One of the advantages of linux is there are a number of desktop environments to choose from whereas the Mac or Windows only gives one.
I’ve been using Ubuntu (32bit) for a while as a basic user dual-booted with Vista (64 bit). I mainly use Vista for gaming and Ubuntu for everything else and that works out well for me. Vista sits on one disk and Ubuntu 8.10 on another. Ubuntu uses the GNOME desktop environment which is clean, simple and stable in my experience though it’s default theme is awful and it’s not strong on eye candy. I wanted to try out KDE to experience that desktop and see if I liked it more or not. So I installed kubuntu-desktop via the repositories in what’s supposed to allow me to use either desktop as I chose (at the login screen).
The Good
It seemed to install fine and indeed I can indeed choose either gnome or KDE desktops to work in.
There is one thing I like about Vista. Call me shallow, but it’s the widgets. KDE has something similar. I haven’t tried it out that much yet but it’s nice to see it there. Ubuntu (which uses GNOME) let me install something widget-like but that experience wasn’t very satisfactory.
The sound is better. A lot better. For example, in DOSBox the experience is much sharper less stuttered sound, especially music.
KDE is prettier. I guess that’s shallow too but then part of the point of a GUI is the pretty, otherwise might as well hide in the CLI. The default theme and icons are nicer though you can certainly improve gnome there. What you can’t improve as much is the positioning and layout. Gnome seems stretched out and almost pixelated. KDE comes across sharp. Gnome might be able to say it’s cleaner if it weren’t for the brown because it’s sparse which is a good thing I think.
The Hmm
The startup sound is cut off abruptly.
Logging out produced black screen, however it was recoverable by control alt backspace.
Using the updater appeared to work but sometime after closing it a crash box popped up.
The reminder of Vista is again brought about with the aero-like mini windows which are just as crummy and pointless on KDE as they are in windows.
Dolphin has one drawback for me which is the lack of video preview which gnome does. Dolphin will preview for several other file types though.
The menu is a bit clunky much like Vista’s. I may get over it once I figure out the quicklaunch equivalent.
Compiz-fusion. It’s a bunch of GUI eye candy and some functionality which is both cool and better than anything in Vista though not so sure about the Mac. I wonder how it works in KDE if at all.
The odd graphical glitch especially when a window expands.
The Ugly
Literally ugly. Firefox tabs have odd artefacts below them looking somewhat like tabs. It’s moves around just by passing the mouse over them. My search on google revealed this is a common problem for which people are awaiting a fix. Selection buttons and other graphical elements also draw badly.
My windows NTFS drive will not mount via dolphin. It says;
An error occurred while accessing ‘Volume (ntfs)’, the system responded: org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.UnknownFailure: mount wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1. Missing codepage or helper program. Or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog – try dmsg | tail or so
in a small box inside dolphin. I can use the ntfs disk fine in the GNOME desktop if I switch and can use windows itself fine. I’ve looked around via google etc for answers and found many mount issues but nothing that seems to work for me. sudo and kdesudo dolphin didn’t work.
I’ve found if I go to the GNOME desktop and mount the drive there then logout and come back into KDE I can then use the drive normally.
This last issue is the one most irritating me at this time which is why I’ve detailed it in case some reader has a fix.
Overall KDE seems to have quite a few small problems. It’s appearance reminds me of Vista but also OS/X of the Mac. Of course the nuts and bolts are still the same as for Ubuntu. I’ll stick with it for a while to get a deeper feel for it, especially to use the various KDE designed applications and see how good they are.
Update: Fixed the hard drive issue with ntfs configuaration tool.
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