In order to get a true feel for Kubuntu Hardy Heron one has to run the system for quite some time; just installing it will only let you know how much better the installation procedure has become, while leaving you with little understanding on how many changes this new system brings, particularly the Kubuntu-KDE4 brand.

I began running the 3rd Alpha release of Kubuntu-KDE4 as soon as it came out, and apart from a single show-stopper libc6 bug that caused one to be dropped into a shell prompt instead of reaching the new and improved desktop there has been little to complain about and much to herald.

Just a few days ago I switched my main machine over to KDE4 as well, and if you are using Kubuntu Hardy Heron you really need to go that route to appreciate how much lighter and faster it is over the KDE3 version of Hardy Heron; Firefox3-beta4 is tailored to this new environment very well (which is odd since it is a gtk app) and the speed is nothing short of astonishing. Similarly the new DragonPlayer (which replaces Kaffeine as the default movie player) and Juk (an Amarok substitute) are grand departures from their predecessors.

The Dolphin file manager offers everything one could want in that department, and is especially notable in the degree of polish and speed it exhibits. While the desktop widgets are a bit slim in the picking, the ones that are there a fully functional and a joy to work with. One feature that stands out for me is the new behaviour of desktop files; under KDE3 one could right click copy to/move to, whereas now a mouse-over said icons now yields a small sleeve that has a resize, rotate, configure and hide option–quite a big adjustment if one is used to the KDE3 way of moving files about.

One of the things that really impresses is the fact that apps run so much faster and lighter, something unimaginable when ‘upgrading’ to Vista, or even moving up to Leopard (from either XP or Tiger, respectively); it seems that the open source developers forgot the mantra of forcing new users to buy faster and more powerful systems for nothing much worthy of note in the OS.

There are still a large swath of this system that I have yet to examine and fully try out, as the transition from KDE3 to KDE4 is such a big step, and many of the KDE3 apps are still hanging about and tempting their use (amarok being a case in point). That being said, I will continue to use this system until it reaches final (and beyond) and report back more of what I discover; this goes beyond Hardy Heron and its speed and stability and more into waiting as KDE4 fully replaces all of the components in KDE3 that make Kubuntu such a wonderful computing system.

Comments will be left on (though still in moderation) so if you have any questions feel free to ask away, or stop by the freenode channel #ubuntu+1 where you can receive real time help with your system; if you have a comment that consists only of ‘nice post’ or something similar it will be deleted, so fair warning.

Well the day has finally arrived, and even in the gnome Linux channels people are asking when they can download and install KDE 4.0. Hahahaha Though not nearly as finished as the 5 releases since 3.0 there is a lot to look forward to in this initial release; coupled with the release of Alpha 3 of Hardy and lots of breakage to look forward to. Will report more as soon as possible.

Pardus has come a long way since the last time I tried one of their fine Linux distributions; it was an excellent system nearly a year or so ago, and has just gotten much better in the meantime. It stands out as a system that is wonderful to use, either in the liveCD (Calisan) or the installed version (Kurulan) and is friendly to speakers of many European languages across a broad range of hardware.

There are systems that you try for a while and then get sidetracked with the bling from one of the major distro releases, and somehow I got lost and didn’t find my way back to Pardus, though the system and name stayed with me as a very positive one, a system that I would definitely like to stick with and learn more about.

I had been planning to run the livecd and then if it worked out to install the full system, but got caught up in a game of lbreakout on the livecd and lost track of time. When you first enter the grub login screen you are asked to choose your native language from a long list (numbering around ten), the first being Turkish (naturally, as Pardus is a product of Turkey), followed by English, and then a number of other European languages, both major and minor.

The splash is slient, so there is a minute or two of seeming inactivity with just the outline of a flashing cursor at the top of the otherwise dark hued screen, followed by a couple of xserver adjustments as the system sought to find the correct resolution (1024×768) for this R60 Thinkpad with the intel 945 integrated graphics card.

The most excellent Tasma control center launches as you enter the KDE desktop, and gives you a wealth of choices as to menu style (four nifty choices there), wallpaper, internet connection, and the package manager Yali. Once you have finished making your selections, you can either head back into Tasma for more customization right away, or finish and delve further into the choices on offer on the lovely KDE desktop, one that the Pardus developers and graphical artists have truly made their own, with a number of eye-pleasing alterations.

