Guest post by I’ve been investigating switching my desktop distribution from Kubuntu to something more… Seriously maintained. I love debian, and consider it one of the best distros out there, but Ubuntu’s KDE variant is downright pathetic.
When I first started using Kubuntu, it was back in version 7.10 on Rei. After more than a year enduring Gentoo’s progressively more disruptive effect on day to day use, I gave up and switched. At first, I was thrilled. The system worked with little problem, wireless configuration was dead-simple. I felt I finally found the desktop OS for me.
Then KDE 4 happened.
First of all, let me clear the air. KDE 4 doeshave problems, it also has a lot of potential. Plasma is a much more modern and versatile base on which to build the future of the platform. Changing that fundemental base, however, is not without it’s problems. The 4.0 release wasn’t even feature complete. I personally did not switch from 3.5 until 4.3 came out; call me shallow, but I couldn’t live until the panel could auto-hide. As a programmer, and a IT professional, I knew that what KDE was attempting was ambitious. It wouldn’t happen overnight and certainly not without user feedback. They couldn’t sit on the code until it was “perfect”, they needed to turn it out to users just so they could debug the thing properly.
In short, KDE 4.0 = Plasma 1.0. Can anyone say “Early adopters beware?”
So how does this bare on my current dilemma? Distros have been slow on the uptake for KDE 4.0 for good reason (see above). Many remained on 3.5 offering the option to use Plasma as the standard desktop. Today, OpenSUSE is a shining example of what a proper KDE 4.x distro can look like.
So why am I not using OpenSUSE? My reasons aren’t terribly logical. One of my first Linux desktops ran Mandrake (now Mandriva), and package management was a damn nightmare. I didn’t want to scour the internet like a Windows user looking for wayward pieces of software. It’s not even a sensible strategy for a Linux system as the available applications are fewer, and installation is more complex due to library dependencies. When I was introduced to Debian, I was in package management heaven. Just login as root, type apt-get and it downloads and updates everything you need.I’ve tried RPM based distros several times since 2000, but the situation hasn’t improved as much as I had hoped. To date, Red Hat, SuSE, Mandriva just feel wrongto me.
If not OpenSuSE or Kubuntu, then what? I wanted to stick within the Debian ecosphere if at all possible, but I quickly found that impossible. There just doesn’t seem to be a solid KDE 4.x, Debian-based distribution. Maybe a year from now Project Timelord will bear fruit and I can come back to my beloved Debian. For now, it looks like I have to go elsewhere.
But where? After some research online and a few helpful suggestions online, I’ve been pointed to Arch. The way they frame their Raison d’être is certainly enticing. Their installation method isn’t as intimidating as Gentoo was in 2005, but it certainly isn’t for the faint of heart. If the forum chatter is to believed, however, it’s KDE credentials are best-of-breed.
Not having the time this weekend to do a full install, I decided to cheat a little and give The Chakra Project a spin. Chakra is an Arch-based LiveCD focusing on easy of use and considerable polish. Booting into it on my Dell Studio XPS 13, I felt I had come home. The system feels responsive, stable, and a far sight better than Kubuntu ever hoped to attain.
Not everything is perfect, however. Even when booting with the non-free drivers enabled, my Wifi and sound failed to initialize. This unfortunately, stopped me from going any further than a LiveCD excursion today. Given my only other option is Windows Vista on my present system, I did not want to trash my current Linux installation no matter how flaky it is. Later when I have the wherewithal, I’ll bother to slice off 20gb of space on my partition table and triple-boot the system.
Until then, I won’t know for sure if there even is the perfect KDE 4.x distro.
If I were you I would scavenge/cannibalize a extra 40Gb HD and save yourself the trouble (you never know your partition table could get messed up loose data etc…)… or is this a laptop now that you mention wifi?
As far as chakra goes you probably would be better off installing arch and then adding the chakra KDE repos http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/KDEmod
Starting from a livdcd is hardly ever recommended… and auto-configuration just isn’t the arch way. NetworkManager works on arch though you might also try wicd for the frontend… if you have an Atheros abgn card ath9k is working for me as the driver I haven’t bothered trying madwifi lately
Edit: I forgot to mention ath9k was really messed up for a lot of cards between 2.6.29 and 2.6.32 so watch out for the kernel version if your wifi locks up or doesn’t work
Since Arch runs quite recent kernels you may have problems with binary drivers (ala Nvidia/AMD) you can always lock in at a kernelverson or install your own kernel (not that hard and a good learning experience and using a PKGBUILD makes installing/uninstalling it a cinch)
Edited 2010-01-18 18:35 UTC
“In short, KDE 4.0 = Plasma 1.0. Can anyone say “Early adopters beware?”
The KDE folks explicitly told people that the 4.0 release was not complete but needed to get out.
I didn’t see it mentioned glancing over it but I would give a suggestion of trying PC-BSD 8. Out of the box my KDE 4 experince has been very good, 3D accerelation with the provided official nvidia drivers on both 32 and 64bit versions, has the desktop cube and various 3d desktop effects that run smoothly. KDE 4 seems fine to me so far
http://www.pcbsd.org/
if you do try I recommend installing firefox to get flash 9 installed as well that way you can browse the web from the get go and be able to see flash videos.
In any case ArchLinux is considered very BSD like with similar init system…and configuration though I can’t really comment on that directly since I have only installed netbsd once basically just got to the point where X worked and quit (since I have bandwith limitations)
Edited 2010-01-18 18:33 UTC
One thing that I get with ArchLinux that AFAIK I would not get with BSD is the FOSS ATI graphics driver.
http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/xf86-video-ati/
http://www.archlinux.org/news/477/
This driver and kernel combination gives me out-of-the-box (nothing else to install) 2D and 3D hardware-accelerated graphics on my low-end graphics cards (HD 2400 Pro and also recently I picked up a cheap HD 4350), but it works even on the higher-end cards from ATI.
http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/RadeonFeature
Even though it has quite some room for improvement yet, this open-source driver, integrated as it is with the kernel and the xorg/mesa graphics stack, is an absolute boon for use with KDE4. The KDE desktop is incredibly snappy and responsive with this driver.
Finally, open source 3D graphics are here!!!! (only on ArchLinux as yet, AFAIK).
Edited 2010-01-21 02:21 UTC
It would be interesting to have a comparison to see how well KDE does on Red Hat, SUSE, and Mandriva.
Obviously, the author has his own arbitrary criteria for the perfect distro, which is fine. But once three out of the top four distros are dismissed without being tried, the article isn’t really useful for discussion.
FYI, Tess is a she, not a he.
And to be completely frank, I agree. This isn’t really a “start a discussion” article. I had written it entirely to convey personal experience rather than as a more scholarly, researched article. Doing do would have taken more than the 34 minutes it took to write what I did.
I think *everyone* has their own personal opinions on what they want out of a distro. That’s what’s great about the Linux ecosystem, I don’t have to swallow the one authorized version. The “Perfect Distro” doesn’t really exist, but I can look for what feels pretty close to perfect for me.
Honestly, I’d love it if OSNews featured a Blog post section so that more casual posts (like this one) can be submitted and kept separate from news-oriented posts.
Actually IMHO, I think the “KDE 4 experience” in Gentoo is far better than the found in Kubuntu.
Edited 2010-01-18 18:43 UTC
Gentoo works well with regards to KDE 4, but that means that you have to be willing to use Gentoo. Personally, I used Gentoo for a number of years until I just got sick of having to fix it when it broke. It has some really nice stuff going for it, but you have to be willing to pay the cost, and I’m not anymore. So, I switched to OpenSuSE. I think that gentoo’s KDE 4 had fewer issues for me than OpenSuSE’s, but that could be purely an issue of using different versions on each of them. But both have worked well for me overall.
