In this case the dragon being the mascot of KDE (the K Desktop Enviroment). Or the gears behind Kubuntu. One of the official Ubuntu distributions. Or as Kubuntu better explains “Kubuntu is one the variants available from the Ubuntu project. Our Kubuntu CDs are made up of Ubuntu’s base plus KDE. You can get exactly the same effect by installing Ubuntu Desktop and adding the KDE packages (and removing the Gnome packages) from the Ubuntu archives”.

I originally gave this flavour a taste a few weeks after originally moving to Ubuntu in June 07. Now at the time I was still very fresh to linux and the whole Ubuntu environment and way of doing things. Essentially constantly battling with some weed called ‘root’ that would not let me do anything. So when I gave Kubuntu a try and could not even connect to the net I quickly went back to Gnome and signed a peace treaty with root.

After 6 months of Ubuntu and armed with a bit more knowledge I am facing Kubuntu again and today I went into Synaptic and selected ‘kubuntu-desktop’. The download went flawlessly. At the end I was asked to choose ‘kdm’ or ‘gdm’, always loving to try something new I selected ‘kdm’ and then restarted my laptop. Watching the new ice cool blue Kubuntu splash screen I looked forward to playing with this alternative Ubuntu distro.

So I was faced with the new ‘kdm’ login screen. Entered my details and…wait a second…nothing has changed. What the F$@K? Oh, Ubuntu will always start in the last session settings. So log out. Back to the login page. Then select KDE from the list. What do you know, I have caught the dragon.

Initially there was a shiver as it looks similar to a previous OS that I placed in the recycle bin some time ago. But that is were similarity ends because the blue in Kubuntu desktop does not mean your system has died. Took me 10mins to sort the USB modem issue and now I have a few upgrades and tweaking to do to get this just the way I will like it. But the fact that I am here typing this shows that all has gone well up to now and time to see how everything works.

I will probably only post reporting problems, but if Ubuntu is any guide, then do not expect many posts. Time to reboot now after getting my upgrades and updates.

Ubuntu…Kubuntu, Linux for human beings.