hey medo (panther86 here)

Mandriva as well, if mandriva didn't exist i would prolly either be a vista user or be a gnome user on ubuntu or fedora.For some reason i had bad luck with kde4 with most distros (suse,fedora,kubuntu) besides mandy seemed to shine with kde4, running less then 300mb of ram idle, filling the holes of appearance where kde team didn't exactly get well, like the kde4 color is UGLY, and the la ora color seems to kick and and make kde4 look beautiful, and the same wiith the low quality window border of just 2 lines running across a white strip to the pretty la ora blue.Out of the box kde 4.1 (i never even looked much into 4.2 so) is a heck lot better looking them cartoonish gnome 2x, i could draw better artwork with a box of crayons then the gnome artwork team, the gnome team seriously seems like the try to make their de ugly as hell.Plus gnome in fedora can eat up to 600mb idle!And mandy on 4.1 doesn't go too much over 300mb idle.......

I've voted Kubuntu. Simply because I'm quite noob and I want to train with linux

I had voted for Arch, but I am back to MEPIS. Arch suffers from the fact they are really bleeding edge, which leads to errors that would be filtered out in a distro that balances its components. There was a HAL issue a week ago which had to be fixed manually, and the Intel video driver in combination with the 2.6.28 kernel gives poor OpenGL performance, leading to Kwin compositing problems.

The KDE 4.2 respin for MEPIS is not perfect, so I had to perform some tweaks to the KDE 4.2 installation, but the underlying MEPIS infrastructure is solid as a rock.

Farmer wrote:I don't think I have a favorite, I just happen to use kubuntu.

Yeeehh thats true. I read some articles on the web to help me and it came to Kubuntu. I've used Mac OS 1.something up to 7.0 then Windows 3.2 up to XP then I just got fed up. Now I use Kubuntu.


Drellir

Hi All,

I've been using Mandriva for a couple of years, then I found Sabayon Linux based on Gentoo. It's got all the software I need, I like the way the KDE desktop is configured and I cannot think of anything else. I started with 3.4f, now on 3.5.1.

Yes, I've seen Ubuntu, PC-Linux and a couple of others - no thanks.

Cheers,
Richard.

Hi All,

I used to have Mandriva, but I got fed up with unstability and with installing additional software I didn't have out of the box. Now I am using Sabayon based on Gentoo.
I like the way the desktop is configured and I wouldn't change it for a million $$$.
Yes, I've seen Ubuntu, PC-Linux, etc.

Cheers,
Richard

I can not really tell about my favourite distro. I use Kubuntu. But I am not really satisfied with it. There are a lot of small things which have been up for ages or turn up from time to time, which bring me to doubt the name KDE-distro is earned. This issues are mostly around the integration and interaction with non KDE apps which most of the KDE-user use also. I also think it is stupid they use there own translation files which often are not as good as the originals and not as up-todate.

A good KDE distro therefore would integrate Firefox so that it uses KDE Bookmarks, KWallet, KDE icons, Akgregator, KDE printing and file dialogues, KGET, KDE proxy settings, be able to open sites in Konqueror, open mailto-links with standard KDE mailer, opens Dolphin from Firefox download manager, uses KDE-file associations.
Similar problems exist with OpenOffice.org and Skype. For some of them solutions are in general there, but in Kubuntu they tend to reappear. in one version it works fine, the next it does not. For others I would see it as important that a good KDE distro solves this, apart from improving KDE itself.

In general I would prefer a Debian based distro. I used Kanotix for a while until most of the devs deserted to Sidux, which I could not use because of some stability issues. Now I am waiting for there first KDE4-release to try it again. I tried Opensuse and I just could not get used to its flaws with its Paketmanagement.

So I am still waiting for the good KDE-distro.

Mark

markum wrote:I can not really tell about my favourite distro. I use Kubuntu. But I am not really satisfied with it. There are a lot of small things which have been up for ages or turn up from time to time, which bring me to doubt the name KDE-distro is earned. This issues are mostly around the integration and interaction with non KDE apps which most of the KDE-user use also. I also think it is stupid they use there own translation files which often are not as good as the originals and not as up-todate.

This is actually hard to do for most distros. The look and feel should be improved in Kubuntu 9.04, though.

A good KDE distro therefore would integrate Firefox so that it uses KDE Bookmarks, KWallet, KDE icons, Akgregator, KDE printing and file dialogues, KGET, KDE proxy settings, be able to open sites in Konqueror, open mailto-links with standard KDE mailer, opens Dolphin from Firefox download manager, uses KDE-file associations.
Similar problems exist with OpenOffice.org and Skype. For some of them solutions are in general there, but in Kubuntu they tend to reappear. in one version it works fine, the next it does not. For others I would see it as important that a good KDE distro solves this, apart from improving KDE itself.

