Can someone tell me which is better Kubuntu or Ubuntu

They are the same distribution. Ubuntu uses Gnome as the default Desktop Environment, while Kubuntu uses KDE. If you already have Ubuntu installed, you can easily install the Kubuntu-desktop through synaptic.

Needless to say, all the installed applications will be different. For example, in Ubuntu, the default browser is Firefox, in Kubuntu it's Konqueror. In Ubuntu, you get Gaim installed as the default instant messenger, in Kubuntu, you get Kopete.

I don't know if you know this already, but you can run Gnome applications in KDE and vice-versa, so no worries there.

Again, they are the same distro, but the applications will be different. I'm just writing this from Kubuntu 8.10 (testing it, out of curiosity) and I love how polished KDE desktop looks, but to be totally fair, I am completely lost here, since I've used Gnome for so many years

I don't mean this to be a review, but here are some negative things:

- Sharing files through Samba is ratter buggy. In Ubuntu, I just right-click on a folder and say I want to share it and it asks if I want to install the necessary services. In Kubuntu, you also get the Share-tab, but the thing simply crashes. Took a while to find a fix on Google and to tell you the truth, I am not sure what the problem was or even how I fixed it. It is working at last.

- Konqueror won't play nicely with Flash. I decided to install Firefox and that was a 130mb download, because a lot of gtk files had to be downloaded. Flash does works fine with Firefox though;

- The menu feels messy. For example, we have K > Settings and K > System > System Settings, and they are completely separated beasts. I know there must be some logic behind this, but both Settings and System Settings can be confusing for a new user because of the similar names. They also share the same icon.

- Keyboard input is slightly buggy as well. For some unknown reason, I can no longer use "Alt + F1" to bring the menu back. "Alt+F2" still works (shortcut for "run"). Never had this problem with Ubuntu. I am sure it will work if I logout, but if this will happen frequently, can be annoying.

- Mouse was not properly identified. I have a mouse with 2 extra buttons. In a web browser, for example, they can be used as shortcuts for back/forward. It works out of the box on Ubuntu.

- Screen flickers all the time. Not sure what the problem here is, but my monitor blinks a lot. Probably because I have not (yet) installed the Nvidia drivers, but this did not happen with Ubuntu using the generic drivers.

- Similarly to the "Messy menu" as I described above, there are more inconsistencies (in my opinion) in KDE. For instance, if you right click on your Desktop, you have a "Desktop Settings" option where you can change your wallpaper and theme. Under K > System Settings, you have under Look and Feel, options for Desktop and Appearance. They are, once again, similar in name and description as "Desktop Settings", but they do completely different things. For instance, one would expect "Look and Feel" to be where you can change themes. Well, it is not there, it's under "Desktop Settings" (right click on desktop).

- No equivalent of "Gimp" installed by default. I was expecting Krita at least? Why was it not included? Don't know . You do get OpenOffice drawing. To be completely honest, I never ever tried that program.

- Pressing "Print Screen" button on my keyboard does nothing by default (either that or the input is still messed up). In Ubuntu, you will get a snapshot where you can conveniently save. Great to when posting errors. Now, KDE has KSnapshot so... why is it not a bind to the printscreen button by default? (I know, I am being a little bit mean now, but I take a lot of screenshots all the time)

- I use a Saitek Eclipse keyboard, which has only a few extra buttons: Volume Up, Volume Down, Mute and Backlighting. Mute works fine, Volume Up and Down don't work. If I press them, it will display the current volume in %, but it won't increase or decrease the volume. Works out of the box in Ubuntu. I did not try to fix that, but one would expect it to work by default, it is a pretty standard thing these days. I have not tested Kubuntu on my laptop, but in that case, the volume controls are very important for me and since this was posted under "Laptop" category, I thought it was important to mention that.

This is what I think of Kubuntu so far. On the positive side, it feels very refreshing to try out a new Desktop Environment after so many years. Some things were a snap to get working, such as divx and mp3 playback. Sharing media files with uShare to my Xbox 360 was extremely simple (through the command line that is). It was even faster to do that in Kubuntu that it would otherwise be with Windows Vista and WMP.

Some default KDE applications are amazing, such as Amarok and K3b. They added a few gadgets too, nothing as fancy as Vista, but at least it is fast and I am very used having a "Post it" like application on my Desktop.

I think if you are trying out Ubuntu for the first time, I'd have to recommend Ubuntu. It has less things to fix out of the box and it is easier to find fix for issues in Ubuntu that they are (apparently) for Kubuntu. Not that Ubuntu/Gnome doesn't have it share of problems out of the box though. But then again, which OS doesn't. Some just gives you a crappy browser and a notepad without any syntax highlighting whatsoever (guess which one )

Still, if you have bandwidth, grab both Kubuntu and Ubuntu. They are both Live CD's and you can try out both without installing anything to your computer. That is the best way to know "Which one is the best" (for you, that is )

My 2 cents.

My take on this is that if you prefer KDE as your desktop there are better distributions. Canonical seem to put a lot more effort into Ubuntu than Kubuntu. Mandriva's KDE installation beats the pants off Kubuntu.

As suggested previously, try a KDE installation and a Gnome installation. Also, remember that Linux does not start and end with *buntu.

Also look at gOS. It has ubuntu has its base and uses gnome, but it is set up to look like a mac.
http://www.thinkgos.com/software.php

I used to be a big KDE fan, but they lost me with 4.0 (buggy and weird).
If you go with KDE, I recommend the latest 3.x.

