14.10

Why you might not want to upgrade to Kubuntu 15.04 yet; stick with version 14.10 (Problems and solutions)


Kubuntu 15.04 has recently been released with quite a bit of fanfare. It introduces the visually apealing Plasma 5 along with many application upgrades.

While I am a huge fan of Kubuntu, KDE, and the slick look of Plasma 5, I will give a few reasons while you might want to wait just a little longer before you decide to upgrade.

Before I begin, I just want to reiterate how much I love Kubuntu and KDE. I have been using Kubuntu for 10 years now. Sadly, this will be the first time in that span that I wait an extra 6 months before I upgrade. After using Kubuntu 15.04 for the week, last night I decided to redo my desktop and go back to version 14.10 (I will continue to use 15.04 on my laptop though).

First thoughts:
While not everyone is a fan of the new Plasma 5 and the flat UI, I think it is fantastic. It looks great and feels like a fresh new system. About 5 months ago I installed Plasma 5 on my 14.10 system and used it for a few days before I decided it was too buggy and painstakingly downgraded.

Problems

Blank screen with cursor:
The first problem I encountered right after the upgrade was that my system would boot up to a blank screen and a cursor. I could not enter the terminal or press any key to do anything. This seems to be a fairly common problem due to KDM no longer being used. Simple Desktop Display Manager is now used instead of KDM. SDDM looks great though when I can get that far!
(Solution: When your system boots in Grub, go to additional options and select "Upstart" mode.)

Speed:
I didn't notice anything to be faster in Plasma 5. The boot time for me increased by about 50% (hello Systemd and goodbye Upstart) and onscreen animations seemed to be a bit laggy. When I turned my projector on, my computer all but died (more on that later).
(Solution: Get more RAM and a faster processor? Doing a fresh install probably would have decreased boot time a bit.) 

Widgets:
The new widget layout is pretty snazzy. I like how the widget layout is on the left instead of horizontally on the bottom. Sadly, quite a few widgets seem to be missing such as the quicklaunch widget.
(Solution: Cry and learn how to live life without Quicklaunch. Make good use of favorites in the start menu.)


WHY?! Why is the quicklaunch widget no longer included. Sad times.
Graphics issues:
When I turned on my projector, my monitor would flicker a bit and my whole system would slow to a crawl. The mouse cursor would slowly move but pressing any button would literally take minutes before any response would happen.


Half of the time the projector would not show up at all. When it did, the whole system continued to be a bit laggy. I tried all the different drivers but nothing seemed to make a difference (this was the straw that broke the camels back for me; I don't think I want to go another six months without watching a movie or TV show on my projector...). 
(Solution: Have a better graphics card than me? This is probably an instance where having a decent graphics card would come in handy. Make sure that you are using the right drivers.)


Dragging and dropping files:
Normal behavior dictates that when you drag a file to the taskbar and hover over the application where you want to drop the file, the application will come to the foreground and you can simply drop the file. I found that for me when I did this in Kubuntu 15.04, the application would NOT go to the forground. Moreover, an icon would show up and stay on my screen (see the "settings" icon on the screenshot below). I found that this was a bug with a hidden taskbar. When the taskbar was not hidden it would work fine.
(Solution: Don't hide the taskbar. Resize windows so that you can drag and drop without moving the files to the taskbar.)  


VPN connecting and notifications:
Because I live in China, I have to use a VPN to access basically any website that is useful. Sadly, connecting to VPN using KDE (or Linux) does not work well even on a good day. With Plasa 5 it became all the more difficult.


When the VPN would not connect (more often the case than not) I could not click on another connection to connect until I manually clicked on the notification "x" to close the notification. I realized that I could edit the notifications to turn them off. So I did. And the notifications kept coming back (forehead slap).
(Solution: Turn off ALL notifications.)  

FTP and transfering files to my phone:
I typically use FTP to transfer files to my phone. I find this to be the fastest and most convenient way to transfer files. It has always worked fine but in Plasma 5 it would time out every instance I tried to connect. After this, I just plugged in a cord. This did not work either. Finally as a last ditch effort I installed Air Droid to transfer files and this also did not work (once I switched back to 14.10 these all worked without a hitch).
(Solution: By this point I gave up trying to find a solution; I made up my mind to reinstall Kubuntu 14.10. Sadly, this was the easiest solution for me.)


