Tsk to marketing types who bring negatives tones to otherwise peaceful Planets. I like to walk cheerfully over the world so here's some top reasons why Kubuntu is good for KDE.
- We'll be the first (out of the release schedules I can find) to ship KDE 4 on a distro by default. Of course 4.0 is only for a select audience, so there will be another CD with KDE 3.
- We are a pure KDE distro, it's the original and best free desktop and we want to promote it. With some other distros when you install KDE you find yourself using, say, a non-KDE browser. That has advantages and disadvantages, but ultimately I think we can create the best user experience by sticking to one desktop. Ark Linux is the only other distro I know to do this for KDE. Ubuntu Desktop takes the same attitude towards Gnome for the same reasons, it's why they didn't have displayconfig for years after we did and why they don't ship those nifty HP printing tools.
- We use configuration tools from within KDE. Some other distros make configuration tools such that they can only work with that one distro. I think KDE wins if we use tools from within KDE, which is why we use Guidance. Yet other distros use GTK configuration tools and seem to be none too enthusiastic for cooperation when I port them to Qt, oh well at least I can maintain it within KDE.
- Sometimes we get criticised for not passing patches upstream, I'm not sure where this comes from, I'd really like to see examples of where that hasn't happened but should have. Usually when I notice something needs a fix in KDE, I fix it directly because I am a KDE developer. Some other distros have to be poked into actually interacting with KDE (as a Dot editor I've done some of this poking).
- Kubuntu sponsors Akademy. It takes tens of thousands of pounds to put on KDE's most important summer get-together. We sponsored Akademy when even Trolltech didn't want to help make that happen, without that sponsorship it would be a lesser event.
- We are marketed as our own product. It's not just an extra spin for those who like that sort of thing.
- We develop for upstream. I got System Settings to replace KControl (a UI I've hated since KDE 1), worked with Amarok to get the first automatic codec installer working (why do people think Ubuntu Desktop got that first?). I'd like to see desktop-effects going into KDE SVN for those who want a compiz setup tool. Oh and I spent a long time updating the licence policy when nobody seemed to care (even some non-KDE Debian packagers!) that KDE could become illegal to distribute (big shout out to toma and dirk on the related issue of relicensing GPL 2 only code).
- We invite KDE developers to our conferences to plan out how we can work better getting KDE to the masses. Want an all expenses paid trip next May to help us do this? Let me know.
- We use PyKDE. The world's computer developer pool is expanding but that includes the VB programmers of this world who will never learn C++. We are the only distro to actively promote this easy and powerful way to get into KDE development.
- We work to being in contributors. We were a more open project when other distros made it hard or impossible to contribute packages (still are more open in some respects, Kubuntu is one of the few large projects I know that doesn't have any hidden elitist IRC channels, yes Linus I'm talking to you baby). Now we run introductory sessions to help people get involved, watch out for more of these with Dev Day and at FOSDEM.
- Finally and most importantly we get KDE used. In France (Assembly), Canary Islands (schools, universities), Venezuela (selling machines), Phillipines (schools again) and Georgia (every single school in the country baby!) we get your software into the hands of non-geeks. Then there's our derived distributions, Linspire, MEPIS (who went back to my other favourite distro Debian for no good reason anyone can see but guess who's KDE 4 packages get used without supplying the source code?) and selling embedded multimedia machines with Linux MCE (this project so rocks) all based on Kubuntu. Many more too.
There are other good things coming out of Canonical which can benefit KDE. Top of the list being commercial support for Kubuntu (and if you want there to be more paid Kubuntu developers, go and convince your company/uni/government etc to buy some of this). Bzr is the best distributed revision control system and I hope ever so much they can convince KDE to look at using it, because if we ever switch to Git we'll find ourselves in trouble when half our account holders can't work out how to use it. Oh and the 6 monthly release schedule we've switching to, great stuff but why are people embarrassed about where that idea came from?
Walk cheerfully Friends.
