do with kde's botched underlying architecture.

i'm temporaily using kubuntu at the moment, and i can definitely say for sure that ubuntu is considerably more stable than kubuntu.

kde does have some good applications, some of which include the following:
-kontact - much better in design than evolution. evolution feels too heavy, and i don't like the way it always asks for an email address at the beginning(i use hotmail).
-basket- this has no known good gnome equivalent. i think this is a superb app, and it integrates with kontact
-superkaramba - better than gdesktlets because the latter had fallen by the wayside in recent years in terms of development, but is trying to pick up again. whether the developers come back is another matter.
-hydrogen - this is great app for doing drum rhythms. for gnome there is joksher, but i haven't tried that since it were in beta. i couldn't find a gnome/gtk program to match hydrogen.
-kxmledit - much better than conglomerate.
-k3b is good and i can see why people like it a lot. however, most of the functionally is not used by me.
-a mind mapping tool such as kdissert - i found 1 or 2 gnome apps, but they weren't as good.
-kfilereplace - the best gnome/gtk equivelent i could find did not have the ability to search for multiple lines.

HOWEVER, there are certain applications where kde has no known decent equivelent. for example:
-audio tag tool - kid3 is the ebst that kde has to offer, and this app is lame and more difficult to use in comparison
-video editors such as cinelerra, avidemux, and lives - i've searched high and low, and kde doesn't even have 1 half-decent one.
-audio editors such as sweep, mhwaveedit, and audacity(this, strangely, uses gtk) - the only semi-decent one is kwave, but it's very limited and crashes often.
-ear training programs such as solfege - kde doesn't even have 1.
-a metronome such as gtick - the closest one (that works) is destick, and that's far too simple
-a files comparison app such as meld - kompare is rubbish. it doesn't even allow 3 way comparisons.
-the ability to change the screen resolution by GUI - in gnome, there is a nice and simple gGUI to do this. in kde, there is no way. i've just spent half a day trying to get kde to recognise a screen resolution greater than 1024x768 after changing it from 1280x1024(this messed up my xorg.conf). i finally found the solution - manually edit ~/.kde/share/config/displayconfigrc for the resolution 1280x960, then uninstall nvidia-glx and reinstall it.
-a decent paint program such as gimp and mtpaint - krita and kcolorpaint don't compare for what i want. kcolorpaint is a nice program for what it doesn, but it lacks things such as transparancy which mtpaint has.
-nautilus is considerably betetr and faster as a file manager than either dolphin or konqueror. konquerer is far too slow, and 99% of the functionality is superfluous for me.
-evince - does anyone know if there is an integrated document viewer in kde?
-a good IM client such as pidgin - kopete has too many bugs (not the type of bugs which are responsible for crashing app, but too many oversights. for example, why the heck does it give me MY OWN email address in 'file' -> 'contacts to add'???? i add myself to my contact list, and unsurprisingly says that i can't. so why the heck does it give me that option? another oversight is that it shows my contact list BEFORE i've logged on - that's bad design). kopete does have some advantages over pidgin - for exmaple, in the ability to easily and install smilies. then again, this isn't really an important issue. it aslso seems to be slightly more configurable.
-a good vector program such as inkscape - kde has nothing remotely to compare
-a decent music score editor that works such as denemo - the only kde progs i've found are all rubbish or don't work at all. i've found museedit, noteedit, and kguitar.
-everyone mentions amarok as being the best, but i've found exaile to work better, and be more intuitive. the cover editor often brings up the wrong cover, and whilst it allows me to delete it, it doesn't allow me to select a different source. amarok should learn from juk and banshee - they have the best cover editors by far. also, i've tried several of the lyics plugins, and NONE of them work well.
- a good dictionary program such as stardict

[bruce89]

-evince - does anyone know if there is an integrated document viewer in kde?


Aye, Okular. It's pretty much a clone of Evince.

I suspect KDE has more fringe things than GNOME does, and very much concentrates on features over anything else.

[ComplexNumber]

Aye, Okular. It's pretty much a clone of Evince.

I suspect KDE has more fringe things than GNOME does, and very much concentrates on features over anything else.
for kde 3.5.7? nope. okular is only for kde4.

[SunnyRabbiera]

for kde 3.5.7? nope. okular is only for kde4.

yup, the one for KDE 3 is KPDF, and Kghostview.
Okukar is meant to replace them and some other apps.

[ComplexNumber]

yup, the one for KDE 3 is KPDF, and Kghostview.
Okukar is meant to replace them and some other apps.
there's kdvi, kpdf, etc, but i want an integrated one that handles them all such as evince. it's a bit like having separate graphics programs to open each of jpeg, tiff, svg, etc.

