I have read in several places that people feel Kubuntu isn't the best KDE distro, preferring openSUSE or PCLinuxOS and others. I imagine some of this comes from feeling Kubuntu plays second fiddle to Ubuntu.

Now, I use Kubuntu, but have tried some of the others sparingly through VirtualBox. Other than app choices and theme (and menu in openSUSE's case), I'm not really sure what's so different. Amarok on one is Amarok on another. So what criteria are people basing this on (excluding deb vs rpm)? Software availability? Control panel? Unseen patches?

You will always have people who prefer x over y or z for a variety of reasons. Don't sweat it.

The first time I used any *buntu was the latest Kubuntu. I installed and used it for about a week, and I had no major problem with it. I have run KDE in Debian for a while, though, so I do prefer it. But with a few modifications under the hood, I could happily use Kubuntu. The system I used is several years old, and Kubuntu was quite responsive.

Because some bloggers feel that their opinions are impressionable fact. Stick with it if it works for you.

I'm not looking to switch so much as just understanding people's motivation. I know with Arch there is KDEmod which has some clearly listed changes. I didn't know if other distros had similar sets of patches and whatnot. Clearly software choice and themes are obvious to the eye, but these others wouldn't be.

Some of it might be utilities specific to certain distro's like Suse's Yast and Mandriva's control center. Other considerations might include number of and frequency of application updates, package management (Kubuntu uses Synaptic while Suse and Mandriva have their own) and fullness of the distro (*buntu's tended to be desktop centric while others included more complete support for server and development needs). Another thought might be that Suse cd's were not liveCD's and included repair and recovery tools.

I have tried a number of Kubuntu releases starting with 5.10 and most of them have not been as stable as Ubuntu or as stable as openSUSE or Fedora when using KDE desktops. Perhaps this only happened on my machines, but that is what I observed so I suspect that others may have observed the same thing. An exception is the current release of Kubuntu (8.04), which is very nice--even with KDE4.

I think the main reason is that at first, KDE was totally broken in Ubuntu. For no good reason, the Ubuntu people decided to install with no root password. This made no sense back then, and still makes no sense, and no one has followed Ubuntu's bad example. Nevertheless, the Ubuntu guys are sticking with their non-standard way. It's a sore point for them, and they'll never admit that they were wrong and remain wrong.

Well, since having a root password is the standard way of doing things, some software assumes the existence of a root password. This included KDE. As such, KDE didn't work in Ubuntu. People who wanted KDE forked a variant of Ubuntu called Kubuntu, which hacked things to get KDE to work. This hack wasn't an official part of Ubuntu, so it was unsurprisingly not very good.

Since then, KDE has patched their software so it can be functional without a root password. This eliminated the need for a separate Kubuntu fork, so now Kubuntu is actually just Ubuntu with different default software installed.

Nevertheless, Ubuntu had already earned a reputation for not being good with KDE, and that bias remains even though the original problems have been resolved.

Cool - helpful answers, guys. Thanks. So far I like that Kubuntu seems a little more vanilla KDE, and has most apps as individual packages. The muted theme is nice, too. I've been pretty happy with DEB and the package selection. Like I said - not looking to switch necessarily, just curios. Thanks again.

You haven't used vanilla kde until you have used slackware

Why can't you set a root password on *buntu systems? I have set a root password on all the *buntu systems I have setup just as I would on most linux distros.?

I dislike having to "sudo" everything so i just use the root account in terminal instead.

Yeah, so were Linux people wrong when they stated it's dangerous to use root account (unrestricted permissions) for daily use and instead people should torture themselves with regular user accounts - Windows users were right up to the newer versions of it, that the only right way is to have one user account with no restrictions, and everything else is just non-standard, wrong and sore point to anybody claiming anything different. Right?

I suggest you read a little more about sudo, in depth if you feel you don't get what it is for from the shorter docs. It's just a new step in the almost historical way of Unix: start off with as little permissions as possible or not at all, and when needed, grant new permissions but only as much as you need. There are good sides in using root account, but there are also bad sides, and locking the actual root account itself doesn't hinder system administration or anything, but can add up to security (in the simplest case, that prevents brute-force attacks against root password). In addition sudo provides a way to have several administrators of "different level", allow regular users do things they need that would normally require root permissions (mounting a certain device without hal/udev for example) and, when well configured, prevents outsiders to gain full, root-like access to the machine in one instant.

If a desktop environment such as KDE is "hard-wired" to use root account, it's a bad thing because it ought not to be tied to the underlying system as such. It's just bad way of designing things to make them dependent of something that isn't in their control. If you are used to using root account, it's ok but just silly to claim that an operating system is "doing it wrong" if they're not taking that path

In my opinion Kubuntu is a KDE-desktop'ed distribution as good as any other; it can be configured to match any other KDE desktop (yes, if you're not satisfied with some piece of it that is customized for K/Ubuntu, you can replace it with the "original" piece), so that can't be the problem. The underlying rest-of-the-OS is very close to Debian which (at least some) people don't blame that much as a failure (and all KDE folks seem to say it's good KDE is so configurable; then what is the problem in configuring it if you dislike it's present state?) So maybe it's just as simple as people not liking Kubuntu folks taking a lot of programs out that are in some other KDE distributions, instead putting in a selected set of apps, changing a few logos and packing it onto just one cd Even though all the rest was available in the reposities.

The only real bad thing I can say about Kubuntu is that the KDE front end for Apt the Package Manager (adept) is not nearly as good as Synaptic is. The rest is up to the user to modify to his/her needs.

And yes, if you don't like it - don't cry, but use something you do like. Not everyone can be Kubuntu fans, not everyone can be something-else-fans.

You can, but that's not the way it's set by default. This was the main reason why KDE was initially broken on Ubuntu.
On my Ubuntu systems, I just leave it the way it is by default, and use "sudo su" when I want a root account in terminal.

No, you're being ridiculous.

The bottom line is that EVERY heavily security oriented *nix still uses a standard root account, and does NOT by default give any regular user sudo access to root. All of the other linux distributions and BSDs have had years to copy Ubuntu's "superior" way of doing things and they haven't done so.

So really, all of the bother Ubuntu went through wasn't worth it.

No, it isn't a new step. No one else is following Ubuntu's lead, because it's not a step forward. Start off with as little permissions as possible? How is giving a regular user root access starting off with as little permissions as possible? How about being able to boot up straight into a root login just by selecting the second boot option? (It asks for no password--not even the regular user password.)

As I said, the bottom line is that other *nixes have had plenty of time to copy the Ubuntu way if it were really better. It isn't. At best, it's a step sideways.

by default that maybe, but alot of people set up sudo on their own computers because its pretty good idea.

You can boot up to a root shell without a root password on all other *nixes, unless you setup a bootloader password. The idea being that no physical security = no security. Sudo has been around since before linux was even thought of. Alot of distros come with sudo, but you need to set it up yourself