User and community member, arraybolt3, provides more details regarding challenges of Flatpak support.

No worries; Flatpaks are still available for all Ubuntu flavors. To enable Flatpaks in KDE’s Discover in Kubuntu 23.04, run this command:

sudo apt install flatpak plasma-discover-backend-flatpak

To enable the largest Flatpak repository, run this command:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Log out and log back in (or restart) to re-initialize the XDG_DATA_DIRS variable, otherwise, newly installed Flatpak apps will not run or appear in the startup menu.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

It is yours in title, deed and asset

A common miss perception with Open Source software is the notion of free. Many people associate free in its simplest form, that of no monetary cost, and unfortunately this ultimately leads to the second conclusion of ‘cheap’ and low quality. Proprietary commercial vendors, and their corporate marketing departments know this and use that knowledge to focus their audience on ‘perceived value’. In some ways free of cost in the open source software world is a significant disadvantage, because it means there are no funds available to pay for a marketing machine to generate ‘perceived value’.

Think, for a moment, how much of a disadvantage that is when trying to develop a customer/user base.

Kubuntu is completely and whole contributon driven. It is forged from passion and enthusiasm, built with joy and above all love. Throughout our community; users use it because they love it, supporters help users, and each other, maintainers fix issues and package improvements, developers extend functionality and add features, bloggers write articles and documentation, youtubers make videos and tutorials. All these people do this because they love what they’re doing and it brings them joy doing it.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels

Today Linux is cloud native, ubiquitous and dominates wholesale in the internet space, it is both general purpose, and highly specialised, robust and extensive, yet focused and detailed.

Kubuntu is a general purpose operating system designed and developed by our community to be practical and intuitive to a wide audience. It is simple and non-intrusive to install, everyday it continues to grow a larger user base of people who download it, install it and for some, love it! Further more, some of those users will find their way into our community, they will see the contributions given so freely by others and be inspired to contribute themselves.

Image from Wikipedia

Anyone who has installed Windows 10 recently, will atest to the extent of personal information that Microsoft asks users of its operating system to ‘contribute’. This enables the Microsoft marketing teams to further refine their messaging to resonate with your personal ‘perceived value‘ and indeed to enable that across the Microsoft portfolio of ‘partners‘!
The story is identical with Apple, the recently announced Silicon M1 seeks, not only to lock Apple users into the Apple software ecosystem and their ‘partners‘ but also to lock down and isolate the software to the hardware.

With this background understanding, we are able to return full circle to the subject of this article ‘Kubuntu is not Free, it is Free‘ and further more Kubuntu users are free.
Free from intrusion, profiling, targeting, and marketing; Kubuntu user are free to share, modify and improve their beloved software however they choose.

Photo by RF._.studio from Pexels

Let us revisit that last sentence and add some clarity. Kubuntu users are free to share and improve ‘their’ beloved software however they choose.
The critical word here is ‘their’, and that is because Kubuntu is YOUR software, not Microsoft, Apple, and not even Canonical or Ubuntu’s. It is yours in title, deed and asset and that is the value that the
GNU GPL license bequithes to you.

This ownership also empowers you, and indeed puts you as an individual in a greater place of power than the marketeers from Microsoft or Apple. You can share, distribute, promote, highlight or low-light, Kubuntu wherever, and whenever you like. Blog about it, make YouTube videos about it, share it, change it, give it away and even sell it.

How about the for perceived value ?

About the Author:

Rick Timmis is a Kubuntu Councillor, and advocate. Rick has been a user and open contributor to Kubuntu for over 10 years, and a KDE user and contributor for 20

This latest release 18.04, effectively the April 2018 release, is a major milestone. It is the first LTS Long Term Support release of Kubuntu running the “Plasma 5” desktop.
The improvements are so considerable, in both performance and modern user interface ( UI ) design, that I was really excited about wanting to tell the world about it.

Which is why I was completely ecstatic when I was commissioned by Linux Magazine to write a 2000 word article, spanning some 4 pages, as a major review center piece in their magazine.

Published as “Linux Pro Magazine” in the US and “Linux Magazine” in Europe.

In the article I dive into one of the greatest and most unsung features of KDE Plasma 5; “Activities”. The introduction of activities in KDE has been a revelation to me, and completely changed the way that I work on a day to day basis. I encourage you whole heartedly to explore them, if you haven’t done so already.

