A tale of broken love to Kubuntu 11.10

EDIT 02 November 2011:
Please read the update at the bottom of the post before commenting.

Even though I was disappointed in Kubuntu 11.10 during my Live run of it, I decided to go on anyway and try to install it. Maybe the issues I have faced in Live run would not be showing themselves in installed system. Some features behaved differently in Ubuntu 11.10 installed and Live so far, that's why installation was a made deal.
As in my Live run of Kubuntu 11.10, I booted my laptop (Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pi 1505) from DVD-RW with CD ISO image recorded.
First of all, I tried to run installation directly from screen with Try - Install selection. It did no work for me. The reasons was that network was not on at that moment, and I saw no way to connect to wireless network at that screen. Installer runs through the same checks as Ubuntu - disk space, power and network, but there is no option to connect to wireless network at that point. Ubuntu gave me such option. As a result, I had to go to Live mode first and then run installation of Kubuntu 11.10 from Live run.
Installation itself was very similar to Ubuntu one. The difference is only in window design/layout and slideshow. They are in Kubuntu 11.10 theme, of course.
I had same issue as in Ubuntu 11.10 again. GRUB was installed without my request. To be honest, that is not 100% true. I was asked where to install GRUB, on which partition. I could select the partition for GRUB installation at that point, but not to cancel the installation. That's a pity.
Another thing to note about installer is that progress bar during installation is something you should not trust. Values go up and down there easily for about 10-15%. It means you can never predict how much time actually left.
Finally, all the installation steps for Kubuntu 11.10 were over. I could reboot the laptop.

---

As expected, I had same issue with GRUB2 on Debian-based system and Mageia. They don't live together. It means GRUB2 put incorrect records for Mageia part of menu, being it Debian itself, Ubuntu or, this time, Kubuntu. If boot the Mageia Linux straight away, the result would be the kernel panic.
And then... I don't want GRUB2 in Kubuntu, I want it belong back to Debian.
So, I had to do same manipulations before booting into Kubuntu 11.10 for the first time, as I have already done in Ubuntu:

1. boot to Debian
2. run grub-install
3. run update-grub
4. manually amend menu items in grub.cfg to allow Mageia boot
5. check that Mageia boots OK

And only after all these steps I decided to do the first boot of Kubuntu 11.10.

When installed from Live run, different systems behave themselves differently. In particular, some of them remember configuration steps from Live run, so you can flawlessly continue your work. Others leave you with fresh system. Mageia 1 was from first category: it remembered wireless driver which I activated in Live run and even configuration for WiFi connection. I have not done anything else before installation of Mageia, so could not check more. But even these steps were very nice bonus. As opposite, Kubuntu 11.10 is from second category. Freshly booted system did not remember WiFi connection details used just now during the installation. I had to configure connection again. That's not bad, but just a little bit annoying.
Naked freshly booted Kubuntu 11.10 operating system took about 340 Mb memory, which was quite a lot compared to other distributions.

Freshly booted Kubuntu 11.10
takes about 340 Mb

Even though after some manipulations I was able to reduce size to around 290 Mb, this was too much compared to Mageia 1 with its 170 Mb.

Memory usage in Kubuntu 11.10 after manipulations

Mageia 1 KDE uses 177 Mb

Unfortunately, my favourite browser Google Chrome did not install in Kubuntu 11.10, same as in Ubuntu 11.10. And again, Chromium was successfully installed from repository which is very good alternative. After considerable time of usage I have not found any functionality deficiencies in current version of Chromium compared to Chrome, which was a case few months ago.

As I have previously mentioned, there is only one Desktop wallpaper included into Kubuntu 11.10 by default. But there is a button "install default wallpapers". I used that button and it brought me more options. Plus, of course, there's an option to browse even more.
Desktop wise, I'd like to note another issue which I noticed. Opacity of panel? For me - it looks strange... To sort this out, I switched off desktop effect Blur. It improved situation slightly, but not in full. By the way, I have not seen this opacity in Live version of Kubuntu 11.10.
There are some desktop effects enabled by default, but not too many. I'd say that approach is very balanced. For my taste, I got just enough eye candy without overbloating the system and reducing performance. To check effects which are not on by default, I activated Desktop cube. Of course, it worked without issues.

