Ubuntu and Kubuntu back to back

I mentioned my last post, about the most popular Linux desktop, that I wanted to spend a little more time comparing the 6.06 versions of Ubuntu and Kubuntu. I noted that I have them running as guests of Parallels on the Mac, but that does not tell me anything about how well they deal with hardware. Especially old hardware, like my test machines. Compaq M300's that have been assembled out of quite a number of broken systems. And it would not tell me about how well they deal with one of my major areas of interest in Linux, the maturity of their 802.11 support.

(note: Because of the magic of time delayed posting, I actually did this testing over the three day holiday weekend we just had here in the USA. The post is written in present tense, but really... this is so last week!)

I started with Ubuntu. It is the basis of Kubuntu. The desktop managers are different, but I assume the basic work in the underlying OS is the same. If I know and understand Unbuntu, my theory is that Kubuntu should be the same, but with KDE looking back at me from the LCD panel. I'll see if that is true from an end user persepective.

Why do this work at all? It is a holiday here in the States as I write this and do the work. So, why do this. Other than I have no life, or perhaps the holidays are the only times I can put together enough time to do more serious level of work like this.

One reason: You may have noticed a bit of a theme for me recently. I have been focused a bit away from the Data Center Linux (I am working on a DC Linux update though) and more on the desktop Linux. One of the most interesting questions to me about Linux is when will it be more widely adopted in the Enterprise as a desktop. It is not a question of usability to me anymore. But there are a hundred other factors probably driving it. Right now I think most of them are outside the actual technical nature of Linux and contained in other areas, such as the readiness of the glass house, and the maturity / standards compliance of various web portals.

What I want to be personally ready to do is answer questions about how to do things in the enterprise with desktop Linux, and I don't want to have my knowledge limited to just a few different Distros. Of course I can not possibly know every single distro's good and bad points, any more than I can really fully comprehend the various depths of KDE and Gnome. There is always a SME (Subject Matter Expert) who will know more than me about any given thing. My goal is to be able to talk with some experience about what works, what doesn't, and to listen to someones requirements and be able to respond to them with more than a WAG.

The Ubuntu/Kubuntu experiment has a few interesting things going for it. One is that with the same basic core Linux work (Debian plus the Ubuntu additions), each 'flavor' layers on a complete desktop from an utterly different project. Sure, you can do the same thing with OpenSUSE or Fedora or other distros, just by picking which desktop you want to use at install time You can even install all of them. K/Ubuntu seems different in that each comes as what feels like a completely integrated, separate Distro. Different install disks even.

After working with both versions side by side, I have circled back around in some ways to where I started in my view of Gnome versus KDE. If I was looking for a Distro I could use as a corporate desktop, and I had not already made up my mind to use something else, either would do. With the nearly identical M300 computers side by side, the Gnome interface is cool looking, but I just kind of feel if I was migrating an MS Windows user to Linux, that the KDE desktop would be more comfortable for them. I have had someone sit down and start to use one of my Linux computers, and not immediately realize she was not at MS Windows. It was KDE with an MS Windows looking theme. They had the web browser open and surfing before they noticed they were not on MS Windows.

One of the nice things about either Kubuntu or Ubuntu: despite the seemingly 'pure' desktops, it is easy to enable the software installation tools so that you can pick up software packages from the other project, or in fact projects like, for a random example, Nessus, that have nothing to do with either desktop. To prove it, I installed Konsole (the KDE terminal app) on Ubuntu, and it works just fine there. It is also interesting to see that each desktop have a large number of application analogs: 'Gmail Notify' and 'kcheckgmail', both in the 'Internet' menus are a good example. Both open source replacements for the gmail notifier I have on my Mac. Nice. Everywhere I am, I know if I have email.

Ubuntu 6.06 is suffixed 'LTS', meaning 'Long Term Support'. I presume this is to offset the criticism of the rapid rate with which Linux releases are normally done, such as two or three Fedora Core releases a year. An enterprise deploying a Linux desktop would want something that didn't rev as often, but still received security and other important updates. I note there is also Xubuntu. I have not tried it, but its project web page says it exists to deploy a lighter weight X (XFfe) than either KDE or Gnome. For older hardware, this is a cool idea. It is amazing however how well K/Ubuntu are running and the ancient gear I am testing it with.

Despite the differences in the package installer programs (Adept on KDE, Synaptic on Gnome) it does a very good job putting installed programs in the same or similar menus. iPodder went into 'Sound and Video' on Ubuntu, and 'Multimedia' on Kubuntu. Firefox went into 'Internet' on both of them.

