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 Gato (not verified)

> but in this case the problem is rather the hack used in NetAccess,
> than media:/ or mostLocalURL

From a pragmatic point of view it doesn't really matter whose fault it is. An unnecessary feature that triggers bugs in other features is still a mistake, no matter who has written the bugs.

by Leo S (not verified)

Look, I'm interested in use cases, cause that's where I run into these problems. As you mention, Kaffeine seems to be fixed, at least in Kubuntu 6.10 I can open a video file from media:/usbstick and it will work (it translates it to /media/usbstick, no idea what it would do on other distros that have no /media)

Here's a big one problem though. I plug in my flash drive, and want to get there in a konsole window. Now I could press F4 and it would work (on Kubuntu), but what if I have an already open konsole window? Intuitively I would type something like cd media:/usbstick. That obviously doesnt work. This would make no sense to users. Yes I know I can use some kde inbetween thing to do it, but I have no idea how, and if I did look it up, I would forget it immediately because it's so obtuse.

Now I want to open a file in helix player. If I open helix player and try to open a media:/ URL it won't work. Once again, this makes no sense to users. Why does a path that works in kaffeine not work in helix-player? Completely mystifying.

The point behind all this is that it causes very real problems for a very slight, if any gain. For some corner cases, the media:/ path is easier to understand, but for many more cases (anyone that doesn't use purely KDE software) it's a very big and very real problem.

In my mind, this is a poor tradeoff. Anyway, I've complained enough about this. Time to move on :) Well done Kubuntu for fixing this critical issue!

by Gato (not verified)

Hm.

OK then you're right, there are correct ways of handling most parts of the problem. But why handle the problem and maintain that handling when it's far easier to not have the problem at all? Why not just use the standard filesystem?

by terracotta (not verified)

Given that in (K)(X)Ubuntu Edgy Eft the file system is reduced to /home and /media for non administrator people I don't think it's a problem. Just as someone stated above: if I right-click in a folder in media:// I have no option of opening Konsole (a KDE apllication!!!!) in that same path, where I can do this with /media/...folder...

Kioslaves are nice, but kioslaves for hierarchy replacement just don't work.
I think they handled the filesystem hierarchy very nicely in Edgy Eft.

by Gato (not verified)

> given the average user's difficulty with the unix filesystem

As a matter of fact I do agree that the filesystem doesn't belong in the user interface at all, but then, kioslaves are filesystems themselves, so what's the point? What's it use to replace a black & white devil that's been known to applications with a pack of blue KDE devils only (sometimes) known to (some) KDE applications?

by Evan "JabberWok... (not verified)

I wrote a couple fairly long messages about them around 1998 or so on the KDE mailing list. I thought that kfm would benefit greatly from using URIs as laid out in the various RFC, which has things like tv:/ and such that had never been implemented. The idea that a universal name for a resource can be used anywhere is powerful and provides a base needed for advanced use, both automated (i.e., the user never sees it), and practical for the user (i.e., using printers:/ to see all printers available on the network). Things like Solid in KDE4 can now benefit from static URLs to dynamic resources and subresources.

Keep in mind that KDE is for multiple operating systems. A printer or cdrom in AIX looks different than on BSD or on Linux. Soon OSX and possibly Windows will be added to the mix. It's easy to say "just use /media"... if you only want it to work with those specific versions of those specific versions of those specific operating systems that choose to use a /media directory. But a working KDE desktop on *any* operating system will display their user available resources the same using the URL. Or at least that's the idea.

by Mark Kretschmann (not verified)

I also agree about the media:/ hell. One of KDE's dumbest features, there is no doubt about it.

by superstoned (not verified)

well, it was supposed to fix a real problem. it doesn't, well, that's a mistake. mistakes happen, it's part of evolution. now let's try to get kubuntu's solution in KDE so we can fix it...

by borker (not verified)

There are two main complaints I have with edgy (I had to switch a while ago thanks to the intel/jmicron sata issue that prevented me sticking with dapper)

1. The system settings applet is missing some (IMHO) important controls from kcontrol. The main one for me is the 'launch feedback' control. The bouncy icon setting drives me nuts so it's litteraly the first thing i change on a fresh install. It's not in SS so you have to run kcontrol from console to fix that. I have nothing against distros reorganizing things to test usability ideas etc, but it really bugs me when that includes dropping functionality coghGNOMEcough to 'improve' usability