So, basically, Gentoo works well for KDE 4, but unless you want Gentoo, it doesn’t really matter. You’re likely to use Gentoo because you like Gentoo rather than because you’re looking for a distro that plays well with KDE 4.
OpenSUSE is one of, if not they, best KDE 4 based distro (as far as intigration, stability, unified look and feel, responsiveness, etc..).
moving out of the linux crowd, PC-BSD has very good KDE intigration, better than most linux distro’s do.
Ditto to that
it’s the best, by a mile
I feel the same way. I’ve left Kubuntu for the same reason. I ultimately gave in to RPM and went Fedora. Suse left a bad, bad taste in my mouth the last time around. The default install just required too much effort to configure to get it into a state I preferred. I’m not entirely proud I went fedora, somethings still seem wrong, and I’m still not 100% over the abandonment of Red Hat Linux.
Yum works well enough, hasn’t broken anything, and has most packages I’m looking for ( I prefer the most stable yet bleeding edge packages available for my personal systems).
If you like Red Hat, try CEntOS (Community Enterprise Operating System)
It is a carbon copy of Red Hat without the cost, support or Red Hat logos and such.
I haven’t tried it, just heard of it.
Good Luck!
No, I liked the old red hat. The last version of which was Red Hat 9. I didn’t realize fedora was going to end up as good as it is now. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a nice hands off server OS, but not for my purposes. As I said earlier, I want something for the desktop with more bleeding edge/ but mostly stable packages.
CentOS is pretty much the same thing as RHEL, as you said.
Good for servers, but their desktop versions are a little outdated.
I tired openSUSE a year(2?) ago and it went belly up on me. I have since been running both Fedora (ok) and Kubuntu (jez). I’ve been running openSUSE 11.2 since day one and it is really good. It amazed me. I’m usually the tweaking monkey master but now I’m more or less running the default install. Firefox integration is nice and the “new” yast is very good. I’m more an apt kind of guy but Zypper, the package manager, works very well.
Haven’t tried Gentoo or Arch with KDE4, but if you are looking at Fedora, Kubuntu and openSUSE the choice is easy.
Go openSUSE!
What do you mean by the “Tweaking monkey master” are you more of a Gui tweaker, or a system tweaker? My previous experience was fine from the gui side, but there were too many running processes in the default install and too difficult to figure out what they were doing and what was safe to terminate.
It was just so freaking slow
I manged to break the package management.
It took too long for new stable versions of software to make it into its repos.
It was the closest I’ve gotten Linux to act like windows. Which was enough to scare me off.
So, you’re looking for a distro that does KDE well and as it happens, some of the best ones are RPM based.
These things have nothing to do with KDE and the fact you have your own issues with them like; “Red Hat, SuSE, Mandriva just feel wrong to me”. Well that’s your problem, not KDE’s.
I think it’s more a problem getting over your own distro dislikes than anything.
Congratulations on grabbing the wrong end of the stick.
Nowhere in the article did the author say that RPM has anything to do with KDE. In the author’s opinion (and I happen to agree), apt-get is superior to RPM (or urpmi or it’s variants). Thus all she is doing is looking for an apt-get distro which uses KDE4 as the default, and it’s pretty surprising that there doesn’t currently seem to be a good candidate.
Yo OSNews dude/author/guy! Try Linux Mint KDE. Yes, it is based on Ubuntu, but I think it does a much better job than Kubuntu.
I use Gnome, though so I guess my opinion isn’t worth much.
Mint is just Ubuntu with another wallpaper and some rectricted applications installed. Mint KDE is propably as bad as Kubuntu, since Mint is a small project.
Actually you’re incorrect. Linux Mint forked from Ubuntu back at Edgy Eft (Ubuntu 6.10) The amd64 edition of Mint forked at Intrepid Ibex (I think…I may have been Hardy Heron.) The Mint team has put a great deal of effort into building its own custom applications and creating a truly user-friendly Linux experience. They’ve done a lot more than simply enable restricted extras and change the theme. Even though Linux Mint releases are compatible with the corresponding Ubuntu releases it is indeed a unique distribution in its own right.
..or author girl! Yes, female geeks do exist thank you!
I tried Mint KDE on an old netbook a while ago and it was not a pleasant experience. I’m a lot like the author, in that I prefer KDE as my Linux desktop environment, when I have one that is, since I don’t install GUIs on my servers, and that I prefer apt-get to RPMs.
That said… Kubuntu *was* my distro of choice when I had a netbook (I’ve since sold it) because it was the easiest to get working. Not that it wasn’t painful. I’ve tried Debin + KDE in the past and found the combination to be lacking.
No, not really. When Mint KDE 6 was still a prerelease, I reported that bug: http://www.flickr.com/photos/19616885@N00/3358984527/in/set-7215760… / http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?p=141599
I even gave a simple solution: Use Debian’s language packs.
As you can read in the second link, the Mint KDE maintainers refused to fix that bug, stating it’s against their policy. In a later reply, a Mint KDE maintainer even refused to take responsibility for that bug and instead pointing the finger at the KDE project (“It’s taken months to make something useable out of the KDE 4 mess”), while that is clearly not KDE’s fault. In fact, Mint 6 simply used KDE packages from Kubuntu’s Experimental repo — inheriting all it’s bugs.
The very same bug was still not fixed in Mint 7: http://www.flickr.com/photos/19616885@N00/3786255180/in/set-7215760…
I have two pieces of advice – one’s the easy route, the second the difficult albeit more rewarding one.
First, you need to overcome your prejudice agains RPM based distroes. For all intents and purposes they work the same as deb based ones. I’ve used both extensively, plain debian for a few months, Kubuntu until it became a total disaster (their downward spiral started after Feisty), then a variety of RPM based distroes: OpenSuse, Mandriva and Fedora – in that order. Of these three, Mandriva provided by far the best, most complete, most stable KDE experience. OpenSuSe wasn’t that bad, my problem was the package management, which seemed to be awfully slow compared to mandriva. Mandriva has a very clean, very simple to use RPM based package management system called urpmi. It’s lean, mean and fast. It’s an excellent command line tool, but their GUI tools aren’t that bad either.
That said, I’m currently an Archer – like so many Osnews readers it seems. And having used FreeBSD in the past, I feel at home again. It’s clean and IT IS SIMPLE. Yes, you need to read the documentation carefully, yes, you have to set up everything manually. Sounds bad? I thought so, that’s why I’ve been putting off trying it. My linux/bsd thinkering days are over, I primarily use my laptop to get work done (which is completely unrelated to linux). And finally when I dived in, it was far simpler than I expected. Since than, I never looked back, nor do I plan to change to yet another distro in the foreseeable future.
For years distroes have been claiming reduced boottimes, piling hack upon hack to get the system up and running faster. You can do the same with Arch of course, plymouth, bootchart, etc. are available – but surprisingly enough, a plain vanilla arch with KDE 4.3.4 boots faster to full desktop than any distroes I have tried. Package management is fast, powerful, simple. Tons of packages available from AUR, an automated build system that lets you compile apps from source – but basically you rarely need to. I have a dozen or so apps installed from AUR, most of them binaries anyway (google-earth, skype, opera, etc.). Everything is kept simple, the user community is extremely friendly and helpful. Being a cutting edge rolling distribution, bugs do happen, but they are fixed very fast, unlike kubuntu where bugs stay in launchpad for years. Even with fedora or mandrake you have to wait longer to get things fixed when shit happens.