I have to agree with allelopath here. KDE 3.x is far more suitable today. I am sure KDE4 will get better, but today, it is a no go, in my honest opinion.

I think Kubuntu 8.04 uses it and Kubuntu 8.04 is a pretty solid OS and well supported for a while as well (it is a LTS branch)

I really can't understand why people keep asking these questions. How can anyone tell you what's better if we don't know what "better" actually means to you? At best we can give our own preferences and comments, as some of the other posters have already done.

But the only person who can really tell you which is better is you, and the only way for you to determine the answer is to try them both.

That's what I did, and I personally found kde to be better suited for me than gnome; the major reason being that kde gave me more power and flexibility in customization and allowed me to set everything up just the way I like it. Of course, you may come to a completely different conclusion. What I call power and flexibility others call complexity and clutter.

By the way, you might also consider the fact that there are other choices available as well, such as xcfe and enlightenment.

I agree with David the H. Try giving XFCE a shot, you may like it. I am trying out Xubuntu right now and so far, out of the three Big Ubuntu-based distributions, it requires less out-of-the-box configuration and has the least problems. Some issues though:

- Sound is a bit cracky, both with native applications and wine (Application in test with wine is Spotify). I am pretty sure it is fixable though.

- Thunar is pretty much all I ever wanted from a file manager: Fast, responsive, right to the point. The only problem is, it won't remember the size of the columns for file names. I mean, I've a couple of files with very long names, I've to resize the column with the file name every time I open thunar. It remembers the window size though, which I appreciate.

- Some interesting choices of applications here: Instead of rhythimbox, you get "Listen" as the default music player. It is not a bad application, but I don't think it can connect to iPod devices as Rhytim can, which can be a problem for some users, considering how popular iPods are.

- Apparently, I can't drag and drop icons/shortcuts from the Desktop to the main top panel. I can right-click on the panel itself, choose "Add new item", but I can't add the programs I wanted, only a few pre-defined ones. If there is a simple way to do that, well, it should be simple to do

Well, I just posted this so you don't rule out Xubuntu right away. I think I will continue to use it and might eventually use it as my main distro. Not because I think Gnome is bad or anything, I am just a bit tired of it. And XFCE feels so fast on my machine which makes me feel like I've a new cutting edge PC

I wonder what gaming performance is like, since it clearly uses less resources than Gnome does. Hmmmm...

Hi there.

I have been a fan of KDE for several years. I used it on slackware and with kubuntu. I have to say that kde 4 has been a total disapointment, cause it's a little bit buggy and it is just to heavy; my fans run wild and my overall computer has slowed down, not much but it's noticeable. I do have to say that it's presence and menus is just the best desktop i have seen. I have also used gnome on ubuntu and with gos, it's light, really fast but i've never liked it cause of the apps that it comes with by defautl; but as somebody already said, it doesn't matter, you can install whichever app you want with no problem using synaptic or apt.

If you are looking for speed and good docs, i would recommend gnome, it's what everybody uses and there must be good reason why, right? I do stand by kde because i just simply relate to it better, but kde 4 has a lot of ground to cover before it can be said it's mature and ready for the masses.

Good luck!

First really big limitation I came across with Xubuntu. Apparently there is no way to connect to a Windows share from Thunar. My options are (that I can think of that is):

- Install nautilus or Konqueror;
- Mount the share manually from the command line;

This is a good enough reason for me not to use Xubuntu and perhaps even recommend it to someone else starting out with Linux.

I will keep digging to see if this can be fixed, but one would expect a modern distro to have some easy to use, out of the box connectivity these days...

Er, I don't!

You can still use KDE3 with most distributions and long term KDE4 will be faster than KDE3. The same sort of fuss was about with previous releases of KDE. The worst you can accuse them of is releasing stuff when it should still be in beta. You can already see with KDE4.2 that it is way ahead of 4.0.

Hey there.

I still stand by my point that gnome is faster than kde. I have installed both in the same computer, with the same hardware, and i can tell that gnome runs faster. I know that kde4 has just arrived and it's pretty much coming along like the other releases did. Once it's made leaner and they get everything on track, i bet kde4 is going to kick butts.

Thanks.

I used to have kubuntu hardy heron on an old laptop (quite old and with some hardware problems - the laptop is now unusable). It had 360 MBs RAM and 30Gb hard disk, and Kubuntu ran fine. I used Konqueror as a file manager, Firefox as a browser, played some DOS games and did other regular work like writing, some projects, reading... I've tried KDE4 and Gnome in a LiveCD and I must say I find KDE4 too confuse and with too many things (that plasma/ widgets thing on the desktop is really annoying). In Gnome, from what I've seen, it consumes less resources than KDE4 and I think that's it. The way you feel better on your Linux should dictate the environment to use.

My suggestion - LiveCD's. Try Xfce, KDE3, KDE4, Gnome, etc. and make your choice.

I must say Kubuntu never gave me any problems (except with midi reproduction - nothing unsolvable though). I changed the menu the way I wanted, changed the icons I wanted, I changed the apps I wanted, and everything ran OK.

OP gone?? Oh well....

Q: Which is better: Kubuntu or Ubuntu?

A: Mint with XFCE

Which is better: Slackware 12.2 or Schizophrenic 0.1??????