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Whom are you trying to fool?
Canonical is wearing a mask. In Gutsy, an update to libxine1 either tried to pull a bunch of gnome packages. Or gave a broken update.
This is in spite of the fact that Kubuntu apps use Xine by default while Ubuntu apps don't.
It is a big joke if someone from Canonical says they give equal care for Kubuntu, when they don't even test updates on kubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xine-lib/+bug/164801
--
Chandru
This is delusional
I don't understand the mentality of European developers here. Having worked in the corporate US IT job market ( and now in the govt), I can assure you that linux on the desktop is almost non-existent here. Where corporate suits hear about linux, they think mainly of RH. Nothing changed - novell didn't change it much though it is happening on the server a bit. Ubuntu - no one even cares outside of LUGs.
The (small) US linux market has been seeded with gnome, long before ubuntu. RH and fedora did it - at LUGs and other geek organizations. Mainstream ('normal') users aren't even aware of linux, except if their geeky brother introduced them to fedora. The fedora touting geeks switched to ubuntu when it came out and helped in its marketing. There is a good reason for ubuntu to choose gnome - thats all self-professed geeks here use. In the US geekdom, you shouldn't be CAUGHT running windows or KDE. GET IT, PLEEEEEEEEEEAAAASSE ! Stop acting like idiots.
Europeans do not HAVE to follow american hype or $hit. They can support their own distro. In the business world ( at least in US), it doesn't matter.
Support pro KDE distros. Or play right into the hands of gnome. If you are under any illusion of gnome promoters loving KDE, see a shrink.
Ubuntu Gnome/KDE/XFCE/etc
First thing: Jonathan, your work on Kubuntu and KDE is just overwhelming. Man, do you sleep at all?
On the other hand, I think the problem Kubuntu users feel second-class citizens is the "Ubuntu", "Kubuntu", "Xubuntu", etc names. We see "Ubuntu" ads, articles and talk everywhere and think "fuck, they are promoting Gnome". As someone pointed a few days ago, in OSNews IIRC, changing "Ubuntu", "Kubuntu", "Xubuntu", etc to "Ubuntu Gnome", "Ubuntu KDE", "Ubuntu XFCE", etc would end that because then, when we saw "Ubuntu" we would think "hey, that's me!".
PS: If we Kubuntu users feel second-class, I cannot imagine what those Xubuntu guys feel
Naming
You mean like Fedora does it?
It's funny because we usually hear the exact opposite (i.e. "Why don't you make a Kedora?", or the same suggestion with some other silly name).
bzr could use decent large-repo svn support
I agree Git is pretty dang confusing. With the way pushing branches work with git and how branches are a flat namespace... I could see it being a nightmare.
At the same time Git has the most inertia because of Thiago and because git-svn is actually usable. I can actually use git for day-to-day development, which can't be said for bzr or Hg due to its poor SVN support. Obviously git-svn and bzr-svn are irrelevant if we were to ever switch to them, but I can't really judge a new system that I can't use on any of my projects.
I (or at least my computer) spent a few hours fetching all 750000 commits of KDE, putting together a 2 gig sqlite database for it, all to find out that Bzr-svn doesn't track moves expect under some special circumstances. Oh and #bzr informed me that SVN can't do moves, it can only remove and then add with history (I don't get the difference, reminded me of the defensivness encoutered in #git when you ask if something is possible that currently isn't or is confusing with Git). In the case of Dragon Player at the time, this meant it spent hours downloading a repo with a commit history of 1. What the heck was it logging all commits for?
Granted I understand that bzr-svn mostly suffers since the Python bindings that are actually produced by Subversion aren't very good.
And while we wait around maybe SVN will make feature branching easy. Who knows, crazier things have happened.
I really don't think that git is confusing
I believe that this general thought that git is confusing is as obsolete as saying that kde is not free. I've been using git on a daily basis and, while you need to read some documentation to start using it, it is quite easy to use.
