Kubuntu Natty Narwhal review - KDElicious!

[Jack]

I'm not quick to change operating systems. In fact, I've been running pretty much the same distributions since ever, with only the version numbers growing. Ubuntu, SUSE, that's pretty much that. A bit of Gnome, a bit of KDE. KDE, you say? Well, way back then in days of old, I started with Kubuntu, switched to Ubuntu, and now there's Unity. Natty was not the sore disappointment I expected, but it sure isn't going to be my next desktop.

On the other hand, I did love openSUSE 11.4, with KDE4 finally managing to win my hard appreciation. With Gnome 3 making its unholy noise and Unity toying about like a sweet retard, the prospect of a future KDE desktop is becoming more relevant by the minute. There's only Mint that could make the difference, but if you want to stay with Ubuntu family, sans cousins, then you should take a look at Kubuntu, that is, Ubuntu with KDE.

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[new user]

I have tried Kubuntu. I did not like it. Kubuntu's KDE is lacking compared to something like opensuse because opensuse is a kde first distro. Ubuntu's Interface is top priority and Kubuntu is bumped down.

 

[TKFlight]

I've been using Kubuntu for awhile now, and I don't think I'm switching to something else any time soon.

 

[silviu_c]

After an upgrade to my machine and re-installing windows 7, I decided to give Kubuntu a try. I have to say I'm quite pleased with it. I had to tweak the following things:

- installed the Microsoft Core fonts package
- fonts, changed everything to Ubuntu 10 px - Light
* Monospaced font is : Anadle Mono 10 px (MS core fonts pack)

- enabled "Use antialiasing"
* Subpixel renedring : RGB
* Hinting style : Slight
- forced 96 DPI (this works for my display, 19" LCD @ 1440x900)
- changed menu style to classic
- installed chrome and googled for a guide to make it look a native app - meant installing a theme and setting some overrides in the window decorator - easily done using only the mouse, no need for console incantations

Comparing this to the vanilla 11.04 is easy. KDE 4 is now mature and stable. Kwin's effects are great. It will turn off desktop effects when it detects a fullscreen app (sweet). Amarok is an awesome audio player. Kopete allows me to connect as "Invisible" to YM.GTK apps look like native KDE ones.

Kudos to KDE developers and to the Kubuntu team for giving us a very polished distro and desktop experience.

PS: Kubuntu also provides various updates like the latest and greatest KDE (v 4.6.4 versus 4.6.2 that is preinstalled) via their ppa.
PPS: Due to an incompatibility between my new P67 mobo and the 2.6.38 kernel I could no use my optical drive that is attached to the PATA port si I had to resort to using a flash disk. Boy was I pleasantly surprised! The whole install took no longer than 10 minutes after I chose my user name , set my time zone and keyboard.

 

[Vextor]

All Linux editions are great, but need customization. They also need quite a bit of an easier to use Kernel Base, as having to constantly Terminal is annoying. It should be like Windows, something similar to .exe (I can't remember to Linux one) and less dependency on the Kernel base, more on the GUI and File Manager.

 

[new user]

No, no exe installers. They are a dumb idead. Package management is and feature not a fault. What so had with using and damn "app store", nothing.