Submitted by This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. Jonathan Riddell, lead developer of the Kubuntu project and the only person paid by Canonical to work on the KDE variant of the popular distribution, has announced that after the 12.04 release, Canonical will no longer be funding him, effectively putting Kubuntu on the same level as other Ubuntu variants like Xubuntu.
Kubuntu has always been an afterthought within Canonical, and it showed – as far as KDE distributions go, it certainly wasn’t among the best. Worse yet, despite being the only Ubuntu variant with financial support from Canonical, it wasn’t even the best variant; Xubuntu always seemed like a more stable release than Kubuntu, for instance (in all fairness, Kubuntu has seen major strides forward recently).
Now, with the focus on Unity, tablets, mobile, and heck, even televisions, it seems Canonical really hasn’t a single reason to invest in Kubuntu. Furthermore, Qt has been added to the default Ubuntu installation as well. And last but not least, as Riddell notes, Kubuntu simply hasn’t been a commercial success, and at the end of the day, Canonical is a business.
“This is a rational business decision, Kubuntu has not been a business success after 7 years of trying, and it is unrealistic to expect it to continue to have financial resources put into it,” Riddell explains, “I have been trying for the last 7 years to create a distro to show the excellent KDE technology in its best light, and we have a lovely community now built around that vision, but it has not taken over the world commercially and shows no immediate signs of doing so.”
And this community is now where it’s at, just like with the other Ubuntu variants. Riddell will only be able to work on Kubuntu in his free time from now on, so the project needs to switch to full-on community support. This poses problems, because many tasks are not particularly sexy, and Riddell wonders if the community will be up for it.
I’m not sure if this news really is as bad as it sounds. There are enough other KDE-centric distributions around, and I honestly can’t fault Canonical for not wanting to invest in a money pit (especially since there’s enough other things to fault Canonical for).
Kubuntu was just beginning to really become a very good Linux distribution.
Oh well, I guess it means I will be yet another user shifting from Canonical distributions over to Linux Mint.
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Linux-Mint-12-KDE-released-1…
http://www.muktware.com/articles/3285/linux-mint-kde-12-released
Enjoy.
There’s also Fedora’s KDE spin, and I imagine the base KDE packages will still be available either via the main repos or PPAs, just not as highly customized.
” I imagine the base KDE packages will still be available either via the main repos or PPAs, just not as highly customized.”
we do not highly customise the KDE packages, we have a policy of getting any changes upstream except with very good reason
For those that like KDE, may i make a suggest you may not have heard of? Vector Linux, which has not only a KDE 4 LiveCD but a classic KDE 3 as well. Its actually pretty sharp and they have several images built based on what you need, light, full, etc.
Can’t imagine much of anything will change for users. The other Ubuntu variants haven’t gone poof due to not being officially backed, a $DEITY knows there’s a metric truckload of them
I vote for Chakra.
It is somewhat new, but as a half-rolling variant of Arch Linux, with a heavy focus on KDE (non-Qt apps are only available via a “bundles” system), it really is a great KDE showcase.
It seems like Canonical doesn’t want Ubuntu to remain a GNOME distribution, either. They seem to want the whole GNOME/KDE thing to just go away. They want GTK+ and Qt applications running together seamlessly, they want to support freedesktop.org standards, and they want their own branded user experience with the Unity shell.
I’m not a huge fan of Unity, but I do think that the increasingly desktop-agnostic direction that Canonical is taking with Ubuntu is good for Ubuntu derivatives and the Linux client ecosystem in general.
There will be better shells in the future, and they will be less complicated to develop and distribute because Canonical cleaned up the interface between the shell and the underlying application platform(s).
SUSE devs have given up trying to port unity to their application.
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2012-February/162109…
Also from what I understand Unity uses compiz which is being dropped from Fedora and OpenSuse. I doubt Fedora will port it if that is the case.
Canonical hasn’t really ever given much back to the Linux community in General.
Edited 2012-02-07 15:57 UTC
Yeah, I wouldn’t imagine that Unity is easy to port to non-Ubuntu distros (including Debian). My point is that future shells will likely be more portable because of Unity (including its negatives).
