Ubuntu Derivatives: Kubuntu 12.04 LTS and Xubuntu 12.04 Have Been Released!

Two Ubuntu brothers a.k.a derivatives: Kubuntu 12.04 LTS and Xubuntu 12.04 LTS have been released. Let's start with Kubuntu! Kubuntu is a derivative of Ubuntu which uses K Desktop Environment (KDE) instead of Unity, it provides beautiful and elegant desktop experience for its users. Kubuntu 12.04 LTS will be supported for 5 years.

What's new in this release:

• Improvements in speed and rendering in Dolphin
• Redesigned power management configuration - settings are now Activity-aware
• New Icon Tasks provides an alternative icon-only taskbar
• Amarok 2.5 updates
• Rekonq and OwnCloud Updates
• And more!

For detailed information about what's new in Kubuntu 12.04 LTS, please click here!

Download Kubuntu 12.04 LTS

In other news, Xubuntu 12.04 LTS is now available for download. It will be supported for three years per Xubuntu LTS plan. Xubuntu is a simple, fast, and lightweight alternative of Ubuntu which uses XFCE as its desktop environment.

Xubuntu 12.04 LTS release notes:

• The i386 images use a non-PAE kernel. The non-PAE kernel will not be available in future Xubuntu releases.
• Some default shortcuts have been changed, added and deleted. See New default shortcut keys for the complete list.
• Pavucontrol is used instead of xfce4-mixer due to latter not supporting Pulseaudio
• The Alacarte menu editor is installed by default and will work with Xfce-related menu items as well
• Lots of appearance improvements, including new branding, fixes for Greybird, Ubiquity, Plymouth, LightDM and Terminal theming
• Syncs, updates and patches from Debian and upstream, including xfce4-power-manager, Ristretto and gmusicbrowser
• xfdesktop4 updated to support single-click opening and thumbnail support for the desktop
• xfce4-settings has been updated to include the new mouse and touchpad dialog

Download Xubuntu 12.04 LTS

Enjoy :)

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Mandriva ROSA Launcher for Kubuntu

Gone are the days of press to start pop-up or pop-down menu launchers for operating systems and desktop environments. Ubuntu have its very own Unity launcher with various lenses, Gnome 3 have Activities hot corner, Apple introduced Launchpad in OSX Lion to go with the trend and even Microsoft is planning to ditch the legendary "Start" menu in Windows 8. But in KDE we still have the same boring Press to start pop-up menu launcher.

Mandriva Linux might be a sinking ship for now but with their latest release in 2011, they have introduced an innovative and eye candy Menu Launcher called ROSA Launcher from Rosa Labs in Russia.

Rosa Launcher have 3 tabs just like the unity lenses, first one is a simple Welcome tab which shows recent applications, places and documents, the second tab has the Applications listed in categories, such as Internet, Office, Multimedia etc., and the third tab is more like the Zeitgeist Journal extension in Gnome 3 which shows the time line for documents and applications, you need to keep the Nepomuk file indexing enabled to use this feature.

Installation:

Now we will learn how to install the eye candy menu launcher from Rosa Labs in your Kubuntu installation.
You first need to download the deb file for the rosa-launcher, you can download the deb file from here.

Open the terminal, change to the download location and install the deb file as given in the commands below.

• $ cd Downloads

• $ sudo dpkg -i rosa-launcher_0.30.12-2_i386.deb

For me Rosa Launcher installed without any dependency problem in Kubuntu 11.10, if you face any dependency problem, then install the required packages from Ubuntu/Kubuntu apt repositories.

After the installation of Rosa Launcher, you need to install the plasmoid widget for the launcher to use it as an alternate to classic KDE launcher.

Download the zipped plasmoid widget file from here.

Installing the plasmoid widget:

Change to the Download directory, and install the plasmoid widget using the following command.

• $ plasmapkg -i  rosastarter.zip

After the successful installation of the Rosa Launcher plasmoid, the Rosa Launcher is ready to use from the add widget menu. Drag the widget to your desktop or taskbar and enjoy the eye candy launcher for KDE.

Troubleshooting:


Error: Installation of rosastarter.zip failed.
Solution: enable more verbose output from plasmapkg. Run kdebugdialog:

• kdebugdialog --fullmode

and enable the outputs for 1209 libplasma.

Error: Could not create a python scriptengine for "Rosa Launcher"
Solution: Install "plasma-scriptengine-python"

• $ sudo apt-get install plasma-scriptengine-python

You may additionally need to install "python-dev" package in case the error persist.

•  $ sudo apt-get install python-dev

Note: If the download links for the Rosa Launcher deb file and Rosa plasmoid widget do not work, you can download the files from the launchpad website as given below.

https://launchpad.net/mandriva-rosa/mandriva-rosa-launcher/mandriva-rosa

Enjoy!

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Kubuntu: No longer a Canonical's flagship distribution!

Jonathan Riddell, lead developer for the Kubuntu project and the only guy employed by Canonical to work on the KDE variant of the popular distribution, has announced that after the 12.04 release, Canonical will no longer pay him for developing  KDE variant of Ubuntu, putting Kubuntu on the same level as other Ubuntu variants like Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Mythbuntu etc. which are already community driven projects.

Riddell will continue to be employed by Canonical, but working on Kubuntu will be confined to his free time. In order for the Kubuntu project to continue operating, Riddell says that community members will have to take a more active role in doing unpopular tasks such as ISO testing.

According to Riddell

"Kubuntu has not been a business success after 7 years of trying, 

and it is unrealistic to expect it to continue to have financial 

resources put into it."

Although this will not going to be a disappointing news for the guys at KDE and the users who prefer KDE over other desktop environments since there are enough other KDE-centric distributions around, and we cannot blame Canonical for not wanting to invest in a project which worth nothing financially.


Kubuntu users who want to join the development effort and participate in testing and maintaining the distribution can learn more about how to get involved at the project's website.

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KDE 4.8 Preview (Sneak Peak)

Yesterday, KDE has release the first Release Candidate (KDE 4.8 RC 1) for its renewed Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. KDE 4.8 which is scheduled to be release in January 2012 you can peek the appearance here.

Taken from the announcement here, KDE 4.8 RC 1 is contain a hundred of bugs fix since its Beta. One of new features in KDE 4.8 is a 'Secret Service', KSecretService is an application which provide shared password storage that help a user to save their password (optionally) and share it with other application, I have not tried this application but (guess) seems similar to Ubuntu password keyring.

Some notable feature in KDE 4.8 are :

• Qt Quick in Plasma Workspaces -- Qt Quick is making its way into the Plasma Workspaces, the new Plasma Components provide a standardized API implementation of widgets with native Plasma Look and Feel. The device notifier widget has been ported to using these components and is now written in pure QML. KWin's window switcher is now also QML-based, paving the way for newly designed window switchers.
• Use Dolphin2, file view has been rewritten for better performance, scalability and more attractive visual appearance.
• KSecretService optionally enables a shared password storage, therefore making your saved passwords available to many other applications, leading to a more secure system and better integration of non-KDE apps into the Plasma Workspaces and KDE apps into non-Plasma workspaces.
• More ..

KDE 4.8 Preview Video
This video is taken from youtube which uploaded by devSantyago (KDE 4.8 git compilation / 2011-11-07)  

Bugs can be reported, verified and found at bugs.kde.org. We will update this news with the new post by the time KDE 4.8 Stable already release or it's available to install via PPA. 

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