Published in the August 2018 edition, and from which the introduction is available online at http://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2018/213/Kubuntu-18.04 or of course you can buy the August issue from http://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2018/213.

It is fantastic to see Kubuntu hitting the main stream publishing and to have an in-depth review article in one of the global leading Linux magazines is wonderful.

by Rick Timmis

While we believe these packages should be relatively issue-free, please bear in mind that they have not been tested as comprehensively as those in the main ubuntu archive.

Testers should be prepared to troubleshoot and hopefully report issues that may occur. Please provide feedback on our mailing list [1], IRC [2], or optionally via social media.

After a period of testing and verification, we hope to move this update to the main backports ppa.

You should have some command line knowledge before testing.
Reading about how to use ppa purge is also advisable.

How to test KDE PIM 16.12.3 for Zesty:

Testing packages are currently in the Kubuntu Backports Landing PPA.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports-landing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

1. Kubuntu-devel mailing list: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/kubuntu-devel
2. Kubuntu IRC channels: #kubuntu & #kubuntu-devel on irc.freenode.net

Codenamed “Zesty Zapus”, Kubuntu 17.04 continues our proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.

The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.

Under the hood, there have been updates to many core packages, including a new 4.10-based kernel, KDE Frameworks 5.31, Plasma 5.9.4 and KDE Applications 16.12.3.

The Kubuntu Desktop has seen some exciting improvements, with newer versions of Qt, updates to major packages like Krita, Kdenlive, Firefox and LibreOffice, and stability improvements to the Plasma desktop environment.

For a list of other application updates, upgrading notes and known bugs be sure to read our release notes.

Download 17.04 or read about how to upgrade from 16.10.

Today the Kubuntu team is happy to announce that Kubuntu Zesty Zapus (17.04) Beta 1 is released . With this Beta 1 pre-release, you can see and test what we are preparing for 17.04, which we will be releasing in April.

NOTE: This is Beta 1 Release. Kubuntu Beta Releases are NOT recommended for:

* Regular users who are not aware of pre-release issues
* Anyone who needs a stable system
* Anyone uncomfortable running a possibly frequently broken system
* Anyone in a production environment with data or work-flows that need to be reliable

Getting Kubuntu 17.04 Beta 1:
* Upgrade from 16.10: run `do-release-upgrade -d` from a command line.
* Download a bootable image (ISO) and put it onto a DVD or USB Drive : http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/zesty/beta-1/

Release notes: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ZestyZapus/Beta1/Kubuntu

Show Audio Feeds

MP3: http://feeds.feedburner.com/KubuntuPodcast-mp3

OGG: http://feeds.feedburner.com/KubuntuPodcast-ogg

Pocket Casts links

OGG

MP3

Show Hosts

Ovidiu-Florin Bogdan

• blog: http://ovidiu.geekaliens.com

Rick Timmis

• G+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RickTimmis
• Blog: http://sickrimmit.blogspot.co.uk/

Aaron Honeycutt (Video/Audio Podcast Production)

• G+: https://plus.google.com/+AaronHoneycutt
• blog: http://usefoss.com/

Intro

What have we (the hosts) been doing ?

• Aaron
  • Playing with the Amazon Echo Dot
  • Playing Firewatch
• Rick
  • Working on Porting Kdevelop Xdebug plugin to KF5
• Ovidiu
  • On sick leave (have the Flu) (and so does Simon :P)
  • Got some new tools and my woodworking shop is almost usable
  • Tried to compile KMail for 2 days (to add a new functionality)
  • Working on official Docker image for Pootle (step towards getting Pootle in Kubuntu and KDE)

Sponsor: Big Blue Button

Those of you that have attended the Kubuntu parties, will have seen our Big Blue Button conference and online education service.

Video, Audio, Presentation, Screenshare and whiteboard tools.

We are very grateful to Fred Dixon and the team at BigBlueButton.org go check out their project.

