Kubuntu, first impressions.

[Scott Mazur]

Just to add my 2 cents worth...

I recently switched to Kubuntu coming from years of mandrake/mandriva.  My
hand was forced to switch after a seriously bad Mandriva 2007 install (your
mileage may vary).  Kubuntu got a serious 'wow' reaction.  Very nice.

I'm really not keen on the whole 'sudo' thing.  On a single user machine I can
see how this would be the cat's pajamas.  On a multi-user machine I think it's
just plain bad user management.  For every one who argues sudo is safer than
logging on as root, I reply it's just as easy to blindly type sudo when ever
there's a problem (which you'll get used to in a hurry because the fingers
always type faster than the brain can follow).  But I can 'tweak' the system
to fit my view of the world, it's not a big deal.

Many of the Kubuntu how-tos show screen captures and contain instructions that
are very specifically Gnome usage.  It took me some time to figure out there's
no system->administration menu in kde, and it wasn't just a borked install.

OpenOffice requires java but there is no java dependency in apt.  Now granted,
OO works without java installed, but without it OO takes forrreeevvvverr to
start.  I mean seriously long, to the point most users will either given up on
it or clicked the icon a few more times to be sure.  Installing j2re fixed it
up pronto, but that's beside the point.  Now I realize that Ubuntu can't put a
dependency on java in OO, but the OO config does have a 'no use java' option.
 So the OO package should at least go that route, or at least have the smarts
to see if java is installed or available first.  (new to deb packaging, so I
don't know how it all fits together).

I really miss the 'service' command from redhat based distros.  Near as I can
tell nothing more than a simple bash script is needed to 'simulate' this
command on deb based distros.  It would be a nice transitional tool that would
make moving between distros easier.

I don't understand why the bash 'tab auto complete' feature is commented out.
 It's extremely useful and user friendly (especially on a new system were not
all files are where you've come to expect them).  Having to turn it on after
install seems rather unfriendly.

The theme, fonts, icons are absolutely smashing!  This the first distro to
come close to my 'personal' preferences and I didn't have to go about the
system tweaking eye candy settings to get things back to usable.  I would have
prefered kwrite over kate as the default text editor (kate is far better for
working on projects, but mostly I just want to work on a file at a time).

I like that changing the system is more hands on config file editing. 
Mandriva gui tools were nice when they worked, but more often than not you
needed to hand edit the config files anyway, and then you risked having the
gui tool stomp all over your changes.  I also like that I can depend on
'other' gui tools like the KDE config tools to do the same job now.  It's a
good shift in strategy in my opinion, although I think new users will prefer
to see more how-tos using the standard desktop config tools to do these things
rather than hand editing config files.

Apt-get is sooo much better than Mandriva update but there seem to be several
'update' tools in the menus, with slightly different interfaces.  Adding the
extra repositories should have been a no brainer but it actually took a fair
bit of googling to get straight what goes where.  I'm still not entirely sure
I've got all of them the way I want.

Spent far to much time learning that the 'login window preferences' only
applied to gdm.  Probably because for starters, it only works if you logged in
through gdm (and dies silently if you don't).  Kubuntu should take a wee bit
more time ensuring that the kdm login manager and menu items are in sync.

Now if only someone could find a way to add a Kubuntu theme to kdm so that it
integrates with the kde login manager instead of bypassing it!

Great work Kubuntu!

Scott

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