Last July I bought one of the new Macbook Air's. The price for the hardware you got was unbeatable, and that was ignoring build quality! While previous Air's were anemic tarted up netbooks, the 2011 Air's were (and are) powerful enough for everyday use.
There was just one problem with the Air however. Horrible Linux support. I'd been using Kubuntu happily for years. After looking at all the ugly dirty hacks people were using to get their Air's running, I decided to give OSX a trial for 6 months or so. Long enough for Linux support to mature. I hadn't used OSX since the early 2000's and it looked like the OS had come a long way. To be precise, what really changed my mind was how far the OSX modding community had come. Despite being hated and loathed by Apple, they had managed to fill in some of the gaping holes in core functionality that Apple philosophy forbade, such as a way to remap keys (in all applications, not just some). I could finally remap the Apple key to something that didn't break my touch-typing habits on all the other OS's I use daily!
6 months later, I'm ready to jump ship. I like OSX Lion's touchpad gestures, but beyond that, I'll miss little else about the OS. OSX isn't bad mind you, but it's infuriatingly difficult to modify when it does something you don't like. It's buggy. It's actually pretty dated and ugly looking now too. OSX's virtual desktop management has absolutely nothing on KDE's.
Unfortunately, just as the next version of Kubuntu was starting to look like a good one for the Air, Canonical announced that they are ceasing paid development of Kubuntu. My favorite KDE distro is now officially on deathwatch. Maybe it will live on with community support, like any other distro has to, or maybe it'll fall by the wayside. I appreciate what Canonical is trying to do with Unity, but it's not for me. I'd long felt like Kubuntu, despite it's many virtues, was being treated like a red-headed step-child. This tears it. I haven't decided what distro I'm going to yet, but it will be one that puts KDE first, and that rules out anything Ubuntu.
Reports of Kubuntu's death may well be greatly exaggerated. Ceasing paid development means pulling the funding of one developer, a developer who was previously absent for a release cycle when he was on he Bazaar rotation instead - and Kubuntu still managed to make a release. At the same time, other Kubuntu developers have pointed out how this change will actually make it easier for the community to put Kubuntu together in some ways, due to the move of their packages from main to universe removing the need to get Canonical's sign-off for various things.
Kubuntu isn't on death watch, there was one person being paid to work on it, the rest was community support. The last version he didn't even work on (he was off working on bazaar or something)
If Kubuntu does die it will be at least like 3 releases out.
If you read the article you posted, you'll know "stopped funding Kubuntu" means Canonical "has paid for developer Jonathan Riddell to spend the last seven years working on Kubuntu" and will ask him to do something else after 12.04. He already wasn't fully dedicated to Kubuntu for a year or so.
I wouldn't mind the official end of life of linux software.
I used to be a window maker user (always hated KDE and did not like Gnomes sluggish performance). Window maker is nowadays not even on the DVD distributions. But it still works fine although I think nobody has really touched the code since long.
That is one of the nice things about linux compared to OS X. On linux dead software will still be alive for long and you get it via your favorite package manager. On OS X dead software is really and finally absolutely dead.
I wouldn't say the Linux support was horrible. It's a bit of a pain to get it installed to begin with, but that seemed an issue with how locked down macs are...
Once I had Ubuntu running, everything worked out of the box. The main issue was terrible trackpad support -- not that it didn't function, but that it didn't feel even close to right. And a few more complex gestures, like tapping with one finger and then dragging with a second, didn't work.
I've been using Fedora with KDE as my primary system for a year now. And after switching from f14 to f16 2 months ago I decided to leave KDE and try the gnome3 again (perhaps Unity on ubuntu). Why? Because KDE sucks. Ok, I should explain. KDE is great. So much better than gnome2 that people love for some very strange reason (but I guess some /same?:)/ people loved win95). I love its customizability. I like its unified feel across the apps. But out of the box feel is really bad. It looks bad, it works bad. I would say it's Fedora's problem as the KDE really is capable.. but still. Also, the apps are painful sometimes. But it's not different from GTK "suite" from what I've tried.
PS: It's my personal opinion of course. Maybe I'll switch back to KDE right after I try the Unity.
KDE on Fedora is my primary environment and has been for years, even through the rough times when 4 came out. Ugly is subjective but I'm not sure what you mean by 'works bad'. Unless you don't like design choices. My F16 machines have been rock solid and I've had no major problems with KDE.
My first distro was openSuSE 10.1, before KDE4, in 2006. The system has been upgraded to a new machine, now headless, and now lives on openSuSE factory. Running through VNC KDE is still a decent interaction. It spoiled me to all other implementations of KDE. OpenSuSE has a lot of other tidbits going for it too. YAST2 being huge!
I realize you're doomed to be downvoted into oblivion, but I have to agree - I had a tough time following someone whose logic is "OS X is pretty dated and ugly looking... it's back to KDE for me".
There are certainly fair points to be made about the inability to customize certain aspects of the window manager -- coming from a long-time linux user's perspective, it was one thing I immediately missed -- but I'm really not sure "ugly design" is one of the criticisms I could make.
Why can't you just take a standard Ubuntu and install the KDE packages? As far as I understand Kubuntu it's exactly the same as vanilla Ubuntu, but just uses different default packages.
This is true, but realize that the Kubuntu team is maintaining those packages, so "taking a standard Ubuntu and installing the KDE packages" does nothing to remove one's dependence on them. For why this still is nothing to immediately panic about see my earlier reply to parent.
This is what I do with Fedora. I started using RedHat in 2000 or so and it's been my OS of choice since. People often assume I'm a gnome user - but I jumped to KDE in the first few months, and never switched back. I do install both though, as disk space is cheap and I like having the ability to run some Gnome applications.
There was just one problem with the Air however. Horrible Linux support. I'd been using Kubuntu happily for years. After looking at all the ugly dirty hacks people were using to get their Air's running, I decided to give OSX a trial for 6 months or so. Long enough for Linux support to mature. I hadn't used OSX since the early 2000's and it looked like the OS had come a long way. To be precise, what really changed my mind was how far the OSX modding community had come. Despite being hated and loathed by Apple, they had managed to fill in some of the gaping holes in core functionality that Apple philosophy forbade, such as a way to remap keys (in all applications, not just some). I could finally remap the Apple key to something that didn't break my touch-typing habits on all the other OS's I use daily!
6 months later, I'm ready to jump ship. I like OSX Lion's touchpad gestures, but beyond that, I'll miss little else about the OS. OSX isn't bad mind you, but it's infuriatingly difficult to modify when it does something you don't like. It's buggy. It's actually pretty dated and ugly looking now too. OSX's virtual desktop management has absolutely nothing on KDE's.
Unfortunately, just as the next version of Kubuntu was starting to look like a good one for the Air, Canonical announced that they are ceasing paid development of Kubuntu. My favorite KDE distro is now officially on deathwatch. Maybe it will live on with community support, like any other distro has to, or maybe it'll fall by the wayside. I appreciate what Canonical is trying to do with Unity, but it's not for me. I'd long felt like Kubuntu, despite it's many virtues, was being treated like a red-headed step-child. This tears it. I haven't decided what distro I'm going to yet, but it will be one that puts KDE first, and that rules out anything Ubuntu.