2. The hiding of everything except /media and /home in the file dialog is a realy big issue for me. I went to add a mount point for my file server through the GUI and whoops no /mnt even though I'm in the 'advanced' tab of SS and have given the admin password. OK update fstab by hand. Then I go to point Amarok at my newly mounted NFS share, where my music lib is. No /mnt in the file dialog and no inclination to figure out how Amarok's config files work to add that by hand... so off to google and kubuntu forums I go (after first going through SS for 1/2 an hour trying to find a way to override this behaviour) and eventually find that there is something called a .hidden file I can edit to get my file system back. Not exactly an intuitive friendly interface. If they want this (very dubious IMHO) improvement then at least make it overridable in some easy to find way instead of costing experienced users (still the bulk of the userbase) a bunch of time looking to get back functionality we've had for years.

Otherwise, nice graphics improve, supports jmicron properly, starts up REALLY quick, automatix gets you your deliciously evil codecs etc all sorted out (happy halloween... how does one dress up as as the DMCA?) and so far, so stable even through the tail end of the beta stage and using fairly 'cutting edge' hardware.

by Robert Knight (not verified)

Regarding 1), these balancing acts are not easy. The classic KDE approach of making everything configurable in a huge settings dialog is, in my opinion, definitely not the way forwards. It becomes a warren in which more important settings ( ie. those settings which a larger proportion of the target users are likely to want to change ) are hard to find and the settings dialogs become hard to test properly.
I like what the Kubuntu folks are trying to do with System Settings, it isn't surprising that they didn't get it absolutely right first time.

Regarding 2), I think a good compromise would be to separate out the "home" and "media" folders from the others in the folder view rather than hiding them entirely.

By the way - please file bug reports or post feedback on the wiki for both the above if you haven't done so already.

by borker (not verified)

Yup, I agree it is a balancing act, but KDE's functionality is one of the fundamental reasons I use it instead of other DEs, so I think for distros to go around removing that which makes KDE the better option for some of us is doing it a disservice. As I said I have no issues with improving the access to functionality... the basic/advanced split in systems settings is an example of that, I just don't want to lose functionality or have to start digging for it in conf files all the time.

by John Tapsell (not verified)

Ooo! So that's why I can't find my filesystem from some dialogs!

I thought it was a serious bug.

What do I have to edit to get rid of that?

by borker (not verified)

have a look in /etc for something called kubuntu-default-settings (typing from memory... its something like that anyway) and there in there is a file called .hidden that file has the list of dirs it will hide from you... remove the ones you want to be able to see

by Michael (not verified)

I installed edgy at home yesterday. At my office I've still been waiting until things have settled down. I noticed the point #2 you mention just now because I didnt try to open anything before. Ugh!!! What a mess. This spoils my otherwise really great impression of Edgy totally. All my folders have gone. This sucks a lot. I cant even access my /mount folders if I enter them manually. This should really be configurable immediately from the open dialog. This is even worse than Windows where I can still click to show i.e. the Program Files folder. What the hell did they think they are doing - if anything at all? I sincerely hope this gets better again in future versions, otherwise I will keep out looking again for a different distro if they continue GNOMEifying KDE.

by Michael (not verified)

PS: I just found out how to solve this. Edgy created a ".hidden" file in "/" (root folder). You can remove it in order to show all folders again. Anyway - it's absolutely inexcusable that they didnt warn explicitly before downloading that I wont be able to open files properly if I dont remove the file. If I had upgraded my office machine I could not have used it for work before solving this. This sucks really a lot!

by Simon Edwards (not verified)

> This is even worse than Windows where I can still click to show i.e. the Program Files folder.

From Konq or the file dialog use the "Show hidden files" menu item and they are there. Typing in the first part of the path also works fine too.

--
Simon

by Michael (not verified)

Not in Konq. I'm talking of the file open dialog. Doesnt work here. I can enter i.e "/mnt" or "/" and press enter in the drop-down list at the top. No folders appear.

by Jucato (not verified)

You can right-click in the dialog box, select View -> Show hidden files or press F8.

