Kubuntu Loses Funding Support from Canonical

Kubuntu will lose its funding support from Canonical after the 12.04  release according to a recent e-mail to the Kubuntu Developers List .  In the e-mail, John Riddell stated that it was "unrealistic
to expect it to continue to have financial resources put into it" since the Kubuntu desktop has not been a business success for Canonical.

This does not imply that Kubuntu will disappear from the Linux scene.  It will simply slide further on down on the Ubuntu totem pole.  Down with the likes of Xubuntu, not bad company.   It seems that Cannonical just wants to do away with the GNOME vs. KDE desktop war by turning to Unity, a desktop interface that still leaves a lot to be desired.

Unity may work great on Tablets, TVs, and smart phones, but for desktop PCs, it is just not as productive.  Maybe Unity in Precise Pangolin will work better?

Xubuntu 9.10 on 256 MB Ram

I have a Dell Lattitude C810 that 512 in RAM and about a 1.2 GHz Pentium 4 CPU. I had it upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala and it was doing a pretty fine job. Since the laptop was so heavy, I primarily had it laying on a desk and used it to check the web. Otherwise this laptop would be a brick.

One of the memory chips went bad some time ago, and I was forced to remove one of the 256 MB modules. Therefore, I was left with just 256 MB of RAM. Not surprisingly, the Dell C810 became quite slow running Ubuntu and the GNOME Desktop. I three choices on what to do with this computer:

1. Throw it away

2. Go out and spend $30 for a new memory modules

3. Try Xubuntu

I did not want to toss the machine quite yet (although I probably should) and I was not interested in investing any money into this laptop, so I decided to try Xubuntu on it.

Xubuntu is advertised as having a small memory footprint and great for older systems. To install it, I simply opened up a terminal and typed:

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

And hit 'Y' to a couple or prompts. All of the needed themes, artwork, and start-up programs were downloaded and installed without a hitch in about 20 minutes.

For a web browser, I switched to Google Chrome for Linux. Now the laptop is usable once again. It is still a little slower than before. But at least for casual web browsing it is still working. So maybe I will get another year or two of service out of this Dell C810 Lattitude.

Ubuntu Everyday PC

This is going to be a diary about my daily use of the Ubuntu Operating system as my main household PC. Actually, I am running it on several of my machines, plus a version called xubuntu on one of my older boxes.

Since Ubuntu 8.10 is due to be released tomorrow, I though it would be nice to start entering some thoughts and ideas about using this operating system over Windows or a Mac.