A case for KDE to replace Win7
Rsadeika
Posts: 3,837
I have been using Kubuntu 14.04 64-bit for the last couple of months and I think that if you are looking for a replacement OS of Windows 7 this might be a good recomendation. I have tried the others - Debian, Fedora, openSUSE KDE versions, and I found for my purposes Kubuntu to offer the most. One big reason was the Kubuntu software center, Muon Discover, it is better organized and in my opinion offers more choices.
When you first start up Kubuntu, it sure looks a lot like a Windows 7 desktop, the open screen and the task bar across the bottom of the screen, plus the big K on the left bottom, which is the start menu. You can place icons of your most used programs on the left side of the screen and you can place your favorite gadgets on the right side of the screen, just like in Windows 7. Also jazzed just upgraded SimpleIDE, so now, that program is also available for Kubuntu.
Some drawbacks for Kubuntu, I really miss Windows Media Center, especially for recording TV programs. The Windows simple and straight forward task manager, comes in very handy when some programs run amiss. And the Windows formating tool, still can not figure out how to do that in Kubuntu, in an easy one double click of an icon. These are just some of the biggies.
I think that some where along the line I will have to learn how todo some batch scripts to create some commands for doing some of my favorite missing Windows commands, but I do not see any replacement of WMC. So far I have been somewhat pleased with Kubuntu, other than a big crash that I had, which I did resolve, this system just might become my Windows 7 permenant replacement. Anybody else have a good experience with Kubuntu 14.04 64-bit?
Ray
When you first start up Kubuntu, it sure looks a lot like a Windows 7 desktop, the open screen and the task bar across the bottom of the screen, plus the big K on the left bottom, which is the start menu. You can place icons of your most used programs on the left side of the screen and you can place your favorite gadgets on the right side of the screen, just like in Windows 7. Also jazzed just upgraded SimpleIDE, so now, that program is also available for Kubuntu.
Some drawbacks for Kubuntu, I really miss Windows Media Center, especially for recording TV programs. The Windows simple and straight forward task manager, comes in very handy when some programs run amiss. And the Windows formating tool, still can not figure out how to do that in Kubuntu, in an easy one double click of an icon. These are just some of the biggies.
I think that some where along the line I will have to learn how todo some batch scripts to create some commands for doing some of my favorite missing Windows commands, but I do not see any replacement of WMC. So far I have been somewhat pleased with Kubuntu, other than a big crash that I had, which I did resolve, this system just might become my Windows 7 permenant replacement. Anybody else have a good experience with Kubuntu 14.04 64-bit?
Ray
Comments
I suspect that the media center features are going to be the most difficult to find what you want in Linux. These are tied into 'for profit' enterprises and MS even owns NBC.
I have no real experience with KDE. There are just such a wide variety of Linux distributions that it is hard to keep up with all the choices. Good luck. But consider having a dual boot with Windows7 if you can. It is a handy way to keep some features that you don't want to give up or haven't yet discovered a Linux alternative.
I think a dual boot is a horrible solution, my aim is to find a suitable OS that takes care of all my needs as described in the first post. There just has to be something out there.
Ray
You really have only three choices -- Apple, MS, or Linux for OSes. Linux has a lot of distributions that feeling a bit different or are special purpose, but it is all Linux under the hood. You might try www.distrowatch.com for information about specific distributions.
My main frustrations with Windows are
1. The update feature is absurd in refusing to let you turn off a computer.
2. Popups drive me nuts.
3. The messages seem to dire.
4. I'd rather not spend money on software that tells me to spend more money on more software.
Others seem to like running Windows inside of Linux, but I don't. I won't try to sell you on my personal preferences as I am sure you feel as strongly about your own as I do mine.
I did move away from Ubuntu as Brad's Spin Tool seemed to no longer work on it and shifted over to Mint and then Debian. Many Linux users drift from one distribution to another as they acquire more experience.
Kbuntu, Ubuntu or whatever buntu are no good to me as they always seem to be broken in unnecessary and mysterious ways when I want to do anything interesting with them.
Perhaps XBMC can full fill your media needs: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO:Compile_XBMC_on_Debian_or_Ubuntu
I have no idea but it has many happy users on the Raspberry Pi.
Well I'm a Linux Mint Cinnamon man myself (productivity/usability + winkey brings up "start menu") but you might not be as versed in Linux as you think you are so you might need to do your homework because:
1. Watching/Recording TV programs - Either use the simple MeTV which works a treat or the very sophisticated MythTV with frontend and backend you name it.. There are whole distros just setup for Media.
2. Task manager - Try the "System Monitor" which in KDE is KSysGuard or gnome-system-monitor elsewhere. Of course there is "top" you can run in a terminal.
3. Formatting tool? What! Linux is full of them, either straight from some file managers (many versions, plugin or configure), or "Disks" which even allows you to do SMART tests etc. Of course never forget gparted, the essential partitioning and formatting tool.