So to sum up, you can go the easy way – Mandriva is an excellent distribution, I recommend it over SuSe, seems to be more stable, especially the recent releases. On the other hand, if you’re a bit up to the challenge, try Arch. KDE runs like a champ on it, and it has modular builds (for example, I have precisely what I want on my system – dolphin but no konqueror, select plasmoids only, kwrite, amarok, etc.). I’m not talking about KDEMod and Chakra, because since 4.2.x Arch provides rock stable modular KDE packages. On the other hand, trying Chakra like someone suggested might not be a bad idea either…
Edited 2010-01-18 19:04 UTC
Loving Debian means running Debian to me, not Kubuntu
Indeed. Im not getting why the writer looks at kubuntu and says debian.
Debian testing/unstable (which one you prefer) has very well KDE packages. rock solid.
You should try debian with kde and come back and write this article again. im serious.
FWIW, there’s also Sidux Linux — basically, Debian Unstable, with some fixer packages. (Think about it a little like a Rolling Release version of Debian, with slightly newer packages.) It has KDE4, and it seems to work pretty well for me — altho I don’t have any complaints about Kubuntu, so maybe I’m not the best judge.
Second.
Also, there is no mention of trying or even thinking about trying KDE on Debian itself.
I’ll add my two cents to the Debian/Kubuntu issue. I am running a combination of the Debian testing branch with KDE4 from unstable. Unlike what I have heard about Kubuntu, Debian’s version is pretty stable. Some of the plasmoids are cute, and the 3D effect integration largely works (though the novelty wears off after a couple of days).
KDE 4.3.4 lacks a few things, however:
Networkmanager-kde still needs the version 3 KDE libraries. I may try Wicd.
Kaffeine needs the KDE3 libraries. Dragonplayer is not a good substitute. I have been trying VLC.
There is no way in Debian to run “Administrator” mode in the KDE Control Center (now called SystemSettings). Neither does the “run as different user” work in the KDE menus. GKSU is a workaround for some apps, but not others. SystemSettings only runs properly from a root Konsole with the command “dbus-launch systemsettings”.
You can’t use different backgrounds for each desktop, anymore.
3D effects work fairly well, but aren’t recommended for laptops running on battery. Hence, while 3D effects work on my EEEPC, I keep them disabled. On my desktop with an Intel 965 chipset, 3D effects work in a limited way with Xrender, but not OpenGL (Compiz has the same issue with the 965).
One of KDE’s strengths was Kprinter, which is now gone, replaced with limited printer configuration tools.
All told, KDE4 works in Debian, but lacks the power and integration of 3.5.10. Ease of printing, and access to running as administrator trump spinning cubes in my book.
No, it does not. Maybe your distributor didn’t package the latest version of KNetworkManager
In moving to Debian Squeeze, I was not able to remove the 3.5.10 version of Kdelibs until I had installed a version of Network-manager-kde from Experimental.
Not anymore: http://dot.kde.org/2009/11/07/introducing-kde-4-knetworkmanager
Kaffeine for KDE4 is still in development but it works pretty well for me already. And, btw, Dragonplayer it isn’t intended to be a replacement for Kaffeine. You’ve Smplayer as well.
Yes, you can. Set up different activities for each desktop and change wallpaper on each.
http://userbase.kde.org/images.userbase/1/17/Plasma_howto-desktop-w…
Edited 2010-01-18 22:51 UTC
As someone else replied to your post above, there must be something wrong with your system. I’ve been using Sid for a long time now so my memory could be playing a trick on me but I am pretty sure that the KNetworkManager that ships with Squeeze is a full-fledged KDE 4 application. Now, if it is up to the snuff, that’s another matter altogether…
I don’t get the love for DragonPlayer and the other “simpler” alternatives to some of the old KDE mainstays either, although I think that I am finally getting comfortable with Dolphin. You certainly will want to replace it with either KMPlayer, SMPlayer or VLC.
Not sure why you chose to use gksu, which probably integrates poorly with KDE, instead of kdesu. Alt + F2 > kdesu systemsettings has been doing the trick for me since the early days of KDE 4 although I’ll agree that the lack of an “administrator mode”-like button in systemsettings is somewhat offputting.
Sure you can. Just setup different activities and there you go although I agree that this could be simpler.
I wouldn’t know as my laptop uses an useless VIA chipset so I can’t comment on the battery draining aspect of it but on my desktop with a Nvidia card it works wonderfully. The effects used to show a lot of tearing and were a bit slow not too long ago, but these days it is comparable to Compiz.
No arguments there.
I’ve been running KDE 4 on and off up to version 4.1 and then full time once it reached 4.2 on Debian Sid and I couldn’t be happier. Most of my initial complaints were solved already except for KNetworkManager that continues to be a black eye on an otherwise fantastic DE. However, KNetworkManager appears to be on the right track as it has been somewhat stable in the last couple of weeks – it used to crash and drop my connection once or twice *per day* forcing me to use GNOME’s nm-applet – so the future looks brighter as far as KDE in Debian is concerned.
Edited 2010-01-18 23:30 UTC
VLC isn’t bad, and I have just grabbed what appears to be a QT4 version of Kaffeine from Experimental.
Because kdesu doesn’t work, period.
And do you know a way to lock a specific activity to a specific desktop? If I change an activity on one desktop, they all change.
Why? It pops up asking for the root password and then grants access to the administrative tool that you called with root access.
I heard of a tool called kdesudo which supposedly works like a graphic front-end for sudo but I have never used it so I can’t say if it works as intended.
Not sure as I never tried doing that. And unfortunately I don’t have a KDE desktop available right now to look at but I will check it out later.
System settings won’t run that way. The only way I can get it to run as root, is with the command dbus-launch from a root konsole.
Thank you. If you can figure it out, I really would like to know. Currently, the KDE4 desktop activities seem like half a feature.
btw. While diddling around in Experimental, I downloaded QT 4.6. Does anyone else get the impression that it speeds things up a little?
OK, in case anyone is still reading this thread, I tried Wicd. Color me impressed, so far. I hadn’t liked what the KDE front-end of Network-manager was doing to its user interface, and Wicd is a nice change. I like that it allows 1 click access to what networks are out there, like the version for 3.5.10 had. Wicd seems faster at browsing for networks, too.
The process of setting up is less automated with Wicd. I had to input the name of the wireless interface. Network-manager finds that automatically.
All in all, I’ll put up with some setup hassle to get better scanning speeds and interfaces.
Exactly!
I seriously wondered why something with flawed reasing as early as its summary made it to the frontpage, but I guess beloging to the pod cast folks gives one an easy way around page two.
The first sentence introduces the author as someone running Kubuntu which the second sentence details as liking it because of its Debian base.
With a summary like that but not a single word about Debian’s excellent KDE package makes one think that the summary was written by somebody else who just wanted to put some Ubuntu reference in there without even reading the article.
spot on.
and
These do not compute. Ubuntu is not Debian. If you want to go back to your beloved Debian, leave Ubuntu and fscking do it.
tessmonsta, you say that RPM distros feel wrong to you because of, as I understand, dependency hell and related problems. I understand prefering apt-get to urpmi, as it still is somewhat faster (there have been huge improvement on that front in the last couple of years); my distro of choice is Mandriva, and I haven’t had any dependency problem in years.
Honestly the “dependency hell” image associated with RPM distros is plain outdated. Nowadays it’s as solid as that of the debian based ones.
That said, I only suggest giving a try to Mandriva again because I heard more than once that its KDE4 implementation was top notch, I don’t use it myself.
You probably heard it right
I used Mandriva for a couple of months, the previous release, not the current one though. All I can say is that it was smooth, polished, very well integrated – probably it’s the best KDE distro out there. And about the recent release – the reviews I have read are just as glowing and positive as the reviews of the one I’ve tried – so it seems to be the Mandriva guys are on the right track.