True, there should have been more information about this. Even the release notes are silent about this new feature. This would probably be the biggest source of complaints.

... I'm still waiting for that wiki page.

by borker (not verified)

There is this page: wiki (you can see my comments from a few days before the release at the bottom tagged with ---borker)

I also filed a bug about 2 weeks ago but it was closed pretty much straight away with no action taken.

by terracotta (not verified)

Why do you insist on mounting the stuff you mount manually in /mnt (or in /mount as someone else here posted?), while you can mount it in /media, that's what that folder was created for I thought, the name of /media sais a lot more than /mnt or /mount to non-technical people, and it's not hard to find out for technical people. No usability is given up and things have become a lot more clear. In konqueror you can still access the *hidden* files by entering the path in case you need to dive into the hierarchy.
(ok, I don't understand why typing /usr or /mnt in the file dialog doesn't work anymore, it's clearly something that should be enabled, just like in konqueror, but generally IMHO this solution is great).

by borker (not verified)

No, /media was created for media devices... cdroms, floppies, usb drives etc. /mnt is where you (/)mount stuff to. I'm not talking about konq, I know I can enter paths in that, but I can't use it to set the lib location in Amarok or point an application at my web source stuff /var or any other number of things I'd like to use my file dialog for.

I personally don't like this solution much, but I wouldn't have to care if it was easy to get rid of. My biggest objection to it is that I lost a big chunk of functionality with no warning and no way to get it back obvious. I shouldn't have to fight my system and scour the web to open a file.

by Jucato (not verified)

If /media was created for media devices only, why are hard drives mounted to /media by default, then? What are hard drives? Aren't they media as well? Maybe you meant removable devices? But if /media is for removable devices only, and /mnt is for "a temporary mounted filesystem" only (check your FHS), where do you put permanent/standard mounts? Kubuntu has chosen to do that in /media. Most new users would mount to /media (if and when they know how to), anyway.

Anyway, you are supposed to mount to /media, now. If you still prefer to use /mnt, you can easily make /mnt appear again by editing the /.hidden file and removing /mnt. This will make it visible again in Amarok.

by Martin Ellis (not verified)

According to the FHS, /media is for removable media:
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#MEDIAMOUNTPOINT

It doesn't seem particularly explicit wrt. whether it's exclusively for removeable media though. Either way, /mnt is still an acceptable place to mount stuff. It certainly doesn't appear to be deprecated.

by terracotta (not verified)

Nobody said it wasn't acceptable, but /media is acceptable as well and a lot more clear to what it is used for. Not used hard disk partitions are mounted there as well, while in for example media:/ all hard disks (even the one mounted to / ) are shown there (which is irritating to me, but that's a personal opinion). From the beginning of Ubuntu their preference of mounting stuff to /media was quite clear. The only thing they need to work out now, is a way to show the not mounted optical drives or removable media that are in the drive or in the usb-port to show up like in media:/.

by mart (not verified)

Oh, I interpreted "Anyway, you are supposed to mount to /media, now" as a statement that things shouldn't be mounted there.

Besides, even if you do mount hard drives to /media, this isn't about mounting hard disks. The thread is about mounting NFS volumes.

by panzi (not verified)

Thank you very much for this posting. I just had the same problem. :)
echo > /.hidden

by Kevin Kofler (not verified)

Hey, why is this newsworthy and FC6 is not? Fedora also includes KDE! Fedora Core 6 has been released with KDE 3.5.4, but 3.5.5 is being prepared for FC5 and FC6 updates, so we Fedora users will have it soon too. (And unlike Kubuntu, we actually get the new versions as updates, 3.5.5 is going even to FC5.)

by aac (not verified)

Both are newsworthy. It's just that the people who post to the dot are volunteers, and no one posted anything about fedora. But you can try to...

by Kevin Kofler (not verified)

I did (right after I posted that comment), let's see if it gets accepted. :-)

by Anonymous (not verified)

Or it's because the main Kubuntu developer is a dot editor...

by Daniel Molkentin (not verified)

No, it's because somebody from the Kubuntu team (not Jonathan) posted an initial story that was not just a copy from the official announcement and outlined things specifically relevant to KDE. That's the kind of posts that get accepted the fastest, simply because reworking entire announcements takes a lot of time to reedit. It's really that simple.

