Showing posts with label kde ubuntu linux eee virtual box. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kde ubuntu linux eee virtual box. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

KDE 4 on Ubuntu

There has been some controversy in the Gnome world recently and it reminded me of KDE. There had been a similar discussion of Qt's lack of freedom years ago.
This prompted me to think about the runtimes I was using (GTK, Java, Mono, Qt, Python etc.) . I was not really convinced by Mono or Red Hat's stance against Mono. So I thought I could give KDE a try even though Ubuntu has chosen Gnome.
So I did apt-get install kubuntu-desktop on my EEE 701 and in Virtual Box.
The result was very pretty, quite slick. I even noticed an improvement in screen refresh speed when switching desktops in Virtual Box (notably Gnome-terminal always seemed a bit slow to repaint and Konsole feels a bit snappier).
I like the way the settings are handled, there is a search bar to find settings, advanced settings are in a separate tab, the management of keyboard shortcuts is a breeze and accessible from every application. I am not sure if it's better than Gnome, just more obvious to me.
Kmail seems like I could use it for work whereas I felt like Thunderbird had slow repaint issues in Virtual Box too.
The only issue I have is that a few applications seem to crash on exit. It's not a big deal but I find that a bit annoying. I guess I am going to need to follow up on these issues as I like KDE and I want to keep using it.