The “shell war” will be messy in the short term because it splits a relatively thick monolithic layer into two layers along a fault line that until now had never really erupted as a de facto interface surface in the FOSS desktop stack.
But in the long run, I think we’re better off with a discrete shell layer, and mailing list threads like the one above suggest that there is plenty of motivation to make this shell layer work for the FOSS community.
I just hope Ubuntu burries Unity for good. Ubuntu 2D doesn’t look as good as it used to a year back, 3D stopped working properly…Very disappointed about Ubuntu lately! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
Or you could use OpenSuse.
Outside of Yast, OpenSuse is a good distro and probably the best KDE distro.
I used older versions of SUSE as “college web portals”, however I think I ended up switching them to a Redhat based distro (CENTOS/Scientific Linux).
SUSE 9.2 was a nice distro if as I remember.
Not bad at all, but since KDE 4 I have liked Mandriva and PCLinuxOS implementations of KDE best (perhaps because they are the ones which feel most like KDE 3.5)
Pity that the future of Mandriva is vey uncertain and that Texstar is taking a leave of absence.
OpenSUSE is a good KDE distro and a good supporter of KDE. The differences are that is is not regularly released in time with the KDE releases and it is more likely to replace gaps in KDE’s offering with other software like Yast and Firefox. Many people will see this as advantages.
I like Kubuntu’s Muon far better than Yast. From and end-user perspective, via Canonical (and ultimately, Debian), Kubuntu has a far more extensive set of available packages than OpenSuse.
Haven’t used latest Kubuntu’s (since 9.04) for different reasons, but I think you missed something.
Muon is only a Package Manager
Yast is a whole administrative front end like MCC (Mandriva Control Center)
In other words… No comparison.
I haven’t found a real need for anything beyond KDE’s System Settings.
On Kubuntu/Linux Mint KDE/Netrunner this lets me configure: Common Appearance and Behaviour; Workspace Appearance and Behaviour; Network and Connectivity; Hardware; and System Administration.
For my own personal desktop, what am I supposed to be missing?
“Oh well, I guess it means I will be yet another user shifting from Canonical distributions over to Linux Mint. ”
Linux Mint is a derivative of Ubuntu. So using it in place of Ubuntu desktop can make sense if you prefer Gnome over Unity. But the existance of Linux Mint KDE depends on the existance of Ubuntu having good KDE packages (also called Kubuntu).
While Canonical stops funding the salary of the main developper of Kubuntu, Linux Mint just added this month a full time paid developper to its new KDE edition (just released some days ago) for the year 2012.
According to Clément Lefebvre, the money comes from Blue Systems, a company which seeked Linux Mint expertise to release its own Netrunner KDE edition.
So far, the agreement seems to please both parties. One up. One down.
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Blue-Systems-becomes-Linux-M…
Edited 2012-02-07 12:44 UTC
Netrunner 4.1 actually looks pretty sweet to me.
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=07092
http://www.netrunner-os.com/netrunner-4-1-version/
http://www.netrunner-os.com/features/
http://www.netrunner-os.com/screenshots/
I haven’t tried it yet, but I think I might download it soon.
Thanks for the tip.
“Netrunner 4.1 actually looks pretty sweet to me. ”
Netrunner is a derivative of Kubuntu so they depend on a healthy Kubuntu the same as Linux Mint KDE does.
It depends on Canonical’s repositories, sure. AFAIK one of the few Kubuntu-written packages in those repositories is the Muon package manager. The majority of the work that Kubuntu does, I believe, is to prepare and check the distribution ISOs.
Both Linux Mint KDE and Netrunner do that for their own ISOs.
KDE itself is written by the KDE project team.
http://dot.kde.org/
http://www.planetkde.org/
Nothing to do with Canonical or Kubuntu.
Having said all this, I’m not actually sure if Kubuntu itself is all that much affected by this development anyway:
http://apachelog.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/how-kubuntu-did-not-chang…
For a personal, user-owned desktop system, either Netrunner or Linux Mint KDE have possibly better default package selections anyway.
