Kubuntu 9.04 Review: 2 Steps Back

So I’ve now had a couple of weeks of use with Kubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty).  I did a standard update from 8.10, which thankfully went very smoothly.  However, I must say that generally I think this version is a step down (well, two very big steps in fact) in functionality and usability.  Here are the main areas I’ve run into trouble:

Bluetooth
If bluetooth was troublesome before, it is now practically unusable.  I’ve got a Microsoft bluetooth mouse and keyboard, both of which worked fine under 8.10 Intrepid, and which now work none only some of the time.  The mouse has a success rate of about 70% connecting to my computer and staying connected.  My keyboard has a 0% success rate.  The built-in KDE bluetooth manager is now completely useless, and does nothing as far as I can tell.  The default Gnome bluetooth-wizard works some of the time, but I can’t get my keyboard to keep a constant connection even when I’m using it.

Word on the street is that this is all due to the upgraded Bluez stack.  But, I can’t understand how functionality that existed and worked really well in the previous version has totally tanked in the current version.  I’ve basically given up using my bluetooth peripherals until a fix comes out (hopefully soon!).

Wireless
Again, the Kubuntu developers have delivered a downgrade in functionality and preformance with wifi in 9.04.  What used to be a manageable, if not quite elegant, solution in KNetworkManager has been replaced by a completely useless KDE 4 native plasma widget.  It looks pretty but is mostly broken.  First off, the new network manager has no way to connect to an unbroadcast SSID.  Second, it rarely remembers to reconnect to existing networks, usually prompting you to enter the password about 3 times before giving up in a confused befuddlement.  Third, the graphical elements are all fucked up.  The list of available networks in the panel is usually cut off so you can only see the first 1.5 entries.  You have to drag it off the menu and onto the desktop for the full list to display.  The proximity display view is even worse – all the networks are just overlayed on top of each other so as to make it illegible.

Both of these may seem like small issues, but they concern the two biggest uses of a computer: typing and using the internet.  What’s all the more disappointing is that the release has been out for over a month, and there have been no patches to address bluetooth, which is barely functional, or the network manager, which is in little better shape.

Upsides
There are a few upsides to this release.  First, KDE looks generally more polished with each release.  There has been a fix to font rendering so that now the font size doesn’t get all screwed up if you use a second monitor.  The fonts in previous versions of KDE 4.x were much too large and bold faced.  Kde 4.2 seems to have fixed this.  And FINALLY the display bugs in Firefox seem to be fixed.

Summary
In summary, there are some new features to make this release worthwhile, but overall there is clear lack of polish in key areas.  I’m still stumped as to how the Kubuntu developers thought it a good idea to issue release with a non functioning bluetooth stack and a really, really crappy network manager.  And I’m even more baffled that its been over a month since this release and there are still no bug fixes to address the display issues in the network manager (not to mention the crippling lack of features) or the non-functioning bluetooth stack.

VirtualBox vs. VMWare Server on Linux

For the last year I’ve been trying to get virtualization of a Windows Partition working on Linux.  The goal is to be able to use Linux as my primary desktop OS, while still having Windows available for the MS Apps I need for work (read Outlook).  The two main desktop apps that are freely available for this setup are VirtualBox, an open source solution by Sun, and VMware Server.  I tested both of these on a Core2 Duo 2 GHz system with 3 GB of RAM and an 80 GB hard disk divided into 3 partitions.  Windows XP Pro was installed on the first partition and Ubuntu running KDE 4.2 was installed on the other two.

VirtualBox
VirtualBox is now at version 2.1.2 and is a very solid app.  Sun provides an open source version and a freely available closed source binary for Windows, OS X and Linux.  The GUI is very solid and integrates well with KDE, due to the QT interface implementation.  The closed source binary has some features that are not available in the open source version, though they are getting migrated as the codebase grows (running a virtual machine from a physical partition, called rawdisk mode, used to only be available in the closed source version).

Setting up virtual box is relatively easy as most distributions have package available from the VirtualBox download page.  To get VirtualBox running with an installed version of windows, I found this pretty excellent guide.  The only problem I had was with the windows bootloader: I couldn’t get the open source iso to work, so I had to download a copy from a windows XP cd, as I didn’t have one handy.

Impressions
Using virtual box is very straightforward.  Setting up the machine and all the settings was straightforward.  There are very useful hints at the bottom of each tab in the settings pane which makes choosing options to enable particularly easy.  Once I had the machine booting into Windows, I installed the guest additions and rebooted.  The VirtualBox Guest Additions are a set of drivers and apps that make integration with the host OS seamless – i.e. you can move your mouse between the client and the host desktops.