Final thoughts:
While this post is about some negative experiences that I had with Plasma 5, I just want to make it clear that I really do love Plasma 5 and am a huge Kubuntu/KDE fan. The point of me writing this is simply as a precation for those who have yet to upgrade.

I suggest if you do upgrade that you make sure that you backup everything and do a fresh install. Better yet, install Kubuntu on USB drive and try it out for a day or two before you decide to upgrade; I know that is what I will do before I upgrade in another six months.

About McKay

51 comments:

  1. Hello, thanks for an informative article. Did you instead try a fresh install of Kubuntu 15.04 to avoid bugs that may have caused by the upgrade? If yes, did you try to upgrade it to Kubuntu Continuous Integration (Kubuntu CI)?
    https://community.kde.org/Kubuntu/PPAs#Kubuntu_Continuous_Integration_.28CI.29

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Originally after having these issues I did plan on doing a fresh install of 15.04 but I ran it live on my USB drive first and found that I had the same problems. That is when I decided to go back to 14.10. Kubuntu CI seems interesting. I anticipate buying a new computer soon and when I do, I will use my old one for more testing purposes and definitely try out Kubuntu CI.

      Thanks for the comment!

      Delete
  2. I did the upgrade on my laptop, which I have been doing upgrades on since Kubuntu 8.04. I did encounter the blank screen too. Initially, things worked pretty good for a day. I made several changes to my setup and I needed to shut down the computer. When I booted and tried to log on, I kept getting the cursor with a blank screen. So, to get rid of all the old junk accumulated overt he years, I decided to do a clean install and used a completely different home. Since then I didn't have any issues, I agree, there are many widgets, tools, & apps that are still either not ready or their conversion is not complete yet.

    I disagree about improvements, I noticed that there have been a noticeable performance improvement. Previously, when I boot the system and check CPU & memory usage without any apps running, I see about 10-20% usage,, now I hardly see 2%. I am using Breeze and haven't tried anything else.

    You made a very good assessment and I too recommend that users who use their computer for production not upgrade yet.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for your comment and experience. I feel that out of all of the Kubuntu upgrades, this one has given me the most problems; likewise it is probably the upgrade with the most noticeable changes. Change is good, I think it is one of the reason I like Linux so much. It is always evolving.

      I am glad you saw improvements with CPU and memory. I have kept 15.04 on my Laptop as well and enjoy using it.

      Delete
  3. "Solution: Cry and learn how to live life without Quicklaunch. Make good use of favorites in the start menu."

    Really? That's the best solution you can suggest? With previous versions of KDE I had app launchers organized in groups by type (internet, media, graphics, etc.) in a bar at the top of the screen with the quicklaunch set to two rows. It was organized and easy to access my commonly used apps. Thanks to the devs dumbing down kde this is no longer possible. The favorite apps in the menu is not a viable alternative. I can imagine what your reaction will be when QT6 and KDE frameworks 6 removes more of what made kde useful.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I realize that what I was offering as a "solution" is not really a solution.

      I wrote "cry" to indicate that I feel similar to you. Removing the quicklaunch is quite upsetting/sad and I hope they bring it back soon or offer a viable alternative.

      Delete
    2. Icon Only Taskbar is the real solution

      Delete
    3. This is an interesting idea. Thanks! This morning I toyed with this idea a bit. I created a new taskbar on the left side (like Ubuntu) and just started adding icons to it. I have the taskbar auto hide. I still have my main taskbar on the bottom of the screen.

      It is not quite as convenient as the quicklaunch widget but it certainly works!

      Thanks again for the idea.

      Delete
    4. I wouldn't say it "real" solution, just temporary workaround.
      I have wide display on notebook (who hasn't nowadays :/ .. no more 4:3 on market), so I prefer to have panel on left side. It's impossible to pack a nice 3x5 quicklaunch area full of icons there.

      So I went for main left panel + autohide bottom with icon taskbar, where I add applications "as launcher" .. gets a bit cluttered by running apps (as many apps I do use can't be linked to launcher by process name, so they duplicate in the taskbar instantly) ... works to some extent, but the autohide panel is annoying, sometimes showing up by accident, when I just need my mouse cursor in bottom part of window.

