Alternative to Kubuntu needed

I'm looking for a distro along the lines of Kubuntu, but I have several strict criteria:
- the distro must have the same hardware detection (w/ wireless working properly; I have an Atheros chip that requires the MadWifi driver)

- the distro must have the same desktop environment (KDE)

- it must have the same commands like "apt-get" and such.

- must be stable!

This shouldn't be too much to ask, but with Kubuntu's reliability, I dunno...

 

PCLinuxOS. Much better than Kubuntu.

 

you could try simply mepis. If i recall correctly it's built off of ubuntu and it's kde.

If i may ask, what version of kubuntu are you running? It shouldn't be that unstable. I'm running ubuntu edgy and havn't had any problems. (asus s96j).

 

I disagree. Synaptic is poorly crippled compared to (K)Ubuntu's, there is a much smaller community, and it doesn't have the same hardware detection on my computer. It doesn't work with my wireless card correctly (though it detects it), and it doesn't work with my media buttons or my Fn+buttons besides Fn+Esc (which is Suspend to RAM). Therefore, I have no way to change my volume besides the little volume thing in KDE. I also find the menu very cluttered, with the same app being referred to about 40 times. And Beryl and Compiz (included) neither work in the latest release with the nVidia drivers (Emerald never loads correctly).

EDIT: You could simply install Debian and the KDE interface if you would like a similar setup, though it will likely be more difficult and take longer to set up.

 

Why do you find Kubuntu unstable? I have very little problems with it.

 

how about opensuse with apt4suse installed?

 

Your issues with PCLOS seem mostly little nitpicks. Synaptic can be expanded to include more packages fairly easily. Setting up the undetected hardware and buttons could be a pain. The menu clutter can be fixed too, by just deleting the extra options. Beryl and Compiz can work by swiching nvidia drivers to a different version.

From what I experienced though, PCLOS has been better than a default Kubuntu, but Ubuntu with KDE installed ontop of it is just as good but probably better if you like KDE. But PCLOS from what I've seen has higher hardware detection than Ubuntu and it installs a lot of the restricted codecs and such. But with 7.04 (K)Ubuntu, thats not as much of a problem anymore.

 

Interesting recommendations. I'll try PCLOS first, then Mepis. What about Mint and Sabayon? I have heard of it numerous times in this forum.

Btw, does PCLOS use the same commands and everything? Does it use the same packages as Kubuntu?

For those who are curious about my experience with Kubuntu, search for threads I started in this area of the forum; there are at least 3 such threads discussing the problems I have had with it. Basically the system would freeze randomly, and restarting X server wouldn't do anything. With just the mouse working, often my only option would be torestart manually.

 

It uses apt-get and so forth, but it doesn't have as many applications available as Kubuntu. It will still have all the debian packages, but whereas Kubuntu has a ton of Ubuntu packages, PCLOS doesn't have quite as many. But it's a fairly similar system, and out of the box it has a nicer and more robust experience and I was quite happy at first. The control center is nice, it gives you lots of apps and customization options, and it allows you set up a wired network really easily. But it doesn't come with knetworkmanager, which is pretty much a must for me these days. And like I said, I still couldn't get a few things to work, including wirelss (although it says it detects my card just fine). Installing the nVidia drivers was a bit hokey as well, and it took me several times to finally get them activated (using the built-in config tool really doesn't do anything). At least it didn't crash X though.

I'd say that comparing Kubuntu to PCLOS, PCLOS is overall a better out of the box distro. However, it still doesn't compare to Ubuntu IMO, and its lack of packages, community support, and (most importantly) easily accessible documention would keep me from recommending it to someone. Even if it does have better hardware detection and setup for most people, if it doesn't happen to recognize your hardware, it will most likely be much harder to figure out what you can do than with Kubuntu. It is still worth a try though.

 

Take the Distro Test @ zegeniestudios.net

 

The test recommended the following distros:
- Mandriva
- Kubuntu
- Freespire
- OpenSuSE
- PCLinuxOS

Does Mandriva have a package manager, WPA encryption support (and the MadWifi driver), as well as the same commands? Also, what is the downside of the free version?