Once I started using the virtualized OS, I ran into problems.  First, Windows was really slow.  To the point of being unusable.  Startup took about 10 minutes from boot to fully loaded, and opening an app was a time consuming task.  I turned off all the eye candy, which helped opening menus and such, but the overall speed and responsiveness was lacking.  Part of the appeal of VirtualBox is the ability to go into ‘Seamless Mode’ a la Parallels on the Mac.  Unfortunately, this never worked for me (but I also didn’t wait around for 20 minutes to see if it would work eventually).

I like VirtualBox, I really do, but its just too slow to be a functional, every day virtualization solution.  Combine that with some obvious inadequecies, like supporting only one processor and very rudimentary 3D acceleration support, and it doesn’t seem ready for prime time to me.  But, I plan on tracking the progress the Sun team is able to make and am definitely willing to give it another shot in the future.

VMware Server
VMware Server is a desktop/server virtualization solution from VMware.  The current version is 2.0, however this review will look at version 1.0.8 because the 2.0 version does not support rawdisk mode any longer.  Getting the older version working was a little bit of a challenge, given my kernel is newer (2.6.27-11) than the last one supported by the 1.0.8 release.  I followed this guide for getting the older version working on Ubuntu 8.10.  This guide will help to set up VMware to work with a physical disk and existing windows install.

Following the instructions was very simple, and I had everything up and running in about an hour, including download/install time.  The options for setting up a rawdisk VMDK in VMware were much more powerful than in VB, for example one could choose the number of processors to emulate on the client.

Impressions
Overall, VMware server is definitely not as pretty as VirtualBox – definitely not built as a desktop centered application.  However, the app is rock solid and wickedly fast.  Boot time was about half what VB was, and applications were reasonably responsive.

The guest additions were easy to install and gave the same basic features as VirtualBox, except the seamless mode.  I did run into a problem with the client software clock getting way out of sync with the hardware clock, either going to fast or two slow.  An easy fix was turning on the option to keep the two automatically synchronized in the guest additions control panel.

Conclusions
VMware came out ahead for my particular setup, which admittidly is not one most users will have.  As I wasn’t testing the traditional VM setup (having a completely ’soft’ install rather than running an OS of an existing partition), its hard to draw any broad conclusions, but for this use case, VMware is definitely the choice to go with.

Update: Check out my post here on how to get VMWare server 1.0x working on Ubuntu 9.0.

KDE 4.2 = My New Desktop

With the release of KDE 4.2, I decided to switch my primary work desktop from Windows XP to Kubuntu.  And I couldn’t be happier.  Overall, the desktop looks gorgeous (easily comparible to Mac OS X), the apps are great (very few crashes compared to previous 4.x versions), and of course, super powerful.  It has been a great switch. 

I tried using KDE 4.0 and 4.1, but along with everyone else, found that they were just too instable and feature poor for everyday use.  KDE 4.2 has added many features that existed in the old 3.5 branch, but also added a host of new and really innovative features that make this desktop a real competitor.  Here are a few of my favorites:

• KWin: Finally, the devs were able to bring compiz style eye candy to KDE natively.  KWin worked out of the box, autodetected my ATI chipset and turned on 3D effects automatically.  They standards are all there, and have been fleshed out to be comparible to Compiz.  On my 4.1 install, I never really got Compiz to work correctly with KDE – it ended up crashing a lot, and the configuration was in two places (the Compiz control panel and the KDE control panel for themes).  
• Notifications: Even in previous versions of KDE, notifications were always a pain.  They showed up willy nilly on the screen, with no organization which meant I turned them off for most programs.  KDE 4.2 has collected notifications down in the system tray, staking new notifications as they appear.  Any file action also goes into the same notification pile, keeping all the information in one place.  Very handy.
• Themes & Repository Integration: This is a feature that keeps on amazing me.  In the KDE system settings panel, you have the ability to add themes, desktop backgrounds, etc.  Most of these are integrated with the same “Get More…” button you can use to download additional plasmoids.  But these things are in the handiest of places – like the GRUB configuration panel, where you can choose to download new GRUB backgrounds from KDE-look.org using the built in preview/download tool.

At work, we use Outlook and some other Windows only apps that I need.  To use these apps, I needed to run my existing Windows XP install off the hard drive in Linux.  As you can see in the screenshot above this works really well – I’ll post the details in an upcoming post.