[vox] Debian + KDE vs. Kubuntu

[Micah J. Cowan]

On Tue, May 23, 2006 at 11:27:17AM -0700, Bill Kendrick wrote:
> 
> It's finally happened.  I've bought a copy of Windows XP and will be
> installing it on my *sigh* home PC at some point soon.  (Waiting for the
> media and a hard drive to arrive in the mail.)
> 
> I'm considering taking this opportunity to make a fresh start...
> replace my cluttered Debian/sid system with a shiny new Kubuntu one.
> I'm curious, though... will it be worth it? :^)
> 
> Who here has made the switch from plain-Debian-plus-KDE-3.5 to
> [K]ubuntu?  What do you think?  I love Debian, but it's getting to be
> a little bit of a pain to maintain, since I'm getting lower and lower
> interest in doing sysadminy type stuff on my own box. :^/
> 
> (Of course, I'd also love a tiny spare box to run as a server, so my
> music collection, CUPS, DHCP, etc. aren't running on my desktop.
> Especially since I'll be *ugh* dual-booting it a lot.)

I just switched to Ubuntu at home. I had a Fedora install before that,
but at work I've been using Debian (which is why I wanted a Debian-based
install). I'm using KDE at work, but I'm using Gnome at home. The
differences aren't too significant for my purposes... I think I like the
default keybindings for gnome-terminal slightly better than for the KDE
terminal, as they are similar to those used for Firefox in tabbed
browsing.

The Ubuntu install is the cleanest, quickest install I've ever done.
Everything just worked. I'll probably switch at work when I get the
chance.

I had to install some package or other to enable MP3 functionality in my
players, but it was readily available once I enabled universe and
multiverse repositories.

To play encrypted DVDs, there's a /bit/ of a hoop to jump through: you
have to install a package (I think it's libdvdread3), and then you have
to run a script from somewhere that /actually/ downloads and enables the
appropriate libs.... the info is at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RestrictedFormats, but the important part is:

  $ sudo apt-get install libdvdread3 build-essential debhelper fakeroot
  $ sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/examples/install-css.sh

To install recent versions of firefox and shockwave-flash, I had best
luck going outside the package system to do so.

I set my repositories to use the "breezy badger"+1 experimental
repositories. I've run into a few broken dependencies, so I wouldn't
recommend that. Also, I couldn't get the DefaultRelease to work for me:
the update manager would suddenly claim there were a ton of things to be
updated when I added the Dapper Dan repositories, even though my
DefaultRelease was Breezy Badger...

I ran into trouble setting up my stoopid proprietary Samsung CLP-500
drivers. It would fail to install its drivers via CUPS, but fail to tell
me the reason. I eventually figured out that the web administration
interface for cups is disabled by default, and had to be enabled.

By default, Ubuntu does not set up a root user password.
Administrator-level users use sudo to do everything. Unfortunately, due
to the stupidity of my printer driver's installer, it requires a root
password to exist, so I did actually use one.

Hope that helps!

P.S., at the same time, I also tried to install Plan9 (for kicks), which
turned out to be the /worst/ install I can recall (it rearranged my
partitions so my minor numbers changed, so I couldn't even boot Ubuntu
until I fixed the GRUB config and fstab). And it didn't even work (and
didn't detect the I/O error it got from the faulty CD during install).
Plus, it doesn't support my ethernet, so I wouldn't be able to do
anything terribly useful with it anyway. :-(

So.... what're you going to use on WinXP? :)

-- 
Micah J. Cowan
Programmer, musician, typesetting enthusiast, gamer...
http://micah.cowan.name/