As an IT Professional I prefer a stable, working professional desktop. And right now that is Gnome.
I keep hearing this “rpm isn’t so bad any more” — I’ve been hearing it since 2002 at least. I keep looking and it keeps being horrible.
Can I install my system and do an online upgrade to the next version without a reinstall?
Can I pick and choose piecemeal packages from newer releases and not fear breakage? (That is, can I trust the package manager to take care of this?)
Have non-Debian distributions finally started sanitizing the FHS? I just can’t ever use SuSE, because every time I look in /etc/ or /usr/ I want to cry, then I want to kill someone. I know you were referring to mandriva, but it wasn’t much better there last I knew.
Basically, so many things in Debian make sense and though the overall user experience is worse (at the start anyway) compared to other distributions, the specific details are almost always better. Upstart is one of the few things I’ve seen elsewhere where I said “This is better then what Debian has.” Over time the Debian experience is in my opinion far better as the system remains stable and updates cleanly.
The only superiority elsewhere, as far as I can tell, is in user experience polish which (frankly) I don’t need.
Edited 2010-01-19 00:43 UTC
Answers depend on the distro. .deb and .rpm are just file formats, and the answer to your questions depends on the package manager (yum, zypper, urpmi, etc.) on one hand, and the quality of the distribution on the other. Take Kubuntu for example. It uses deb AND it uses apt yes? Still, upgrade from one version to the other never ever worked for me – and I tried 3 times: Feisty->Gutsy, Gutsy->Heron, Heron->Ibex. In the latter case, I ended up with a system that was completely unbootable. Not just the usual X wouldn’t start, wireless doesn’t load, etc – kernel panic on reboot.
You certainly cannot mix and match packages from different versions or from debian. You can try, the may work, but the same can be said about almost any other distro (you can install select packages from cooker on mandriva with a very high probability of them working).
It was a very long time ago that I used Debian, but at that time, mixing packages didn’t work (although I tried to use a kernel from unstable in testing for hardware compatibility). So your questions can be easily reversed – have debian based distroes gotten their act together? Can they do online update from one version to another? Can you install packages from newer versions on an old system without breakage? The answer may vary depending on the distribution you choose.
Ubuntu is Debian-like, not Debian-based. I give it a pass on most things because it’s got familiar tools and policies, but they just don’t have high quality packages.
You *certainly can* mix and match packages from different Debian versions. I have been doing this for 7 years without any real issues. You can run in to trouble if you mix packages from testing (and especially sid!) in with stable, of course. But, for a long time I had a system with a pinned gaim from woody running alongside packages from two versions later. I liked the gtk1.x version of gaim and how it did logging (0.58, IIRC) and only switched when a similar log format plugin was added to pidgin. This is only one example, but I did (and do) similar things constantly. If you use a package from a newer version on an older version it probably causes a cascade of updates… but it installs and works. If you use a package from an old version you eventually run in to conflicts that prevent upgrades of other things without removing it, but until you do it works (and you can work around that.)
That seems to be very hardware dependent. My media-player laptop has been upgraded from Kubuntu .something (the first one with a KDE4 spin; 8.04?) all the way to 9.10 without issues. It started with 6.06, but I reinstalled for the KDE4 bits, just to play it safe.
You certainly can mix-and-match packages on Debian. My work laptop was a very stable hodge-podge of Etch, Lenny, Squeeze, and Sid packages, as I wanted to get KDE4 up and running as soon as possible. It eventually settled down to a mostly Lenny install. I moved over to Kubuntu 9.10, though, to get “newer” applications than Debian stable carries.
For Debian itself, it’s a “yes” across the board, since the Sarge (3.1) days. We have servers that are mixes of Sarge+Etch, Etch+Lenny, and desktops that are Etch+Lenny+manual backports from Sid. Along with a bunch of “pure” Etch, and “pure” Lenny servers.
Ok, I admit it’s possible to mix packages on Debian, but it’s far from being seemless. Or was. When I tried, and that was a long time ago (I believe sarge was just out the door) I ended up with a broken system. Granted, I wasn’t much experienced with linux those days, but that’s my point: you need some expertise to do what you suggest doing. You can mix and match packages across RPM distroes too if you know what you are doing – and I believe the same holds true for debian. Things won’t be handled automatically, sooner or later you’ll need to get your hands, edit configuration files, symlinks, etc.
Anyway, my point is, that I don’t see much of a difference between .rpm and .deb. What matters is how well a distribution is tested, not what format it uses. For example, although I prefer Mandriva to OpenSuSE, OpenSuse allows mixing packages from various branches, in fact it makes it ridiculously easy through one-click installs. You can easily add select factory packages to a stable release.
Same holds true for other package formats. You can easily upgrade/downgrade packages on Arch for example, install old versions from AUR, run select packages from testing, etc. But that’s not because the format is superiour to .deb or .rpm, it’s because the package manager (pacman) is clever enough to handle odd cases.
Again, just because a distribution uses .deb and apt tools, doesn’t mean you can do all the things you cited. And just because a distro uses .rpm or whatever format, doesn’t mean that it cannot. For example, the OpenSuSE package manager sucked balls for a very long time, until they got their act together with 11.1. They didn’t improve because the .rpm spec improved, they improved because they rewrote the package manager.
About the hardware – well, I had an intel-only laptop
(graphics, motherboard, wireless, etc.) I bought specifically to run linux on, and yet, none of my upgrades on Kubuntu were successful. And seeing how most users recommend to just do a clean install, I don’t think breakage is that uncommon. Just take a look at kubuntu forums during a release.
Edited 2010-01-20 03:34 UTC
My biggest complaint is that, with most of the RPM-based distributions that I’ve tried, that graphical package managers are awful. I’ve tried both Fedora 11 and 12, and pretty much use YUM on the command-line exclusively, as the GUI manager is just unusably bad. One thing that drove me absolutely crazy, at least for 11, was that the GUI package manager couldn’t queue multiple transactions — so I had to do one package and its dependacies at a time — and that it was slow as molasses at Christmas: between those two factors, a transaction that would’ve taken five minutes with Synaptic took 15 ot twenty with… whatever it was, I forget what it was called. Not to mention that — again, so far as I recall — it had to re-read the package database after every transaction, which just made the whole infuriatingly slow process that much worse.
I tried SuSE 11.0 some time ago, and the package management experience — and system administration experience in general — was so awful that it compelled a distro switch in short order, and I’m not going back anytime soon. I could write a book about how awful SuSE’s package management was. It was bad. It was slow, complicated, confusing, unreliable, difficult to configure, and system-breaking. It was… bad!
That’s pretty much my experience with SuSE 9 and 10. Glad to know it’s not worth looking again, yet.
Mepis 8.5 is getting closer (i’m waiting for it too), with kde 4.3 and debian lenny based
… and its working quite well with 11.2 and KDE 4.4 RC1.
The packagemanager(zypper) is faster than apt on ubuntu 9.10 for me. Its pretty stable. Dependency hell is definitaly solved with 11.1 and 11.2 .
Hmm.
Did you just say that everything was okay except that wireless and sound were broken.
Right
.
I have just tried the latest Sidux live DVD.
I found their KDE implementation nice and polished.
It is only a shame that I can’t manage to install GRUB to the root partition (I don’t want to touch the MBR).
I also find Mandriva very nice. Its package manager seems fine to me.
I can’t disagree with the people who like openSUSE either. What I appreciate most is that openSUSE makes it darn easy upgrading to the latest KDE4 release (now at 4.4 RC1).
Get an account, and make one to suit your needs. It’s almost too easy, and KDE4 is well-loved in suse land.