[p_quarles]

there's kdvi, kpdf, etc, but i want an integrated one that handles them all such as evince. it's a bit like having separate graphics programs to open each of jpeg, tiff, svg, etc.
Konqueror is capable of using all of those programs -- and others -- as embedded document viewers. Doesn't get more integrated than that.

[ComplexNumber]

Konqueror is capable of using all of those programs -- and others -- as embedded document viewers. Doesn't get more integrated than that.

yes, but konqueror is a million miles away from being reliable and easy to use. also, some of the kparts are next to rubbish (eg the ark kpart has a mind of it's own, and often bombs out without warning).
for those reasons, i use dolphin instaed and invoke the appropriate apps manually.

[tbroderick]

the crashing on kubuntu is not a problem of kubuntu, but more a problem with kde, as these typical random crashes can be seen equally over all distros. the problem is more to do with kde's botched underlying architecture.

Stop trolling KDE and/or QT threads.

[p_quarles]

yes, but konqueror is a million miles away from being reliable and easy to use. also, some of the kparts are next to rubbish (eg the ark kpart has a mind of it's own, and often bombs out without warning).
for those reasons, i use dolphin instaed and invoke the appropriate apps manually.
I find it 100% reliable (some KDE apps crash or bug out, but not Konqueror), and I can't see how it's difficult to use. To each his own.

[ComplexNumber]

Stop trolling KDE and/or QT threads.
making a not so positive comment is not trolling

[tbroderick]

making a not so positive comment is not trolling

Okay.

"the crashing on kubuntu is not a problem of kubuntu, but more a problem with kde, as these typical random crashes can be seen equally over all distros."

Guess what? KDE hasn't crashed once in my Mandriva 2008 install.

the problem is more to do with kde's botched underlying architecture.

Complete bull****

[ComplexNumber]

you're one of the exceptions. the same behaviours has been seen on a range of different hardware. the patterns were seen on kubuntu as much as mandrake(and later, mandriva).

[tbroderick]

you're one of the exceptions. the same behaviours has been seen on a range of different hardware. the patterns were seen on kubuntu as much as mandrake(and later, mandriva).
...

[maniacmusician]

While ComplexNumber's post borders on trolling, I don't know that it really qualifies as he did make some rational arguments.

KDE3's underlying system was a bit frantic, yes...that's been established by many KDE developers themselves, thus the major rework for KDE4. The KDE4 technologies are being re-written so as to be more maintainable, and will hopefully not be hacked to the point of being often unreadable.

As for crashes, this can sometimes depend on the software and/or kernel. I've had gnome crash on me just as often and sometimes more than KDE does. ComplexNumber's experience with KDE crashes does seem to be a bit extraordinary though...I don't know of anyone else that has that many crashes so often, or someone that has that many problems with Konqueror.

I find the app lists to be slightly irrelevant though. While native toolkits can make a difference on older systems, We're getting to the point where running a GTK app in KDE or vice versa shouldn't really be much of a hassle. I think some cooperation between GTK and Qt developers is necessary to iron out some of the pecularities, but it is definitely not unattainable.

It's a bit inefficient to make clones of apps just because they're not using a native toolkit. It's a waste of time to rewrite entire applications because of this. We've already wasted so much time porting and cloning apps this way; let's not waste any more. The only thing that justifies it is integration into the core environment, and this only applies to a few essential applications. Not to mention that it only takes relatively small API revisions to enable integration into different environments; compared to cloning or rewriting the whole app, this is really trivial.

[bruce89]

While ComplexNumber's post borders on trolling, I don't know that it really qualifies as he did make some rational arguments.


It isn't because there was a reason behind it.

If someone just says something without evidence, that's trolling.

I am a bit suspect of CompexNumber's avatar mind you.

[pelle.k]

Oh, BEHAVE kids! ;)
Anyone that has some experience with developing on both qt and gtk will tell you pretty much the same thing. qt rock!
I belive many kde developers saw some of the design flaws (and learned a couple of lessons) with the current 3.x kde base (and qt 3.x for that matter) and kde4 is the result of trying to fix that.

I will, however say that kde3 is actually quite stable in it's own, but most distros patch is quite heavily so the end result may vary in quality. If you have a unstable kde, you are using a crappy distro.
But, as I previously said, it has some usability quirks/bugs though, and they never seem to go away (kde is the king of regressions);

*Ever noticed how desktop icons seem to move around, pretty much at random?
*Ever noticed how konqueror forgets the position in a parent directory when you back out of a child?
*Ever noticed how konqueror forgets it's own view profiles?
*Ever had kicker crash on you?
*Ever had arts crap out on you?
*Ever noticed that you can't create proper a symlink from media:// kio slave?
and the list goes on...

