Bye-Bye Kubuntu, Good Riddance Canonical – 470 days old

[Bad Haircut]

No great crystal ball needed to have anticipated this one but still well deserving of a: "WTF! Are you serious?"

In a nutshell the good and wise folk at Canononononononical have decided to pull the funding for the in house developers working on Kubuntu and leaving it to the community. And they're going balls out with Unity full time.

I had fun experimenting with Kubuntu this past couple of months but the experimenting is now officially over. I like KDE, it's polished and has bags of room for improvement and refinement, and it's deserving of far better treatment and attention than deluded outfits like Canononononononical have ever lent it.


Check the links and feedback over at Slashdot

[Grogan]

Ubuntu is anything but freedom... it's quite a dictatorial distribution with the way they do things. No more for me. I will not so much as answer a single question about Ubuntu. It no longer exists.

I used to install it in a VM just so I'd be familiar with its releases, but I haven't done that in a while because it's been more sickening with each new version.

P.S. Kubuntu, like Mint, will surpass Ubuntu now that Canonical is out of the picture.

[Michael_Horatio]

Alas, I said goodbye to Kubuntu a couple of weeks ago. I still have mint on one machine and an Ubuntu LTS distro on my netbook, I'm not sure what I'm going to do next with my main rig..

[Bad Haircut]

P.S. Kubuntu, like Mint, will surpass Ubuntu now that Canonical is out of the picture.

I doubt that community has the drive and impetus to take up the slack that that lead developer is going to leave behind, all the donkey work and stuff, going off what I've seen. He did a great job considering.

[Grogan]

Well, I guess there's really not a great need for a "Kubuntu" with Mint offering a KDE version and all. They just recently released one in fact. It's got to be leaps and bounds better than Ubuntu with KDE.

I don't know why anyone would install Ubuntu and then download and install KDE from the repos. That's pointless gyration for something half assed.

[Dark Angel]

I ended up going back to Ubuntu 10.04 (none of this Gnome 3/Unity crap) as I was having considerable trouble getting Slack to communicate with my MP3 player, which works just fine with Ubuntu and Rhythmbox. I don't know what the hell was going on with it, though I'm guessing it was some kind of lib version miss-match. Package management is Ubuntu's strong point. Leaving dependency management to the user is problematic in some ways, especially when the user keeps installing random crap. I got sick of dancing around every time I wanted to build something and accidentally breaking packages I'd already installed because I was trying to meet dependencies for new builds. What I'll do after this I don't know. I can only keep this thing going myself for so long after Canonical moves to the new LTS version. I may do the Slack dance again after this semester.

[Grogan]

I can't stand Ubuntu... it hinders me at every turn. A system that works against me. I have tried to use it in the past, and also I had a few versions on my netbook where I need a fast food distro. I have a pretty good Xubuntu setup on there now though (thanks to me). I won't be installing another OS in the lifetime of the hardware now. (I'm upgrading kernels and stuff my way)

Leaving dependency management to the user is exactly what I want, when the user is me.

[Bad Haircut]

Well, I guess there's really not a great need for a "Kubuntu" with Mint offering a KDE version and all.

Funniest part about the whole thing isn't it. Mint can get it's shit together on a comparative shoe string and has just actually struck a potentially great partnership to get a full time KDE developer on board to bolster and maximise Mint's DE 'portfolio'. Really positive.....

And then you get dumb bollocks doing the exact opposite, when in actual fact they'd got a widely regarded desktop package going with Kubuntu 11.10 and the general consensus was that'd they'd turned a corner. I know Canonical are doing it for business reasons but that cuts no ice whatsoever with anyone who's an active Kubuntu user. It's a bloody good job Mint KDE is there for many.

[Dark Angel]

Well when you build pretty much everything from source yourself then you can do things pretty much as you please, so long as the libs do what the program needs them to do. I think I was having trouble with too many applications of mixed ages requiring different library versions. In essence I got myself into trouble. I already miss the XFCE desktop in some ways though. There was just a couple of niggles with folder refreshing and desktop icons that I wanted different, but it was pretty slick to use just the same.
No matter how much I like 10.04 I won't be drinking the Unity cool-aid. That's just not going to happen.

