Pinderkent

I'm very happy to see that Ubuntu has been a major force in bringing Linux to the masses. Those users get a better desktop experience that they would likely have gotten using a different operating system, while also benefitting from the low cost and the better security Linux offers. Unfortunately, I see a bothersome trend forming: Ubuntu users who seem to be under the impression that GNOME is the only desktop for Linux.

It is in the second last paragraph of that blog entry that I see this problem manifesting itself. The first example is in the sentence that begins: I don't like the way Ubuntu handles network drives (even Puppy Linux does a better job, in my view) ..... The second example is later on: .... and Ubuntu still looks very average - aesthetically - compared to XP, let alone OSX.

As a commenter to that blog article pointed out, those are not problems with Ubuntu or Linux, specifically. Those complains involve GNOME. Now, Ubuntu does ship with GNOME as its default desktop, so most first-time Linux users may come to think that it is the only software there is. Of course, there are many alternatives, including KDE and XFCE, among a wide variety of plain window managers. Luckily, Ubuntu allows for such software to be installed easily and painlessly.

It becomes a situation of advising new Ubuntu users that they do have a lot of choice available to them. If they don't like certain aspects of the default GNOME desktop, it is very easy for them to replace it with KDE. Another option is, of course, to recommend the use of a distro like Kubuntu, which combines the benefits of Ubuntu with those of KDE.

So if you're a Linux user who is setting up an Ubuntu system for a friend or relative, be sure to install at least KDE in addition to the GNOME environment that is already present. You may just make their experience a lot more flexible, and hence enjoyable.

As has widely been reported, Ubuntu 7.04 is now available. While I know a great many people use Ubuntu as their primary GNU/Linux distribution, I have usually avoided it as I prefer KDE over GNOME. Because of that preference, I have leaned towards Kubuntu instead. Kubuntu essentially takes Ubuntu, and replaces the GNOME desktop environment with KDE. And when there's a new version of Ubuntu released, soon after we get a new version of Kubuntu. In this case, that version is Kubuntu 7.04.

While I find myself using Solaris and NetBSD more often these days, I do like to keep up with what is happening in the Linux world. So today I decided to download and install the newly-released Kubuntu 7.04. After installing it and using it for a little while, I am very impressed. Dare I say it, I think Kubuntu puts up quite a challenge for Windows Vista to face.

Installation
The installation is, of course, the first part of Kubuntu that many users will experience. Being quite used to the text-based installer of a system like NetBSD, I do not think that I'm a good judge of how easy or difficult a typical individual would find it to install Kubuntu. But I will say that for my installation attempt, it went flawlessly. Each step to be performed was explained in a clear and concise manner. The progression was sensible, and in the end I got a system that was working. I have no complaints here.

KDE
Although KDE 3.5.6 isn't a new release by any means (it was released at the end of January 2007), it's a very enjoyable desktop environment to use, and the Kubuntu developers do a really good job of integrating it with the rest of the GNU/Linux system. My one main complaint has to do with the default theme. Namely, I dislike the use of the 3D gradient sort of effect used in the window title bars. The grey area, which intersects the lower half of the window title, is distracting and pointless. Of course, the theme can be quite easily changed, so this is not a major problem by any means.

Usability
I have found the usability of Kubuntu 6.10 to be excellent. As always, KDE provides a very clean, integrated and effective desktop environment. All of the major types of applications are present for starters. Konqueror provides a fast, memory-efficient and standards-compliant web browser. Although I prefer mutt, KMail is truly a very powerful email client. Kopete is a complete instant messenging solution. Of course, there are many, many other useful KDE applications to choose from. And beyond that, there are the thousands of other open source applications that are so easily installed.

Kubuntu does a great job at showing off the maturity of today's open source software. More importantly, I think it shows how the commercial offerings from various other companies are facing some very stiff competition from their open source counterparts. In terms of usability, Kubuntu is more than ready for the corporate desktop. As mentioned earlier, it provides essentially all of the basic applications needed to run a business, all without the cost and licensing hassle of many of the commercial offerings. And I do not doubt for a moment that many home users would find it to be a practical, high-quality system, as well. In many cases, I think Kubuntu would render Windows Vista sufficiently useless, or at least not worth the cost of using it.

