PDA

View Full Version : What are your thoughts on Kubuntu 8.04?



Trail
May 9th, 2008, 07:52 PM
First of all, I've been wanting to post such a thread for a while but I delayed since I've been sick twice in a row a total of like 8 days in bed. Do NOT want.

So lately, even before 8.04 came out, I was thinking that I had configured my laptops perfectly (using KDE 3.5) and I was perfectly satisfied with it. I DID want more, of course, but it already has a name... KDE4.1 :) I was curious a bit as to what does the new Kubuntu have to offer... and I couldn't find much. Dialogs for automatic printer detection, for compiz, etc.

So one day I do the dist-upgrade thingy, download about 1terrabyte, all set, reboot. 3D acceleration not working, ok, that was expected. I fallback to 'nv' driver (did they add more options to the 'low resolution detected' gdm window or I just noticed?), and try to launch the restricted-manager-kde application. Except there is none, they seem to be using a new one in its place (forgot the name, started with j). But it would not detect my card :| I tried a few things, got pissed, and decided to install it manually later.

Then I noticed that the 2.24 kernel would not detect one of my hard drives :| This is a kind of common problem for me; I have a pretty good (old nowadays) motherboard, and I've stuffed it with a LOT of hdds. Since I'm out of SATA slots, I use one extra ATAPI slot to fit the last hdd that connects to a 'soft' raid chipset that is set to 'Just a bunch of disks'. I traditionally had problems getting this drive to be recognised. Iirc 7.04 was the first to recognise this out-of-the-box but was slow (2-3Mbs), but 7.10 kernel both recognised it ouf-of-the-box and had a normal speed.

So it appears that 8.04's 2.24 kernel was configured with some slightly different options that don't allow me to use that hdd... And since it is pretty vital for me, I gave a gave a go into using 8.04 with the 7.10's kernel. I tried compiling the nvidia module but somehow I was lacking the 2.22's headers :confused: and I got pissed and wiped everything.

Well not really, I backed up everything, and decided that KDE+KDE4+GNOME was clumsy, so I decided to reinstall kubuntu7.10. (And I also a small 12G partition so I can play with openSUSE's KDE4.1alphas; KDE seems nice but I HATE .rpms - enough RedHats at work also...).

So I got a 7.10 installation, I manually install the latest version of some applications I care about (gcc, mplayer, nvidia, etc) and I am compiling the 2.25 kernel as we speak, using (hopefully) the correct settings for my hdd to get recognised.

So in short, I was quite disappointed by 8.04, and I think that a 7.10 with manual updates is equal or better than it... Compared to previous releases, I didn't find anything that awesome (read-write ntfs, printing pdfs actually working, compiz out-of-the-box, my hdd working etc)

What do you think of it?

madjr
May 10th, 2008, 04:22 AM
am waiting for kde4.1

luca.b
May 10th, 2008, 11:35 AM
I'm using Kubuntu 8.04 right now on KDE 4.0.4. A pleasant experience for me (but as a disclaimer I started using KDE4 since 4.0.0 was out).

Incense
May 10th, 2008, 03:03 PM
K- 8.04 with KDE 3.5.9 is a very good release. The auto codec install is very nice, Kdebi is finally working for me, and for the first time since I can remember, Kubuntu doesn't feel buggy or slow. It's very nice, and I would not hesitate to run it on a production system.

The Kubuntu KDE 4 release however feels unfinished, and left me disappointed. I'm sure 8.10 with KDE 4.1 will be a very nice release, but when you look at what openSUSE has done with KDE 4, kubuntu 4 just leaves me wanting more.

EdThaSlayer
May 10th, 2008, 03:16 PM
You know, a terabyte is 1024 or so gigabytes...
I'm using Kubuntu 7.10, and yes, I'm on a laptop. Just reading your article makes me want to pospone my own clean install of Kubuntu 8.04(although I will install it next month or so).

gsmanners
May 10th, 2008, 03:25 PM
I played with Kubuntu (the KDE 3.5 version) and that works just great.

I personally think one or two hard drives is plenty. If you need more space, then get a bigger hard drive.