[Grogan]

How come you don't use Mint? It gives you a better system, with access to the same software. (with their own versions of certain things uncrippled)

In XFCE I don't use desktop icons (everything is on my auto hiding panel) and the only "folders" I see are in my X File Explorer file manager. (I don't much like Thunar). It doesn't matter what it is, there's always something about it I hate and I have to customize and replace stuff with things I like better.

I hate almost everything.

[Dark Angel]

I probably should give Mint a run. I just have a substantial aversion of Gnome 3 etc. I'll give it a look and see.

[Dark Angel]

* Dark Angel is now embarrased at myself for giving up so easy. What kind of piss weak sys-admin lets a couple of libs beat them.

[Grogan]

I never said Slackware was for everyone. If you don't like doing that stuff, then you really should use something else. I would only use Slackware (or Linux From Scratch, or Gentoo, or Arch or anything like that) on my own desktop computers. Not on my netbook and I probably wouldn't want it on a server in a remote datacenter either.

There is such a thing as needing to get work done when you have to manage your time. I can't be tinkering with my netbook every time I start it up to connect to a network at a job site, and you have course work to do.

I know what you did... your mp3 player was known to work in that version of Ubuntu, so you went back to that and embraced the environment that you were most used to.

[Dark Angel]

Well I'm rebuilding my Slack-box now. So long as I get virtual box up and running before Friday afternoon I can continue my lecture series (audio only works in Windows, unfortunately. It's a limitation of the webinar software) I'm good to go. I already had the rest working in Slackware. It was really just the MP3 player that gave me the hissy fit and that was probably my own fault somewhere.

[Dark Angel]

Rebuilt it and it just would NOT let me run my Cisco simulator. Again, most likely my fault somehow but I don't think I did anything different to last time and this time ... nothing. Not even a single error message and ldd just says they're not dynamic executables and won't give me a dependency list. Stuff it. Back in old-faithful 10.04 till I decide which way to go next. Mint is promising. I have it downloaded but I have to get it installed to a USB drive or get some DVDs, which I'm out of. Slack and I are not on speaking terms right now. If my mp3 player plays up now you'll here the language from Saskatoon.

[Grogan]

Wrong "bitness" most likely. (multilib related). You are probably querying a 32 bit binary with the 64 bit dynamic linker (ldd is a wrapper script and on a multilib system, it would choose the correct dynamic linker ld-linux.so.2 or ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 which are themselves symlinks to the correct ld-version.so.2 from glibc, in the correct lib or lib64 directory). Evidence that indeed, you did something wrong. Your multilib environment was not set up correctly.

grogan@getstuffed:/storage/doom3$ ldd doom.x86
        not a dynamic executable

If it really wasn't a dynamic executable, then dependencies would not be an issue because there would be none. The script only prints that error message because it's the only one it knows when the linker cannot actually understand the binary and permissions and stuff are correct.

[Dark Angel]

I figured as much. PacketTracer is a 32bit app, so obviously I missed something somewhere with the multilib additions. Anyway, oldbuntu is working ok for now. Honestly I really do WANT to run Slackware. I'm getting tired of screwing the pooch, though. Have to give this a break for a while.

[Dark Angel]

Some people really are masochists, ya know.

[Dark Angel]

Ok, back in Slack and got PacketTracer working. I REALLY should post up exactly what I do each time to make it easier to find when I balls it up again later. Need to sleep now.

[Grogan]

Heheh.... sometimes I post stuff so I have it etched in stone, to refer back to again. Someone else may find it useful too.

