Kubuntu 6.10 Released

Kubuntu 6.10, codenamed Edgy Eft, is hot on the download mirrors, this release is based on the brand new KDE 3.5.5. For all your photo needs the award winning digiKam is now installed by default and renowned artwork by the beloved Oxygen artist Ken Wimer shines all over. On top of this Kubuntu makes the perfect platform for KDE 4 development and porting KDE 3 applications with all the KDE 4 development libraries available along with Qt 4.2.

Comments

by asdf (not verified)

I love Kubuntu, and have been using it since Breezy Badger, but I have to say that Edgy is the buggiest release so far. The problems I've notice so far...

_ system settings is missing configuration options.
_ i tried to access a file in /var with kate, but once I reached the root dir, the only directories I could see was /home and /media.
_ tty1 .. tty6 are corrupted and unusable.
_ X crashes occasionally while surfing the web, darn i810 drivers
_ trying to turn on drop shadows via system settings locked up the kde startup sequence. it was a bit of a chore trying to turn them off without being able to get into kde again.
_ fonts look awful

... and I've only been using Edgy for one day!

Now this being said, I have confidence that Kubuntu can turn it around. Also the roughness of this release wasn't a complete surprise, after all this was supposed to be a bleeding edge release.

by weintor (not verified)

"i tried to access a file in /var with kate, but once I reached the root dir, the only directories I could see was /home and /media."

If you enabled show hidden files, you'll see all the files and folders.

by Rick (not verified)

Yes, but then you will see all the files that were really intended to be hidden as well. There is no way to enable the previous behaviour where hidden files are hidden but the root of the file tree is unpruned.

by terracotta (not verified)

System settings is nog missing configuration options, there's just a 'General' and an 'advanced' tab (ok I don't like it this way, but the same options are still there).

the /home and /media thing is not a bug, it's on purpose, you can still access the directory you like like by entering it in the file dialog.

by beccon (not verified)

> the /home and /media thing is not a bug, it's on purpose, you can still
> access the directory you like like by entering it in the file dialog.
Well, if this is the case then they've crippled a well working system beyond a level not even the Evil from Redmond would expect of it's users!

We users are not infants! I don't want to be incapacitaded by my system - especially not when I'm on a FREE desktop system!

So if it is true that the directory tree is "pruned" down to look like last year's Christmas tree:

What about directories shared between users? How could I access them?
How would I be able to edit sytem files such as in /etc (OK by entering it into the url line - but this woulds a) drive me nuts b) rendering the GUI completely obsolete for that purpose as I'd be light years faster opening a terminal and edit on vi

Conrad

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

"So if it is true that the directory tree is "pruned" down to look like last year's Christmas tree"

I just wanted to see that simile again and admire it :-)

by cies breijs (not verified)

(i must admit this post if driven a bit by zacks last blog post)

please people,

most of the previous posts are about annoyances, etc. kubuntu is driven by a team of motivated volunteers: you probably did not pay anything for this marvellous product!

instead of paying for your software the free-software movement basically ask you to do either of the following 3 things:
1. use it, be happy and show gratitude
2. help to make it better
3. don't use it

so, if you don't like it, and your not happy, there is only 2 options left: (1) help or (2) don't use it. (note: these options do not include: "complain")

i feel that people are showing even more negativity here than on forums about paid software. why?

the free-software movement is so open and friendly, you can easily join the forums, mailinglists, wiki's, irc-channels and starthelping out in one way or another... THIS IS HOW ALL THIS FREESOFTWARE GOT TO YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE! PEOPLE HELPED OUT, FIXED, EXTENDED, AND TOOK RESPONSIBILITY.

so if you're just ventilating your compaints, you're WRONG: you can help constructively though.

cies breijs.

p.s.: these 3 'options' i talked about, i made them up myself.

by Michael (not verified)

Sorry I dont really agree. It's a bit naive IMHO to expect that OSS is somehow exempt from criticism. I use this forum (as many others do) to take a somehow global, overall standpoint on a new release. I do file bugs, but it's still sometimes necessary to view a product as a whole. You just cannot expect this to completely stop. The OS movement wants all people to use their software not only developers. As we have so many computer users in the worlds it's just unrealistic that everyone will file bugs. You would literally be swamped in bug reports.

I'm using Open Source software for many years now. This is of course for a reason. But sometimes a release is just really disappointing and I will continue to speak out in the future if I think so. Kubuntu Breezy was a very, very impressive release but Kubuntu Edgy is one of those very disappointing releases (just like Firefox2). All the new features (Suspend mode, Upstart etc) simply dont work. In KDE there are no 3D effects which made the release a bit more worthwhile in Gnome. And at the end of the day it has caused more trouble than good for me. YMMV though.

by cies breijs (not verified)

so we don't agree... no problem!

you talk about disappointing releases, i understand your point. but... in my eyes it's very hard to be disappointing when it is free: just don't use it!
stay with Breezy, firefox-1.5, and go GNOME if you want to.

in my eyes you have no right to complain, you do have the right to help out though!

