Kubuntu

From TheLinuxVault

Kubuntu is a popular Ubuntu based distro. Linux, Unix and BSD have many desktop environments, such as GNOME, KDE and Xfce (unlike Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X, which have just one desktop environment.) GNOME and KDE are the most popular DEs among Linux users.

Kubuntu has KDE as the default desktop. Unlike Ubuntu, it focuses more on applications native to its desktop enviroment rather than cross-platform software. One can install and run any GNOME or other *nix application from within the KDE desktop (eg: Xine, XMMS etc)

The latest KDE version (also default in Kubuntu and Ubuntu) is KDE 3.5.7. KDE website is at http://www.kde.org. KDE 4.0 is a major rewrite of KDE and is in final stages of development and brings exciting features to users. It is expected to be released in Dec-2007

Some of the KDE applications that are popular with non-KDE users also are:

• Amarok - The Media player. You can use it for podcasts, listening to media files
• Konqueror - Webbrowser, filemanager, and swiss army knife (hint: you can use fish:// protocol to view files on remote machines graphically)
• Kate - is a nice text editor, use it when you are too lazy to fire up vi
• Kontact - which has email, addressbook, notes, calendar, journal, To-Do list, Feedreader, NNTP reader integrated (Actually all these apps are available on their own too, kontact is a "shell" to host these)
• K3B - CD/DVD recording application
• konsole - KDE tabbed shell (Command Line)
• kpdf - PDF viewer
• kooka - scanner application
• knetworkmanager - A great wifi connection tool that lives in the system tray