Performance
Although I have not performed any benchmarking, I do get the impression that this release of Kubuntu is more efficient and responsive than the last release of Kubuntu that I tried on this test computer, Kubuntu 6.10. Applications seem quicker to start up, and even when using them they feel much more responsive. Switching between tabs in the Konqueror web browser, which was noticeably slow under the installation of Kubuntu 6.10, happens almost instantaneously now. The application menu on the taskbar also seems a whole lot more responsive, with the list of applications being displayed virtually instantaneously. I don't know if this possible performance improvement is due to the use of GCC 4.1.2, Glibc 2.5, or the Linux kernel 2.6.20. Regardless, I am always pleased to find software getting faster as time goes on, rather than getting more bloated and inefficient as is often the case with many of the commercial desktop OS offerings.

Conclusions
Kubuntu 7.04 is the real deal. The installation was easy and successful. In terms of usability, everything is there: KDE offers all of the necessary applications, and Kubuntu offers the integration. The performance is suitable. And unlike Windows Vista, Kubuntu 7.04 is a pleasure to use. So I'd suggest that you try it out.

Today I heard about a Linux distribution called Linux Mint. More specifically, I was interested to read about their release of a KDE Edition of their distribution. On the page talking about their KDE edition, they mention the software that is included with their distribution. But something seemed out of place. It took me a moment to realize what it was: ... the default Web browser is Firefox 2.0.0.3.

I find it very odd that the KDE-based edition of a Linux distribution would choose to go with Firefox as their default web browser. KDE already comes with an excellent web browser: Konqueror.

Konqueror is actually more than just a web browser. It is also the KDE file manager. Nevertheless, it is a very capable browser, and can often act as a complete replacement for a browser such as Firefox. When running the full KDE desktop, it would in fact make a lot more sense to use Konqueror rather than Firefox. Konqueror integrates very well with the rest of the KDE environment, which is just not the case with the typically GNOME/GTK+-based Firefox.

A further reason to use Konqueror rather than Firefox when running KDE is a reduction in memory usage. When using KDE, many of the shared libraries that Konqueror depends on will already be loaded, and shared with the rest of the KDE environment. But Firefox typically does not make use of these libraries. Instead, it will require the GTK+, GDK and GLib libraries to be loaded. This is wasteful, as these libraries only really duplicate much of the functionality already offered by the already-loaded KDE and Qt shared libraries.

The performance of Konqueror versus Firefox is a contentious issue. Although I have not performed any formal benchmarking, I do tend to believe that Konqueror offers better performance than Firefox. Konqueror has also seemed more responsive. This may be due to it directly using the Qt widget library, rather than adding something like the XUL layer that Firefox uses.

It makes little sense to me why Linux Mint's KDE edition uses Firefox rather than Konqueror. Feature-wise, Konqueror is comparable to Firefox. In terms of performance, Konqueror is better than Firefox. And finally, Konqueror integrates better into KDE than Firefox ever will. So why do they use Firefox?

Konqueror is a web browser developed as part of the KDE project. KDE is, of course, one of the major open source desktop environments. Over time, Konqueror has become well-known for its high quality and standards-compliance. So I really wasn't surprised when today I read an article stating that KHTML 3.5.6 is the most CSS3-compliant browser. The article does make one comment that I would like to address, however: It really is a shame that only a tiny proportion of web users have access to this excellent browser.

I would consider that statement to be incorrect. Virtually every web user can use Konqueror. All they would need to do is install an operating system like Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, or Mac OS X. For most people, at least one of those operating systems will run on some piece of hardware they have available. And easily enough they'll be able to install KDE, and be able to experience the full benefit of Konqueror for themselves. Of course, that will change once KDE 4, which will likely offer native support for Windows systems, is released.

The actual benefits of 3D computer desktops is a topic I have written about in the past. And today I'd like to revisit it, specifically after seeing an article linking to a YouTube video of Beryl in action. In short, the title of the article challenges Bill Gates and Microsoft to exceed what is shown in the video. Except I don't think that there video really shows anything remarkable.

Shimmering windows and traditional 2D desktops placed around the faces of a cube may look pretty and be eye-catching, but I don't think they really offer any real benefits. There's a definite productivity decrease while waiting for the windows to stop jiggling after minimizing or maximizing them, for instance. Placing your 2D desktops around a cube limits you to only six virtual workspaces, while it's often convenient to have many more than that. It may look impressive to rotate a window into the screen at an angle, but beyond that, there's really no benefit to being able to do something like that.

While open source developers are free to work on whatever they wish, I would have to hope that more effort is instead put towards improving the existing X11 desktop environments. I am without doubt that the memory consumption of KDE and GNOME could be reduced a great deal, for instance. There are likely some performance enhancements that could be made. Doing such work, while not always exciting or fun, would surely lead to more enjoyable and productive desktop environments.