Edited 2012-02-07 23:33 UTC
Good job explaining to the guy who worked on Kubuntu what KDE is….
jriddell was trying to claim that Linux Mint KDE and Netrunner specifically depended on Kubuntu.
My point was that Linux Mint KDE and Netrunner effectively duplicated most of the work that Kubuntu does. Most of the actual writing of code is upstream from Kubuntu.
If I just straight out said that with no support, it would have no weight against what jriddell said.
So I pointed out where the code was coming from and who does what work to make my case to OSNews readers.
Netrunner and Linux Mint KDE do indeed depend on Canonical repositories for the underlying system infrastructure. Canonical need all that anyway, including Qt now. So even if Kubuntu was completely eradicated from Canonical’s repositories, all that Netrunner and Linux Mint KDE would have to do is get the KDE4 source code from kde.org, compile it, make sure it worked in conjunction with the infrastructure code from Canonical, and then put it in their own repositories.
Oh, and also take over maintenance of Muon, which IMO is very worthwhile.
Edited 2012-02-09 00:19 UTC
Is that your elegant way to say you blew it?
and Kubuntu uses the debian KDE packages…
I didn’t know Kubuntu had been funded. In either case, I guess it was inevitable as Ubuntu seems focused on the Unity interface.
I guess openSUSE just got a million new users, just like the other KDE-centric distro’s…
How is this a good business decision? People are fleeing Ubuntu in droves. Unity may be good some day, but not today. They will never convert KDE users who have already moved to another distro to come back and try the next version of Ubuntu. Mint is killing Ubuntu at Distrowatch. Other distros will be getting a boost in users also as the exodus continues. I used Ubuntu for a while but there are too many other good distros out there to stay with a sinking ship.
Simple. These users that are ditching Ubuntu in droves pay $0. Ubuntu may get some ad revenue from users browsing in firefox/chrome and some money from the Ubuntu store, but I really doubt it ads up to anything substantial.
I really doubt Mint makes much money. And the fact is that many distributions are so focused on building desktop/laptop features that really don’t matter to the mainstream consumer market anymore. What average person gives a shit about an even-lighter-weight music player which doesn’t connect to any music stores, doesn’t play video, etc. Companies that focus solely on the desktop features are going to go out of business. Redhat is excluded because they’re an enterprise business service provider.
Canonical is at least trying to spread to the largest sector of the consumer market, although I don’t think they have much of a business plan.
What Mint made in Januari 2012:
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1925
Steve Balmer earns more during the time he throws a chair, but I wouldn’t sneeze at give or take $ 14,000 in a month.
.
Edited 2012-02-07 13:43 UTC
Anyone remembers this?
http://dot.kde.org/2006/10/15/mark-shuttleworth-becomes-first-patro…
http://ev.kde.org/supporting-members.php does not list him as patron.
Kubuntu 11.10 was completely done by the community and is a fine distribution. So, nothing new, really.
Exactly. They terminated the position of the one guy on the Canonical team proper that was responsible for helping with KUbuntu. Yes it sucks for him, but it means very little to the distro itself.
Good riddance, everyone knows that KDE’s slow and crashes all the time. It’s not very configurable either, it always seemed dumbed-down compared to GNOME.
I don’t blame them for not wanting to support a mediocre desktop that till this day still crash and use 100% of your CPU.
http://vhanda.in/blog/
Aaron Seigo will not be sponsored by Nokia soon and is just a matter of time before that tablet experiment fails.
So yes, KDE is a sinking ship.
Wow! I’m waiting for lemur2’s reaction to your post. In my experience, KDE is exactly the opposite of what you’re saying. But lemur2 will provide the links
In his fantasy world KDE is perfect and can even cure cancer, but in the real world is very different.
When I dare him to show a video of KDE running in a netbook, he declined. He is just a fraud.
KDE isn’t unstable, and neither Kubuntu.
If people wanted to try it by themselves, there was a VirtualBox disk image of Kubuntu 11.04 i386 Desktop, stable version in
http://torrentbox.com/torrent_details?id=1476261
This was definitely true when KDE launched the 4 series, but nowadays this is no longer the case. KDE 4.7 on Kubuntu 11.10 i stable and fast
As someone who also tries KDE, I beg to differ.
