Thinkpads Forum

As a long time Mandrake/Mandriva user, I always used KDE because my friends said it would be easier for a Windows user to grasp, and it was the default. I've learned tp quite liked it. However, since Mandriva doesn't have a 64bit One CD, and I'm feeling adventurous, I'm downloading Ubuntu. I expect some learning curve but how much? I've heard Ubuntu might be the most friendly of all distro's, but I've honestly never used it. I know there's Kubuntu out there, but, it seems to be lacking 64bit versions, and even if it wasn't, I wan't to try Ubuntu.

So what should I expect?

There are two bars instead of one: Top and bottom.

Top bar holds the applications menu and the notification tray, bottom bar has the running applications.

Other then that, I dont really see a lot of difference. Different default apps, but if you eg like Amarok to listen to your music, its still in the Repos, it just loads a few extra librarys to support it.

My 9 year old took to uBuntu like a duck to water. He has a x30 very mildly tweaked. Just 512mb of memory on a 10gig HDD with a B wireless card (X31 lid). His School laptop is a X31 running Windoze, and he also has a T30. Both of the former are pretty well maxed. Given the choice, its the x30 every time!


Ron

Well I decided to load it and wow... this is the ONE Linux distro out of the 20 or so I've tried that I can say is prime and a good, easy, usable desktop system.

Plays nice with my iPhone, good battery life, good performance, pleasing aesthetics.

If it were Microsoft, we would be paying 300 dollars for this.

I can't express my enthusiasm enough. If ANY Linux OS has a chance of becoming mainstream like Mac OS and Windows, this is it.

I came from Mandriva a few years back and made the change to Ubuntu. I've never looked back. I've also become hooked on Gnome and pretty much refuse to go back to KDE. You've made a wise decision.

t140568 wrote:I came from Mandriva a few years back and made the change to Ubuntu. I've never looked back. I've also become hooked on Gnome and pretty much refuse to go back to KDE. You've made a wise decision.

Indeed I have. It has now become my only operating system. I've had no problem with it. It's funny, I've always been a Mandriva enthusiast but, Ubuntu did what Mandriva never could; it turned me into a full time Linux user. Gnome was much easier to lean compared to KDE, and reminds me a bit of the Mac OS UI which I'm very comfortable with.

Glad you've found something that works well for you--I'm also a big fan of GNOME (though I prefer to use it in Fedora 14) Word to the wise, the next version of Ubuntu is going to be switching away from GNOME as the default window manager...

t140568 wrote:I came from Mandriva a few years back and made the change to Ubuntu. I've never looked back. I've also become hooked on Gnome and pretty much refuse to go back to KDE. You've made a wise decision.

Replace Mandriva with Ubuntu and Ubuntu with Debian and you have the story of my most recent conversion.

I'm a long-time GNOME fan, although I'm a bit concerned with the direction that GNOME 3 is taking...

(Disclaimer: my workstation runs something quite close to CDE...)

Gnome was always more about the simplicity and "cleanness", at the cost of tunability, whereas KDE has more options at the cost of "possibly confusing the end user".

In the end, it doesn't really matter. There are tools / ways to configure even "unconfigurable by default" things in Gnome.

I'd say - choose the best tool for the job. A friend of mine is no Linux expert, he has a multimedia (well, audio) studio and loves fluxbox WM for it's simplicity, despite the "fluxbox/blackbox/icewm/anything-non-KDE-or-Gnome is for geeks" myth.

comps wrote: In the end, it doesn't really matter. There are tools / ways to configure even "unconfigurable by default" things in Gnome.

True, but part of the reason that I use GNOME is that I don't want to have to fight my machine to do what I want. If the devs remove functionality that I use in GNOME 3 such that I have to resort to hackery to get it back, I'll just switch DEs (since if I'm going to spend more than a few minutes configuring something manually I may as well spend a few more and customize another DE.)

I like GNOME >= 2.20 <= 3.0 because it provides me with all of the modern desktop features that I need "out of the box" and doesn't require me to spend a lot of time setting things up. I can throw it on pretty much any box I have lying around and wind up with a comfy config within about five minutes of installation.

KDE < 4.0 was great. Ever since the move to 4.0 though, my relationship with KDE has gone like this:

1) Try version 4.x.
2) Find it to have bugs A, B, and C.
3) Look for solutions.
4) Get frustrated, give up.
5) Mention my experiment with 4.x to someone on IRC, only to be told: "4.x? Yeah, it's got some bugs. 4.x+1 fixes those though."
6) Try 4.x+1.
7) Discover that while bugs A and B are fixed, C is still not fixed (although magically everyone with that problem must be doing it wrong, because none of the devs/fans can acknowledge it), and bugs D and E have appeared.
8) Go to step #3.

Every. Single. Release. Like clockwork.

Sigh.

[rant]
Add that to the fact that they *still* haven't gotten the KDE PIM back to the level of functionality of the 3.5.x suite, and I'm afraid it's GNOME for me. How is it that they went from a PIM suite that could be made to sync with a variety of services to one that can't sync with much of anything (but will be able to "real soon now")? Oh, but it's backed by a shiny new storage solution based on MySQL, so it's *clearly* superior! Except for the whole "less functionality than previous versions" bit. But that'll be fixed in the next version, we promise!
[/rant]

Did you say Mac GUI?

wget http(s)://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/macbuntu/macbuntu-10.10/v2.3/Macbuntu-10.10.tar.gz -O /tmp/Macbuntu-10.10.tar.gz
tar xzvf /tmp/Macbuntu-10.10.tar.gz -C /tmp
cd /tmp/Macbuntu-10.10/
./install.sh

I had to break the above link, remove the brackets from the http(s).

http://tutorial.downloadatoz.com/how-to ... 10-10.html

Ron

I was a long-time user of Mandrake, then PCLinuxOS (Mandrake derivative). KDE 3.x was really quite nice. But when KDE 4 came along, I switched to Linux Mint, which is an Ubuntu derivative. It uses the Ubuntu kernel and packages, with a few GUI tweaks and add-ons. I never did like the two bars (top and bottom) in Ubuntu, especially since ThinkPads these days are afflicted with widescreens and consequently have less vertical pixel space. So I like that Mint has gone back to a single bar by default. Mint also comes with the necessary codecs and so forth to play DVDs and other patent-infected media, so less fiddling at installation time.

I used the be huge KDE fan back in the 3.x days. However once I started using Ubuntu it's been Gnome for me. Oh I have used both of them on and off for years depending on the distro. That being said I really prefer Gnome. However I always remove both default panels (bars) and create my own custom one at the bottom of the screen which holds my menu, icons, workspace switcher, time, and login/logout button. It's nice, clean and and out of the way. I have it set to be 23 pixels high.

I have in the past used FluxBox, BlackBox, IceWM and so on. To be totally honest though, my absolute favourite of all of them is *gasp* AfterStep.