by Daniel Molkentin (not verified)

Update: I edited and posted the fedora story now.

by noone needs me (not verified)

thats 4 sure teh reason why kubuntu gets that much place to spread their shit..
whether ubuntu nor redhat want support kde.. so why give them this place?
kde on fedora/kubuntu is just disappointing, i dont kno about suse, but i m sure that new kde menu in suse is not what an usual kde user wants to see..

i d be happy if there was a pure kde distribution, i dont want OOooOooo nor IceWeaselBeaselFoxOnFirePowerXPRebrand31337
bigger customizings/rebrandings should be done by the original developpers otherwise we get just broken builds (debian/ubuntu repos are full of them)
making kde look like gnome and removing kde-features, breaking the genius localization in kde is what they ve done..

ok?

by Robert Knight (not verified)

> Hey, why is this newsworthy and FC6 is not?

Perhaps simply because nobody submitted a story about FC6?

Kubuntu had a very strong presence at this year's Akademy and I think there are a lot of KDE people following it closely.

But heck, if Fedora have done something cool with KDE then please tell the world :)

by Kevin Kofler (not verified)

By the way, I haven't given up on packaging KDE 4 snapshots for Fedora yet, I have just been busy. I'll let you know when we get these up. :-)

by A.C. (not verified)

> Hey, why is this newsworthy and FC6 is not?

Because Kubuntu is explicitly KDE-centric. Fedora Core isn't.
Mind, it's very cool that FC supports KDE and I'm sure their developers did a great job with this release. It's just that this site is about KDE *itself*. I have no doubt you love FC, and that's all fine and dandy; but are you certain that the release of any distribution, however great, where KDE is only optional, is newsworthy on a KDE site?
If they made KDE the default, then alright, that's newsworthy and I'm wrong. I just heard of no such thing as of yet.

by MZM (not verified)

I'll been using Edgy for some time - now it's far better than month a go, but still far far away from Dappers stability.
Xorg i810 drivers for i855gm still are broken. Have to wait for Edgy+1;
Right click in Konqueror causes occasional segfaults (don't like subversion desktop entry) (this one really sucks, as it comes up in most inappropriate times, and, yes, I have filled bug in that annoying bugtracker (launchpad));
And there is no KOffice 1.6.

by Max (not verified)

> And there is no KOffice 1.6.

Does this mean no Krita?

by imbrandon (not verified)

nope , krita is installed by default also , koffice 1.6 was just released to late in the cycle to include, it will be avaible via kubuntu.org though soonish

by Jucato (not verified)

KOffice 1.6 has been available to Edgy (and Dapper) since it was released. But like what imbrandon said, it was too late in the development cycle to include it. Here's the link on how to get KOffice 1.6 in Kubuntu:

http://kubuntu.org/announcements/koffice-16.php

by Rick (not verified)

I guess it is okay...

My complaints:

1) The crippled Konqueror profiles. Yes, there are instructions on how to restore the default profiles, but each time the kdebase package is updated the crippled ones reappear. And this breaks things like the "Home" icon in Kicker which actually points to the filemanagement Konqueror profile.

2) The power management system, which is a clone of a broken GNOME hack which delegated power management to a tray applet just because the original programmer wanted to use the gconf system for storing the configuration and didn't know how to access that data from a system daemon.

I did my best to get rid of this system, but the "Suspend" and "Hibernate" buttons are still there in the logout dialog. Of course they crash the system if clicked, even though suspending my machine works using /etc/acpi/sleep.sh.

3) Scribus needs to be started like this; "LANG=[C/xx_XX] scribus[-ng]" or it only allows you to use size 0.5 fonts.

by djouallah mimoune (not verified)

as a happy kubuntu dapper user - dual boot as my work planning software still don't work on Wine- I think if you don't have an internet access; it will be diffucult to upgrade software
as in thild world countries; net connexion is not granted; imagine that last time tu upgrade amarok ,I go the cybercafe then for home to unstall all those deb for six times it says some libs lack there and there.

