* post should be read with the Black Sabbath song ‘Changes’ playing in the background *
For nearly two years now I’ve been using Kubuntu (Ubuntu + KDE) quite happily. It was a happy marriage between us, but yesterday we filed for divorce.
Kubuntu Gutsy, and Hardy, had been fine. I’ve even been using KDE4 since 4.0, but recently KDE would just, for no reason and with no warning, corrupt the screen and return to the login screen. When this happened yesterday in the middle of some (as ever, unsaved) work, I snapped.
The courtship of Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) began, and the divorce papers were served to Kubuntu.
Another reason to abandon Kubuntu was that most of the applications I used were all GNOME based, so essentially I had a KDE/GNOME hybrid. It had the look of KDE for things like Amarok and K3B but the look of Windows95 for things like Firefox, Thunderbird et al.
After a quick test of the Ubuntu 8.10 in LiveCD mode I saw that most of my needed apps (GIMP and those mentioned above) would be installed by default. And I’d only need to manually install Scribus and Thunderbird.
One quick backup later and Ubuntu was installing.
my spanking new Ubuntu desktop
What was yesterday. I’ve been using Ubuntu now, exclusively, for a whole day and, I have to say… I like it! I can definitely see a speed increase in Thunderbird and Firefox, in KDE they were ok to use, but a bit clunky and ugly – hence why I, at one point, switched to using Opera as my browser. I can get a decent screen resolution too, which I could never get in KDE. Ok so I lose Amarok, but Rhythmbox seems quite adequate. Not tried it, but Brasero seems more than capable of burning a CD/DVD.
All in all, I feel like a new man.
Wait, that sounded a bit…
Similar Posts:
- Acer C301XMi Tablet PC
- Banshee – King of all things iPod
- KDE4 – First Impressions
- KDE 4.1.2 + Lancelot menu = Happiness
- CrunchEEE (CrunchBangLinux) on the ASUS EEE 701 PC
#1 by Emmanuel at November 23rd, 2008
My favorite music player for Linux is Banshee, it integrates nicely with GNOME. Also, nothing is stopping you from using Amarok under GNOME. KDE4 (and KDE3) applications look pretty nice under GNOME. I have used Akregator recently and it looked pretty nice.
Hope you find GNOME to you liking!
#2 by Ronnie at November 23rd, 2008
True, but it would mean installing a pile of KDE libraries in to Gnome, and that’d take me back to where I was, with a hybrid system.
For music and ipod stuff, Exaile seems to be the best for me.
#3 by Catfacts at November 23rd, 2008
Personally I go for Songbird. It is still a beta but works quite nicely for playing and storing music. I don’t believe it handles music burning. But than again I don’t use any music apps on my Linux computer because I have an mac and an iPod for that.
#4 by Vyoma at November 23rd, 2008
Stumbling across your site earlier got me thinking of switching and trying out KDE – but now my second thoughts have second thoughts.
#5 by Andrew Min at November 23rd, 2008
Of course, now we’re going to need to find a KDE guy for FCM. You and I were the only KDEers out writing…
By the way, Evolution (I’ve found) is really nice and snappy. And it syncs with Google Calendar and Gmail Contacts, a big plus for me.
One suggestion: install Amarok. Rhythmbox is nice, but Amarok takes the cake.
#6 by Ronnie at November 23rd, 2008
@ Andrew Min – I’ll still be keeping my beady eye on KDE4, but it’ll need better apps as, like we discussed on Twitter, most nice apps are on Gnome, bar Amarok and K3B. Oh, and try Exaile, it’s basically Amarok for Gnome, even looks similar in layout…
#7 by Emmanuel at November 25th, 2008
The funny thing is, I had never really heard of Exaile before until around today. I have got to try that out! The reason I like Banshee is that it is the most similar to iTunes and it automatically “docks” itself to the notification area when I close the window, as opposed to actually quitting the application. (I have expirieinced this in Rhythmbox many times. Lots of people say that Amarok is an awesome music player, but I never stuck to it because I like certain apps to match with GTK+. Thanks for the recommendation! I shall give Exaile a try.
#8 by Ronnie at November 25th, 2008
Having said all those good things about Exaile, it doesn’t seem to want to send files to my iPod – which is kinda useless.
So, I’m going with Banshee. It does work with my iPod, and looks really nice too.
#9 by Richard at November 16th, 2009
I think you should give Kubuntu 9.10 a try again as upgrading to KDE 4.3.3 is way better than the previous version. I always add SMB4K, GIMP, Pidgin and Skype to my build. A little tweaking with Glassified theme, cube workspace switch and slideshow desktop makes whole a more pleasant experience. Amarok with MySQL works very well at importing iTunes libraries. Having said that I understand that project Timelord will try to address the KDE purity issues that tarnish all Kubuntu current distros.