Kubuntu is an official derivative of the Ubuntu operating system using the KDE Plasma Desktop.

Kubuntu is an official derivative of the Ubuntu operating system using the KDE Plasma Desktop instead of the Unity graphical environment.

It is part of the Ubuntu project and uses the same underlying system.

It is possible to install both the KDE Plasma Desktop (kubuntu-desktop) as well as the Gnome desktop (ubuntu-desktop) on the same machine.

Every package in Kubuntu shares the same repositories as Ubuntu.

It is released regularly on the same schedule as Ubuntu.

The difference between these two sister operating systems is typically only graphical applications and tools used.

"Kubuntu", means "towards humanity" in Bemba, and is derived from ubuntu ("humanity"). The K at the beginning represents the KDE community on whose platform Kubuntu is built. By coincidence, Kubuntu also means "free" in Kirundi.

Updates (via Distrowatch):

Kubuntu 11.04, a useful Ubuntu variant featuring the latest KDE desktop, is ready: "The Kubuntu team is proud to announce the release of 11.04 - codename 'Natty Narwhal': the latest version of our popular Linux distribution, based on Ubuntu and KDE's Plasma and Applications 4.6. With the combination of its Ubuntu backbone, the amazing KDE Software Compilation, and a few unique extras, 11.04 aims to provide the best fusion of stability, beauty, and up-to-date software. Whether working, browsing the web, playing your music, composing an email or connecting with your friends on social networks, Kubuntu brings you a powerful, innovative and attractive platform for all your desktop needs!"

See the release announcement and release notes for additional details.

Download (SHA256): kubuntu-11.04-desktop-i386.iso (696MB, torrent), kubuntu-11.04-desktop-amd64.iso (694MB, torrent).

Recent releases:

  • 2011-04-28: Distribution Release: Kubuntu 11.04
 • 2010-10-10: Distribution Release: Kubuntu 10.10
 • 2010-04-29: Distribution Release: Kubuntu 10.04
 • 2009-10-29: Distribution Release: Kubuntu 9.10
 • 2009-04-23: Distribution Release: Kubuntu 9.04
 • 2009-02-22: Distribution Release: Kubuntu 8.04.2

Color	Meaning
Green	Both OS's
Yellow	Ubuntu Default
Blue	Kubuntu Default

Software	Ubuntu	Kubuntu
Kernel & Core	Ubuntu Kernel & Core
Graphics	X.org
Sound	PulseAudio
Multimedia	GStreamer	Xine (moving to GStreamer) via Phonon
Desktop	Unity	Plasma
Primary Toolkit	GTK+	Qt
Browser	Firefox	Rekonq
Office	OpenOffice / LibreOffice
Email & PIM	Evolution	Kontact / Kmail

Kubuntu's Plasma desktop is fully customizable, much more so than a typical GNOME or Unity desktop is without extra tools or configuration file editing. Originally designed to ease transition for users from other operating systems (such as Microsoft Windows) by allowing a similar desktop layout, the KDE Plasma Desktop incorporates widget-centric modularity that allows the user to incorporate function similar to all other operating systems and also create new functionality not found in other operating system desktops. Desktop effects are integrated in the standard KDE SC 4 installation, and enabled by default if supported.

It is worth noting that because Ubuntu and Kubuntu use the same sources/origins for their software, any application intended for one is installable, and will work, on the other. This makes it very common to see Firefox on Kubuntu or K3B on Ubuntu.

Gallery.

Kubuntu 8.04

Kubuntu 8.10

Kubuntu 9.04

Kubuntu 10.10

The desktop version of Kubuntu currently supports the Intel x86 and the AMD64 architectures. Some releases additionally support the SPARC architecture.,the PowerPC, IA-64 (Itanium), and PlayStation 3 architectures (though, due to an official firmware update from Sony released in April 2010, users of the PS3 cannot run other operating systems on their machine - a feature previously supported by OtherOS). Because Kubuntu is Ubuntu with a KDE desktop, any version available in Ubuntu is also available for Kubuntu.