      I still hope quicklaunch will come soon, after all, it's not that far to 15.10. Looking forward to it, as right now having my production notebook on Plasma 5 is total PITA (not only it's dumbed down a lot, but also plasma and widgets keep crashing a lot, at least once in a day, sometimes even more).

      Delete
  4. KDE4 wasn't broke and certainly didn't need this kind of progress for progress' sake "fixing". I began turning to it because of unhappiness with the roads Apple is taking with OS X; now it seems KDE is trying to ape that instead of steering clear from ivy fashion victimhood ...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I assume that the transition from KDE4 to plasma 5 is all about new capabilities in the underlying QT5 library that it's all based on. What I don't know is how necessary it is for QT to break backward compatibility with each new generation of its library - or whether the KDE team could implement a compatibility layer when they switch QT versions. Being open source makes it easy enough to recompile everything for a new release - but each KDE generation has required significant recoding efforts that go way beyond that. Is it inappropriate to ask why that's the case? I'm sure it has something to do with keeping everything clean and not bringing along too much baggage. But at some point, you need to get things good enough that the importance of backward compatibility outweighs such purity. Because a moving target is hard to hit - unless that target doesn't do very much. Probably why ChromeOS is becoming the most 'popular' linux desktop distro...

      Delete
  5. I am as unhappy as you are, but come on guys, no one held a gun to your heads to upgrade. You could have skipped this release & waited for many of the widgets, tools & apps to get migrated to plasma 5. You could have tested this release using a thumb drive and kept what your are happy with. That is what I did on my production machines but kept it on the one I do testing on. No one took the option of keeping what you are currently running and happy with from you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Anon; I am not sure if you are referring to what I wrote or just the comments being made but I do agree with you. Testing out the upgrade on the USB is smart and probably what should be done before each upgrade. I think for me personally, the quality of upgrades in the past have been so positive that I have become complacent in my testing things out before upgrading.

      Delete
  6. Come on guys, the KDE developers need to test and verify lots of new code, They can't do that all by themselves and need some help. The is the least we can do for them and show some gratitude in the process.


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You are right. Thank you for the reminder. The KDE developers really are doing a great job. I hope what I wrote didn't imply that I felt contrary to that. I for one am very grateful for KDE, Kubuntu, Linux, and open source in general. It is useful to the developers however to get feedback. If something is not working they will want to know.

      This past upgrade has helped me to realize that I for one can do a better part and try more beta versions and report more bugs (I just need to wait until I have an extra computer I can do this on).

      Delete
  7. Actually I was responding to the other anonymous who complained about missing widgets (e.g. Quick Access). & went on bashing KDE developers "dumbing down kde". Rest assured the developers didn't innovate Plasma to do that, on the contrary, they are improving it to eventually have more widgets. They also want to make it easier for themselves to maintain & manage by streamlining libraries & applications code so they can use the basic code for different hardware platform/devices (e.g. desktops, tablets, & possibly phone), which will have different user interface.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for providing your insight. Currently there are few widgets I use, but I imagine if there were more I would start using them more. I think let all software that goes through significant changes there is an adjustment period. I imagine after using Plasma 5 for a year or two it will be hard to go back to anything else.

      Delete
  8. I upgraded one x86_64 PC from 14.10 quite some time ago. The only problem, after a reboot all my apps appear on desktop 1 and I have to drag and drop them to other desktops - Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU - E5700 @ 3.00GHz and on-board Intel graphics.

    On a second PC about 2 weeks ago I had a hard drive problem on 14.10 so I decided on a fresh install of 15.04, again no problems other than the one above - Atom N330 with NVidia Ion graphics.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Sid for your comment. It is good to hear the positive experiences with 15.04. Hopefully most people who upgrade have a similar experience to you. I can say that so far I have quite enjoyed using it on my laptop.

      Delete
    2. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

      Delete
  9. Sorry, took the wrong place:
    I can fully confirm your experience. I'm using Kubutu at least as long as you, I like it and never made bad experiences with upgrades. So I can't understand why the maintainers of Kubuntu switched to Plasma 5 so early, if it is in a state of develepment as stated in this bugreport: . I can confirm your bugs, and have a lot more. One is, that windows sometimes get a black contents when switching to full size.
    Luckily I did the upgrade on my private PC, not at my workplace. There I will stick to 14.10 as long as I hear good news.
    Is there a way to go back to it if one did the upgrade already ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I did some research to see if I could downgrade to 14.10 before I just did a clean install and from what I have gathered it is not possible. I guess that is one reason it is important to try it on a USB first.