4. Batch scripts? Isn't that what BASH is for but far far more powerful?
declare -A a # declare an associative array 'a' faking a bi-dimensional indexed array i=1; j=2 # initialize some indices a[$i,$j]=5 # associate value "5" to key "$i,$j" (i.e. "1,2") echo ${a[$i,$j]} # print the stored value at key "$i,$j"TIP: Go to Keyboard configurations and setup "keyboard shortcuts" so you can easily bring up your favourites with a keystroke or at least add them to the panel or start menuetc.
BTW, I drifted through distros and now I am very stuck on Mint Cinnamon for several years. Also BST requires the ia32-libs installed for 32-bit compatibility in a 64-bit system but I've also found that I need to run bst 0.19.3 to get it to work (of course you need to install the Parallax font too)
So far, with Kubuntu 14.04 64-bit, I have not run into that problem, yet. Believe me, I give the OS a good work out, and yes I do try some really weird stuff, accidently of course.
Ray
Its a catch 22. you cant get Really good codecs IMO for linux . so thigs that rely on them often are sketchy.
and untill we get more open yet used codecs . there is not much incentive to make a better app XYZ
http://web.njit.edu/all_topics/Prog_Lang_Docs/html/mplayer/codecs.html
But there may be 'as good' free alternatives now.
http://web.njit.edu/all_topics/Prog_Lang_Docs/html/mplayer/codecs.html
When I went over to Linux, I just accepted that there was sure to be something that Microsoft would manage to hold back. So I have not really tried to get each and every feature that I like.
These days, I try to watch TV and video in Chinese.. just to improve my ability. So I don't need these.
So, what does my KDE desktop look like, on the left side, I have my frequently used icons like Arora, a minimalist web browser that does not show any google ads, period. I also use Yahoo! as the search engine, kind of wish Bing was available. Then I have the standard fare, Konsole, Dolphin, Putty, KUser, KCalc, and HDHomeRun. For the time being I use the Konsole to start up SimpleIDE. I have one of the HDHomeRun tuners attched to an antenna, so the HDHomeRun program, using VLC, provides me with some local TV programs, to bad the VLC record feature does not work with this configuration.
On the right side I have two gadgets Popup Notes and a Calendar. The Calendar gadget was part of a wxPython tutorial that I was looking at, perfect, I have the source code. Now if I can make some improvements to that program like right click on a date and a menu pops up with some choices like: Appointment, Journal, ..., etc. ...
One of the suggestions that I did add was the System Monitor, now it sits in the panel, or as I like to call it, the task bar. The other program that I am now cosidering is Krusader, it looks like a very decent KDE GUI implementation of Midnight Commander, still have to see what that has to offer.
Now I did mention that I had a crash with Kubuntu some time ago, as it turns out when you put Kubuntu into sleep mode and then try too wake it, if you have not installed the OS on your C drive, Kubuntu loses its way. My C drive is a 256GB SSD, plus I have a USB3.0 2TB external drive. My intentions were to have the C drive contain the actual programs to run the OS, and the external hard drive would be the container for everything else. For example my Dolphin folder would reside there so all the programs would run from that drive. Well it did not turn out the way I wanted, so I just installed the OS on my external drive, hense the crash of the system when I tried to wake it from sleep. In the end, to resolve that issue all I had to do was turn off everything, including the external drive, and then turn everything back on, so I do not use the sleep mode anymore. I am sure that somewhere in the install process there was a way to partition and assign things, but for the average user, like myself, not something that I would like to spend time doing, also very good way to really mess things up, fast.
So all in all, short of not being able to replace WMC and Netflix, this is looking like a keeper.
Ray
PS I am now very seriously considering a Surface Pro 3, I wonder if I could sync that with the Kubuntu desktop? This topic may be started in another thread.
Here is how I put an icon on my desk top for SimpleIDE.
1) sudo apt-get install kmenuedit
2) Run kmenuedit from Konsole (Don't ask me why kmenuedit does not get added to the menus itself)
3) Add a menu item for SimpleIDE. I think it's easy enough to see how to do that. Set an icon for SimpleIDE whilst you are there.
4) At this point you should be able to find SimpleIDE wherever you put it in the menu system.
5) Drag and drop SimpleIDE from the menu onto the desk top.
Note: you will need to have right clicked on the desktop and selcted "unlock widgets before you do this. Lock the widgets again when you are done.
There should be SimpleIDE icons in the installation package you can use.
Also adding that I installed PropellerIDE, and after a tiny glitch, it is running just fine. At this point I have SimpleIDE and PropellerIDE working as expected, so now I have access to programming the Propeller in C or Spin on a Linux machine.
Ray
Ray
What "system" are you running there?
I ask because after many years of "apt-get update" and "apt-get upgrade" I have never seen my Debian box with KDE suddenly get slower.