 

Mandriva does have a package package manager (a different one).
It has the same unix coomands, but so do all the other unix variants
The donwside of the free version is that some of the non-free drivers wont be there.
The full version of the distro can always be download from bittorent (or bought on dvd for cheap from internet vendors).

 

Mandriva is not a good distro at all. I'd recomend avoiding it.

You could always add the Ubuntu reposetories into PCLinuxOS. That'll be a little weird, but its doable with synaptic. Knetworkmanager can also be installed into PCLOS easily.

I'm using Sabayon right now and plan on sticking with it for a long while. Its a very fast and very stable distro, but the DVD version comes with a lot of extras. Not that thats a bad thing, but do you really need 4 office suites, 6 picture viewers, 3 3D programs, etc? With the DVD version you're pretty much guarenteed not to have to setup anything. The CD version you may have to find a few drivers and such, but probably not, its pretty comprihensive, even though it was stripped down. Sabayon doesnt support apt-get though. It supports Gentoo's emerge commands. They're basically the same thing though.

 

I'd like to add a few comments. I use PCLinuxOS as my main desktop distribution and think it's a great distro! I'm wondering if you have ever actually tried to add Ubuntu repositories to PCLOS. Seeing as PCLOS uses the RPM format, I don't think you'd have an easy time trying to get it to play nicely with Ubuntu's .deb packages. Someone else mentioned that PCLOS has access to all the Ubuntu packages. These statements about PCLOS's interchangability with Ubuntu aren't accurate. PCLOS's developers maintain their own repositories, and if you find a package you can't live without - just make a package request in their forums. I've done it many times and have never had a package turned down, have had first-hand contact with the primary developer, and have had packages added to the PCLOS repos as quick as within 2 hours of making the request!

With that out of the way, I'd like to clarify the difference between Sabayon (Gentoo - a Gentoo-based distro) and the rest we're talking about. Sabayon has *some* pre-built packages, but unless you find everything you're looking for on the installation media - you're going to have to put up with building nearly every package from source. Now, Gentoo's "emerge" command will do this for you, but the time involved in having the packages built from source is far greater than simply downloading a pre-built package. I've used Sabayon on and off since hearing about it, but it has some points I don't like. It is very responsive (fast) once it's set up, but if you have to install/update packages - it takes quite a bit longer. I've also never been able to issue "su" and then open konqueror or kedit as root - it just refuses to do so with errors. I've never had an issue doing this with any other distro, and it baffles me why I shouldn't be able to do it with Sabayon.

That out of the way, why do you (the original poster) need to use apt-get? There are many different package management systems in the linux world. Apt-get is nice, but it's not the only option. I recommended OpenSUSE before and will do so again. I find it to be somewhat of a pain to set up the extra repositories, but once that's done it's just like any other distro. When there are updates, an icon in the systray will blink at you. You tell it to install the updates, and voila! I've read many reviews of laptoppers with OpenSUSE installed, and many find it finds the various "extra (media) buttons" laptops come with when other distros won't.

I use Linux Mint on my old Gateway lappie. It's nice and simple and has codecs and dvd support installed out of the box, which is nice. But it (as with other Ubuntu-based distros) doesn't have a nice, central administrative control center like YAST in OpenSUSE or the PClinuxOS or Mandriva control centers. If I were using a modern computer, I'd want the administrative control center for a gui interface for administrative functions like partitioning, changing the bootloader, en/disabling processes at boot, changing software sources, etc. Alot of distros are missing this, much to their detriment. I know you can achieve the same goals with the command line, but I'd rather use a gui tool than modify a text configuration file if possible - most of the time the gui tool won't let you bork your system as you can easily do by screwing around with config files.

I'd try that and PCLOS (and maybe Sabayon - just to satisfy your curiousity).

Good luck!!!
Nikolaus

 

"That out of the way, why do you (the original poster) need to use apt-get?"

Straight up: I'm too lazy. I've spend too much time learning the inner workings of Kubuntu to just switch to another baffling distribution. I won't try OpenSuSE, but I'll give PCLOS a try just to see how it goes. If things don't work out of the box, I'll just install Ubuntu.