      You are right; it does seem a bit early to switch to Plasma 5. I must say however that bugs will probably get sorted out more quickly this way.

      To be honest; it was kind of nice for me to do a fresh install... it had been so long that I felt my system was getting a bit bloated with software I would try out and end up not needing. I think it is good practice to do a fresh install every year or two and make sure that you have things backed up in a way that it is easy to restore important things.

      Delete
  10. This is the link I mentioned: link text

    ReplyDelete
  11. I installed Kubuntu 15.04 on a fresh new install 3 times : at each time I faced a freeze of the screen a few minutes after starting to play with it, the only available feature was... mouse move. I wan's able to return to the console screens and so on... i could only reset
    graphic card is a Nvidia geforce 780...
    I gave up and returned back to a fress 14.04 new install

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am sorry that it did not work for you either. Hopefully these bugs will get resolved soon!

      Delete
  12. There is another bug in Kubuntu 15.04 on my system with an Nvidia geforce in combination with systemd: system is freezing after booting for some minutes before the login-screen shows up. When using upstart, it's much quicker, the opposite of what systemd was aiming for. Try using upstart too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the suggestion! Good to know. So far I have not really noticed anything different with systemd (other than it being slower).

      Delete
  13. Problem: "I did the upgrade on my laptop, which I have been doing upgrades on since Kubuntu 8.04. I did encounter the blank screen too. "

    Solution: I kept the original home directory that had the persistent blank screen at login and today I looked into resolving it. I first tried renaming the .kde directory but that didn't help resolve the issue. Next I tried renaming the .cache directory and that took care of the issue. I might try pin point the problem to a specific cache file since there is a bunch of them in that directory.

    NB: to be able to get around the window manager lock up, boot Kubuntu into text mode by going into recovery mode. That can be done by holding the shift key down at the start of the boot process. Make sure you enable Networking mode, which will mount your file systems that are in fstab, then go to root boot. This will enable you to access home directories if you have them on their own separate partition.

    I hope this would be of help to some one.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Hi, I seem to be in a minority here as my upgrade has been a virtual complete success. Apart from not as many widgets, I found a number of things much more cohesive. EG. my phone connection through KDE connect is much much better, I could never get is going in 14.04. Graphics are much more refined and smoother. DVDs worked straight out of the box, but the best improvement is the smoothness of the cursor, scrolling and general interaction between windows (drag drop and opening programs etc) Over all my laptop is now much more friendly, easier to look at and use! Sorry to say it but it is. I run a Toshiba L750 with intel intergrated graphics controller, hardly cutting edge but it really zooms along. Lindsay

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for your comment Lindsay. Hopefully you are not in the minority. I noticed that the upgrade worked much better on my laptop than it did on my desktop. I wonder if many of the issues are related to graphics cards in desktops.

      While functionally my laptop has not been working as smoothly as yours I certainly agree that the graphics are nicer.

      Delete
    2. Yes I think your right about the graphics cards issue nVidia is a real problem for Kde sometimes. It took me a while to set up my nVidia card on my desktop computer, fortunately I did it when I was running 14.10 when I did the upgrade to 15.04 the card was detected without any problems. One top tip I've found when setting up nVidia is to do it from the proprietary tar ball then use system settings - driver manager . I know that sounds obvious but you can waste a lot of time following the inadequate steps in the Kubuntu guide. Other issues, it is necessary to use the exact nvidia driver (although the nvidia linux driver is generally generic there are variations), the nvidia README and installation guide are very helpfull and should be followed exactly. http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/349.16/README/index.html I hope this is helpful to someone. Lindsay

      Delete
  15. I should have readed this yesterday, before upgrading. Sadly now I have to reinstall, wich I hate :(

    ReplyDelete
  16. I have similar experiences to those described above.

    I upgraded both my work laptop (Lenovo T430) and my work PC (i7, midrange Nvidia GPU, dual vga and dvi monitors) from 14.10 to 15.04 without problems. (And the PC has an absurdly complicated configuration in order to build stuff.) Both upgrades went flawlessly and everything works as expected, including the dual monitors driven by the Nvidia 346.59 driver.