Here is a weird thing: Adept is out of the Debian project. You'd think it would work on Ubuntu. But when I try it, I get a nasty message abouu 'kdesu' not working. I can install that program of course, but I find it interesting that a KDE sourced bit of code would be required to get Adept going under Ubuntu.

One of the questions in the back of my mind as I have played around with these two versions of Ubuntu is if they would in some way make a better corporate desktop than Fedora or OpenSuSE or even Sun's so called 'Java Workstation' (So called, because they pre-install Java as near as I can tell). I will have to defer that till I can test the Evolution included with K/Ubuntu (2.6.1) against our MS Exchange server.

I can see one cool possibility in using K/Ubuntu in the corporate environment. If you assume that you wish to provide both desktops to the end users: If you buy into the idea I talked about in "Which Gui ", that your technical population will prefer Gnome, and your less technical / recent MS Windows converts will prefer KDE, then here is a unique and interesting way to provide either desktop to your end user, but still have some ability to maintain it centrally, not to mention write usage documentation.

On the other hand, I have not seen much in the way various centrally managed patch tools supporting K/Ubuntu yet. I assume that means there has not been much demand for it.

Install logs ahead

In case anyone is interested in the process, I include these notes I took as I was installing the two releases. They show all the pit stops and wrong turns I made, as they were written as I went. They are not edited for TV. Parental disgression wait.... no ... digression is advised. They are not utterly germane to the point I am after, which hopefully I made above. Skip it if you wish to maintain any illusions about my intelligence as a Linux installer.

Ubuntu install log

I booted the Ubunti CD, which launches a LiveCD running version of the OS. You can do this same thing with Knoppix these days: Install it to the harddrive from a running Linux. Ubuntu asks a few more questions during the install than, say for example, Freespire. 6 panels worth, but mostly simple stuff like 'Time Zone' and name and whatnot. I let it take over the hard drive and do whatever it wanted to it. I am always interested to see what is considered a 'best practice' by each distro for disk layout. For my real 'production' systems I always override the defaults, since I always want to preserve my /home. And one configuration (the IBM T41 that is my main desktop, running Fedora Core 5) is set to dual boot while the others are not. The disk layout is very simple: 11.2 GB for / 500 MB for swap. It is a small disk by todays standards, so this is probably how I would have done it. / is 18% full, so the 698 MB Live CD expanded out to 1.8 GB.

I do not know how long it took to install. Once I answered the questions, I went out to play NTN trivia for a bit with my wife. She plays, I .... err... "coach". But I digress: It was done when I got back, so... install takes less than two hours. Not really what I care about. I am installing this on such ancient systems, it is going to take a while. That is just a given. I was running Mandriva 2006 on this system before, and boot times looks to be about the same. The bottlenecks here are the hardware, so I am just going to stop talking about speed except when it surprises me that it is fast on this kind of gear.

My first roadblock is that when I jack in my D-link DWL-650+ 802.11 card, I can not find any way to configure it. Being the impatient sort, I just enter the ifconfig and iwconfig commands to bring it up manually. The good news is that it comes right up! I chose this card for this test because it is one I have varying results on. The acx100 TI chipset was reverse engineered for the Linux Drivers, since TI did not issue any with the chip.

My first step on any new OS install of any OS type is of course updates. The update manager only has four. All are listed as new versions. Meanwhile I surf with Firefox. Not for long: they come down and install quickly. At the end of the 'Applications' menu is a choice to 'Add/remove'. Software that is. I want to see if I can find stuff to monitor and manage the wireless. The only one I can find is a KDE app. In fact, most of this is KDE apps. I enable the 'unsupported' and 'commercial' options to see if I can get more choices. I *try* to. It says it can't get an exclusive lock on the package manager, and dies. Fine. Just fine. I see Synaptic is another menu choice, so I tell it to install the things it can. And it can't get an exclusive lock. I suspect loose nut at the keyboard. Yep: I left 'Software Update' up.

Starting over. Enabling the 'unsupported' checkbox appears to work this time. OK: Cool. Java and Flash are now install options! Humm. It wants me to switch to advanced mode to install Realplayer. Which requires leaving the app and loosing everything I have selected, or installing what I have selected so far, which is 98 packages. I take the install route. Well, lookie there: 'Advanced' is just 'Synaptic'. Been here, done this on Debian, Freespire, Xandros.... Also interesting: This is not 'Adept' I had to install that. Realplayer won't install because 'xlibs' is not installable. I'll figure it out later: I want to see 'Adept'. A light goes on. Adept is missing from Ubuntu because it is a Kubuntu thing. Must be: It wants 'kdesu'. Interesting difference. It just does not want to run under Ubuntu: not enough KDE guts installed, specifically 'kdesu'.

