I have been playing with the latest version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Unlike the earlier ‘Ubuntu’, ‘Kubuntu’, as you might guess from the name is based on the KDE desktop rather than the Gnome desktop used in Ubuntu.

I have used Ubuntu before, but even though I run Gnome on all my machines, Gnome from a LiveCD seems to lose something, and I general prefer the command line for most of the tasks that the Gnome developers might expect me to use Gconf etc for.

So far, I am very impressed with the K Desktop Environment compared with Gnome. Apert from the ‘K’ fetish, everything seems very crisp and nice kompared (oops) with Gnome which is a bit more staid looking.

Here’s a screenshot of Kubuntu from a few minutes ago taken with KScreenShot :

Here’s the best thing about Kubuntu, it detected *every* piece of hardware on my girlfriends Dell Dimension, so the sound works, 3d graphics work really nicely, the network works. Just an fantastic performance.

The only tiny blot is that the fonts initially looked krappy (sorry, won’t do it again) because anti-aliasing was turned off. Turn it on and they look great again.

There’s too much installed to list, but the highspots for me included open office, and being able to boot from a CD and ssh to my home linux box, and have the mythtv front end come up and be able to browse my ‘taped’ shows from over the weekend. Rockin’

Here’s a link to i386 Kubuntu LiveCD:
bittorrent i386 iso live cd
i386 iso live cd
AMD and PowerPC iso are also available here