    When I tried a fresh install on my home PC (AMD-64, Nvidia GF119, dual displayport monitors) I ran into display problems.

    If I stay with the default Nouveau driver the dual screens work, albeit with lower but adequate visual performance. Whenever I first log on, however, I get a single duplicated display on both monitors and have to go to "System Settings -> Manage and Configure Monitors And Displays" to rearrange them as two separate displays. Once the change is applied I get two displays until I log out again.

    If I switch to an Nvidia driver (346.59) and reboot I get much the same symptoms as described by others above; a blank black screen on both monitors with a slightly odd-looking mouse pointer on both. I can't switch to an ctrl-alt-N console and end up having to shut down the PC.

    I'm going to reinstall 14.10 and then upgrade to 15.04 and see if that fixes the problem. I’ll report the outcome here once I've done it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Have you tried booting into text mode then rename .kde and/or .cache. One more thing you can try is to create a totally new account and see what happens.

      I have the feeling that most problems are in deed graphics related and very possibly because of special effects are turned on. Try turning them off.

      Delete
    2. I didn't try renaming .kde or .cache or creating a new account. Partly because I forgot but also because from reading around the web it looks like those fixes have a 'hit and miss' success rate; they work for some but not others and may just be down to coincidence. FWIW I didn't need to make those, or any other changes, in the case of the two machines that upgraded successfully.

      There seem to be a lot of reports of problems with Nvidia GPUs and 15.04 I get the impression that it's only certain GPU models but in those cases the system seems to be unstable even when the screens are displaying correctly.

      I think it may be best to wait for the issues to be ironed out rather than burning a lot of time trying to tweak 15.04 to work reliably with a troublesome GPU. (Unless you have time to experiment in order to help the developers. Unfortunately I currently don't.)

      Delete
  17. Following up on my earlier posting - I reinstalled 14.10 and got everything working smoothly, including the Nvidia driver and the dual-monitor display, and then used it for a while to check it really was working OK. Then I upgraded to 15.4 and ended up with exactly the same problems as seen before with a fresh install of 15.04.

    Given that two other machines upgraded smoothly, one of which had a different Nvidia GPU driving two screens, and given that this PC seems to be almost OK if restricted to the Nouveau driver (works but keeps resettign to single screen mode as described above) my tentative conclusion is that 15.04 has problems with Nvidia drivers for specific Nvidia GPUs, at least in multi-screen configurations.

    Another observation is that, on my PC at least, 15.04 is noticeably slower than 14.10 to boot.

    Overall, 15.04 and Plasma 5 will be awesome one day, but maybe not quite yet.

    ReplyDelete
  18. I can confirm the aforementioned problems exist in Ubuntu 15.04 and that it is not restricted to Kubuntu nor KDE. The noticeably slower boot up and the blank screen and freezing are a result of systemd and systemd with the proprietary nvidia modules. The solution is to move the proprietary modules to another dir, reboot the system (now it will default to the Intel GPU, assuming a two GPU unit), then copy modules back, run depmod, and use the GPU as always. Performance is the same and there are now freezes. I've been upgrading since 11.10 and sometimes encounter problems mainly with Xorg, but this is definitely with systemd (although upstart yields the same result - the freezing ) and some Ubuntu specific automatic hardware detection tool.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What did you mean with 'move the proprietary modules to another dir'. On my system I found the directory '/usr/lib/nvidia-340-updates'. After renaming and rebooting no graphic-card was detected, so no gui. After renaming back, depmode and reboot all is like before: The login screen appears 5 Minutes after showing the Kubuntu splash-logo.

      Delete
  19. I'm really upset with this new version of kubuntu (ie kde5). This is the first time since I left Microsoft world ten years ago. I use to have some bugs with new version but this time everything is buggy and worse you really can't work with it !

    + Complete freeze of the entire system. Even the console (ctrl+alt+F1) is not responding -> hard reboot
    + After hard reboot -> black screen where only the mouse is working... (have to delete some configuration file to restore the desktop!!
    + Dolphin won't remember my personnal places or ftp places !!
    + Trouble with ipv6 -> takes a long time to apt-get update -> 2 minutes waiting the connection with an official repository.
    + My MP3 player is no longer recognize with MTP protocol. I have to had myself in the udev files the PID.
    + Audio CD are not automatically mounted. Can't play an audio CD with amarok -> amarok freeze.
    + etc...