Heck, it’s so easy, I made one while posting this.
KDE4 SS:
– openSUSE 11.2 x86_64
– Nvidia/ATI
– Compiz
– qt4 libs
– PacMan, Factory, and Contrib repos configured
These won’t last long..
login: tux/linux, root/linux
Disk Image:
http://susestudio.com/download/ebcbf971af368c9970bcc9a0ab35df65/KDE…
Live CD:
http://susestudio.com/download/7e3e3fa98b3f43f24f138c779c1476c6/KDE…
You say get an account as though if it’s just a registration away! As of today (and probably as of forever), SuseStudio needs invitation which I applied for months ago and never got.
KDE has nothing to with the SS.
Why? There’s KWin already.
It is said before in this thread, but I run Arch Linux with the standard KDE 4.3 and it is rock solid and fast on a ageing machine.
Edited 2010-01-18 19:29 UTC
Have you tried Slackware 13?
Have you? It’s been around 5 years I don’t use Slackware anymore, due to its package system. As Tess said, when you start to use apt-get, you simply can’t quit to use anything else.
Talking about KDE, I tried to use Kubuntu, but (sorry Kubuntu guys, but it’s my impression) it doesn’t seem integrated as it should. And it’s slow as well.
I’ve tried to use PCBSD as well but unfortunatelly it doesn’t recognize my net card.
So, if Slackware is fast with KDE, I can give it a try.
Thanks.
You mean, lack of a package system.
Having said that, I don’t really find the lack of a package system to be that large of a detriment, because the base system you get with Slackware is usually pretty complete and extremely well-configured. A complete install usually comes with anything I’d use apt-get to install. Granted, a Slackware install will take up a decent amount of space for it, at least in comparison to other Linux distributions… but it’ll still be fairly light, in the grand scheme of things. An 8 GB Slackware install (that number being pulled out of thin air) will probably be size-competitive with Vista or Win7 (for all I know), and I think most people with modern drives can spare the OS 8 GB.
Give a try to pacman, you won’t be disappointed
Mandriva is an excellent distro, I mean EXCELLENT. After few years of using Arch on my desktop and realising that I loose too much time on configuring things and dealing with bugs, I have given mainstream distros another shot. Ubuntu, Kubuntu, OpenSuSe, Fedora, Debian, … they are all way behind Mandriva.
It’s finally really pleasant to use Linux, again.
And, I can say that I’m not a beginner.
Haha, I just went the opposite direction (distro hopping from kubuntu to the big trio of opensuse, mandriva and fedore, finally arriving to arch and loving it. But I agree with your point – Mandriva IS EXCELLENT, the best of the lot in my opinion.
I’ve just started a second round.
My first distro was Red Hat, then Mandrake, then… Arch, …, Mandriva 
Arch is excellent also, but it’s too much on the edge(unstable sometimes) and is not well suited for “family PC”. But, for my old laptop, that’s another story.
juste no.
i’m in the same situation, i jump from distro to distro unable to find what i like.
i used fedora11 (pure garbage with gnome in my kde), to mandriva2010 (dependency hell, nvidia not working …)
by the way, i’ve got two another computer, one wich stay with kubuntu (always last version) (not good, but not bad), and opensuse 11.2 wich simply works. i prefere a more simplier package manager, but it do job better than mandriva (ya realy)
I’m very surprised to read this. I now have Powerpack 2010 installed on my home desktop, my home laptop and my work desktop, which in fact is the second there in six months: the only problem seems to be with the laptop, which uses ATI rather than NVIDIA, which is what the other machines have. Arguably the NVIDIA machines have smoother graphics than the ATI, but problems are very few; Mandriva has become much more reliable now.
Or should I say . . ? KDE is now more reliable after the horror of 4.0 and 4.1, from 4.2 it was quite reasonable and in the current (4.3) version it is very good.
Not sure where this constant complaint about “dependency hell” is coming from. There seems to be nothing like that on any of my systems. Have you tried doing a “urpmi –auto-select” to check if anything needs installing?
You want Sidux or Mepis.
Sidux if you want bleeding edge packages, you like a rolling release and you don’t mind getting your hands dirty from time to time. It’s a hardened Debian Sid. Much more stable than stock Sid, but it’s still Sid.
Mepis if you want something reliable and you don’t want to update every few days. It’s Lenny with some updated packages. Very reliable but quite old in some areas.
You can also use Sidux and switch your sources.list back to testing. That’s a nice compromise between stability and currentness.
You could try Pardus, a KDE distro originating from Turkey. The 2009.1 release came out last week.
Using the “Then KDE 4 happened” comment to illustrate issues with Kubuntu’s KDE implementation is an error. The simple truth is that Kubuntu was sub-par KDE distribution compared to other offerings, even in the KDE 3 days. That they also screwed up the transition is telling, but don’t change the fact that it was not particularly good to begin with.
The RPM prejudice is just nonsens, dependency hell have not been a more real issue on RPM distributions than DEB distributions for years. Nowdays urpmi, yum and zypper hold their own against apt. Curiously from what I currently see on the net, it actually seem that DEB users have more dependency problems. Usually when people(for whatever reasons) end up running mixes of Debian stable, unstable and various Ubuntu repos.
But I guess Kubuntu prejudice isn’t eh?
I really don’t know why people hate on Kubuntu these days and I really don’t see what’s so much better with, say, Mandriva (drakconf? Please, make the pain go away).
The only thing people seems to be able to put their finger on is the translations but in all honesty? I use english so I don’t really care.
Since the situations where you could get problems with RPMs have been remedied for years, and there are tools making it comparable to the solutions used by DEB based distributions it has become an non-issue. So having prejudice against non existing issues are quite nonsensical. As for Kubuntu, prejudice is not the right term. The situation is that Kubuntu have always been lacking and still is, compared to several other distributions KDE offerings. Which the Kubuntu developers themselves acknowledge. Time will tell if Project Timelord will remedy the situation, and they manage to deliver a worthy KDE version.
Simply realizing that there are better alternatives is not hate. But it would be less annoying for all, if more people would follow the Kubuntu developers lead. More work on fixing the actual issues and less hype.
Less brokenness and better stability?
So an advanced and comprehensive GUI for configuring nearly every aspect of the distribution is bad? And Kubuntu/Ubuntu world does not have anything similar, or even close usability and functionality wise. Go figure, of course it’s bad:-)
That’s a very visible one, and they continue to do it release after release. And all the time the KDE upstream is correct, and the same for the Debian packages. Continuing to repeat the same mistakes over and over, when the solution is simple, known and existing, is not really a quality mark. There are many more examples out there too. In forums and mailing-lists there are lots of treads where people fail to see the bug/error complained about, it works correctly for them. And nearly always, it seems like the complainer are using Kubuntu.
Some would say the same about RPM. I honestly don’t see what’s so great about OpenSUE and Mandriva (that everyone’s raving about) and yes I’ve tried both (although OpenSUSE was a while back) and I went back to Kubuntu.
I don’t see why it’s needed. KDE already have System Settings so having a 3rd party app (like DrakConf and Yast) is utterly pointless and counter-productive.
I’m happy that (K)Ubuntu does not have one because if you do there’s something wrong with your distro.
Again with the vague accusations and no actual details regarding what is so broken and unstable. I’ve had no stability or brokenness problems with Karmic so I really dont know what people are on about here.
Perhaps but it’s not a concern for me. Might be for someone else though but for the majority of the worlds KDE users I doubt it’s a deal breaker. I tried using computers in my native language (Swedish) and it’s just, well, strange.
Here you totally miss the scope of what System Settings, DrakConf and Yast are. System Settings configure your user desktop, nothing more. While DrakConf and Yast are are used for configuring the rest of the operating-system.
