Kubuntu update

Ok, I may have been a bit hasty with my previous assessment of KDE4. I threw together a live CD and booted the lappy into Kubuntu 8.10 with KDE4. December's Linux Format magazine pointed out that the context menu for the K button has an option to revert to the previous menu structure; much better. I would imagine a full install would provide the precious Tango icons that I am so enamoured of, along with Plasma themes I could actually download, or modify as I wished. The live CD only had them displayed as a kind of preview, naturally, but I will double check to see if that is a glitch.

I still don't care for the black task bar, so I am hoping that is a bit more straight forward to change once I have it installed. I may do a clean install on the new system I am setting up, then start transferring data. Most of the software I have on 8.04 is running just fine for now, so after the new system is set up, I will be wiping that drive and setting it up to dual boot with XP, as well as adding another gig of memory. It should be a pretty sweet little system once that is complete, ready for playing around with some virtualization.

Mostly, though, it will be for World of Warcraft. Hopefully, my cable broadband holds out for the winter until I can replace the internal co-ax in the walls. Also, I think my Linksys router is going out, so that will be replaced with a wireless router. Newegg has a pretty sweet deal going on the flashable router Linksys offers, so I will be throwing Tomato or something on that as soon as possible.

Along with the RPG projects I have lined up, 2009 is looking to be a busy year.

------------------Further News------------------

Ok, that was a bust. Trying to upgrade to KDE 4.1 as a means of clearing up a few issues, the dependencies broke, killed my kdm, and the whole system was trashed. Rather than start over with KDE, I decided to give GNOME another try.

I have to say, it is pretty damn sweet. I am not the least bit disappointed, and I might leave KDE for other people. Even before the crash, I was not happy with the windows management. GNOME has been nothing but smooth in rendering windows, keeping track of widgets, and putting my fonts exactly where I expect them. I found I couldn't jump from 1024x768 directly to 1280x1024, but interim steps got me up there. Compiz has a few glitches while doing window tricks, but I am not running top of the line graphics, so that is to be expected.

All in all, I am now a GNOME user, and I am quite happy about it.

Memory boost

Linux was running marginally well with the previous 256mb, but with X-Chat and Firefox going constantly, things were starting to seriously bog down. The whole system started taking seconds to refresh a window, then minutes. Eventually, I could watch the screen re-paint, and it wasn't fun at all.

So, I broke down this weekend and decided to pick up a gig of Kingston. Ironically, they are using the exact chipset of the memory I took out, one stick of which had gone bad. Inherited Dell system, and the previous owner couldn't get Dell to figure out what was wrong with it. They bought a different computer and I got this one. Damn good machine overall, but I am pretty sure it is dual channel, and I only have the one stick of memory in it now.

Not that it really matters. When I get another gig for it and set it up to dual boot as a Windows machine, the dual-channel might kick in, although I doubt it would be a noticeable difference anyway. I would likely need to get a benchmarking app to see any improvement over 2gig that wasn't dual-channel.

After installing it, life has been a dream. Prior to that, Linux was constantly hitting the swap partition with the couple of programs I had running. I was starting to worry that it would shake itself apart, and I would have to get another drive to replace it. Now that I have the gig in there, I don't hear the drive click at all, unless I am listening carefully when a program launches. I have two Open Office documents and an Open Office spreadsheet open, X-Chat on five channels, Firefox with half a dozen tabs I switch between, Pidgen instant messaging, and a large image for the 5th Edition Herbalist's Guide in full colour, with alpha channels, on five layers (and counting!) that I am editing in the GIMP.

I was getting a little frustrated for a while, but once again, I feel like Linux is the best choice for me. Naturally, I should have remembered the Golden Rule: Memory upgrades are the best ROI available. The frustration is largely my own fault, for not upgrading that sooner. I was hoping Kubuntu 8.04 would be able to do a bit more with the limited memory I was using. Granted, I never actually crashed with memory real estate as low as I had, because I am sure running under Windows would have been a daily re-boot, if not more so.

Now that my system is back up to operating speed, I can concentrate on a couple of other snags; KDE never seems to remember that I told it to show my mounted hard disks on the desktop, and System Settings will fail to repaint the options after I go into root mode from my regular login. Minor annoyances, now that I have a real computer back again. And what is more fun than tracking down a glitch and fixing it?

The lesson here is, don't skimp on memory, even with Linux. Especially if, like me, you like running a beefy GUI like KDE.

Kubuntu

I was playing around with several different Kubuntu distros, among them 8.04 with KDE4. Man, was that a pile of turd.

I mean, it's not bad enough they use the same colours as Vista, it uses just about the same layout, too. It's just ugly, all the way down. The K-menu updates look OK, but the cascading menu takes a bit to get used to. I'm not sure it is an improvement, per se, more of a compacting of the regular menu items spawning sub-menus external to the list. A bit less cluttered on the screen, perhaps, but moving between sub-menus is a matter of a few seconds anyway.





Sure, I get it. Familiarity with the interface makes the transition less troublesome. I think it is time to start showing some real innovation, however. For most people, Vista is made of epic fail. Copying the windows manager is not a good move in this case. Great things could have been done to keep the windowing simple, yet add features. I'm not 100% convinced there is really a need for a gadget bar or OSX-like dock. But certainly, they could have been done with more elegance than a ham-handed attempt to clone the features as directly as possible.

Linux is on the ascent. People are aware of it, but a second hand rip-off of Vista is not the way to take advantage of that. Come on, KDE Team, grab some innovation; start with the 3.5 interface and improve on that. Trying to copy what the 'cool kids' are doing isn't going to convince anyone to transition. No one seems to like what the cool kids over at Microsoft are doing anyway. There is a solid kernel under there, you don't have to worry about integration or software compatibilities. You can spend all your time on the interface itself.

Please, fork Plasma to an alternate build, and go back to the 3.5 interface for development.