Jamie's Random Musings
Various thoughts and adventures, including but not limited to Linux, Windows XP and Widows Vista, and assorted bits of hardware new and old.
Monday 10 August 2009, 10:54 AM
Kubuntu Netbook Release Coming
So, off to the Kubuntu 9.10 Alpha 3 Technical Overview. Not a lot more information there; it just says that there is a netbook image, but all that has been done so far is some changes in desktop and font settings, but more will be coming soon. This actually sounds like a good start to me, because what I would really like to see is a netbook-oriented distribution which takes the approach of just adjusting a standard Linux desktop to accommodate typical netbook hardware, rather than having a totally new desktop like UNR and Moblin do.
I've downloaded the Kubuntu netbook image, and converted it to a bootable USB stick using the Ubuntu 9.04 USB Startup Disk Creator (found under System/Administration). I have then booted that Live image on my ASUS N10J, and it looks pretty good. However, I don't use KDE much, so I'm not familiar enough with it to do much more at this time. I'll keep looking at the Live images as the development cycle moves along, and if they do some more interesting things I'll eventually try loading and running it on one or more of my netbook/nettop systems.
jw 10/8/2009
PreviousComments on this post
I know that KDE4.4 will be their netbook version so this is going to be a Kubuntu only thing?
My first though? "Oh crap."
Im typing from a Kubuntu9.04 right now, had it on for 3-4 months (and used it on my Dell Mini 9 too) and its NOT a top 3 or even 5 KDE4 that Ive tried.
That was the case 2-3 years ago and is still the case now.
Kubuntu is the red headed stepchild of the Buntu family and it shows when compared to other KDE distros..
I will give it a look of course but as someone who has tried every Kubuntu of the past 3 years, I have serious reservation about this based on their previous work on KDE.
@zeke123: Thanks for reading and commenting. Can you give us examples of some better KDE distributions? I am personally not very partial to KDE, so I haven't spent much time with it, and thus can't really make an informed comparison. I've worked with both Mandriva and openSuSE/KDE, are these what you consider better than Kubuntu? What others might be in that category - and if you were going to put KDE 4.4 on a netbook, what distribution would you start with?
Thanks again.
jw
Kubuntu is generally a very vanilla KDE distro. That's why you won't see some of the "extra" patches many other distros carry to make themselves stand out from what upstream KDE is doing.
I just saw KNE with the plasma-netbook in use yesterday (I haven't updated my KNE machine in the last few days, so mine still has plasma-desktop) on Scott Kitterman's netbook. Very nice looking! We were talking about changes that need to be made to the application launcher, but it looks like a good start.
I think we'll be the first distro to ship with plasma-netbook too :)