Good for you, but to me an distribution who give me no other option than manually editing of configuration files for many system settings seem quite lacking in usability. Not having the option of using an advanced and comprehensive GUI for configuring the OS are something of a defect in an modern general purpose operating system.
Is that why System Settings include admin tools like printer config, users and KDM config?
I really wonder what it is I am supposed to be configuring with these other tools that System Settings does not handle?
The printer and user settings are Kubuntu specific modules and not part of KDEs System Settings, so they do not exist on other distributions. KDM comes with KDE, so they provide the configuration module for it. And it’s mostly look and feel configuration, so you can debate how much OS/distribution related it is.
What about configuration of Network Settings, networking devices(Modem/ISDN/LAN/WLAN etc), additional hardware configuration(IR devices, TV cards, Joysticks, Sound cards, Scanners, Monitors and Graphics cards), System Services, partitions, security settings(also advanced solutions like SELinux or App armor), firewall, user settings, sudo settings, virtualizations tools, network services, NTP, LDAP, NFS, NIS, hostnames, Samba Server, membership in Windows domains and software management to mention a few possibilities.
NetworkManager.
Who’s using ISDN on a desktop in 2010?
KDE has joystick configuration and has had for the longest time.
What’s there to configure?
Why would you need to configure these on a desktop?
(g|q)parted
Finally something it might be good for.
KPackageKit or Synaptic.
You know, it’s not that I mind the 3rd party config options and tools it’s just that I dont see why they (OpenSUSE, Mandriva etc) don’t integrate them with the existing settings system (be it KDE or GNOME). Instead we get this awful other application that usually works quite different from the rest of the system.
Edited 2010-01-20 12:56 UTC
There are cases where NetworkManager simply don’t work. And in addition it does have reliability issues, also on Kubuntu according to reports on the net.
Not everyone lives in areas where broadband is available.
But as long as the joystick hardware is not configured correctly, that control panel module does not do anything.
For desktops the ability to disable the on-board sound card while using a separate one is quite common. And some of the expensive sound cards seem to have settings you want to configure.
There are countless of settings you may want to configure when it comes to monitors and graphics boards, or do you prefer manually editing the xorg.conf file?
Lots of desktops do not live alone, but a on a local network. Those are services users may want to use, and in some cases key parts of the local network infrastructure. Not uncommon on SOHO networks. And even on an desktop, you may at least have the need to start and stop some network services like ssh.
Along with 8-9 others you simply ignored 🙂
Neither are part of System Settings, and the question was “I really wonder what it is I am supposed to be configuring with these other tools that System Settings does not handle?”. So a very valid answer.
Neither KDE or Gnome have anything close to the scope of Yast or MCC(and they are not allocating resources at it either, as it is seen as the distributions job), so the distributions do have to provide their own functionality. There are some random 3rd party software that provide some or parts of the functionality(some may even integrate into system settings), but all are far away from the distribution tools. And those tools do tend to not work and function in any coherent way. I prefer to have the system configuration tools in an coherent and well integrated manner, tailored to function with my distribution, not a collection of random 3rd party tools.
I think I didn’t make it clear what I actually meant (it was early ok?). I don’t actually mind the added configuration applets, what I do mind is that they use an entirely different system. If the features of, for example, Yast and DrakConf was better integrated into KDE/GNOME (like how Kubuntu apparently does it) I wouldn’t mind them at all.
I still don’t see what good most of them are on a desktop today but maybe that’s just me.
NetworkManager was pretty much the primary reason I stopped using either KDE or XFCE on my lap-top. A good active wireless connection manager was a requirement for my lap-top. Could I have probably set up WPA Supplicant et. al. to work just as well? Sure, but that would’ve inolved lots of time spent huddled up with some Man pages, stumbling through /etc/ every time I wanted to change something: it was much less hassle to just suck it up and use Gnome.
Again, the ability for my system to sanely re-configure its sound and graphics settings on the fly — like when I plug it into a projector, or plug in my USB headset — is very valuable. Could it be done without nice GUI tools? Sure, it could, but, you really don’t want to head in for an impromptu demo of your project, and have to visit TTY1, edit some config files, and restart X just to get the projector to set up correctly: you want a nice GUI tool, to make changes to your display settings on-line.
Are you serious? You can’t see any use case for any network service on a user’s desktop? Really?
Study a Windows user. I think you’ll find that, when network services become easy enough for non-technical users to use, they find uses for them. Lots of my friends would probably tell you remote, networked X was pointless… and then use Remote Desktop on an almost daily basis.
And apparently you’ve never wanted to move a file — say, a movie — from one machine to another while at home.
Sabayon is currently #7 right behind Debian on Distrowatch. Find out why!
Tom, nice article on Kubuntu. It’s really a disaster, people are really giving up on it. Mostly is KDE’s fault though. Usability issues – something that has been designed inside the KDE development circle. They try to innovate just like Windows Vista, there you go.
I didn’t cope it.
Linus didn’t cope it.
And you, from OSNews, joining the team.
My advice is: Stick with Ubuntu, Karmic has been the most usable distro (after some serious tweak I am sure), but Lucid Lynx is promising to be something out of this world, and it’s just happening…
Like this author, I have been a long-time Debian user and supporter. I was also a loyal KDE user until things got dodgy in the early days of KDE4. With KDE 4.3, I decided to return to the KDE fold. Like the author, I decided that I was up for a new distro since I hadn’t hopped for awhile. I wanted something as powerful as Debian with the ease of use of Linux Mint (I never, ever liked Kubuntu.) I found both in Sabayon 5.x. This distro is based on Gentoo but it is orders of magnitude easier to install (taking less than 15 minutes) and maintain. The unique thing about Sabayon is it has two package managers and either can be used to update and maintain the system (mixing the two package managers is not recommended!) Entropy is Sabayon’s home-grown package management system and it is extremely easy for those accustomed to the Debian way to use. Entropy contains a raft of popular and cutting edge binary packages. One can use equo on the command line or the GUI Sulfur (very similar to Debian’s Synaptic) to add and remove packages with ease. Sabayon also supports the use of Gentoo’s native emerge system which brings thousands upon thousands of up-to-date packages direct from source. The system can be used as a stable system that smoothly updates periodically when packages are deemed stable by the very competent development team, or the “Limbo” repository can be enabled for those who prefer the bleeding edge and a rolling update style. Sabayon includes the very latest and greatest software in its package repositories and the default installation picks from the cream of the crop while also including proprietary video drivers and multimedia codecs. Everything on my system worked out of the box including wireless. There are separate Gnome and KDE ISO’s available to choose from and other popular Window Managers like Xfce or Lxde can be installed easily. Sabayon Linux is one of the most user friendly, yet powerful distributions I’ve ever used. Finally, the forums are busy and very friendly! I’ve been using it on my main workstation for about six months now and I think I might have found my new home. Highly recommended.
If you are using Arch on an ATI graphics system, then for goodness sake drop the non-free graphics drivers.
Up to date Arch works with 3D composited graphics with the FOSS drivers. It works very well right now, including KMS. The FOSS drivers are properly integrated into the kernel and the Xorg stack. The KDE desktop flies.
When kernel 2.6.33 becoames available soon, the FOSS ATI drivers will gain support for interrupts. When Mesa 1.8 becomes available soon after that, the ATI FOSS drivers will gain proper blit functions.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Nzg3Ng
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Nzg4NQ
Performance will only improve from here on in.
