Today is going to be an exciting day. We will be testing the official release of Plasma, on top of an early version of Kubuntu. This shall be a teaser of what we might expect to see in April. Given my excellent experience with a beta release on top of Utopic last year, my hopes and expectations are very high. Plasma 5 has the potential to revitalize the Linux world, it’s that important and meaningful. Of course, we must not forget that applications play their critical role, but if you need to sell your product, the first look, the very… Continue Reading

The end is nigh. The end is upon us. We are, of course, talking about the end of the calendar year, and this means voting for the best of the best. In a few days, we will have the grand Dedoimedo best distro contest, but before we do that, let’s do a more specific vote. Namely, let’s elect the finest KDE distro of the current year. We did this last year, and the winner was Kubuntu Ringtail. It proved out to be a very solid, polished distribution, with good stability and good looks. Now, why would you care? Well, because… Continue Reading

After a very short delay the new version of Netrunner has arrived. All the new features and changes introduced on Kubuntu 13.10 are also part of Netrunner 13.12, so our review of the latest of version of Kubuntu is pertinent as well. But there’s much more than just Kubuntu in Netrunner. What’s new? The new Homerun Kicker (Main) Menu This is probably the first thing users coming from 13.06 will notice. Netrunner has abandoned the classical style kickoff menu for a new more modern one called Homerun Kicker. But fear not: Netrunner didn’t jump into the bandwagon of replacing self-explanatory… Continue Reading

Normally, at the end of the year, I tend to run my best annual distro roundups, choosing the finest among five operating systems or flavors thereof that showed the greatest promise in terms of stability, usability, elegance, support, and other curious items in the outgoing twelve-month period. But I have never dedicated much thought to selecting the best implementation of any one particular desktop environment, regardless of the system underneath. But when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Oftentimes, distributions rise and fall based on their desktop session, because that is what users see and interact… Continue Reading

Every six months all members of the Ubuntu family get updated. Every six months new features are added, bugs are corrected, new apps get in, some apps get off. Some releases come once every three years. Long Term Support (LTS) releases must be more stable and polished than usual, there’s less room for experiments, this versions are meant to be used for a long time and by users on enterprises or managing systems that require as much stability and longevity as possible. Moreover, Kubuntu 12.04 isn’t just another LTS, it’s also the last Kubuntu version with the lead developer Jonathan… Continue Reading