[Dark Angel]

Well what I found here is, AlienBob has done a little TOO good a job with the multilib stuff. He's provided multiple versions of various packages so you can use what you want/need. Problem being that in my case they didn't install in the right order and an older version of a particular lib was the last one installed.
I finally got packettracer to give up the goods on what was wrong by invoking the binary directly in it's installed directory (/opt/pt, nothing fancy). glibc was the one in question (needed >= 2.10 but 2.9 was installed) and sqlite was another one of the niggles, requiring the 32bit libs to work (which I ended up moving to the local directory as 64bit install was needed for other things looking for libsqlite.so.0) There were a couple of other things, like libnotify needing to be different versions for different apps, which I got around by installing the later version, copying the lib that was being looked for in particular, and then reverting back to the one the rest of the system wants. I had to get sneaky and link a couple of libs as well, since installing libssl.so.1.0.0 breaks a few things but another app wants it ... but works just fine with 0.9.8 so long as it thinks it's the later version.
It's all much easier when you take a systematic approach and don't panic. It's also much easier to read the monitor when it's not flying across the room.

[Grogan]

Wrong (older and incompatible) glibc? If that's the case your binary should have been loudly screaming about symbols (loudly, if launched from the command line where you can see output of course). Proprietary binary only software is usually compiled against old glibc (or even have the C functions statically linked) so that doesn't happen. For example my Unreal Tournament 2004 still runs to this day (needs libstdc++.so.5 though, but I just drop one in the program directory)

libssl versions can be a pain in the ass though.

When something like that happens, consider dropping compatible libraries in the program directory instead of installing (incompatible) versions to the system where they are going to interfere. If the program doesn't find them there, set a LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable before launching the program. That can be done in a script, or often at the command line.

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/pt:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH packettracer

or....

#! /bin/sh
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/pt:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
packettracer

or...

#! /bin/sh
cd /opt/pt
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=.:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
./packettracer

(setting it to . for the current working directory)

What the appending of $LD_LIBRARY_PATH is about is good practice when setting an environment variable so you append any existing value to the new one (though LD_LIBRARY_PATH will NOT be set by default. It's not how things are done, it's only used to override). But I do the same thing with PATH or any other directory based variable when I override system defaults. For example PATH=/opt/pt:$PATH so it doesn't REMOVE /bin and /usr/bin and friends lol

[Dark Angel]

The startup script for pt does exactly that and there's a lib directory in it's file tree for a few other things as well. In my case, with my dodgy multilib install, I had glibc 2.9.blah but needed at least 2.10 ... even though latest is 2.14. That one just needed a reinstall of the latest version. The sqlite one I had to put the whole thing in the /opt/pt/lib directory and then reinstall the 64bit one in the main system. libnotify is another one that shit me. 99% of the install wants libnotify.so.1 but one app wants .so.4 instead. I just installed 4, make a copy and then put the original one back and restored the copy. Since the app looks for libnotify.so.4 rather than libnotify.so.0 etc it's all happy and the rest of the system gets what it wants.
More and more I like the idea of apps just including the libs they want in their own tree rather than bitching about what's on the system. I know it's an inefficient use of space, but at least that way things always work.

[Dark Angel]

Coffee ... ingested ... world ... brightening ... fuck MAY be given ... maybe ...

[Dark Angel]

Well I found a way around my mp3 player issue. While using the latest MTP libs helped it was still flakey with Amarok, even with updated firmware in the player ... so I discovered and applied a hack that changed it from a MTP unit to a regular USB one. Now I can use it as a regular thumbdrive if it amuses me and loading music is easy as all piss instead of a right chore. MUCH happier!

[Grogan]

That's better anyway. I would prefer a player that is just USB storage... copy mp3 files and edited playlist text files to the player instead of using nannying ninny software.

[Dark Angel]

The MTP thing always annoyed me as well. I deliberately bought this player because it can handle .ogg files for one and because it's NOT an iTurd. Discovering it required some annoying transfer protocol wasn't good but I was able to function well enough with it in Ubuntu. Their lib must be slightly different, or Amarok doesn't use the libs quite the same way or something. Irrelevant now, I'll just use it how I intended when I first bought it.