Until then, I won’t know for sure if there even is the perfect KDE 4.x distro.
there is no perfect kde 4.x distro because they are distro anyway. you need a real os Tess. a really integrated shiny desktop. here i excerpt some of the reviews about Pardus.
http://translate.google.com.tr/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=tr&ie=UTF-…
Pardus is fast, stable, easy to use and very amigable.Es the distribution that best implements KDE as default desktop, rather than OpenSUSE. La experiencia total con el sistema operativo es complemente satisfactoria. The total experience with the operating system is supplemented satisfactory.
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/pardus.html
Pardus is a really nice distro. I’m surprised it does not have a bigger user base. But it kind of figures out. Few people have heard of Pardus or had the chance to try it and find out just how great it is, myself included. But now that I’ve been exposed to its goodies, it’s time to spread the word. Pardus wins you over by many great features, starting with a very soft, pleasant installation, followed by a smooth, streamlined desktop setup. Then, you get lots of great programs, cross-platform productivity out of the box, great looks, good performance and solid stability, and a whole lot of tiny details that you don’t normally encounter. Pardus is truly a unique, refreshing change from the daily routine.
http://www.raiden.net/articles/review_pardus_2009/
It’s like having the bleeding edge without ending up with a pool of blood on the floor.
and a new release this week. Pardus Linux 2009.1. Here is the news and download link.
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=05870
http://ftp.pardus.org.tr/pub/pardus/kurulan/2009.1/
so i want a review Tess.
there is a helpful community for international user.
http://worldforum.pardus-linux.nl/
here is an interview with Sebastian Kügler from KDE team.
http://www.pardus-edergi.org/files/sayi-13/interview_sebas.pdf
I’ve recently visited Turkey, I was invited by the Pardus team to attend a Free Software conference. I’ve also got to visit the Pardus offices and talked a lot to the developers. I think the Pardus team is doing an outstanding job, I’m very impressed how they created a Free operating system with KDE as its user interface, and how well it integrates the UI and the OS — it really feels like it’s one, and not just a graphical shell slapped onto a Linux kernel.
> What’s Pardus’ rank between the distributions using KDE?
It’s the best integrated KDE distribution I know. Simple as that.
a blog entry from KDE Developer’s Journals by Simon Edwards
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/4022
What makes this distribution so interesting is the system tools and configuration tools which they’ve developed based heavily on Python, PyQt and PyKDE.
System boot and initialisation is done using a Python based system called Mudur which replaces the mass of shell scripts which make up the typical Linux boot system.
Instead of RPM or Debian dpkg, Pardus has its own package manager called PiSi written in, yes, Python.
As a Python fan and the main developer/maintainer of PyKDE, it certainly gives me that warm fuzzy feeling inside to see Python, PyQt and PyKDE put to such great use. It is also very impressive to see how such a small team of developers can put together such an impressive distribution. It is a great demonstration of why it is important to choose the right tool for the job. As one of the developers said to me, Pardus would not exist without PyQt and PyKDE.
The task for the future is to see how we, KDE and Pardus, can better work together to share code and make sure that more things can go up stream into KDE. The next major release of Pardus is due in about two weeks, is KDE 4.2 based and is definitely worth checking out. Keep up the good work Pardus!
Edited 2010-01-19 03:23 UTC
http://beginlinux.com/desktop_training/148-desktop-selection/1468-m…
Pardus 2009 really rubbed me the right way. Pardus 2009.1 was just an confirmation of what I thought the first time around. I use GNOME in my everyday work and it’s a real treat to explore such a great looking and behaving KDE distro. I’ve used many KDE distros but this is one of my favorites because everything flows so well, looks good, and is overall just easy to use.
Archlinux offers a fairly nice KDE desktop backed up by magnificent package management.
And if Arch’s KDE seems to be not enough of KDE devotement, You have Gentoo with USE=”-gnome -gtk -qt3 qt4 kde”…
it is kind of sick but freebsd/pcbsd may be the best kde 4 distro. ohhh poor linux.
I am also running Arch installed with Chakra cd, and it indeed has the best KDE I have tried. Overall, I also think Arch is the best distro I have tried. But although Chakra makes installing Arch easier by configuring the system automatically, it is not ready. Actually, it’s still in alpha stage.
I also had some problems with audio first. Chakra just doesn’t configure everything right yet. That’s why you should check through the basic Arch configuration guide here: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide#Part_II:… to see everything’s set up right. I did that too, and it doesn’t take as long as you might think considering the length of the guide. After that you should have perfectly functioning Arch installation.
This is not an intended flame war gambit. Taking into account all the provisos given out on the release of KDE 4,and all the development since, I still find that KDE 4 gives you such a crick in the neck. It’s sluggish and painful, even on relatively new hardware, it’s even put me off PC BSD, which I used to like on older machines since it felt clean and responsive. I switched to Gnome (not for any ideological reasons but simply because it doesn’t feel such a kludge – if I were more technically minded I might use some other alternative, such as Enlightenment). How long are we going to hear about this ‘potential’. Potential is only good if it can be realized, and I am afraid I do not see much in the way of this realization. Sorry for the negative post but this feeling has been building a while now.
KDE4 isn’t sluggish or painful at all. Not a bit of it.
It is actually the fastest, snappiest full-featured desktop software available, bar none.
Then why are you posting offtopic about how KDE4 sucks, even though the OP specifically told it’s his desktop of choice and asked no opinions on desktop environments? In every article even distantly relating to KDE4 there’s someone commenting how it’s slow and ugly and likes men. You know what? In my opinion Gnome, and some other desktops, are just like that, still I’m not posting to every article about it. I’m happily using the desktop I like, and let other people make their choices. I just don’t understand people like you.
Why do you think anyone cares? Why do you care? There are alternatives, you know.
Urm, where did I say that other people should use Gnome? Or that others should not use KDE? I gave voice only to my own experience, on Linux and one of the BSDs.
I used to be a KDE user. I go back to it now and again to see if it has improved against what I recollect but this has not been the case so far, which is disappointing.
Where did I say I was not aware of alternatives – I specifically mentioned that I might use another desktop environment apart from Gnome if I had more technical confidence.
Why do you care so much, yourself ;-)? Is your opinion somehow more equal than other people’s? And why the snide remark about the sexuality?
I don’t know how this is going to be convincing:
head -1 /var/log/pacman.log
[2007-06-22 17:51] synchronizing package lists
The above means that I installed Arch linux on my laptop 2.5yrs ago
system is up to date
I use Kdemod so after boot system takes 189MB (with fancy stuff enabled and nvidia driver running)
it boots in 14s to kde
problems with wireless may be related to kernel (2.6.32 has some serious issues (e.g. power saving and more), these are not related to Arch). I don’t know what wireless card your system is using.
Very convenient package manager. ABS system allows to customize packages in a way similar to Gentoo.
On the other hand I have found opensuse slow, resource hungry, not flexible. Upgrading to next version always causes problems: either way something is broken, or system is becoming less responsible or next upgrade kills it completely (as a reference check out opensuse forums).
I don’t know if Arch is best KDE distro, I can’t tell if it will work for you (if you find installer intimidating).
What I can say is that in my experience Arch KDE is stable fast system that requires minimal maintenance. So maybe give it a try. Maybe arch will work for you, if not, there is plenty other good distros supporting KDE.
> head -1 /var/log/pacman.log
I kinda forgot about that or did not realize it was kept around for so long…
[ddennedy@home ~]$ head -1 /var/log/pacman.log
[10/30/04 18:03] synchronizing package lists
Wow, I have been doing rolling upgrades of Arch on my main workstation since Oct 2004. Holy crap! If I recall correctly, I maintained it through upgrades to 2 new computers (P4 -> dual Athlon -> Core 2 Quad).
Nice testament.