The minimum system requirements for a desktop installation are a 300 MHz x86 processor, 512 MB of RAM, 5 GB of hard drive space,and a video card which supports VGA at 640x480 resolution. The recommended system requirements for the desktop installation are a 1 GHz or better x86 processor, 1 GB of RAM, 15 GB of hard drive space, and a video card which supports VGA at 1024×768 resolution, and optionally supporting visual effects.

Before Kubuntu 10.10, there was some aggravation by members of the community and general reputation online was a commonly negative one. The Kubuntu team sought to remedy this negative impression.

Causes:

* Lack of branding - since the transition to KDE SC4
* Delay of Ubuntu improvements into Kubuntu - sometimes requiring a release or two
* Stability of software

Responses:

* Project Timelord – An initiative, name inspired by Doctor Who, to improve the developer workflow and quality of Kubuntu.
* Working Upstream – Much of the work done by Kubuntu developers is done in upstream, such as furthering GHNS integration and the KDE SC 4.4 login manager theme.
* Best in class (KDE) – The use of Ubuntu's PPA system allows easy upgrading to the latest KDE SC. The argument is that if you want the latest KDE software, you run Kubuntu.

The results have been overwhelmingly positive.[citation needed] Many pieces from the KDE community have matured and stabilized, while the team itself seems more productive. Kubuntu's package manager has a category view very similar to that of the Ubuntu software center, the default web browser is now based on webkit, and many more features showcased in Ubuntu are being matched by those in Kubuntu, such as the upcoming wireless connection page in the installer discs. Kubuntu's website also received a welcomed[by whom?] redesign.

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Bayanihan Linux is a complete open source-based desktop solution for office and school use.

Bayanihan Linux is a complete open source-based desktop solution for office and school use. It is a package that includes an operating system, a word processor, spreadsheet program, presentation software, email facility, an internet browser, and a graphics editor.

This complete system is packaged in a single easy-to-install CD. The word "Bayanihan" relates to a Filipino tradition where people in a community help their neighbour in physically moving their house to a different place. The most recent versions of Bayanihan Linux are based on Debian GNU/Linux; previous releases (3.1 and earlier) were based on Fedora Core and Red Hat Linux.

Updates (via Distrowatch):

Tracy Melissa Decena has announced the release of Bayanihan Linux 5.4, a new revision of the desktop-oriented distribution based on Debian's old stable branch, featuring the legacy KDE 3.5 desktop: "Bayanihan Linux 5 Revision 4 is now available for download. The newest 'Kalumbata' revision now features LibreOffice by The Document Foundation, an open-source office productivity suite derived from OpenOffice.org. However, OpenOffice.org 3.3, the latest version, is still bundled in the installer. Also packed in the new ISO image is the latest release of Bayanihan Linux's default web browser, Mozilla Firefox 4. Tons of security updates are also added. For old Bayanihan Linux users, software updates can be downloaded via Synaptic." See the release announcement which includes upgrade instructions for existing users. Download the installation CD image from here: Bayanihan5Desktop-Installer-i386-686-Rev4.iso (700MB).

Recent versions:

 • 2011-04-25: Distribution Release: Bayanihan Linux 5.4
 • 2007-03-28: Distribution Release: Bayanihan Linux 4
 • 2006-06-15: Development Release: Bayanihan Linux 4 Beta 2
 • 2006-04-21: Development Release: Bayanihan Linux 4 Beta 1
 • 2004-09-28: Distribution Release: Bayanihan Linux 3.1
 • 2004-06-25: Development Release: Bayanihan Linux 3 Live CD Beta


The Bayanihan Linux 5 Revision 4 is now available for download! The newest Kalumbata revision now features LibreOffice by The Document Foundation, an Open Source office productivity suite greatly derived from OpenOffice.org. However, OpenOffice.org 3.3, the latest version, is still bundled in the installer. Also packed in the new ISOs is the latest release of BL5's default web browser, Mozilla Firefox 4. Tons of security updates are also added.
For old BL users, software updates can be downloaded via Synaptic. Just follow the easy steps below:

