Kubuntu 10.04

29 Jul 2010

I finally decided to update my laptop to Kubuntu 10.04 (a distribution of GNU/Linux based on Debian). As usual I used the Live DVD to just rename the /home folder to /old, delete everything else, and mount the partitions in the advanced setup without formatting them (although like this I wasn’t able to make use of the new EXT4 file system). For new users there is an article how to do a graphical installation of Kubuntu.

KDE4 really has some nice eye candy. Also there are themes for many things and you can just download them using the configuration dialogs. Here’s a screenshot of the Kubuntu Spotlight theme I chose for the login manager.

For the boot splash animation I used the Spectrum theme.

And here is a screenshot of the desktop in action.

The distribution can be downloaded free of charge at http://www.kubuntu.org/. There are few issues with the HP Compaq nx7400 notebook I am using. So far I’ve found the following problems:

NetworkManager disables itself before going into standby and doesn’t come back when disconnecting power during standby mode (one needs to edit the file /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state). Also when using another tool such as pppoeconfig, NetworkManager will disable itself using another configuration file (one needs to edit the file /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf).
VoIP settings: One needs to switch everything in Twinkle to ALSA/Default.
When not terminated properly, Amarok gives the error message “Amarok is already running!” even though it is not running.
Sometimes one needs to restart Amarok because it stops playing after every song.
The Shoutcast list is not included in Amarok any more but there is an Amarok script for adding Shoutcast to Amarok.
I had to install msn-pecan because Pidgin’s default implementation for MSN has issues.
Pidgin won’t connect to ICQ unless Use clientLogin is checked in the advanced account settings.
The waste bin has become a plasma widget which is not on the desktop by default.
As usual one needs to fetch additional codecs and libdvdcss from the Medibuntu repository in order to be able to play videos using patent-encumbered codecs and DVDs.
The file associations for PDF documents are configured to prefer the proprietary Acrobat Reader over the Okular free software.
WPA2 wireless keeps disconnecting (iwl3945 driver, deauthenticating by local choice (reason=3)). Installing install the linux backports modules doesn’t seem to help either at this point in time.
The default output device for mplayer is xmga. You need to change it to xv.
One of the ALSA volume controls for the microphone seems to be mislabelled as the ‘Digital’ input.

Update:

I posted about listing manually selected packages with aptitude on the Ubuntu Forum. This is very useful for generating the command line for installing the same set of packages on a new machine (e.g. my new HP G56-108SA ;)). One can list the manually selected packages as follows:

aptitude search '!~M ~i' -F '%p'

I.e. you can run the following command on one machine:

echo aptitude install `aptitude search '!~M ~i' -F '%p'` > install.sh

Then you copy the resulting file install.sh to the target machine and run

sh ./install.sh

Basically !~M selects not automatically selected packages and ~i selects installed packages. See content of package aptitude-doc-en for more information.

Note that you might have to manually modify the file install.sh if the package names on the target system are different (e.g. 32-bit vs. 64-bit, other proprietary wireless driver, …).

Update:

Here’s a nice example of a dual-screen desktop running the same Kubuntu version.

See also: