I've been using Linux since 1997 .. and most of that was using KDE. I like KDE.
i liked KDE 3.5.x more than 4.xx, but KDE3 did have some quirks and needed a bit of an overhaul. KDE4.X is heavier, glossier, compositited and much more modern,
and as its mid 2012 as i write this, KDE looks bang up to date. QT4 is nice.
Last few years i've been using Kubuntu on the laptops, the hardware support was better than most linux i found, and (strangely) i found Linux Mint broke
a little too easily, but they too are more Gnome oriented. Yuk.
but man, am i falling out with Canonical.. and this ridiculous move to the dumbed down touchpad type interface we're sadly seeing everyhere ..
We're not all frustrated wannabe Ipad users, and the present desktop metaphor still holds more or less, good, thanks in no small measure to the Incredible work Alan Kay and the folks at Xerox in Palo Alto started many years ago.
Just dont screw with the standardised desktop model, modernise it, yes, but
not at the risk of breaking it and having the very same users
they say they care about, have to then throw away all their existing desktop driving skills and start afresh, what a huge FAIL distromakers - if its not broken, then dont fix it,
an
old meme, but very, er, apt.
All that knowledge being thrown away for ""tabletmania"" i understand tablet computers are 'cool'
and humans like little shiny chinese computer boxes they can carry around and show off easily, and i agree
the tablet interface is
okay, and it works well on
that hardware,
The key thing designers need to get is a '
hardware appropriate interface'
I'm sure some quarters may look and see the PC or laptop as 'Olde Worlde' with its archaic mouse, keyboard, buttons and ports,
and it all works, and
this interface works well on
this hardware too, we're not all dumb users, confused with options.. i mean, some of us can even find our way to the Kebab shop without GPS.. but i digress.
On my Laptop, Kubuntu 10.04 worked well, the laptop is an early 2009 Macbook Pro, so its not 100% plug n play with Linux,
but for 95% of the install its plain sailing, yes its slightly esoteric hardware perhaps, compared to generic plastic Windows type, but there's loads of howto's for those.
I downloaded the Mac-64.iso version that Canonical makes for Apple computers.
Users of Mac LION may have partitioning problems as Mac LION makes its own recovery partition (delete it) and I never use a swapfile on LINUX anyway, so this fact pretty much got 'round the weirdness during partitioning. Its hard to see what difference there are between the Kubuntu ISOs, and information is scant, though i saw Grub-EFI mentioned,
EFI-boot issues relating to Grub2 not long ago were still giving issues, i expected less problems with partitioning alongside LION. I deleted LIONs recovery partition. lets keep this simple shall we ?
All this rush forward in OS's seems a little odd perhaps, compared to the fact that the BIOS is still the main legacy we're dragging 'round, i mean EFI *
will* be the default someday soon, because it'll hold the platform back at some stage otherwise. I dont mean the secure Microsoft led ""Windows 8"" boot time certification shenanigans, instead, the Intel introduced EFI .. which was originally introduced for their IA64 Itanium, but it didn't work out as they'd hoped.
I'm not a huge MacOS X fan, as its not free software, but I am an OS geek, so i'm quite proficient with almost any mainstream OS and i like my OS a certain way, MacOS X is wayyy too closed and proprietry, and its getting worse with every iteration. I shall graft KDE or some other UNIX type DE onto the Mac at some stage soon i imagine, but i'm not
that bored just yet,
i dislike the Mac UI, Aqua, well, mainly the dock, and the desktop is going all 'touchscreeny', so i think Mac OSX is not going to be a OS i'm going to want to upgrade in the future, Mountain Lion ? NO
But at present its got far more polish and attention to detail than Linux (or windows) has and, as long as the computer does the jobs (sic) i bought it for, and as computers
are just tools, i'm using the correct OS i deem best for the job.
Linux is 99% on all PCs here, both laptops run Linux, though not going to be any *buntu much longer, maybe i'll re do my personal Susestudio distro. hmmm. the desktop PC can boot into Windows if i need to use anything like that, or even DOS if i need to program a radio. its also got PC BSD on, which i like a lot, but not played with enough just yet. so i need to get some more quality BSD time in i think.
So WHY do the *buntu MAC ISO's fail when being written on Macs ? - come to that ALL the later *buntu .ISOs fail to mount on Mac (that i have tested) but Its ok of course, i know its only Mac OS X thats failing to mount or use them, the ISO's are OK, its just Canonical tweaked the CD filing system, and Mac doesn't understand it.
Why does Ubuntu ship with Firefox, but not Kubuntu ?
Why still no base only system, something just like a KDE minimal ?
no office, games, nepomuk or akonadi crap. (You listening KDE?) and Linux vendors.. STOP putting bloody pulseaudio in the distro's its shit, flaky, unintuitive, messes audio quality up and uses confusing terminology.
And for what gain ? i mean to the average desktop user ? networked audio ? really ?
do me a favour.