Kubuntu News

• Controversy in the News:
• Untrue: Betanews reports “Linux Mint lacks resources to maintain KDE Plasma version — turns to Kubuntu team for help” – http://betanews.com/2016/12/11/linux-mint-resources-kde-plasma-kubuntu
• True: We reached out to Mint and asked if they would help test the backports – http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3175
• KDE Community “announcement” on G+ https://plus.google.com/u/0/+KdeOrg/posts/5eMquXUzhmG
• In Backports PPA for Xenial and Yakkety:
• KDE Frameworks 5.28
• KDE Applications 16.04.3
• KDE Plasma 5.8.5

Elevator Picks

• Ovidiu – Pootle
• Docker image Pull Request
• ReviewBoard Docker image
• Aaron – Second Life client
• Rick – Ubuntu-Make
• Kubuntu Welcome Draft

Sponsor: Linode

Linode, an awesome VPS with super fast SSD’s, Data connections, and top notch support. We have worked out a sponsorship for a server to build packages quicker and get to our users faster.

Instantly deploy and get a Linode Cloud Server up and running in seconds with your choice of Linux distro, resources, and node location.

• SSD Storage
• 40Gbit Network
• Intel E5 Processors

BIG SHOUT OUT to Linode for working with us!

Kubuntu Developer Feedback

• Frameworks 5.29 delayed due to compile issues on Launchpad
• Trello card: https://trello.com/c/J5w6GdXP
• KDevelop and Krita synced with Debian
• Waiting on Qt 5.7.1 to land in Zesty before we can ship a KDE Applications version greater than 16.04.3 due to some PIM parts depending on QtWebEngine, which is a new package coming to the Ubuntu archive along with 5.7.1. We are currently seeing if we can do a partial upload with the applications that DON’T depend on QtWebEngine so we can at least ship some newer applications
• KDE Plasma 5.8.5 is also shipped, with an upstream fix fixing a regression in which the Save dialog appears as an Open dialog, fix in the upstream tarball as of 5.8.6 and 5.9.0

Game On

Aaron’s game pick of the month: Firewatch

Sponsor: Bytemark

Bytemark was founded with a simple mission: reliable, UK hosting. Co-founders Matthew Bloch & Peter Taphouse, both engineers by nature built the business from the ground up.

Today, they lead a team of 31 staff who operate Bytemark’s own data centre in York, monitor its 10Gbps national network and deliver 24/7 support to clients of all sizes. Brands hosted on Bytemark’s network include the Royal College of Art, data.gov.uk and DVLA Auctions, and of course Kubuntu.

Drop by their website, and get Started with a free month of cloud hosting!

Afiliate link: http://www.bytemark.co.uk/r/kubuntu

Contact Us

How to contact the Kubuntu Team:

• Website: https://kubuntu.org
• IRC: irc.freenode.net
  • #kubuntu
  • #kubuntu-devel
• Telegram Groups:
  • Support: https://telegram.me/kubuntu_support
  • Cafe: https://telegram.me/joinchat/Bpq8FwCyZ1kDx_bXTJGwqw
• Telegram Channel:
  • News: https://telegram.me/kubuntu
• Social Media
  • Google+
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Reddit
  • Linkedin

How to contact the Kubuntu Podcast Team:

• Google+
• Youtube

Show Audio Feeds

MP3: http://feeds.feedburner.com/KubuntuPodcast-mp3

OGG: http://feeds.feedburner.com/KubuntuPodcast-ogg

Pocket Casts links

OGG

MP3

Show Hosts

Ovidiu-Florin Bogdan

• blog: http://ovidiu.geekaliens.com

Rick Timmis

• G+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RickTimmis
• Blog: http://sickrimmit.blogspot.co.uk/

Aaron Honeycutt (Video/Audio Podcast Production)

• G+: https://plus.google.com/+AaronHoneycutt
• blog: http://usefoss.com/

Intro

What have we (the hosts) been doing ?

• Aaron
  • Working on system76 docs
  • Move to laptop as main machine with 2 monitors/keyboard and mouse
  • I won stuff! #ConvergeMePlease
• Rick
  • Kubuntu Packagers Guide
  • Ubuntu Phone App – Slitherio
  • A new Ubuntu Phone scope
• Ovidiu
  • Akademy
  • Diving in deeper into electronics

Sponsor: Big Blue Button

Those of you that have attended the Kubuntu parties, will have seen our Big Blue Button conference and online education service.

Video, Audio, Presentation, Screenshare and whiteboard tools.