1. Open Synaptic Package Manager (Menu > System > Package Manager). Enter the root password.
2. Before proceeding, make sure that the Kalumbata repository is enabled. To do this, go to Settings under the menu bar, and select Repositories. Check the box beside http://apt.bayanihan.gov.ph/kalumbata and click OK.
3. Click the Reload icon found at the upper left part of the Synaptic window.
4. After checking the repository for new, removed, or updated software packages, click the Search button (the last icon at the toolbar) and type the software to be updated.
5. If there is an update on the software you searched, right-click on the item/s and select "Mark for Upgrade".
6. On the resulting dialog box, click Mark.
7. Then, click the Apply button at the main toolbar.
8. The selected software will then be upgraded to its newest version.

Bayanihan Linux 5 Rev 4 can be downloaded here for free. For more information or inquiries, email us at info@bayanihan.gov.phThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .


Bayanihan 5 Desktop: Kalumbata.


Codenamed "Kalumbata", the latest version of Bayanihan Desktop features an easy-to-install single CD distribution.

This edition has the following features:

• New graphical installer
• Integrated office productivity applications, web browser, antivirus, CD/DVD burning tool, firewall utility, and many more!
• Improved out-of-the-box support for various wireless devices, peripherals and printers, as well as plug-and-surf capability for popular 3G wireless devices
• You can now use the LIVE CD to install Bayanihan 5

Minimum hardware requirements:

• 32-bit (486):
  • Pentium 1 to Pentium 2 processor
  • at least 128MB RAM
  • at least 3GB hard disk space
  • monitor with at least SVGA resolution
  • standard keyboard and mouse
  32-bit (686):
  • at least 500MHz Pentium-class processor
  • at least 128MB RAM
  • at least 3GB hard disk space
  • monitor with at least SVGA resolution
  • standard keyboard and mouse
• 64-bit:
  • at least 1GHz 64-bit-capable processor (AMD64 or EM64T)
  • at least 1GB RAM
  • at least 5GB hard disk space
  • monitor with at least SVGA resolution
  • standard keyboard and mouse

Download:

• Bayanihan 5 Desktop 32-bit 686 Installer CD - MD5/SHA256 Checksum
• Bayanihan 5 Desktop Live CD - MD5/SHA256 Checksum

Bayanihan 5 for Government.
 


Bayanihan for Government is a desktop solution tailored especially for government offices.  Based on the latest version of the Bayanihan Desktop, this edition features templates of common government forms for OpenOffice.org office suite.


This edition has the following features:

• Integrated office productivity applications, web browser, antivirus, CD/DVD burning tool, firewall utility, and many more.
• Improved out-of-the-box support for various wireless devices, peripherals and printers, as well as plug-and-surf capability for popular 3G wireless devices.
• Templates for common government forms for easy filling out and printing.
• No games installed by default.

Minimum hardware requirements:

• at least 500MHz Pentium-class processor
• at least 256MB RAM
• at least 5GB hard disk space
• monitor with at least SVGA resolution
• standard keyboard and mouse

Download:

• Bayanihan 5 for Government 32-bit 486 Installer CD - MD5/SHA256 Checksum
• Bayanihan 5 for Government 32-bit 686 Installer CD - MD5/SHA256 Checksum
• Bayanihan 5 for Government Live CD - MD5/SHA256 Checksum

 Bayanihan 5 Add-Ons.


The Bayanihan Add-On CDs are collections of software packages that are categorized and compiled into Development, Education, Games, and Multimedia.  The software packages contained in these CDs are also available from our repository.

• Bayanihan 5 Add-On Development 32-bit CD - MD5/SHA256 Checksum
• Bayanihan 5 Add-On Education 32-bit CD - MD5/SHA256 Checksum
• Bayanihan 5 Add-On Games 32-bit CD - MD5/SHA256 Checksum
• Bayanihan 5 Add-On Multimedia 32-bit CD - MD5/SHA256 Checksum

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Kolibri is a small x86 assembler hobby operating system.

