4 replies to this topic

[Lo Tec]

Developer Jonathan Riddell has announced that, after the release of Ubuntu 12.04, Canonical will no longer be paying him to do development work on Kubuntu, the KDE derivative of Ubuntu. As a Canonical employee, Riddell has, for the last seven years, been paid to work on Kubuntu and is now moving on to other tasks within the company. Riddell has previously been on hiatus from Kubuntu-related work, though it had no noticeable affect on Kubuntu releases.

One significant outcome of this situation is that there will be no paid support for Kubuntu from version 12.04 onwards. Riddell said that Canonical has tried to make the derivative commercially feasible, but has failed in doing so.

According to Riddell, "Canonical wants to treat Kubuntu in the same way as the other community flavors such as Edubuntu, Lubuntu, and Xubuntu", which means that it will still be recognised as an official derivative. He also questions "whether the world needs Kubuntu"; if it does, then he suggests that community developers step up to take on tasks such as ISO testing. He also notes that he may not be able to work much on it in his free time and calls for community contributors to replace him.

Source

[+Mephistopheles]

Already posted: Canonical Ceases Funding of Kubuntu Development

[Lo Tec]

Guess I missed that. Thanx Mephistopheles. Could a mod merge this with other post or delete this one please?

[cork1958]

No big loss as the are to many variations of Ubuntu already and who used that bloated KDE version anyway also?

While we're on the subject of Ubuntu, I usually use the lighter XFCE desktop, but was more or less forced to try a different version due to what some said is a compatibility issue with XFCE and Firefox 10 on 64 bit machines.

I tried the full fledged Ubuntu and man, is that Ubiquity (?) desktop one BIG POS!!

If they ever do that to XFCE, I guarantee I will NEVER use any Linux distro that switches to that crap a** looking/dis-functional thing!

[bjoswald]

cork1958, on 21 February 2012 - 10:58, said:

No big loss as the are to many variations of Ubuntu already and who used that bloated KDE version anyway also?

While we're on the subject of Ubuntu, I usually use the lighter XFCE desktop, but was more or less forced to try a different version due to what some said is a compatibility issue with XFCE and Firefox 10 on 64 bit machines.

I tried the full fledged Ubuntu and man, is that Ubiquity (?) desktop one BIG POS!!

If they ever do that to XFCE, I guarantee I will NEVER use any Linux distro that switches to that crap a** looking/dis-functional thing!

I know man, I hear you! With all those icons on a dock that's on the LEFT side of my screen -- permanently -- I just want to yell at my monitor! Who wants to pin icons to the SIDE of your screen? Who wants Compiz effects when you could be using simple, old-school flat menus from the 90s? I hate Canonical!