Kubuntu 15.04 development is in full swing and it’s looking like our 10th anniversary edition will be a classic. We’re the first distribution to ship a stable version with Plasma 5, the desktop which is getting tech journalists excited. My new favourite desktop they say. A masterpiece in the making they’re calling it. The most exciting release in a long time they exclaim.
Kubuntu 15.04 Beta 1 is out and is working well for people wanting to try out Plasma 5. We’ve deprecated the 14.10 Kubuntu-plasma5 packages, they were only ever tech preview and I’m afraid we don’t have the person-power to keep them updated, if you want Plasma 5 use the 15.04 Beta 1 for released versions or use Kubuntu CI images for Git versions.
Last week Ubuntu switched over to Systemd for boot system. It’s complex and faffy but at least we have the same complex and faffy as the rest of the world. There was a strange issue during the switchover where login manager SDDM suddenly disabled itself from starting. If you get that just run:
systemctl enable sddm
With a new desktop comes the pleasingly satisfying work of integrating it, it’s not unlike when I first uploaded KDE 3 to Ubuntu. This time though I’m better placed to put all the fixes upstream directly. For example I’ve just setup gtkbreeze, a helper tool to set up GTK 2 and 3 themeing to mostly match Breeze. But the icons don’t work, any help with that welcome.
Scarlett has updated Applications to 14.12.3. Aaron H has updated the docs and the ubiquity slideshow. I’ve nudged the people and pulled the leavers to get KScreen released and print-manager KF5 happy (mostly thanks to Red Hat that one) and telepathy working nicely with Plasma 5 (Martin K gets bonus points there for the legacy presence applet). Package manager Muon now fits in so well with Plasma 5 it gets released with it thanks to Aleix. User Manager gets an update courtesy of Vishesh. And Harald took time out from making all of KDE continuously integrate to port About Distro, you just can’t live without that one.
We’re still stuck on getting the new BlueDevil in, something in Ubuntu Touch needs ported to Bluez5 apparently. Libreoffice is looking nice with Qt 4 Breeze theme but I’ve failed to get the breeze icons properly integrated, hopefully I’ll have a spare day soon for that.
There’s still plenty on the bugs list many of them probably quite easy to fix if you fancy helping out. Our To Do list has plenty to be done including several that could be classes as junior jobs if you’re wanting to get into free software such as making some new recommended applications for the Muon Discover banner or reviewing the ISO contents to see if anything can be removed and get the size down a little. We’re in #kubuntu-devel on freenode if you want to say hi.
regarding the sddm issue, see:
https://github.com/sddm/sddm/pull/340
…which reminds me I should finally take care of this and provide some debug logs.
Does it boot? I appreciate your work and I am big fan of Kubuntu (see my twitter feed). Unfortunately the latest isos didn’t boot up. Should I give a try? I mean maybe you as a developer update online but I need to install from USB or DVD.
Today’s daily boots fine for me. However there’s a general ubuntu bug that stops X starting in Virtualbox https://launchpad.net/bugs/1432343
If you find any other problems do let us know
Yes. 64bit works now. I will test 32bit tomorrow. Great!
After yesterday’s updates I can’t log in anymore. I get the SDDM login screen, but after I enter my password it just sits there. (I’ve waited for quite long.) I can bring up a virtual console but running startx doesn’t do anything.
Hi Mike, did you solve this problem in any way? I got it this morning as well.
systemctl enable sddm should fix it. it’s alas a mystery why this happened at all
T H A N K Y O U
For another great release. I’ve been running Vivid on my brand new Microsoft Surface Pro 3. It (KDE) is beautiful. I’ve been running KDE since the early KDE 2 days and this is the most beautiful OS I have ever had the pleasure of using.
Yes, it boots. And yes, there are a few hiccups (ksystemlog, I’m looking at you) but seriously, this thing is a wok of art.
Hi Andy,
sorry to bother you but your post it’s very interesting to me! Because of the hardware I bought a Surface Pro 3 but after 15 years in using Linux it’s really hard for me get back to Windows …
So here the questions: it’s working fine? Everything out of the box or lots of twicks to be done? Do you know about any usefull link?
Thanks a lot for any information that could take me back to Linux!
last time i tried kubuntu 15.04 x64 beta nvidia drivers depended on upstart. hope it got solved now. since systemd is default method of booting kubuntu
I am using Kubuntu Vivid. I’d like to know, whether it would be possible place application icons on the panel as in the KDE 4?
Looks like it’s coming along really nicely, and I’m glad you’re getting so much good press about it. Any idea when you’d be looking at a stable 15.04?