I have already mentioned in my Live run that Kubuntu 11.10 has two package managers included: Muon Package Manager (MPM) and Muon Software Centre (MSC). Which one to use?
Of course, MSC is more colourful and nice to work with. But it only allows you to process (install/uninstall) one application at a time.
As opposite, MPM allows you to select all the packages you need and then install them in one go, being slightly less visually nice. Of course, when you first install your favourite tools right after system installation, I would recommend to use MPM, as I did. Later you can use MSC for better graphical design.
Installation of my usual tools in Kubuntu 11.10 went OK: VLC, Qutim, Skype, smbfs were installed without any particular issue.
I had small problem with Qutim during its first run. For whatever reason it did not want to connect to GTalk account. But luckily it sorted itself after system restart.
Of course, MP3 and Flash worked for me in Kubuntu 11.10 out of the box - checkbox was ticked during the installation.

Flash works in Kubuntu 11.10
immediately after install

As you can see from here, everything was nice and shiny for me in Kubuntu 11.10. I started to fall in love again. But suddenly things have changed to opposite.

The cloud was very small initially. I wanted to download something from FTP resource. Of course, I could use Chromium or even  Midnight Commander built-in tools for that. But for whatever reason I decided to go for specialized FTP tool. I found several of them available in Muon Software Centre waiting for me.
My first attempt was for KFTPgrubber. Why? Because it is KDE-native tool, which would require minimal download and would look pretty integrated in Kubuntu. Installation was successful, but after all approaches it did not want to connect to the remote server. Chromium connection was OK at the same time.
OK, if KDE-native tool has an issue, then all-trusted FileZilla should work. You could think so. But instead FileZilla did not start at all! Few seconds of jumping cursor and then... nothing! Not even a farewell note in dmesg.
Then another issue was found. And this was already a sign of thunderstorm. My Kubuntu 11.10 did not want to reboot itself when remote partition was mounted via CIFS. The issue was still the same as I saw in Kubuntu 11.04 and which drove me away from (K)Ubuntu. Operating system shuts down wireless network connection before unmounting the remote partition. Then it waits for 5 minutes before unmounting command times out. Strangely enough, Ubuntu 11.10 did not have this issue when I tried it!
And finally... Tornado came in and crushed the system. After some attempts to run FTP client, after few reboots with hanged CIFS partition, Kubuntu 11.10 stopped properly boot. Connection did not restore automatically. Attempts to manually restore connection hanged the system and it was only responsive to Ctrl-Alt-Backspace combination. But even that one was not a solution, because restart of X-server brought KDE to black screen without any signs of life on it.

Thus, Kubuntu 11.10 became unusable. At least for me. At least now.
It still remains in my heart as (almost) first love... But it won't remain on my hard disk.
The love is broken...

Do you want to try Kubuntu 11.10 yourself? Then why not order a CD with this distribution via Buy Linux CDs service? Don't want Kubuntu? Check it out, there are plenty of other distributions too!

UPDATE 02 Nov 2011:
Something weird (or wonderful) happened! After few days when I left Kubuntu 11.10 untouched on my laptop, after few days of this post being published, I decided to boot into this Operating System again. And it works! Network connection is fine. FTP download via FileZilla is fine.
Did anybody make any magical spells or shaman dances remotely?

Once I could boot and work in Kubuntu as normal, I could look at other issues. Following were also solved:

• Automatic network connection: configuration of connection lacked relevant checkbox. Once it was ticked, connection was restored automagically on reboo.
• 5-minutes timeout for network partition unmounting. Solved with 2 lines of commands suggested by Elder Geek.

UPDATE 03 Nov 2011:

Second day of tests showed that timeout on network partition unmounting still exists. This issue was not solved.