Default Ubuntu applications

[Christopher Chan]

>>> The major plus in KDE was that you could run the same session for as
>>> long as you wanted (a day, a month, a year) without having to log out ->
>>> startx. with Gnome, I now log out once a week to keep it running
>>> smoothly, a la Windows 98. Still, for some reason, my panel lost after a
>>> security-update-provoked reboot the quick menu which allowed me to log
>>> out, suspend, reboot etc. effortlessly, and that menu has not come back,
>>> nor can I make it come back. And I don't even want to start with how
>>> buggy some Gnome applications are.
>>
>> I must take issue with this. I have been running Ubuntu since the
>> first version. OK, I concede, I have skipped a few; I ran 6.06 until
>> 7.10, then 8.04 'til 9.04, for example.  I have never experienced
>> problems with stability, reliability or robustness. I find no
>> difference in reliability between KDE or GNOME. In both I have
>> occasionally screwed it up so much that I have had to Ctrl-Alt-F2 to a
>> text console and do ``telinit 6'' and a few times I've just given up,
>> wiped&  reinstalled. On both GUIs, on various distros.
>
> I *do* have a lot of issues with the Gnome on 9.04. Evolution freezing
> on startup till local IMAP cache and settings are deleted, Evolution
> being generally slow and unresponsive; menu items diasppearing between
> reboots, the whole panel missing after a reboot (sudo apt-get
> gnome-panel fixed that), video not playing on Firefox (The Totem plugin
> is useless), inability to tell gnome what apps to open for which file
> extensions, Gnome (or Ubuntu?) causing OOo not to respect the
> high-contrast colour mode (works fine on KDE), inability to set the
> colour scheme for KDE3 apps (Ubuntu or Gnome issue) rendering Scribus,
> k3b, kaffeine useless, while Scribus-ng, which runs on Qt4, looks just
> weird with black text on dark background; gnome-panel suddenly crashing;
> not a Gnome issue, I think, but Xorg hogging memory and slowing things
> down -->  swapping, unresponsiveness; on Ubuntu Gnome, Claws Mail can
> unexpectedly crash if one alters the colours in the settings and applies
> the changes without first pressing "OK"; and now I need to be going, but
> the list could be carried on.

I assure you, the problem is GNOME unless both Ubuntu and OpenSolaris 
are hopeless at implementing it.