Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

I've been a long time fan of KDE and decided to try Kubuntu on one of my home systems after being a 3 years user of Fedora.  I still use Fedora on my laptop but don't intend to upgrade considering all the difficulties and problems I've heard about in recent years.  Unfortunately, despite installing Kubuntu, I almost never use it at home (mostly due to space and resource issues; I need a new desk and monitor but my place is just so small!).  Despite this setback, I decided to give Kubuntu a go at work.  I must say that it's really nice!

I've never been a huge fan of Debian because of the myth of the whole unstable vs stable thing.  Not to mention I had a bad experience initially with Debian a long time back that made me slightly prejudice against the system.  Going into Kubuntu, I was a bit apprehensive.  However, I had been using apt-get and Synaptic on Fedora for a while (and now Yum), so I got used to the idea of dealing with all of RedHat's dependency problems.  Making the switch wasn't any problem at all.  Probably the biggest issue was how Debian arranges some directories, configurations and binaries compared to Fedora.  That said, it's not unusable.

Quite the contrary.

I found dual booting with Windows to be dead easy.  One of Fedora's weaknesses is that there is no partition tool to easily help a person handle a dual boot system with Windows.  You still need a shitty tool like Partition Magic (which royally screwed up my system at one point!).  It's one reason, imo, Fedora hasn't made much progress on the desktop.

You still are left with a lot of configuration to do after you get the base installed.  Unlike Fedora though which practically needs a DVD to hold the entire disc image, Ubuntu still just needs a single CD.  They're practical in having people install from Synaptic, which is better anyway.  I mean, after you get a new system, you're probably a few upgrades away still from being up to date.  The nice thing about Synaptic is that it's pre-installed, unlike Fedora which requires you to get either that, apt-get and even the Yum GUI tool.

Getting a simple server with subversion, apache, mysql, etc. is quite easy.  Just use synaptic, grab your modules and just configure the rest.  In about two hours, I had a subversion server running with WebDav and websvn all together! 

My only pet peeve at the moment is that I think the GUI could use some improvement.  It looks like an old version of Windows 95.  Not too handsome.  If Fedora has one good thing going, it's that their BlueCurve theme is quite nice to look at.

Unfortunately, I think the people at Fedora probably spent too much time on that and adding as many modules to the base that they forgot about compatibility and stability.  Those two areas are definite strengths for Ubuntu.  My Dell system at work had no problem at all.  First try and I had Kubuntu going in no time.  My Dell laptop's DVD/CD Writer locks up depending on the DVD i insert!  It was so bad that I was forced to use (yick!) Windows for watching DVDs since Xine would just die.

Anyway, I'll probably migrate my laptop some day to Kubuntu if they continue to produce such a tremendous OS base.