Q: Why does Kubuntu exist?

[Yuriy Kozlov]

On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 2:42 PM, Harald Sitter <apachelogger at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Hullos!
>
> In my recent wave of thinking about Kubuntu and how to make it clearer what
> exactly we are doing, I came to wonder why Kubuntu actually exists.
>
> Now, let me explain what I mean by that. Every project (every useful one
> anyway) is there to solve some problem or improve something, simply put a
> general justification for spending time on it. Kubuntu, being a useful project,
> must have some general justificaiton of existance, some problem, desire or
> similar.
>
> What I'd like to find out is exactly what Kubuntu is supposed to archive, and
> why other OS or distributions failed at it. Not so much by how we want to
> archive it or by what means we (want to) measure the successfulness of this.
>
> If everyone writes a couple of lines (some would call this brainstorming ;)),
> it might be easier to find a general definition as to why Kubuntu is existing
> and why it is good that it is existing.
>
> Thanks.
> --
> Harald Sitter
> Kubuntu Core Developer
> http://www.kubuntu.org
>

In my view, Kubuntu exists to be the best consumer desktop operating
system.  This means a lot of things that I think can be summed up this
way:
 - Pleasure to use.
 - Gets the job done.
 - Pleasure to develop for.
 - Free as in Freedom.

More specifically, in no particular order:
 1) stable
 2) good looking
 3) customizable
 4) provides all applications an average user needs (average != "normal")
 5) cutting edge technology -- the best applications out there
 6) user friendly
 7) one API to rule them all
 8) easy to maintain (don't have to constantly fiddle with settings or
clean up malware)
 9) choice to use any other (especially Free) application or library out there
 10) easy access to any other (especially Free) application or library out there
 11) Free as in Freedom
 12) brand and market momentum

KDE gives us 1-7.  KDE-only improves on 2,3,5,6, and especially 7[1].
Debian GNU/Linux gives us 8-11 and 1.  Ubuntu gives us 5 and 12 while
keeping 1.  All together, we have Kubuntu, and no other project has
quite the same potential with minimal compromises on each point.


[1] (4) remains a relatively weak point in KDE and thus Kubuntu.

~ Yuriy