KDE4 needs people testing the eye-candy that i will sport, see kwin_composite in kde4. firefox had many RC shipped, you seem capable of testing them, and reporting bugs: did you?

Again: _I_think_ you can't, and shouldn't, complain over freesoftware. But it is just my opinion.

Ofcourse we should see freesoftware as a product; see what is misses, where it is bad... But we look at it in order to fix it: not to comaplain.

by Rick (not verified)

Complaining is a way to help out. It helps people who would be severely hit by the bugs and misfeatures of a certain product steer clear of that. If you don't like what you hear about the Kubuntu release in this thread, you might want to check what people have to say about the Fedora one reported in the following Dot article, and possibly save yourself a lot of grief. For you then, the people complaining added lots of value to the open source experience, by saving you hours and hours of time wasted installing and fighting with Kubuntu.

by Matt (not verified)

Come on guys, something is going in the IMHO wrong direction and I cannot talk about it just because it is done by volunteers? Nonsense!
After Novell's sell out to MS I'm more than open to install a new distro, but nothing crippled please, if I wanted that I would use Gnome.

So exactly as Rick says, "the people complaining added lots of value to the open source experience, by saving you hours and hours of time wasted installing and fighting with Kubuntu" - I'm very grateful for all the opinions I hear here and will look now for opinions about Fedora and LinSpire and Mepis etc. to see if I get there an easy = 'non-crippled' KDE distro which does _not_ get in my way by hiding things from me, in the assumption that I'm too stupid to use them.

So sorry all you nice and friendly volunteers, what you wanna do seems not to be what I need to get my work done in time, but do not despair, there might be others who like dumbed down computers.

by bitoy (not verified)

In my marketing class I've been taught that customers who complain are the ones who value your service. Those who don't value your service don't complain; they just move on to other providers.
I don't mean that complaints are not annoying, cause they sure are. It's just that they ARE part of the business, and they CAN help, in their anoying, noisy way.
Hey I don't know anything about programming, just as I don't know the first thing about making a pizza, I'm not even sure what I like about it, but I'll sure know it when I don't like it.

by Phil (not verified)

I've been running Edgy for about 10 days. This has been the most
delightful upgrade in many years. Not since Xfree86 itself was
added 12 years ago has an upgrade been so fun.

All the CPU performance stuff is finally in and working, and the
overall performance is dramatically better. On my T60p Thinkpad,
Open Office, for example, is finally fast enough to use, no longer
scrambling key-stroke order, and fast enough to use presentation
animations.

Gnome based apps, like Eclipse 3.3, finally get printing support,
very long overdue.

Lots of bugs, but they said this would be edgy... I've found
myself w/ 2 sources.list under /etc/apt and symlink to the which
ever repository set makes sense. Edgy repository mostly, but I
have had to point back at the dapper repositories in order
to get working versions of some apps, like squid, which are
otherwise dead-on-arrival.

Mark Shuttleworth and his team deserve a congradulations, they're
doing great, and often thankless, work.

Phil

by Anders (not verified)

that would be nice, but how on earth do i install it? All that happens when I attempt to
*aptitude install kde4base-dev*
is that it complains about unsolvable dependencides and gives in: http://paste.debian.net/15759

by Anders (not verified)

And here is a recipe, though not a very satisfactory one:

remove kubuntu-desktop
remove speedcrunch
install kde4base-devel

This works, but it does leave the system in kind of a messy state (from apt-get output):

The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
xserver-xorg libstdc++5 linux-headers-generic wlassistant ttf-gentium python-libxml2 brltty libqt4-qt3support
hwdb-client-kde libqt4-core kde-icons-mono ttf-lao kbstate python-qt4 hwdb-client-common libqt4-gui amarok-xine
libbrlapi1 openoffice.org amarok python-dbus libglade2-0 libtunepimp3 libqt4-sql fping landscape-client
xcursor-themes language-selector-qt xorg libhsqldb-java linux-headers-2.6.17-10 libservlet2.3-java
openoffice.org-base python-elementtree libvisual-0.4-0 kde-guidance-powermanager gcc-3.3-base kmousetool
libnjb5 kmag bluez-pin linux-headers-2.6.17-10-generic
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.

It also remove python-qt4 -- not a big loss for me since I do not use python (except when coded by others). But hey, I *did get the kde4 packages installed, so I should now be able to jump onto the platform... :)