I have just a secret dream; just grap one file - like firefox2- go home and instal it; it is really sad that windows people can do that since 1982.

regards
mimoune

by ZoltanH (not verified)

Well me too an really happy Ubuntu/Kubuntu user, but I don't want to use windows again. Because Linux gives you choice - but windows not. You surely using/used hundreds of software with similar functions on win, but none of it gives you sure stabilty, full scalable solutions, fast help. Yes, linux is young, and still evolving. There problems, errors, unusual package usage - but count it how many years after the community could show up an usable system, and yes - mostly without 'klik-klik'. And put next to it the Ms Windows. 1982 till today is a very long time, but it seems nothing is changed really, all of that - there are many unused possibility.

But the community trying to give their users freedom, and free choice to use such software and with capabilties wich you requiers.
Therefore is made modules, plugins, a.s.o. The problem is that you are right, but just a little - because all linux distro's mother is the net.
I've got also an secret dream. Users are mostly without cry, and living with more help to each other to make every work in digital and non digital life happier. Help if you can. I'm sure you could. Even if only 'just' translating man pages, user guide, documentation to people who can make your wishes....

by djouallah momoune (not verified)

Thanks for that poetic response but IMHO developer don’t care; just tell me is it difficult just to install klik client by default; then make all those package available ( *.cmg) over the internet in way that we can downloading them using any operating system. Then installing them without worrying about lib dependency problems and all those crap; Because if you forget it 97 % of operating system used as client are windows; and all cyber café here use windows.

I am really sick that this wonderful operating system are harmed by such simple usability issue; people by nature are wick they don’t really care about a software if it is open or close; they simply want a software that works

Cheers
mimoune

by Brazilian Guy (not verified)

Yes. I agree with you frind. I have a nice 30KB/s conection at home, but I had this problem with Kubuntu also. The package manager have a weak dependencies structure. I give up the Kubuntu due this problem.

I was using Kurumin, a brazilian tropical Debian mod. I never had problems with this distro. It is possible to do thousands installs and updates without no problems.

Now I am playing with Mandriva 2007.0 - a dual linux boot. Mandriva is great, wonderfull. But you have a limited package supply, so you need to use de contrib and the plf sources. Plf is really great, but the contrib sometimes have dependencies problems.

I think Debian have the best package manager.

Euh debian and kubuntu have the same package manager...

by David (not verified)

I upgraded to Edgy from Dapper following these instructions:

Users of Kubuntu 6.06 LTS can upgrade to 6.10 over the internet by following these instructions:

* NOTE: This procedure upgrades your system over the Internet, which requires a large download of several hundred megabytes.
* In Konqueror go to /etc/apt, right click on sources.list and choose Actions -> Edit as Root
* Change all instances of dapper to edgy
* Launch a console with KMenu -> System -> Konsole
* In the console run: sudo apt-get update
* In the console run: sudo apt-get dist-upgrade and follow the prompts to upgrade
* In the console run: sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop python-qt3 python-kde3 ubuntu-minimal and follow the prompts to install
* Reboot your computer

But after the reboot I have 34 Packages pending for installation (mostly python stuff) but it won't do anything if I try to upgrade either in konsole (apt-get) or via adept... does anybody else have this problem?

by Michael (not verified)

If you read the apt-get message closely (if i.e you try to apt-get install a single one of them) it mentions why it cannot install those packages: You have installed packages which prevent installation. This is because python packages have changed names. Before they were called python-2.4-blabla or sth. like that. Now they are only called python-blabla. So you have to apt-get remove all those packages one by one which is a bit tedious unfortunately. Afterwards an apt-get upgrade will install all the remaining python packages properly. Hope this helps ;-)

by David (not verified)

Thanks for the answer Michael, I can see that there is some python packages that have the status "Upgradeable" but I don't see python-2.x packages that would maybe break things... I tried to remove python packages but that caused apt to remove almost the whole desktop (all kde packages) and that wasn't really what I wanted :)

In Konsole I don't get any error message, it just says 34 packages upgradeable and then nothing happens :(
Is there something else I can do?

Thanks in advance,
David

by cm (not verified)

You can try the following:

In a konsole:
apt-get dist-upgrade

This will list the packages that are held back.
Hit Ctrl-C to break out of the command if it stopped at a prompt instead of returning to the command line.

Then do
apt-get install list_of_package_names_from_above

It will tell you what packages it wants to add / remove / upgrade.
If it looks ok to you let apt-get do its work by answering "Y".