Kubuntu is better than Fedora after all
I replaced Fedora with Kubuntu on my laptop yesterday. After experiment with the KDE interface on Kubuntu, I think that Kubuntu is better than Fedora for the following reasons:
- Flash is easy to install
According to several online tutorials, x86-64 Fedora users need to first install 32-bit support packages, and then install Flash plugin. After that, the users also need to worry about other Flash player issues, including no sound in the Flash movies. When I was using Fedora, I simply downloaded the incomplete Flash plugin for Linux from Adobe website and copied it to .mozilla/plugins in my home folder. Every time I reinstalled Fedora, I used this method to install Flash plugin. And it worked successfully each time without any issue.
In Kubuntu, I no longer need to download Flash plugin through Adobe website. I simply install it from the KPackage user interface. It installed and also worked without any issue.
- Excellent NVIDIA driver
To install NVIDIA driver in Fedora, I need to add RPMFusion repo. However, after installing the RPMFusion version of the NVIDIA driver, it appeared that Second Life doesn’t support it. I then need to download the appropriate driver from NVIDIA website, exit the X Server, and installed the driver from the command line.
With Kubuntu, all I need to do is install the proprietary NVIDIA driver through Hardware Drivers detection window.
- Second Life is ready to run without installing additional packages.
I needed to install a list of 32-bit packages in Fedora in order to run Second Life that is only available under 32-bit. After the installation, it still missed a lot of features like voice communication through microphone.
After the installation of Kubuntu and NVIDIA driver, Second Life are running smoothly without any problem. Even the voice communication feature is working correctly.
- Dual-monitor support works out-of-box
Thanks to the help of Nouveau, Fedora supports dual-monitor without any issue. But the Nouveau driver does not support 3D grapics yet. Because of that, I disabled Nouveau driver in grub.conf file and installed proprietary NVIDIA driver. However, Fedora didn’t enable the dual-monitor support by default anymore. I need to manually enable the feature through nvidia-settings.
After the installation of Kubuntu, the Hardware Drivers dialog box automatically popped up to remind me that I need to install NVIDIA driver. I installed the driver and restarted the laptop. Kubuntu automatically detects my two monitors and expand the desktop across these monitors.
In the end, I like Kubuntu better than Fedora. However, I’m still getting use to the single click method in KDE. After all, maybe I will stop following Fedora news and completely switch to Kubuntu community.
New Linux Kernel Problem
I use Nvidia graphic card on my Fedora laptop. Today I have upgraded the Linux kernel to the newest version. As you may already know, I changed my graphic driver from the Nvidia driver that comes with RPM Fusion repo to the official driver because of the Second Life issue. Because of that, I prepared to enter command mode after the upgrade to reinstall the graphic driver in order to work with the new kernel. I restarted my laptop and it freezes after the Fedora boot up screen for no reason. I pressed F8 when restarted my laptop again and boot up Fedora by using old kernel before the update.
After it booted up, I reinstalled Nvidia official driver for the new kernel and restarted. Surprisingly, it still didn’t work. I restarted the laptop once again and googled my problem. I found this short article over phoronix.com. It seems that this problem is caused by the broken kernel DRM interface in the new kernel.
I’m excited to know that the new incomplete Nouveau driver is in this kernel release. After I read about this, I don’t have any choice but to change the default boot kernel to the previous kernel by editing the grub.conf file in /boot/grub/ directory until the next kernel update. Hopefully the next release of Linux kernel would solve this problem as well as release the new Nouveau driver with it that will soon to be completed.
Experience with Proprietary NVIDIA Driver and one Compiz Fusion tip
After I installed proprietary graphic driver from the official NVIDIA website because of the recent decision of using Second Life on my Fedora system, I installed Compiz Fusion. I was surprised to see that the animations produced by Compiz Fusion is smoother than before, although I don’t know why the NVIDIA driver installed from RPM Fusion does not have the same performance as the official driver. Aside from great performance and ability to smoothly run Second Life, I also noticed that the print screen key didn’t work. The problem came from using Compiz desktop. The print screen works once I switched to Metacity window manager by right-click the Compiz Fusion icon, select “Select Window Manager”, and choose Metacity. I decided to find the solution of this problem since I want to completely use Compiz Fusion and will be taking screenshot in the future. After I searched over in the CompizConfig Settings Manager, I discovered a neat feature in the settings manager to search the whole text across the Compiz Fusion plugins.
- After you opened CompizConfig Settings Manager, choose Advanced Search on the bottom left, at the top of the Close button.
- Wait a few moment to allow it to scan all of the Compiz Fusion plugins.
- After that, check “Settings value” checkbox under “Search in…” (Note: this will be unchecked once the manager window is closed, I guess that the search settings cannot be saved).
- Then type the word you want to search under Filter (in my case, it’s “print”).
- While you type, the plugins that contain the filter characters appear under Plugin.
- I found that the print screen key is in the Gnome Compatibility plugin. So I went back to the plugins list by clicking the Back button and enabled the Gnome Compatibility plugin.
- Now I can use the print screen key to make the screenshots. The problem solved.
I’m not sure why the Gnome Compatibility plugin was not enabled by default because it seems to be enabled by default during my re-installation of Fedora in the past. Maybe perhaps because of the proprietary NVIDIA Driver. But I’m still believing the open source Nouveau video driver. I hope its 3D support version will be released soon.