That would be an insane amount of work, equal to rewriting all those applications into KDE apps. No distro does this, nor is any distro likely to do this in the future. Maybe the KDE proxy settings could be made so that they are global, but that's really a KDE issue. Skype will most likely never get any of this either, since it is a closed-source application that in uneditable at all by open source developers.

You could petition the developers of the applications themselves for KDE integration, but beyond that it probably won't happen...

So I am still waiting for the good KDE-distro.

Mark

I think your expectations might be a bit too high. Non-KDE apps are non-KDE apps. Application integration at the level you're expecting just wouldn't be possible.

Hi,

JontheEchinda wrote:I think your expectations might be a bit too high. Non-KDE apps are non-KDE apps. Application integration at the level you're expecting just wouldn't be possible.

I disagree. I think integration and interoperationallity is that what makes Linux better that Windows. And it works in many ways and it is been worked on. Unfortunately at some point there is a lack of consequence. For many of the things I put on that list solutions are, have been available or should not be such an issue. You can do them by hand, but it is always a hassle.
e.g.: KDE icons, Akgregator, KDE printing and file dialogues, KGET, be able to open sites in Konqueror, open mailto-links with standard KDE mailer
are or have been possible. Some of them where also standard when you install Firefox in Kubuntu.
Uses KDE-file associations & KDE proxy settings have been in Diskussion.
The use of KDE Bookmarks, KWallet and opening of Dolphin from Firefox download manager should not be such an issue.
BTW: Skype integration is done and will be delivered in KDE4.3

If have seen wish/bug reports for several of this issues on bugtrackers of KDE, Kubuntu and the external apps. No one really cares much, so it takes its time, even for small things. The distros who label themselves KDE distros should have the biggest interest in this because not many people use pure KDE. In that case integration is what makes the difference.

Mark

I can't say I tried a ton of distros, mostly Mandrake, Mandriva, OpenSuse, and (K)Ubuntu. And in all honesty, the one distro that stood out the most was Mandrake/Mandriva. It made the most amount of sense to me, design and how it functioned, etc.
OpenSuse was alright, but some things were a bit confusing, packages and such, Yast I think it was called, and pakman. Kubuntu didn't look that nice and in order like Madriva. Can't say much for Kubuntu. Not sure why it's so loved, but oh well.
So although I haven't tried a lot, I love Mandriva the best. It's a wonderful distro, loved it when I started it, and loving it even more so now, don't care to even try another distro because Mandriva satisfies me 100%!

Mandriva : Stable & For End-Users. Really nice distribution if you want to leave easilly Windows

Use it as a CIO of a large corp, my 76 years old mom like it also

It's been fourteen months fighting KDE on my ArchLinux laptop. It's still sluggish, graphics artifacts, and a dog slow krunner. However, it's perfect on FreeBSD! Perfectly smooth desktop effects, precise and snappy actions, and total awesomeness.

I've got FreeBSD on two systems, my old desktop and my new one. But even the older one with a single core CPU and decrepit video card runs rings around my ArchLinux laptop.

Imho Arch Linux is the best KDE distro (for me), the KDE packages are shipped vanilla and very fast (usually even before the actual "release" by KDE) and if you want a modular KDE you can also use KDEmod.

I also tried OpenSuSE and Mandriva, the problem is just that I don't like their package managers...
After using Arch Linux' pacman, you just can't use any other package manager

pano wrote:Imho Arch Linux is the best KDE distro (for me), the KDE packages are shipped vanilla and very fast (usually even before the actual "release" by KDE) and if you want a modular KDE you can also use KDEmod.

I also tried OpenSuSE and Mandriva, the problem is just that I don't like their package managers...
After using Arch Linux' pacman, you just can't use any other package manager

I agree. I originally voted for Kubuntu, but since then moved to Arch with KDEmod and it's just great. What I like at Arch the most, is the transparency of process. You really have to do everything yourself so if something is wrong you have at least a basic understandment what to do to get it right.
I Kubuntuwhen I screw up my system I had to reinstall, because I thought that's the only way. Now I only remove my KDe, or dot files or whatever is making problems and reinstall. I know how to get to the problem.
And yes pacman is just a dream

markum wrote: I tried Opensuse and I just could not get used to its flaws with its Paketmanagement.

Interesting. What flaws did you find in openSUSE's package management? Which version of openSUSE, by the way?

Personally I have found that, ever since the built-in YaST package-manager backend was replaced with zypper, openSUSE's package management has been faster than almost any other, including yum, apt-get, and smart. Pacman still has an edge, though.

My personal favorite KDE feature about openSUSE is the number of options I have for installing KDE. I can have KDE 3.5.10, KDE 4.1.3 (the version openSUSE 11.1 was released with, therefore the "official" version), 4.2, or 4.3 (from the KDE trunk) which is what I am running now. Plus I can run KDE 3.5 and one of the KDE 4 branches side by side.