First stop was Firefox, which loaded very quickly, to head over the various spots one would normally go when accessing the internet– youtube, a streaming mp3 site, and a site that streams non-flash video–all of them passed with flying colors, all of the various codecs ready to go from the livecd without a hitch.

Just as a livecd it is a very fun and responsive system–one can only imagine how much speedier it must be in the installed version. All of my hardware was recognized, including wired/wireless, core duo processor, HP all in one printer, and external (fat32) hard drive.

This lynx comes loaded with tons of games, all the graphical tools for media/content creation you could imagine, something for every internet need, music/video playing, as well a full (one might say over brimming) office suite of tools–whatever your content creation, work, entertainment or internet needs, Pardus 2007.3 has something for you–and the configuration tools are as fine as any system I have tried, comparable to those on offer in PCLinuxOS and Mandriva ‘One’ 2008, all this in a tiny 688MB livecd package. It’s amazing how much they were able to pack into this single disk.

If you are looking for a system that is fun, fast, easy to set up and run, easily customizable and using the KDE desktop environment, then there is hardly a better choice out there than Pardus 2007.3, one of the dark horses in this year of stellar Linux distribution releases. Try the livecd and see if you don’t agree–you may find it’s hard not to queue up the installer disk on your torrent list as you zip around in livecd mode. Highly recommended.

This is a desktop environment that still clearly deserves the beta status–while it shows hints of promise, there remains much to be done to make it a full-fledged DE. The start button and the panel, as well as the digital clock are very visually appealing, and the widget machine in the top right corner of the screen actually works now (with a handful of choices), though the Kmenu itself (not the Kmenu, but not sure of the name) has few actual KDE4 items–two I believe, one of them being an Asian language radical identifier.

This is a fun system to use in liveCD mode, and being based on Debian 4 (Etch) is very speedy on modern hardware, while likely still quite usable on lower-end machines; I had no intention of installing it (nor did I see an installer, though didn’t look carefully) but was curious to see the state of my favorite up and coming DE. The startup time in liveCD mode is nothing short of phenomenal, and responsiveness while in the system is very high indeed.

Please note: this is on my test machine only (Thinkpad R series, Core Duo Intel, 2GB ram) so your own experience may be very different, whether it is this system, Ubuntu/Kubuntu, LinuxMint, or whatever; if you are having problems with one of Canonical’s offerings, a good rule of thumb is that the alternate installer will work where the liveCD does not. If you are having difficulties, then trying things out in a virtual environment would be the preferable first step, provided you don’t have an old clunker lying around to test things on–don’t do this stuff on a production machine (or do, but don’t blame me, hahahahaha). Also, a good place to get timely answers is on the various IRC channels–as opposed to my leisurely (if ever) responses. And there the people actually know things, unlike here.

A glimpse of future wonders in this beta, and since it will use OpenGL to render, a nice less gaudy replacement for Compiz-Fusion–though undoubtedly everyone will want both, leading to loads and loads of conflicts, and serious temper tantrums by frustrated users on the IRC channels. Can’t wait (insert smiley face here).

The XFCE version of LinuxMint 4.0 (beta) ‘Daryna’ is out, and while it is not KDE (still waiting on that one, heh) it is plenty nice and much lighter weight than the GNOME version. It has all the great things you’ve come to expect out of the LinuxMint team–even Compiz-Fusion is ready out of the box.

Though not as light as the new GoS (using the Enlightenment desktop environment), still much better than the GNOME environment, and of course all the device drivers you can imagine are included, so no worries about getting that 1923 third-party hand-crank scanner working. Or anything else really, including the latest Atheros_Swan drivers (the one the 3ePC uses for wifi)–should your driver not be included, then the windows wireless driver gui is a handy way to add them via ndiswrapper.

After trying out the liveCD on my test machine (no install yet), I have to say that is hard to determine exactly why they label this a beta–major proprietary companies come out with pre-alpha releases (cough vista cough) that are nowhere near this in usability.

Getting the KDE4 beta (Debian) liveCD, as well as the third release candidate for Fedora 8 and will be installing both of them and writing up the results shortly. If you plan on using Fedora 8 for any length of time, then now is a good time to get the torrent in order to avoid melting down their servers when the final release comes out in a mere three days.