Kubuntu 6.10 “edgy eft” is Nice

I just tried out Kubuntu 6.10 “edgy eft” on a live dvd I downloaded and burned.
Very Cool, Very Nice. Desktop Linux has truly arrived.

For those who don’t know Kubuntu is not all that different from Ubuntu internally. In fact their main differences are the graphical user interface layer (GUI). Ubuntu uses GNOME which is supposed to be more user-friendly but limited and Kubuntu uses KDE which is supposed to be more customizeable and better for control freaks. Based on looks, they’re very similar in the default installation. I like the idea of Kubuntu for the extra control you get to have (I’m with Linus Torvalds on this, don’t assume all users are idiots, and if they are, teach them like the original Mac did).

So how does Kubuntu feel? Pretty solid, very responsive. I tried the PPC (powerPC) version on an iBook G4. Other than the unfamiliar bootstrap sequence (looks like the BIOS startup on old windows machines) it was pretty slick. It looked a lot like a mix between Windows Vista and Mac OS X.

The parts I liked least were the parts that resembled Windows. The window menus and whatnot. It’s OK, but it would be nice if there were a version that more closely resembled OS X. I felt a bit lost without my control, option and command keys behaving in a familiar manner.

But that’s fine. OS X users have little reason to actually switch to Linux, they have most of the same power-user features already and a wonderful GUI. No, it is Windows users who Linux is ready for and aiming for. And folks, the time is now, Windows is dead in the water. Ubuntu and Kubuntu resemble Windows closely enough at the GUI that anyone familiar with Windows will feel quite comfortable very quickly in one of these two Linux incarnations. I’d say it’s high-time PC vendors started shipping cut-rate computers with Ubuntu or Kubuntu (or both) as the operating system installed.

If a Mac is too expensive for your taste, then you certainly should not consider Windows anymore. Go with Ubuntu or Kubuntu. No BSOD here. (blue screen of death) There is still some strange prejudice out there that thinks there is no software for Mac OS X and that Linux is hard to use. That’s just not true anymore. Both Mac OS X and Kubuntu/Ubuntu come with a full stack of software options. If you still need yet another option, there is also always BSD, another of the UNIX family.

Oh, one more reason to consider Kubuntu is the Konqueror web-browser. Because it shares so much with Apple’s Safari web-browser, you will have a wonderful web-surfing experience. Beautifully and correctly rendered web-pages. If that’s not your cup of tea, you can always use Opera or Firefox, too. Kiss Internet Explorer Goodbye!

*NIX (unix/linux) the once and future king [of operating systems].