Before I go install Kubuntu on the other M300, I find the wireless setup thing. Too easy. System / Administration / Networking. Doh. And the 'Networking' applet for the command bar understands the wireless inherently as well. What always seems to get me in trouble with K/Ubuntu: Preconceived notions about where things should be. In this case, thinking separate applications are needed for wireless. Add the battery charge applet to the command bar: I wonder why it didn't do that by default? I am starting to multitask now: I need a second wireless card so I can work with both at the same time. A good test anyway: Lets see with Ubuntu does with an Atheros chipped card. Install DWL-G630, configure as before, and it's on the air. This it about as painless as I have ever seen 802.11 be.

Bluetooth: Install Kensington Bluetooth dongle, fire up blue tooth file sharing. Something missing. The Mac mini can see the Ubuntu computer, but says nothing is started on it. On the other hand, the Ubuntu computer can browse the network and find all the MS Windows (SMB) stuff no problem. Add/remove software, seach for 'blue': no Bluetooth stuff installed at all. Install it. Easy. Now I can send things to the Mac. At 25 Kb a second. No speed records there, but this is a USB 1.1 port. Poking around the Ubuntu web site, I just found a reference to the Ubuntu DVD now. I don't know how I missed that before. Oh well. Seems to make no difference on the install. Here is a gmail notifier. Handy. Looks a lot like the one from Google too.

Kubuntu Install Log

Back to the Mac. I burn the 3.42 GB Kubuntu DVD to install to the M300 that has a previous version of Kubuntu installed on it. It is interesting to me that there is no Ubuntu DVD. I wonder what that means? (It means I'm a doofus sometimes. It is a bit odd how it was easier to find the KDE DVD thoough. Ed.) Is KDE that much bigger? ... no, there is a CD version of Kubuntu as well.

Ruh Roh shaggy: looks like the CD is about to fail on this unit. Nasty messages about /dev/hdc timing out. There is a reason I found this gear in the trash pile. M300's have 'blades' or 'slices' that they doc they dock to. Switch it out for another... looks better! That blade installed Ubuntu. I guess DVD is different enough than CD that the drive can handle one but not the other.

There it it: A clean KDE desktop. Same two icons as Ubuntu: Examples and Install. Click Install. Six screens: Similar, but the Kubunti screens act different is subtle ways. The time zone sets are more obvious where the cities are, and hovering over a city reveals its name. I also prefer that everything is in shades of blue rather than brown, but that it utterly a matter of taste because Blue is my favorite color. I am sure I can override Ubuntu's color scheme now that it is installed.

Kubuntu laid out the 12 Gb disk the same as Ubuntu. While Kubuntu installs from the DVD, I find a picture of the new Orion spacecraft docking with the ISS and set it as my backdrop on Ubuntu. Once at NASA, always at NASA. Set theme from 'Human' to 'Clearlooks'. OK. This looks good to me. While I was doing that simple thing. Kubuntu installed itself by 50%. The new CD/DVD is working much better. I went away for a bit, and came back to a message about not being able to access security updates. Probably because it is not hooked to the network yet. I want to try the same NIC in both computers, at least to start, and the DWL-650+ is in the Ubuntu computer so I can surf the net while I wait for Kubuntu. No point in writing down what Kubuntu says as it installs. I was not here when Ubuntu installed anyway. It did get hung where Ubuntu didn't though. Meaning Ubuntu didn't look for security updates?

Wireless card works about the same, except that the networking widget didn't seem to know it was wireless. I enable it manually, and now it does know it's wireless. Adept does not want to work. Looks like not having the network going at install time disabled all the repositories. Enabling them... tons of stuff updating now. Full upgrade: wow: way more packages than I saw on Ubuntu. I wonder if I need to enable some of it's repositories.

Next, try Bluetooth, see what that does. Nifty: it sees my phone and my mini-mac. I can push a .png over to the mac. Not fast though. Looking at the disk space use: Same as Ubuntu. 18%. What is all that space on the DVD being used for? No Firefox on the install. Adept, select 'any suite', and install. Easy. Ditto ipodder and kcheckgmail.