Edited 2012-02-07 17:25 UTC
If people wanted to try it by themselves, there was a VirtualBox disk image of Kubuntu 11.04 i386 Desktop, stable version in
http://torrentbox.com/torrent_details?id=1476261
You misunderstand the implications.
1. Kubuntu does not equal KDE as a whole.
2. Kubuntu is a community distro and a lack of funding does not equal death. Many distros exist with $0 funding.
3. You have been sniffing glue if you think that KDE is less configurable than then Gnome3.
Please think before you speak.
Depends on how one defines configurable really. KDE4 certainly has more configuration dialogs, but considering Gnome-Shell is basically javascript these days one could make the argument for it being more bendable to the user’s will. For a sufficiently technical class of user of course.
That said the entire first post in this subthread reeks of bad troll.
If KDE4 is so configurable, thene where is the option to remove the cashew?
There are, or were, several plugins that’ll do it for you if you desire. You’d have to ask someone who actually uses KDE4 actively for more detail on what they may be and where to locate them though
So, it doesn’t comes with the option, you have to rely on a third party developer for that, that’s not my concept of configurable.
It does come with the option. Right-click on the desktop, choose the settings and change the used layout plugin to one that does not have the cashew.
The ones w/0 the cashew sucks, sorry. Is not good enougth.
So, everything done in Javascript is in general more bendable then any other programming-language? Sounds like the view of a Javascript-fanboy.
KDE’s desktop is a collection of plugins and each single component can be replaced/changed on the fly. All those Plasmoids out there prove that. Do not like those Folderview’s? Use another plugin! Do not like the Cashew? Use another plugin!
KDE goes even so far to make removing, adding, changing or arranging plugins and visual components possible via the UI. So, you can just drag and drop a folder-view from your desktop to your panel if you like. Or you can just add a new panel to the right-side of your desktop with just some clicks.
That goes far beyond what is possible with Gnome-Shell. Sure someone could achieve the same result but for that you need to dive deep into the Javascript and code everything yourself.
So, how exactly is Gnome-Shell more bendable to the user’s will?
According to our boy up there plugins don’t count as customization. 😉
I’ll admit it’s been a looooong time since I’ve touched KDE4 and it’ll be an even longer time before I bother to do so again, but the plugin frameworks do offer a lot of customization as you say. By the same token Gnome has it’s extensions ready for one click installing and the capability of more or less being rewritten on the fly if the user wants to exert the effort. Perhaps at the end of the day they’re equal in potential, for a sufficiently technical sort of user.
1. And where did I say it did? (Hint: I didn’t)
2. Now that the rats have started deserting that sinking ship, it’s only a matter of time.
3. Oh yeah? Show me the KDE equivalent of GConf!
Clearly you’re just trolling because you’re jealous of GNOME’s popularity and success.
“Out of the 25 people who notably contributed in the past year, 1 person was employed by Canonical to do so (i.e. 4% of general Kubuntu work was financed by Canonical).” And he has not left the ship. And he doesn’t like being called “rat”, don’t you think? 😐
[From https://apachelog.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/how-kubuntu-did-not-chang…]
The KDE equivalent of GConf is KConfig. You can edit the config-files manually if you like (not possible with gconf) but you don’t need to.
Thankfully KDE does not have GConf or anything like it (binary config files? seriously? Are we back in 1990 and I’m using DOS?).
There’s an API for config files and all the config files are plain text.
Well, I have something to say about they choice to use text based files as configuration, is not that is bad, it is that their choice was to use some type of malformed kind of .ini files.
Edited 2012-02-09 14:35 UTC
Malformed? How so?
$ head -n 3 .kde/share/config/kmixrc
[Global]
AllowDocking=true
AutoUseMultimediaKeys=true
Looks pretty normal to me.