Kolibri is a small x86 assembler hobby operating system. It forked off MenuetOS in 2004 and has mostly been developed by ex-USSR community since.

API and ABI is being enreached with developer-friendly features. User interface is not that good yet but we are trying to improve it as well.

Your feedback is very appreciated, although help would always be much more valuable.bri or KolibriOS is a small open source x86 operating system written completely in assembly. It was forked off from MenuetOS

System requirements.

    * i586 compatible CPU required
    * 8 MB of RAM[2]
    * 1.44 MB floppy disk drive[2]
    * Boots from several devices; NTFS is also supported. Can even be started from Windows (Windows will shutdown)
    * Graphical user interface based on VESA
    * Development kit: code editor with a macro-assembler (FASM) integrated
    * Fits on a single 1.44 MB Floppy (many applications are compressed)
    * Pre-emptive multitasking, streams, parallel execution of system calls
    * Supported file systems are FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 (long names support), NTFS (partially, read only), ext2/ext3 (partially, read only) and CDFS
    * AC'97 audio codec support for Intel, nForce, nForce2, nForce3, nForce4, SIS7012, FM801, VT8233, VT8233C, VT8235, VT8237, VT8237R, VT8237R Plus and EMU10K1X chipsets

Current 0.7.7.0 release introduces several kernel, applications and libraries updates. We thank everyone participated and tried making this release a better one. Huge networking code changes, ATI video driver, HTMLV and DOWNLOADER integration for convenient web browsing and many other improvements — that is what we would like to get you excited today. Full list of changes could be found at a special wiki page.
	Floppy image to be used for various virtual machines, writing on diskette or putting to hard disk to boot from.
	Compact disk (LiveCD) image to be used for various virtual machines or burning to CDs to boot from.

Dual booting Debian and KolibriOS .

KolibriOS is very impressive stuff, and after finding a brief set of instructions for installing it to a hard drive, I had a “dual-boot” system of both Debian and Kolibri running on the old Thinkpad 560e that’s still floating around the house.

It’s not as hard as it might sound; the instructions I found here from a few years ago still work fine with Debian stable as a host system. I can’t tell you why decided to use Debian, other than the fact that the CD was already in the drive.

And chances are I doubt it really matters which other Linux distribution you use as host, because the symbiont is tiny by comparison. If you give it a FAT32 partition of its own, you can save files to and fro and between the operating systems without having to rely on something like a floppy drive as an intermediary.

For my own purposes, this is what the partition array looked like on my test machine, with a slot specific to Kolibri.

/dev/hda1 64Mb /boot ext2
/dev/hda2 128Mb swap swap
/dev/hda3 1Gb /dos fat32
/dev/hda4 ~ / ext2

That last partition was whatever space happened to be lying around. It was more than enough to hold an entire Debian stable command-line installation, while the /dos partition was where all the Kolibri goodies sat — and a gigabyte was way too much space for that, too.

In any case, I had a place to read and write screenshots or text files or what have you, and move them between operating systems. Primitive, but on a machine with no CD, no floppy, no USB and network access only while in Debian, I am hoping you can forgive me.

Once Debian was installed, I got the machine online and added syslinux and p7zip-full. The former brings in the memdisk package, which will allow you to boot straightaway into Kolibri off the hard drive, and the latter makes unzipping the .7z format a little easier. If anyone on the Kolibri team is listening, it’s probably not necessary to compress a 5Mb ISO down to 3.5Mb, but do as you will. …

Download the floppy image with wget, expand it to the /dos partition and keep an eye on where the kolibri.img file lands. Then edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst file to add something like this.

title KolibriOS
root (hd0,2)
kernel /memdisk
initrd /kolibri.img

As always, pay close attention to the root designation if you changed the array from what I had, and to the location of the .img file, relative to the top level of the partition. In other words, don’t prefix the kernel or initrd lines with “/dos/”, because it won’t work.