Although it may be not suitable for all needs it is far superior in terms of performance and branching/merging. Most of merges are fast and just work considering that sometimes merging with svn may be so painful.
I also use git-svn to use svn repositories and from version 1.5.0 I never had any problem. With 1.4.* there were some segmentation faults.
delete me
I did the same as wheeler
Where do we get the idea...
Arf. Accidentally responded at the wrong level. Reposting in the correct place.
Why Fedora is good for KDE ;-)
> We'll be the first (out of the release schedules I can find)
> to ship KDE 4 on a distro by default. Of course 4.0 is only
> for a select audience, so there will be another CD with KDE 3.
Fedora, on the other hand, actually believes in KDE 4. We will release only days after you, which will make Fedora 9 the first big distribution to ship KDE 4 as the only version of KDE.
> We are a pure KDE distro
Yet you share many packages with Ubuntu and draw from the same repositories. Not that different from the Fedora KDE spin...
> With some other distros when you install KDE you find yourself
> using, say, a non-KDE browser.
If you install from the Fedora-KDE-Live spin, you get Konqueror (and KDE apps for practically all the other tasks, except system configuration) by default.
> Ark Linux is the only other distro I know to do this for KDE.
See above.
That said, I really respect Bernhard Rosenkränzer's work, his work on KDE on Red Hat Linux back when he was working for Red Hat is an important part of Fedora's history.
> Some other distros have to be poked into actually interacting
> with KDE (as a Dot editor I've done some of this poking).
Possible, but Fedora isn't one of these. I've committed my obvious patches straight upstream and submitted bugs.kde.org reports for the other ones, and I know our other 3 maintainers also try hard to get the patches upstreamed.
> Usually when I notice something needs a fix in KDE, I fix it
> directly because I am a KDE developer.
If I did this (for the non-obvious patches), I'd get yelled at for bypassing maintainership. For example, ossi would kill me if I committed the KDM ConsoleKit patch over his objections.
> We are marketed as our own product. It's not just an extra
> spin for those who like that sort of thing.
Yet, the latter is exactly what you are, the former is just marketing. Kubuntu is a set of packages out of the Ubuntu main repository just as Fedora-KDE-Live is a set of packages out of the Fedora repository. The fact that "apt-get install kubuntu-desktop" is all it takes to install Kubuntu on a Ubuntu machine (just as "yum groupinstall KDE" is enough to install Fedora's KDE desktop on Fedora) clearly shows this.
> We were a more open project when other distros made it hard or
> impossible to contribute packages
Fedora never made it "hard or impossible" to contribute packages to Fedora Extras, and since the Core-Extras Merge (Fedora 7), community (i.e. non-Red Hat) contributors can also maintain or comaintain packages having a core role in the distribution (which includes the core KDE packages, which are now maintained by 2 RH and 2 non-RH maintainers). While I'm not familiar with the Ubuntu processes, I believe the Core-Extras Merge actually gives us a lower barrier to entry than for Ubuntu main (which, as I explained before, is also Kubuntu main).
> Oh and the 6 monthly release schedule we've switching to,
> great stuff but why are people embarrassed about where that
> idea came from?
Fedora? We had already released Fedora Core 2 and were about to release Fedora Core 3, all on a 6 month cycle, when Warty Warthog (the first Ubuntu release) hit, and the first Kubuntu release came even 6 months later (between FC3 and FC4) with Hoary Hedgehog.
As for "KControl (a UI I've hated since KDE 1)", that's a matter of personal taste.
Re: Why Fedora is good for KDE ;-)
Fedora, on the other hand, actually believes in KDE 4.
Actually Fedora believes that their KDE users do not care about important features in KDE which require system integration.
Fedora's KDE people are basically in the same boat as Kubuntu, their base distributions will happily change interals that break the KDE user's experience.
Since you are a Fedora developer you probably do not need to be reminded about the networkmanager fiasko, but some of the other readers might not.