Haven’t you see the .inis plasma makes? it is something like this:
[12][23][1][2][34][21][97][21][55][1]
value=1
value2=3
Looks like these guys were to classy to use XML or JSON, so they used .ini files witch goal is for structural value for pair data to a full serialization container, I feel sorry for the poor bastard who has to made the parser for this, if you wonder why plasmoids losings its configuratios, thank to this deformed entity.
Yes and they don’t look like that, at least not on my machines. I can’t find a single kde ini file that looks that way.
That hasn’t happened to me for years.
Here you can get the idea:
http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?t=32239
> > > losings its configuratios
> > That hasn’t happened to me for years.
> Here you can get the idea:
He said that something like that has not happened him for years, and then he has been answered with something from three years ago.
Edited 2012-02-10 07:40 UTC
Oh, I see. Yeah, that’s a bit …odd although it seems it’s only for plasma applets. I did find some of those myself now that I looked a bit deeper.
That said, I haven’t had any problems with missing plasma settings for years.
It is a resolved issue no doubt. But when it happened often it leads me to try to investigate the cause and It was when I found this “jewel”.
Although I’m primarily an Xfce guy (who’s slowly coming back to Gnome since Cinnamon became available in the AUR on Arch) I have to say a full install of KDE has always been slow and buggy and felt bloated for me no matter what machine I was running it on so in that sense I agree with you (although I haven’t tried 4.8), but a minimal install of KDE has always worked wonderfully and has never given me any problems. I just don’t stick with KDE because usually I prefer GTK apps with a couple exceptions ie. K3b…
That criticism certainly had some validity when KDE4 first came out, however it simply isn’t true anymore. If you think KDE is still like that, you haven’t tried it in a while.
I have used Gnome for years. However, with the changes that Gnome has made, I now find KDE preferable. The recently released Mint KDE version is far more stable and usable than the Mint Gnome version.
The decision by Ubuntu to drop Kubuntu is probably just one more step down the road to its own irrelevance.
You mean, it doesn’t crash nor use 100% CPU anymore?
I beg to differ.
Debian testing KDE works out pretty well.
Suggestion:
– Rename Kubuntu to something else (and please, a good listenable and pleasant name, enough of this ooga-ooga buntu crap).
– Ship a DVD full of applications, including out of the box integration with GTK 2 and 3.
– Ship all media codecs and stuff out of the box.
– Select the highest rated set of applications instead of K* traditional ones (eg. VLC, LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox).
after that, prepare for going after Linux Mint.
You mean, like this?
http://www.netrunner-os.com/features/
Netrunner is not an “ooga-ooga buntu” name, it uses apt, muon and Canonical/Mint repositories, with 36,000 packages in them. Also consider that it can use apps from PPAs at Launchpad.
This fact means IMO that it is a better option than OpenSuse or PCLinuxOS, although having said that, either of those are reasonable options also. It is just a matter of the selected default packages, and the available packages in the repositories, and the means of installing them, and it seems to me that Netrunner 4.1 might have the edge.
Especially so if I am able to install KDE 4.8, which it appears may soon be possible.
Edited 2012-02-07 23:01 UTC
Suggestion:
– Rename Kubuntu to something else
The name was created by the original Ubuntu team before I or anyone from outside the company was involved. Coming up with a name which emphasises KDE and Ubuntu but is original and not stupid sounding is very hard.
– Ship a DVD full of applications, including out of the box integration with GTK 2 and 3.
Shipping a 700MB image is a nice limit to prevent it being too much of a burden for many to download.
– Ship all media codecs and stuff out of the box.
This will end up with Canonical staff in jail and they won’t want that.
– Select the highest rated set of applications instead of K* traditional ones (eg. VLC, LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox).
That defeats the purpose I had for Kubuntu.
– after that, prepare for going after Linux Mint.
Linux Mint is a derivative of Kubuntu so that won’t help you
Probably except for the LMDE
I don’t believe there is a Linux Mint KDE Debian Edition.
LMKDE?
Debian itself treats KDE like a poor second cousin. If you want a KDE distribution based on Debian, I think your viable choices are MEPIS, Kanotix, aptosid and siduction.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mepis
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=aptosid
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=kanotix
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=siduction
Edited 2012-02-08 05:33 UTC
I’m using Debian testing with KDE, and didn’t notice any poor treating so far
Do you mean some specific problems?