KDE3 had facilities for X to do this, but no one used it back then even, and now, with even more portable audio gear about, its gonna get used
even less, maybe even
never.
Canonical, or Ubuntu's recent decision to drop KDE and go with Gnome / XFCE seems about as misguided as i can imagine, KDE - especially series 3 was known to be more comfortable for users coming from Windows, the general desktop layout and configurabilty and the like even
Mark Shuttleworth himself was a KDE dev and famously our Man
Linus Torvalds was a famous KDE user, so which desktop shall we ship? Yes, it was crappy old Gnome 2d (i call it) plain, dull, lack of configuration, it even has a windows-like registry, god help us, and the layout is all completely different for these 'new users' and, oh, it was brown. the colour of shit. and to compound the failure they added pulseaudio, no, no no no NO !
Gnome was jealous of Mac, and always wanted to be Mac's Aqua interface so bad that as soon as Mac OSX changes to look more IOS like, Gnome copies it immediately, fails, and as Windows announces the Fisher Price interface of Windos 8....
WTF ?
Gnome 3 Fisher Price uses more RAM than KDE4, the icons are 600% too big, ugly and messy, with features hidden from users and a real couple of steps backwards. i mean, which
newbie knows the
actual linux filename to type in and start a program ?
WTF ?
Is Gnome 3 a newbie DE ? features hidden ? now thats dumb, the hidden 'un-features' most of us would like also seem to have been copied from Mac OS X, Lion which really started hiding stuff from users,
in its Steve Jobs inspired quest for ZEN minimalism.
Not much in the way of customisation either, in OS X, it
IS possible, and there are a couple of extremely startlingly nice UI makeovers for OSX, The
CrystalClear Interfaces is amazing, but there's not enough customisation choices, not to
the point i wish it was, by a long way, i'd prefer the KDE window manager,
wmaker, e17 or some Linux/Unix wm on the Mac instead of Aqua, yes
it can be done.
Ok, i understand the Zen of desktop minimalism, in Leopard and Snow Leopard the UI is quite clean already, for the most part,but then to add the Mac's messy dock that looks like items on a second-hand-shop shelf messies the whole thing up.
Some pundits think Apple want to drop OS X and make IOS their PC operating system..
-- and dont tell me Mac's aren't PCs - or i'll have to shout at you again -- they ARE personal computers
and can even run the same operating systems. End of debate Apple fanbois?Gurlz
Why not open source OSx ? they never will of course, but the XNU kernel is pretty good, just a shame they didn't give much back, but hey.. BSD license. I'm not sure whether OSX will be dropped, not for a while yet, anyway, if so,
there'll have to a transition period, strange, as they will have just recently dropped Rosetta too, starting with Lion, but i doubt i'll be using OS x by the time keyboards and mice are not used in the OS anyway.We'll be seeing the one button mouse soon too, i expect.
For me, I'll just install another Linux or BSD on the PCs, but Linux is STILL flaky on some laptops, power management and cooling particularly so, battery life, thermal problems and proprietary hardware support still can kill the Linux experience,
You need luck and to STILL be more choosy when buying hardware, even though Linux is my main, preferred OS, Mac and Windows still work better and fully support all the hardware you're ever likely to see. Installing Slackware last year on my old laptop (AMD Turion x64 dual core) - the processor thermal management got so bad that the laptop overheated during the install, it died. It
refused to power back up until well cooled of course, and it wouldn't switch on properly until it was discovered a RAM slot was so hot it became
BROKEN. This was
after i did research on buggy BIOS's and thermal management in the Linux kernel.. i used to, a few years before, regularly compile my own kernels to enable wait states and tweaks and stuff to control the extra heat Linux generated on my older laptops.
who do i send the bill to ?
Ubuntu is on losing ground already, the decisions it has taken lately have created a need for a real beginner friendly distro, with Linux Mint stepping up as the default newbie distro. I think the best 'newbie' distros
was Mepis, but its such a big job for even a superman like
Warren Woodford who i admire greatly
and interestingly was known to use Mac hardware to Work on his
MEPIS LINUX and the amazing
Texstar and the Guys over at
PCLinuxOS, who's attention to detail was nothing short of amazing, and supported every bit of hardware we threw at it
I prefer debian based LINUX and the apt-get package management, but they are mainly KDE based distros, so it was mostly academic whether they were RPM or DEB based they are superb distro's, and i may go back to them again.
Props to
Linux Mint for
LMDE as its moving away from Canonical's base, Good ..
but where's Mint's KDE editions ?
Add to this the recent (summer 2012) QT/Nokia news and i'm leaving Canonical but still want
KDE, but may have to find a better base... only time will tell. it wont be Gnome and it seems KDE is missing some serious issues too, though, not having gone to a 'Tablet Interface' yet, and i hope they dont, they are still shipping KDE making it tricky to slim it down to just a window manager,
i know i know, but Nepomuk, Akonadi .. please NOOO ...
I guess its distro hopping time again ...
enjoy the summer / rain / both ...