I switched to linux fulltime after using PclinuxOs.I have tried almost all major linux distribution except slackware.While KDE4 is not perfect this distribution works well for me.
I am assuming you must boycott Gnome to not considering it as an alternative and would rather use VISTA than any distro that has Gnome.
I’ve used Gnome for a long time, but I tried Kubuntu and KDE the first time recently. It run flawlessly without any problems, but I found out KDE4 isn’t for me. I do know that KDE is used by a larger percentage of linux users than Gnome.
However, this newer version KDE4 is like Vista for me, way too much graphic. Everything is smooth, round, white transparent and blurry. I get a headache from using it, the graphic make my eyes wanders trying to go through a list of apps that all started with a K.
is which things exactly are bad about one distro that don’t exist in another one )using more or less the same versions of the various kernels, libraries, and software). I always hear that (K)Ubuntu is awful, try distro X it is fantastic. But not a lot is spelled out for what these problems are that make one better than the other, things that actually go deeper than personal preferences or politics. Or whether these issues might exist in other distros as well.
I use Kubuntu. It takes me the least amount of fiddling, tweaking and problem resolution to get things the way I want it. Does that make it better than Arch or Fedora? For me it does, but that doesn’t make the other ones bad for you.
Edited 2010-01-19 19:07 UTC
Arch linux I would say would be the best, there is KDE and KDEmod.
They are rapidly updating and maintaining packages. Its a rolling release which is good and bad. Good to get the latest stuff when you want it, bad for when you update you full system and things break.
They seem to do Bug Squishing days where you get on the IRC channel once a month or so and try to eliminate as many bugs as they can submitted by users. Its pretty awesome, it really shows how committed and actively involved they are as being not only a community but devoted to their system.
What is a plus with Arch, you do not have those mindless processes running in the background. You know what is running, why its running, and what should be running.
I recently tried installing it on my wifes old toshiba laptop, the wireless card was recognized but the “driver” was i guess not there, and not knowing what driver i needed i gave up putting arch on her old laptop. Thats really the only problem I have had.
They have a huge wiki full of how tos to getting your system how you want it.
IRC channel is filled with people and if you wait around someone will help.
It wasnt. Was more a developer release
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UneGtZlehTU
Slow???? some like Fedora went straight to 4.0, even when KDE developers recommend distributions not to switch for the moment.
My experience have been very nice, and OpenSUSE 1 Click Install is incredible. But may I said that Debian/Ubuntu debs have same issues as rpm distros. Start removing packages and you will hit a dependency sooner or later.
For best distro, IMHO it depends more on what it provides out of the box, and the post install user experience. The user experience means how easy to use, maintain, integrade non-repo software on it, etc.
The mayor (and many minor) distros provide package manager these days. And they perform the basic updating task fairly well. So if the user types apt-get update or yum update, or pacman -Syu, or emerge –sync && emerge -u is not that important.
But how many packages their repository provides, how up to date they are, for how long you can keep updating your machine without reinstalling… Those things are important to me.
But returning to the article… Best KDE distros????
It has been discussed a couple of times on the net, but right now the 2 strongest KDE distros are OpenSUSE, and Pardus. Fedora is not that bad. While they keep the packages updated (4.3.4 on repos right now), you will have to deal with some gtk apps like Gnome Network Manager, on the KDE install.
They all will pull updates, and install them
and how easy to remedy they are. All distributions provide the packages, some on the install media like Mint, some do not like Fedora. But those media packages can be installed over the net. Again, is the more than the package manager itself. Most package managers do the basic stuff these days (install, and remove software). For example, opensuse may be a rpm distro, may not include out of the box mp3, dvd playback, but it is very easy to add that using OneClick install. It’s even easier than Ubuntu/Kubuntu method.
So at the end what usually people want on a distro: stability, media support (which is not included in US distros), and keep fairly up to date
I wonder why there is so much talk about the KDE4 network manager. Who needs it? Anyway, I haven’t used Kubuntu in over a year. I haven’t liked it in about four years. Mostly because the upgrades never work. I think the larger a project gets, or the more users, and trying to make it easier than ever, the more things can go wrong. Look at Windows and now the *buntus. I started my linux experience with Mandrake years ago. And about a year ago tried Mandriva. It is a VERY good distro. I lean a little more towards Debian, though. And I love Sidux. I still have a few unresolved issues with Sidux but that is due to my own laziness. I really don’t like Fedora. I like it’s ideas and innovations, just not using it. Although, I haven’t used the latest version. PCBSD never really had the right feel to it. I will put it out there again, that does not use the linux kernel. I haven’t tried KDE4 with FreeBSD. PCLinuxOS was fun with KDE3, I just hope he can do so well with KDE4. I did try KDE 4.0 on PCLOS and, well, it was KDE 4.0. I really like PCLOS, too. I’m not an open source maniac zealot. I should be able to do anything I want on my operating system. Maybe that’s where Fedora and I don’t see eye to eye. Never used OpenSuse so I will not comment. Just heard too many complaints about it.
I will say that Arch with pacman gets me as excited as if I had an 18 year old Japanese girl sitting in my lap. I even left FreeBSD for Archlinux. I have been using Arch on an old machine with LXDE and E17 for a while. Great. Well, since I loved it so much I decided to install onto a faster box and use KDE4. I like KDE4. The look, the way it works and feels. I like it. Well, Arch and it’s own KDE4 work perfectly. I even tried kdemod from the Chakra Project. I might be in love. Sure KDE is a little overload itself but in Arch you don’t get super overloaded with packages you will never even know you have. You also really only have to configure Arch once. So I don’t know why I saw the comment somewhere here that it is difficult to maintain Arch. You’re probably doing it wrong. It takes a few minutes but the wikis and other users are probably even more helpful and informative than any BSD handbook. We’re talking about KDE4 though right? I don’t know anything about integration or any other weird thing people keep talking about with KDE and their distro. I love Arch and I like KDE4. It can’t not work on Arch.
The downside I see, in regards to getting people to switch from Windows to linux is that Arch is not easily maintained by somebody who doesn’t care about learning how to use the operating system. Actually, they probably don’t know what an operating system is and will never know the difference as long as it works. Slow or not because it’s the internet that doesn’t work when the computer won’t open a program anymore, right? What’s the internet? Anyway, that is why I like Mandriva so much because those extra drak tools are very nice and easy to use. What’s so bad about the GUI anyway? I prefer CLI but I see nothing wrong with point and click.
Try Archlinux and KDE4.
Mandriva is the best linux distro for KDE 4 use.
It is more user-friendly than kubuntu and even ubuntu (because of Mandriva Control Center) and it is lighter and stable than opensuse and fedora. Mandriva One is a livecd which has even proprietary things like Flash plugin, nvidia and ati drivers, etc. The almost official PLF repositories can easily supply things like mp3 support, codecs, DVD CSS, etc.
The main problem of Mandriva Linux is the bad marketing of Mandriva and the common myth that it is a paid (having to spend money to download and license it) distribution, which is false.
Edited 2010-01-20 14:10 UTC
Have you tried the new 8.5 beta of Mepis. Small but passionate community around a solid implementation.
This is the premier KDE distro. It is exceedingly stable and is intelligently organized. It is a product of the Turkish government and is without peer.
Debian KDE is a joke – have to load all that other junk before you can set up KDE. Slack is in limbo although for the fiddlers and folk with idle time it is good.
The beauty of Pardus is that the main forum is in Turkish, although there is an English forum which is a low traffic forum. That means – no superfluous, inane garbage about nonsensical topics. I don’t know what the forum is like since I don’t read Turkish.
Pisi works, it all works!
This is the one distro that could replace Windows. Everything about this distro – repos, etc – is remarkably efficient!