However, maybe you have hit on one of worst deep dark secrets of KDE. A horrible thing that annoys everybody...
Some years ago KDE introduced a great idea. The idea was to have a system, running in the background, that will scan all the files on your entire file system and index them. In that way it would somehow be possible to find things on your computer very easily.
What I found, and many others, is that when you install KDE this damn thing hogs 100% of your CPU for a very long time as it does it's searching and indexing thing. This is not a Linux problem this is a KDE problem. The whole show becomes unusable until it has finished it's scan and indexing.
So what you have to do is turn this brain damaged pile of jobbie off as soon as you can. Like so:
1) Hit the "K" button.
2) Select "System Settings"
3) Oh heck! The thing I want to talk about is no longer there in my Debian Jessie.
Used to be that somewhere in "System Settings" you would find something about "Search and Indexing". In there you could turn off this CPU sucking monster.
That never did any harm because I never missed it and I don't know of anybody that knows what use it is anyway!
If I want to search my file system I use "locate" or "find" and "grep".
Seems that it is possible that the KDE guys have removed or tamed this beast in my latest KDE version any way.
The upshot is that whilst your machine is doing nothing much the CPU load as shown by "top" should only 1% or so which is generally the Chrome browser doing whatever it does.
By the way: Nobody wants to go "backwards" to the command line, we have never left it! But we like to have a command line and a GUI at the same time. That much maligned command line has a lot more power and ease of use than you might imagine.
Ray
Yes but what distribution are you running there?
For sure if I ever see "...a prompt on my task bar saying a security update ia available." I would be turning whatever does that off as soon as possible.
Never seen it on any Linux machine I used since 1997. Except maybe for that abomination known a "Ubuntu"....
Ray
238 packages to auto remove does seem a bit extreme.
Whilst you machine is being slow can you fire up a terminal and issue a "top" command?
Then we might see what is hogging all your CPU there.
Please don't tell me how crude it is to go to the command line to do that. I recently had a Win 7 box acting very slow as well. Getting into the task manager and checking the processes and loads with the wonderful GUI was almost impossible.
Who said so?
It's a billion lines of software, written by humans. It has bugs and holes like anything else.
Linux may have suffered from attacks less than other systems for whatever reasons but that is no reason to be complacent.
Ray
I was expecting something more like:
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 2843 heater 20 0 438m 28m 19m R 6.3 0.9 0:14.35 konsole 1947 root 20 0 224m 90m 59m S 5.3 3.0 2:10.57 Xorg 3255 heater 20 0 1399m 429m 24m S 1.3 14.2 5:33.79 chrome 3102 heater 20 0 853m 153m 71m S 0.7 5.1 4:23.33 chrome 3134 heater 20 0 635m 203m 87m S 0.7 6.7 5:50.92 chrome 66 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:03.12 kworker/u:2 3414 heater 20 0 410m 55m 3084 S 0.3 1.8 0:16.90 plugin_host 1 root 20 0 15436 848 696 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.58 init 2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd 3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.66 ksoftirqd/0 5 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:02.72 kworker/u:0 6 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/Ray
I really hope you find space and time to put up a Debian machine with KDE someday.
Linux may be lacking in some luxuries from the Windows / Mac world but it is such a huge and wondrous playground it should not be missed out.
It's a shame things like Ubuntu are making a mess of it.
This mornings update/upgrade/security update was all about the kernel, so I am not sure who is to blame, the Linux kernel people or Ubuntu, I did not think that the Ubuntu people would be changing/altering the Linux kernel. If this happens one more time, then Linux will be gone forever from any of my systems.
Ray
Ray
Over the years I have seen many cases of Windows becoming broken after an update. Some interesting cases where when a virus scanner decides that some updated Windows code is dangerous and "fixes" it, thus leaving you with a system that won't even start up. Seems that we all have the same experiences and come to opposite conclusions. Perhaps the more correct conclusion is that all these systems are prone to failure. They are all made by fallible humans.
Only the other day I had to use a Win 7 system that had become so slow it was barely operable. I could not for the life of me figure out what it was doing. Certainly nothing I asked it to do. Like your case, an eventual reboot got it back to normality.
Our anecdotes don't really prove anything here.
I would not be so quick to blame "the Linux people" or Canonical. Could be you had some process go wild on you, like that file system indexing thing I mentioned. I was hoping we could tell from the output of top. A reboot would likely "fix" the issue even without any updates, as you see has.
Certainly Canonical will have made changes to their kernel, most Linux distributions do. After all people like RedHat are developing kernel features that may eventually end up in the main line kernel. Canonical seem to be a long way behind in contributing their changes back to the kernel (and other) developers and have a habit of breaking pretty much anything.
For stability I would recommend sticking with Debian, from which Ubuntu is derived in the first place.
It's best to run top and watch it a while to see what CPU hogs are there. The stop it with Ctl-C and cut and paste what's on the console here.
I'm interested to know what it might be causing this problem.