[ComplexNumber]

If someone just says something without evidenceevidence? this isn't exactly a whodunit. it's a person's experience, and that doesn't make it wrong or right.
maybe you mean like all the signal 7/11 crashes?


I am a bit suspect of CompexNumber's avatar mind you.
i prefer the gtk toolkit. that doesn't mmake my opinion of kde or gnome any less invalid.

[bruce89]

evidence? this isn't exactly a whodunit. it's a person's experience, and that doesn't make it wrong or right.
maybe you mean like all the signal 7/11 crashes?

I have no interest in KDE, so let that put you at ease.

You cited experiences, that's good. I was saying that just saying "it's crap" without explaining isn't.


i prefer the gtk toolkit. that doesn't mmake my opinion of kde or gnome any less invalid.

Of course.

[ComplexNumber]

I was saying that just saying "it's crap" without explaining isn't.i wanted to do a list summary rather than an essay. if you or anyone else wants to ask me about any individual instance(s) of an application where i've said it's good or crap and not fully explained myself, i'll be more than happy to go into detail about why i think what i do.

[maniacmusician]

i wanted to do a list summary rather than an essay. if you or anyone else wants to ask me about any individual instance(s) of an application where i've said it's good or crap and not fully explained myself, i'll be more than happy to go into detail about why i think what i do.
He was indicating that your post wasn't trolling, as you did have reason behind your post and experience to back it up. He's appreciating the fact that you took the time to type all that up rather than just saying "KDE sucks" and starting a flamewar. In other words, don't be so jumpy, you're being defended :)

[ComplexNumber]

He was indicating that your post wasn't trolling, as you did have reason behind your post and experience to back it up. He's appreciating the fact that you took the time to type all that up rather than just saying "KDE sucks" and starting a flamewar. In other words, don't be so jumpy, you're being defended :)

ahh right. my apologies then :). it's just that he said this:

I was saying that just saying "it's crap" without explaining isn't. .
in some cases, i did say "it's crap" without much of a detailed explanation, although in some cases i did mention the reason, albeit briefly. i was thinking that if anyone wants more detail reasons, then i'm quite happy to say so. but it wasn't really necessary for my initial post because it was just a summary.

[Zoiked]

Yes, I find KDE applications are more full features and more stable then gnome apps.

[bruce89]

i wanted to do a list summary rather than an essay. if you or anyone else wants to ask me about any individual instance(s) of an application where i've said it's good or crap and not fully explained myself, i'll be more than happy to go into detail about why i think what i do.

I was saying that you DID explain, good.

[Haiyadragon]

I find it 100% reliable (some KDE apps crash or bug out, but not Konqueror), and I can't see how it's difficult to use. To each his own.

This can't be anything other than a downright lie. Either that or you never use Konqueror for more than half an hour at a time or you only use it to browse files.

The day Konqueror can hold out a day without crashing is the day I switch to KDE.

I have experienced KDE with Arch Linux (32-bit and 64-bit) on my gaming pc, which is pretty much vanilla KDE. And I've experienced KDE with Ubuntu on an old-*** 32-bit work pc, probably heavily patched.

The other reason I don't use KDE is massive bugs like this baby (ftp-part corrupts ftp urls):
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=150973


Although an Ubuntu release can be fairly bug infested, a month later it's solid as a rock.

[ukripper]

I found XFCE more stable

[CCNA_student]

When I tried Kubuntu I had far more applications crash than in Ubuntu or Xubuntu. In fact I would use Xubuntu except for the fact that Thunar cannot navigate through networks. Just my two cents though.

Sin Cere,

CCNA

[bufsabre666]

out of all the managers ive used, id have to say kde is second worst, only enlightenment crashes more and is less stable

[swoll1980]

I love kde but kubuntu is the buggiest most unstable piece of software I'v ever used. I'v got alphas on my computer that have less bugs I don't know what the problem is. when I use mandriva kde is very stable and I have not had one crash since I installed almost a year ago
Ubuntu is almost as good all though today it decided to lock up on me twice it happens when I use synaptic and transsmision at the same time

[GSF1200S]

I had alot of bugs with Kubuntu 7.04 vs. Ubuntu 7.04. Once 7.10 came out, I installed kdebase and built up from there. Ive had absolutely no problems since then, and thats with alot of different programs. KDE 3.5.8 is really doing well for itself. And now, we get to start the bugs all over again with KDE4 ;)