Hello, As the latest distros get released, users of older computers have to think twice before installing them since the latest ones are heavier and can slow down the computer. For that reason I had removed Kubuntu 9.04 from my system and reverted back to Debian 5 (Lenny). My system is a P4 2.4 GHZ on an Intel 845 board with 512 MB RAM. KDE4's successors are getting more and more heavy and make them practically unusable on older P4 systems.
Then came Ubuntu 10.04 and I had to install its 64 bit version on another machine. Just to see how it looked and felt, I tried the 32 bit CD cd on my own system and was pretty impressed by its sleek look and speed, even in the live CD mode. The menu was fast to access and programs opened reasonably fast. 10.4 has all the latest versions of Firefox, OpenOffice etc. This distro was definitely designed for agility. Since I am a KDE user and to be fair to KDE4.x, the Kubuntu 10.04 Cd was downloaded and tried out live but it was very disappointing. It was slower than Gnome and the looks were very dull. The splash screen during loading had a very poor colour resolution and it looked ugly for a latest distro. The desktop too has some sky blue - gray colour combination that looks lousy. KDE4.x was its usual slow. It looked as if Kubuntu 10.04 was released just as a formality to keep up with Ubuntu 10.04. If the KDE guys are not careful, KDE will become an endangered species. They need to trim and speed it up. Ubuntu 10.04 has finally replaced Debian 5 KDE on my system and I am quite happy about it. The software package manager 'Ubuntu Software Center' is nice for those who want a gui based one. It can be deceptive and do not rely completely on the package grouping/indexing. There are many packages out of this group too and will be available if you type their name in the search query window. A queer thing I noticed was that the package 'build-essential' was not available in the default India repo. After switching to a Taiwanese repo, I got this package. Everything else went smoothly. I installed the latest HPLIP package and got my HP K-209a printing and scanning working properly. Those who want restricted packages for multimedia support and fonts can install 'ubuntu-restricted-extras'. Thunderbird 3 was downloaded and Evolution was removed. Thunderbird 3 has some features of Windows Live Mail and Firefox. It has tabbed windows like Firefox and variable folder view like Windows Live Mail. This mail is being sent from Thunderbird 3. The 64 bit version was installed too on another system yesterday. Everything went fine there too. Just keep in mind that Skype's 64 bit version 2.x still does not have camera support in it. Overall Ubuntu 10.04 is a good system and very handy for those who do not have the latest hardware but want the latest software in their systems. Go ahead, enjoy it. -- Regards, Rony. GNU/Linux ! No Viruses No Spyware Only Freedom. -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