After that it’s simply a matter of rebooting. If everything is set correctly, Kolibri should running in only a few moments, far faster than by floppy. At 166Mhz and with a horrid 2Gb 4200rpm drive, it’s up and running in less than 5 or 6 seconds.

The downside is that the video card in the 560e is officially certified VESA1.2 — no ifs, ands or buts. That explains why no Linux distro to date could push it beyond 640×480, and why even Kolibri can’t push it past 640x480x16. And that depth is utterly unattractive, with color smears and ruined visual effects everywhere. 

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Syllable is a free and open source operating system for Pentium and compatible processors.

Syllable is a free and open source operating system for Pentium and compatible processors. Its purpose is to create an easy-to-use desktop operating system for the home and small office user. It was forked from the stagnant AtheOS in July 2002.

It has a native web browser (Webster which is WebKit-based), email client (Whisper), media player, IDE, and many more applications.

Features according to the official website include:

    * Native 64-bit journaled file system, the AtheOS File System (usually called AFS, which is not the same as the Andrew File System)
    * C++ oriented API
    * Object-oriented graphical desktop environment on a native GUI architecture
    * Mostly POSIX compliant
    * Software ports, including Emacs, Vim, Perl, Python, Apache, others.
    * GNU toolchain (GCC, Glibc, Binutils, Make)
    * Preemptive multitasking with multithreading
    * Symmetric multiprocessing (multiple processor) support
    * Device drivers for most common hardware (video, sound, network chips)
    * File system drivers for FAT (read/write), NTFS (read) and ext2 (read)
    * REBOL as system scripting language


 Syllable is a volunteer project that creates a family of easy to use, free software operating systems. You can use them separately, or you can use them together to form network platforms. Read our full introduction and go to the Syllable Desktop and Syllable Server sites for more information, news and software downloads.

Syllable Desktop is an original, modern operating system design, in the tradition of the Amiga and BeOS, but built using many parts from the GNU project and Linux. It is designed and optimised for your desktop PC, making it exceptionally fast and responsive and easy to use.

It is under development, so it is interesting and even exciting to try out, but you have to decide for yourself whether it fits your needs already. Syllable Desktop runs on industry-standard Personal Computers with a minimum of a Pentium compatible processor and 32 MB of memory.

It can make a new computer extremely fast and an old computer usable again.

Syllable Server is a small and efficient Linux operating system. It uses the Linux kernel and is compatible with Linux software, but is otherwise built to be as similar as possible to Syllable Desktop, using mostly the same parts. It is optimised for server computers, yet inherits a lot of efficiency and speed from the Syllable Desktop design.

The current version only has a text mode console interface suitable for server use and elementary support for running some graphical programs (it is shown here running on Syllable Desktop under emulation).

Nonetheless, the clean Syllable design and straightforward documentation make it easy to use. The graphical user interface from Syllable Desktop will be added in later versions to enhance ease of use further. Due to its Linux base, Syllable Server is a stable and usable system. It runs on industry-standard Personal Computers with a minimum of a 486 processor and 16 MB of memory. It can make a new computer very fast and efficient and an old computer usable again.

Updates (via Distrowatch):

Kaj de Vos has announced the release of Syllable Server 0.4, a small (but extensible) server distribution built on top of a recent Linux kernel and the Linux From Scratch (LFS) base system: "We are pleased to announce that we have released the new Syllable Server 0.4. This release focuses on maturing existing functionality, improving security, ongoing system restructuring, and making the system a suitable base for third-party package managers. About half the packages in the system were upgraded, including key components such as the Linux kernel, udev, the LFS init scripts, DirectFB, SDL, Bash, Packager, OpenSSH, REBOL/Core, the Cheyenne web server and cdrtools. Other important packages such as Ruby, Midnight Commander, Links and Transmission were also updated. XZ-Utils was added, providing the same LZMA compression as in 7-Zip."

See the release announcement and changelog for further details.

Download: SyllableServer-0.4.i486.zip (92MB, torrent).

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