Silicon Gadget

As promised here it is my report on the 8.04 version of (K)Ubuntu. In specific I downloaded the 64 bits version of Kubuntu (that is differentiated by Ubunutu by having KDE instead of Gnome and some other applications differences).

The first thing to say is that this time Kubuntu has been released in two flavors: the plain Kubuntu 8.04, that is based on the stable KDE 3.5.9 (and it is the version I am using), and the Kubuntu 8.04 KDE 4 Remix, that include KDE 4.0.3.

The first peculiarity of this new version of Kubuntu is Wubi, a feature for those who want to test (and learn) Linux without leaving Windows (… yet); basically this feature allows the user to install Kubuntu under Windows as it was a normal application – “There is no need to modify the partitions of the PC or use a different loader”. Personally I did not tested this feature since I was already using Linux, but I think it is immensely useful for the beginners.

Another useful installation option, available only on the “Alternate Installation CD” for now, is the possibility to install an encrypted file system; every partition can be encrypted, except for the the /boot partition. I did not tried this feature because, even if it was announced, I personally did not discovered it until the actual choice during the installation; what stopped me on using this feature is that, by not knowing how it works I was afraid that if later on (may be days, weeks, or even months) some setting get screwed up I may be not able to access my data; but since encryption is one of the cornerstones of security (even for the end users), I will investigate more on this.

Beside these two features I found the installing procedure quite easy, and similar to the one I encountered in the 7.04 an 7.10 versions.

Another peculiar aspect of this version is that this time even KDE has its own application to manage the “Desktop Special Effects”, a feature that Ubuntu (that uses Gnome) had available still in the 7.10 version. For the new users will be easy to enable 3D Desktop Effects such as a spinning cube, true transparency, wobbly windows and other special effects. Personally I preferred to keep using the Compiz’s native “CompizConfig Setting Manager” as it offers more advanced options for configuring the effects.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzCL0TocBvg]

Most of my hardware has been already configured automatically during the installation. The only two things that required manual installation were the printer drivers and the video card drivers.

In the first case the process has been easier than usual; the interface was the usual, but this time KDE did not give any problem to find and install the printer even if it is not conntected directly to the computer, but shared from a Windows machine in my workgroup. To install the printer you have to go either to: K Menu –> System Settings –> Printers –> Add –> Add printer/class, or more easily use the dedicated task bar applet ( right-click on the task bar –> Add Applet to Pannel –> Print System).

For the video card the system will immediately warn you that there are the native drivers available and it ask you if you want to install them (since they are proprietary and closed-source they cannot be automatically included during the OS install). Once installed “Adept Manager” is capable to handle them so, as it happens for all the software installed through it, you will be automatically prompted if a new version is available. Just to be clear: this feature was already available on the past versions of Kubuntu (but since this is the first time I make this report, I want to give notice about it).

Regarding the rest of the software in general I noticed two particular things: OpenOffice.org were automatically installed instead of Koffice and it was the 2.4 version (on Kubuntu 7.10 I never got the update from the 2.3 version even if the 2.4 version has been released weeks ago); the second things is that in “Adept Manager” if you select to install the generic package of Firefox, you get the latest beta version of Firefox 3 instead of the stable Firefox 2; I tested it for a couple of hours and I noticed that is stable enough to deserve to enter the Release Candidate stage (as announced), but many third-party addons are not updated yet for it (and since I cannot live without them I decided to downgrade to Firefox 2).

Everything great? Well I found some problem, but fortunately not insurmountable.

The first problem is that the option to change the location of the Document, Desktop, and Autostart folders (found on System Settings –> About Me –> Path) seems bugged and it does not save the modifications; until this is fixed if you need to modify the path of the Desktop, the Documents folder, and the Autostart, you have to modify the content of the configuration file “$HOME/.config/user-dirs.dirs” with any text editor (Kate for example).

Wine 0.9.60 was unable to run World of Warcraft: when launched all the graphic of the login screen was screwed up and eventually it crashed after 2 seconds with an (Windows) error message; I still don’t know if it is a problem specific of the new version of Wine or it is an incompatibility with some stuff new from Kubuntu 8.04, but for the moment the only workaround (that I found) is the following:

• purge Wine (with “Adept Manager”);
• remove the “$HOME/.wine/” folder;
• download and install the version 0.9.58 of Wine (download link — do not use version 0.9.59 since it had a bug with SHIFT/CTRL/ALT + Click combintations);
• reinstall World of Warcraft.

Compiz (the program responsible for the 3D desktop effects) somehow has reversed the meaning of the Num Lock’s light (the num pad gives numbers if Num Lock is disabled and it gives the arrows functions if it is enabled) and it seems it interfere with some keyboard shortcut (configured in System Settings) even if they are not configured to do anything within Compiz’s configuration (for example I cannot use Win+R to get the Run Command dialog and Win+F for KFind).

Well … as I stated, I solved the problem with World of Warcraft and the other two issues are more nuisances than real problems and I have to recognize that is common for every new release of any new operative system (even for those that you have to pay for, like Windows and Mac OS) to have some inconvenience in the early period.

Discounted for these problems I can say that this new version Kubuntu is quite a good (even if minimal) upgrade compared to the past and this can only means that there is still hope for the Penguin to reach the desktop market.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 10:30 pm and is filed under Guides, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.