Beautiful phrases…

Who says quotes about physics and maths are always funny or cheesy? Here is one that is actually very smooth:

Physics and Maths are the undercurrent of life. Why? Because physics is time, and math is the explanation.
And together, they are the phenomenon of the earth.

Kubuntu KDE 4 Review

There have been plenty of reviews deriding KDE 4 (the Linux Desktop Environment). I decided to see if it were really the case of KDE 4 being a bad nut, or just the distributions that shipped it.
My emphasis is on the desktop pliability of distributions, with a minimal use of the command line. So if there are complicated, script-type, workarounds to bugs and problems, and there isn’t a simple solution, I am afraid it does not hold for me.

So with all that in mind, I decided to use Kubuntu as my first KDE 4 distro to check out. Why did I choose this in the beginning? OpenSUSE 11 has a powerful KDE 4 option, as does Fedora. But I believed that the KDE 4 version of Kubuntu is only a community version, so it should be the closest possible to the original state of things. This does not, however, mean that I am reviewing KDE 4 (or 4.0), only the distribution Kubuntu KDE 4 Remix, along with its particularities.

KDE 4 from Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy

I may also point out here that I had tried installing KDE 4 from within a running Ubuntu installation (from the Software installation tool, and choosing ‘KDE 4’). That got KDE 4 installed, and I was able to restart my computer and log in to KDE 4. The resolution was incorrectly picked up: it did not detect my simple native resolution of 1024×768. Furthermore, changing the resolution from the ‘System settings’ > ‘Display’ tool changed the resolution, but only until the next restart of my computer, when it went back to the old configuration. I already had everything else installed and configured from my Ubuntu installation, so there was not much else to test out. Nevertheless, I noted the ugly look in most applications, as they had failed to adapt to the KDE4 theme properly. But I suppose that was only to be expected.

Kubuntu 8.04 Hardy KDE 4 Remix

At this point, I decided that if I was going to be really testing out a KDE 4 distro, I must install it from scratch. So I downloaded the Kubuntu 8.04 KDE 4 Remix from the website.

My test machine is an Intel P4 (2.4GHz) with 512 MB RAM. This is not too low, and has run most Linux distributions satisfactorily.

So in went the freshly burnt LiveCD. And the problems began immediately: the screen resolution was still incorrect. Nevertheless, I persevered and went ahead with the install in a skewed screen. Fortunately, the install went ahead and I was able to boot into my fresh Kubuntu installation.

But the woes were back, the resolution, no matter how hard I tried to correct it, would not correct. More on that later.

Aesthetics

I have always maintained that aesthetics are an important part of any desktop operating system. Kubuntu KDE 4 turns out to be an ugly deal. The huge black taskbar does not go well with the Mac-ish windows theme. If they wanted a horrible looking cross between Vista and OS X, they certainly achieved that. The colours were bad, the effects poor.

Applications

Kubuntu KDE 4 stuck with the standard complement of programs. Amarok, GIMP, OpenOffice.org etc. were all there. The Dolphin file manager was default, but the shortcomings of this were somewhat redeemed by the inclusion of Konqueror, which seemed to have taken up the KDE 4 theme well, as opposed to most other apps that looked like as they were glued on.

Branding

There is very little to differentiate Kubuntu KDE 4 from a generic installation of KDE 4. Indeed, the only obvious branding and stylization I noted was the ‘Kubuntu’ tag on the K Menu.

Stability and bugs

After about ten minutes of use, I had not suffered any crashes or major bugs. There were plenty of screen tearings and glitches here and there (like ‘Widgets’ not deleting properly, clicks not being recognized now and then), but nothing really major.

But these small annoyances do stack up, and within twenty minutes, I was feeling irritated. To add up, I found that the PrintScreen button on my PC was not bringing up the Snapshot tool. I opened it up from the the newfangled KDE 4 ‘Kicker’, but to my consternation, it failed to take snapshots: it just did not do anything at all. That also explains the lack of screenshots in this review…

By now, I was getting fed up trying to work on a wrongly resolved screen (which I might try to describe as a higher than normal resolution, all shifted to one side and flickering very slightly). I opened up the Display tool from the Settings panel once again. This time, I checked ‘…Apply on startup…’ when setting the resolution correctly.

That was a major mistake. Just for charms, I restarted my computer. I got to the login screen, logged in, and then…. nothing. Yes, simply a black screen. Ctrl+Alt+Backspace? Nothing at all. Ctrl+Shift+Esc? Still nothing.

I had to do a hard reboot, and this time opted for the command line, even though I did not particularly feel like it. And here was the ultimate surprise: nothing! No prompt, no text area, just a blinking cursor that did not respond to any keys that I could throw at it. This was certainly the end.

Verdict

I do hope that this Kubuntu KDE 4 Remix disaster is only particular to my machine. Enough said.

Update: A sentence in the beginning of the review edited for clarity.

Linux

One of my old interests has recently gotten very strong. I have been trawling the wikis of different distros, forums and the Distrowatch.com comments page. I hope to be able to post reviews of different things in my own emphasised line – desktop usage. Hopefully, I’ll be able to give a thorough review of Kubuntu KDE 4 in a day or so.