In a little bit more than a month before the release of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx I decided that I want to try how KDE 4.4 behaves and if I am ready to switch from Gnome to KDE again. My heart was always with KDE and Qt but after KDE 3.5 everything went downhill and I switched to Gnome. I really want to try the new KDE, but going to Beta software on my primary workstation is not an option and I will stick with Karmic Koala for a while after the release of Lucid Lynx which will be shipping with KDE 4.4. The only option for me and others like me is to install KDE desktop on top of existing Ubuntu taking it from the backports repository. Here are simple step by step instructions on how to do this.
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Time sure flies when you’re having fun and now we are about ten days from final release of Ubuntu 9.10 – Karmic Koala. What kind of stew did Ubuntu guys cook for us this time? Four days after the FinalFreeze stage in the Ubuntu development cycle means that what didn’t make it in the distribution will be left out and that we will get the Release Candidate in three days. I decided to install Kubuntu 9.10 which differs from Ubuntu regular in primary desktop environment and installation program. Instead of Gnome based desktop you will get KDE based desktop. Is KDE 4.3 up to the task? Let’s dig in and see how Koala tackles the legendary horned rabbit! ;)
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Couple of days ago KDE 4.3 was released. Celebration is in order because we didn’t have a stable release of KDE for almost four years. KDE 3.5 was the last stable release of KDE desktop environment and it happened in early November 2005. Before 4.3 release there were some try outs with KDE 4.0, 4.1 and 4.2 releases, but they were far away from being stable. KDE 4.2 was almost there, but not quite yet. I’ve been KDE user from the very beginning, from version 1.0. There were times that I had an urge to switch to Gnome especially with the first release of Gnome Ximian but it didn’t last long.
KDE is by far the most configurable and customizable desktop environment which offers complex integration with its components and other KDE programs. KDE is built on top of Qt widget library and this was quite controversial at first because Qt library wasn’t published under Gnu General Public License. Richard M. Stallman and Debian guys have had a lot of issues with KDE bunch. In a nutshell: first we had FreeQt license which enabled KDE to distribute Qt with KDE. Then KDE and Trolltech signed some papers and legal agreements which made people a little happier. Then, they created QPL and Free Software Foundation said that it is still incompatible with GPL. Then Qt was dual licensed under GPL and commercial license and all was well. Then Nokia acquired Trolltech, and in the beginning of 2009 released Qt under Lesser GPL with a few exceptions that enable you to use Qt in commercial, closed source products.
Read on if you want to know how to install KDE in Ubuntu 9.04 and survive … ;)
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