    I made an upgrade from ubuntu 14.10 and a fresh install. Same painfully experience of this "beautiful" plasma desktop.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is good to know that the problems exist on a fresh install and not just an upgrade. I thought perhaps many of my problems were simply because I had not done a fresh install for over a year.

      I tried to endure with having Kubuntu 15.04 on my laptop. I finally succomed this past week. I was only able to make it about a month with Kubuntu 15.04. The latest problem I was having was that I could not authenticate Synaptic in order to run updates (the authentication screen would automatically close). I could do it through the terminal but it ended up just being too much of a bother with all of the things I was trying to update and install.

      Delete
  20. Like many of you, I've been a Kubuntu & KDE fan since I migrated from Windows, about 10 years ago. I tried gnome, xfce, lxde and kde, and stuck with kde, which, in my experience, has always been the most stable and configurable environment. I've been using the LTS 14.04, and was hesitant to upgrade, as my laptop is my work and bread. Finally, because of an accumulation of issues that were best solved by formatting and doing a fresh install, I decided to give Kubuntu 15.04 a try, even tthough I'd read a few comments recommending otherwise.

    Looks like tomorrow I'll be installing 14.04 again. In my personal experience, 15.04 has been very buggy, unlike the releases of the past few years.

    - Hidpi support (Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro) seems to be worse than in 14.04, surprisingly enough. In 14.04 things weren't perfect (dolphin, GTK apps), but most KDE apps looked more or less OK, panel elements scaled perfectly and one could scale fonts and icons separately. That doesn't seem to be the case in 15.05. Icons can't be resized (at least in my case, the system doesn't let me), and setting a high enough dpi for fonts to be readable in dolphin results in ridiculously oversized panel graphics and elements.
    - Issues detecting my WD passport on the USB 3.0 port (no issues in 14.04)
    - Network applet animations freeze while connecting
    - Still no out-of-the-box support for wireless card, involves blacklisting
    - Dolphin doesn't remember shortcuts added to side panel
    - Serious tearing, particularly with task-switching. Changing scaling method (compositing) from crisp to smooth improves it, but there's still some flickering going on)
    - Apparently no option in settings (GUI, at least) to have different partitions auto-mounted at start-up
    - Can't, for the life of me (and maybe this is my fault, but things have definitely changed since KDE 4X) find how to set separate wallpapers and task-bar elements for different virtual desktops
    - Settings menu is overly simplistic and lacking configuration options

    I know a lot of people have put a lot of work into this, and I don't mean to berate their efforts, but I can also see that, in trying to keep up with trends, borrowing things from different places (Mac, Android, etc), the things that made KDE such a stable and trustworthy system have somehow been left behind. I can understand the logic behind many of the new changes--simplifying menus, unifying notifications, etc.-- and see the potential, but many of these implementations seem a bit green to have been included in a stable release. A lot of this feels like Beta, or even alpha material. In fact, many of the issues present in the first alpha are still there in the final release.

    I understand that the market is evolving quickly of late and Kubuntu doesn't want to be behind the curve, but (supposedly) stable releases are no place to showcase new features that aren't ready for release yet. Potential new users, attracted by the hype, will run away and forever more be hesitant of kde; potential gnome concerts will rush back to their flock; hardcore kde fans will either downgrade or migrate to other kde environments (particularly fedora or suse), depending on their priorities.

    I guess the point behind this here rant is...if you're doubting on whether to give it a short or not, do so in Vbox or a live session. And if you're a Kubuntu developer....you're here to maintain your current supporters, not garner abstract, anonymous awe. Keep doing what you've been doing 'til now, which had us all delighted, and release nightly versions to showcase your most cutting edge development, if that's what you want, but keep stable releases stable....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Great comment. The statement you made that resonates the most with me is that "many of these implementations seem a bit green to have been included in a stable release. A lot of this feels like Beta, or even alpha material."

      I remember when I was testing the beta version my thoughts were basically "this looks very nice, but is quite buggy; I will be happy when the stable version is released and the bugs are worked out." Well, the "stable" version has been released but most of the bugs I experienced have remained.

      I think your rant is about as eloquent as a rant can be and the points you brought up echo my own thoughts that in the future, doing a thorough test is a virtual machine or running it live is the way to go. It is sad that I cannot trust the semiannual updates that I once could.

      I still am very appreciative of the work the KDE and Kubuntu developers are doing and think the direction they are going in is ok, I just hope that it results in fewer bugs in the future.

      Delete
  21. I agree with this article. But it is too late already, i am now using it on work. Hope they release patch fixes very soon to fix bugs and stability issues. I have thought about downgrade but is now stuck.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Let us know if it gets any better with the periodic updates.

      Delete
  22. Does anyone had a pleasant upgrade by now? I had postponed the upgrade, but now 14.10 is unsupported and I'm receiving no critical upgrades. Do you know if upgrade bugs were fixed? Which?

    I started with Kubuntu 7.04 and upgraded it till 8.04, but was afraid of upgrading from 8.04 to 8.10, which introduced KDE 4. So, when 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) arrived, I did a clean install in another partition. Then, due to many upgrade problems, the possibility to upgrade from KDE 3 to 4 was cancelled.

    I'm upgrading since Kubuntu 10.10 and it was never a seamless process. From 13.10 to 14.04, I was left with no keyboard and a broken KDE installation, and had to fix the issues by composing commands by copying and pasting letter by letter to the terminal...

    Now, I'm quite afraid of breaking everything by upgrading 14.10 to 15.04, due to the transition from KDE 4 to KDE 5. As other users, I'm a bit sick of doing so many upgrades and having to deal with the issues... I could stick with LTS versions (as I do in other computers), but I'm afraid that the transition from KDE 4 to KDE 5 in LTS versions will not be free of problems (supposing it will be possible).

    Maybe I should try a rolling release distro, or give up KDE :-(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am going to wait a couple months till the 15.10 release then try it again. In the meantime, I am happy with 14.10. Hopefully the next release will be good. I have been using KDE for so long; I really don't want to give up on it quite yet.

      Delete
  23. Kubuntu 15.04 installation is abysmal ... Among many other issues, it is plagued by bug #1443692 - failing to format ext4 partition during the installation. Apparently it was known since beta version yet the developers decided NOT to address it. Ever. How on earth they released it that way is beyond my comprehension.

    I have tried to install it in a few systems and all but one failed to install at all. I couldn't even install it Virtual Box (the installer crashes there) it you can believe that. Yes, it is THAT bad. I think the only way you can install this abomination is by NOT changing ANY defaults. Which ... well ... is unacceptable in real life. Forget about that many things are broken in it - it doesn't really matter as you cannot even install this thing !! This version 15.04 speaks volume about the level abandonment this distribution is facing. It was a continuous downhill ever since Canonical took her hands off her.

    If 15.04 is representative of it's coming after, then there is no point in waiting for 15.10. Rather start looking elsewhere now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have just been installing it on new notebook, at it went good...
      wait a second, now I realize I did use usb + lubuntu image, because it was much smaller.

      So yeah, the Lubuntu install was extremely smooth and nice. I was amazed, how well it worked. But as I'm used to KDE, I went for "kubuntu-desktop" package, and now I suffer again (I'm already trying to live with upgraded Kubuntu 15.04 on different notebook).

      Warning: if anyone wants to follow my way, how to install clean 15.04.. the Lubuntu way is viable, and core *buntu will be installed well, but after changing to kubuntu-desktop you will have much more chaotic content of menus, with all those lubuntu apps added in. It's no big deal, at least some of them work better, but I wouldn't considering it perfectly clean "Kubuntu 15.04" install because of this.

      Delete
  24. I also updated to 15.04 already. Because of all the mess, I set all my hope in Plasma 5.4. I got it now, by installing the kubuntu-ci backport (ppa:kubuntu-ci/stable). The result is, that now all languages except English are gone and the mess is still there but different (many of the bugs are not reproduceable, so I didn't start any bug report). Now I hope it will be fixed until Kubuntu 15.10 is out.

    ReplyDelete
  25. I wish I would have read your blog 24 hours ago! I just finished the painstaking process of reverting back to 14.04. I ran into bugs immediately and didn't have the time/patience to deal with it. Plus, I love a few apps and plasmoids under KDE4 / Plasma 4 that I'm not sure I could live without and/or replace with Plasma 5! So for now ... Thanks for your blog!

    ReplyDelete

Powered by Blogger.