I didn’t specifically use LMDE, but I think it uses repositories compatible with Debian testing. Why shouldn’t it have KDE available?
Edited 2012-02-08 19:09 UTC
I’m sorry… you’re basically saying my points are not valid. Well, time to celebrate the financial cut then. I do think Ubuntu is a weird name, let alone its derivatives.
Do you like when other people celebrate the financial cuts that happen to you? 😐
“Kubuntu” means “towards humanity” in Bemba, and is derived from ubuntu (“humanity”).
Why is this weird? Not everyone has English as his mother language.
Isn’t weirder… to have an avatar of someone that looks like he’s pointing at you with a weapon… than “towards humanity”? 😐
Edited 2012-02-10 07:37 UTC
Mageia seems to be a fork of Mandriva Linux, and supports KDE quite well I heard.
http://www.mageia.org/
the sound of people clamoring to get their hands on kde… is not very loud
I did… one month ago, after several years on gnome. Gnome used to be good back in the 2.x days…
Since the KDE desktop is mature and fully usable, unlike Gnome 3.x or Unity, why would Canonical want it around to steal Ubuntu’s “thunder?” This outfit just keeps making one misstep after the other! Considering this news comes on the heels of Mint’s fabulous new KDE edition (developed jointly with Netrunner OS) I’d say this dumb decision is yet another in a long line of missteps by Canonical in the wrong direction! The silver lining is of course that in the hands of community developers (by the user, for the user) Kubuntu will only become stronger and I suspect many of its developers (and users) will defect to Mint.
I find this really curious.
We have tried to implement standard Ubuntu in an enterprise environment a number of times and our users hated it.
The same users reacted vary favorably to Kubuntu and have been using it non-stop for over 24 months.
I honestly think that Canonical is losing its collective marbles, so to speak. Just like ximian and suse before them, they seem to have an internal culture that dictates technology choices based on what those entrenched developers want to champion, instead of what´s best for the user.
I am sorry but Unity in its current state is nowhere near the polish of KDE. I never thought that Canonical would go back on its word, especially after many public appearances showing support for the distribuion by Mark Shuttleworth himself.
Now the question that really needs to be answered is: if Jonathan won´t be doing oficial KDE support, who will support Kubuntu 12.04 for the next three years?
Can we take the chance of Kubuntu 12.04 or is that completely irrational for a company? I was eagerly awaiting the release of 12.04 as it would give me 3 years of support, which I take it to mean, three years of stable operation.
What do we do now? Is there any serious kde-focus distribution offering an LTS release with 3 years of support on the desktop?
Edited 2012-02-08 17:30 UTC
Just a remark: it’s 5 years of support with that release.
Five years is for the server version. The desktop version of Ubuntu and Kubuntu get 3 years of support.
Why do you say that?
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases
Ubuntu & Kubuntu 12.04 Desktop LTS extended to five years
http://forum.micromart.co.uk/Topic449343.aspx
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Desktop To Be Supported for Five Years
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/10/ubuntu-12-04-lts-desktop-to-be-s…
More
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Kubuntu/12.04/LTS-Proposal
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=kubuntu+“12.04”+5+years+site…
Linux in general has pretty much failed on the desktop. It’s ok for servers, and thats about it. It’s no wonder the Ubuntu guys are trying to find ways to boost revenue and sooner of later Shuttleworth will call it a day in his plans to be the next Microsoft.
Personally, I think anyone who thought Linux could be the “next Microsoft” of personal desktop computers was living in a dream world. Linux is a niche market on the desktop. It fits that role very nicely and honestly I wouldn’t trade my Linux PC for anything. I love it, and as soon as Linux DE & OS developers get the idea of desktop domination out of their heads (I’m looking at you Gnome and Ubuntu) I think the better off the Linux desktop will be.
Edited 2012-02-09 18:15 UTC
I wouldn’t say that… in this site.
http://www.osnews.com/story/25485/OSNews_Browser_OS_Stats_2012
Edited 2012-02-09 18:44 UTC