LinuxAndUbuntu Review Of Kubuntu 17.10

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As Ubuntu 17.10 had made its way among the users, so had its various flavors. Kubuntu is one of them. Recently launched Kubuntu 17.10 supported for 9 months is available to download in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Most users will actually skip out 17.x series as it’s not LTS and moreover, stability is the main concern. Check out the official release notes and what I experienced on using Kubuntu 17.10 on my PC below.  

Download Kubuntu 17.10

You can download Kubuntu 17.10 from the link below.  

Download  

Alternative download link –   Alternative Download  

Also, I extracted the wallpapers from Kubuntu 17.10 just as I did with Linux Mint 18.2 last time. I am a fan of beautiful wallpapers (so are you?). Grab them from the link below.  

Download Wallpapers

Kubuntu 17.10 Release Note

​The original announcement is here. The important points in notes are:-

  • 9 months support span.
  • VLC, Cantata Qt5 music player & Muon package manager are now shipped as default replacing Dragon Player, Amarok and Plasma discover.
  • Ktorrent, Krita, KDevelop and many  KDE applications are updated.
  • KDE Plasma 5.10 is default DE.

Many applications are removed because they were either outdated or users wanted to change. This is a good step as it makes it more stable and useful. For instance, many users wanted VLC as default rather than dragon player as VLC does almost all jobs on all PCs.

What I discovered in Kubuntu 17.10

Yeah! Except for those wallpapers, I discovered many more things. The performance was pretty amazing while I used the OS in live environment. However, I experienced some glitches in animation which were very rare and some lag too while trying to switch between various settings but that was also very rare.​The first thing you come across after booting is two options regarding your choice whether to install or try in live environment. Then there is simple, clean desktop as you can see below.

I seriously believe that there should be a file explorer icon prebuilt on desktop as I was a windows user in the old days. I tried playing my media which worked fine as there is a known bug in Ubuntu 17.10. PulseAudio devices are not working and I was lacking pulseaudio device to test the theory and workarounds.​You can try messing with DE as you want. A lot of options to tweak are available.

File copying, media playing, surfing, and all your jobs can be done without any issues.  I changed the default wallpaper, theme, some settings, installing apps from the store as well as manually and kind of daily jobs and everything was really smooth.

You may want to change the settings of touchpad in case you want to use Kubuntu 17.10 on your laptop. Double click on touchpad won’t work by default unless you enable it in settings. Check Out other functions too which you require.

Kubuntu 17.10 Bugs

​As reported by official release notes;-

  • (1720519) KDE/Kubuntu: pulseaudio module “module-switch-on-connect” should be loaded once at most. Refusing to load
  • (1716092) Enabling Auto switching streams on new active output causes pulseaudio to crash
  • Bugsearch results link
  • (1706859) Auto-selected keyboard layout no longer matches chosen region on “Where are you” page
  • (1447144) oem-config forgets to update /etc/sddm.conf

bugs:

  • (1442512) Apport-kde crash when reporting bugs
  • (1449265) accounts kcm can not change user’s password because password is missing
  • (1451728) kde-config-telepathy-accounts package install error
  • (1514491) kubuntu desktop inconsistency and integration issues: scrollbars. gtk3 button placement also not integrated
  • (1561745) OEM config fails to remove itself
  • (1638473) Blank screen after running oem-config

What I experienced:-
​

  • Bit glitches and lags at certain moments (very rare).
  • My wifi card showed less range than usual as it’s driver issues. Change your driver if you have the same issue.

There is a workaround for pulseaudio bug as reported in release notes. However it’s not sure it will definitely work, but it’s worth trying.

editing /etc/pulse/default.pa and commenting the last 3 lines:

#.ifexists module-switch-on-connect.so
#load-module module-switch-on-connect
#.endif

Conclusion

​Kubuntu 17.10 is just launched and as expected there are bugs. However, it is really impossible that you will get all known bugs on your PC. There are a lot of new things which make it a really good release but bugs are there too. However, I think it is good in case you can fix bugs when encountered and go on. If you want updates, keep in mind it is not an LTS variant but comes with a lot of new updates.