We are very grateful to Fred Dixon and the team at BigBlueButton.org go check out their project.

Kubuntu News

• Canonical joins KDE Patrons program

Elevator Picks

Identify, install and review one app each from the Discover software center and do a short screen demo and review.

• Ovidiu – KSysGuard
• Aaron – Mycroft
• Rick – soundKonverter

In Focus

• Akademy
  • https://shop.kde.org
  • https://akademy.kde.org
  • https://timeline.kde.org

Sponsor: Linode

Linode, an awesome VPS with super fast SSD’s, Data connections, and top notch support. We have worked out a sponsorship for a server to build packages quicker and get to our users faster.

Instantly deploy and get a Linode Cloud Server up and running in seconds with your choice of Linux distro, resources, and node location.

• SSD Storage
• 40Gbit Network
• Intel E5 Processors

BIG SHOUT OUT to Linode for working with us!

Kubuntu Developer Feedback

• Kubuntu Ninja’s meeting
• Plasma 5.7.5 release pushed into Archive, and is in proposed, but the big Challenge is having developers on hand with upload to archive rights.

Contact Us

How to contact the Kubuntu Team:

• Website: https://kubuntu.org
• IRC: irc.freenode.net
  • #kubuntu
  • #kubuntu-devel
• Telegram Groups:
  • Support: https://telegram.me/kubuntu_support
  • Cafe: https://telegram.me/joinchat/Bpq8FwCyZ1kDx_bXTJGwqw
• Telegram Channel:
  • News: https://telegram.me/kubuntu
• Social Media
  • Google+
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Reddit
  • Linkedin

How to contact the Kubuntu Podcast Team:

• Google+
• Youtube

Show Audio Feeds

MP3: http://feeds.feedburner.com/KubuntuPodcast-mp3

OGG: http://feeds.feedburner.com/KubuntuPodcast-ogg

Pocket Casts links
  OGG
  MP3

Show Hosts

Ovidiu-Florin Bogdan

• blog: http://ovidiu.geekaliens.com

Rick Timmis

• G+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RickTimmis
• Blog: http://sickrimmit.blogspot.co.uk/

Aaron Honeycutt (Video/Audio Podcast Production)

• G+: https://plus.google.com/+AaronHoneycutt
• blog: http://usefoss.com/

Intro

What have we (the hosts) been doing ?

• Aaron
  • Kicking Rick’s merges to the curb
  • Kubuntu Manual / Documentation
• Rick
  • Kubuntu Party
  • Kubuntu Dojo
  • Kubuntu Manual / Documentation
• Ovidiu
  • Projects
  • Dockerising Open Source Applications (ReviewBoard, AgileFant, FixMyStreet)
  • Adding Images to Feedburner
    

    Sponsor: Big Blue Button
    

    

Those of you that have attended the Kubuntu parties, will have seen our Big Blue Button conference and online education service.

Video, Audio, Presentation, Screenshare and whiteboard tools.

We are very grateful to Fred Dixon and the team at BigBlueButton.org go check out their project.

Kubuntu News

• Kubuntu 16.04.1 LTS Update Out
• Qt 5.6.1
• Plasma 5.7 and Apps 16.04 for Yakkety

Elevator Picks

Identify, install and review one app each from the Discover software center and do a short screen demo and review.

• Ovidiu … KPatience https://www.kde.org/applications/games/kpatience/
• Aaron … snapcraft : snapcraft.io
• Rick… – Krita https://krita.org

In Focus

• Documentation Kubuntu. https://github.com/ahoneybun/kubuntu-manual
• Simon Quigley became a Kubuntu Ninja

Sponsor: Linode

Linode, an awesome VPS with super fast SSD’s, Data connections, and top notch support. We have worked out a sponsorship for a server to build packages quicker and get to our users faster.

Instantly deploy and get a Linode Cloud Server up and running in seconds with your choice of Linux distro, resources, and node location.

• SSD Storage
• 40Gbit Network
• Intel E5 Processors

BIG SHOUT OUT to Linode for working with us!

Kubuntu Developer Feedback

• Linode Server – 1 x LXD Containers for other to use
  • 1 Container being used by one of the packagers
  • 2 A KCI Slave node
  • With this resource we can build one tree level dependency at once, which is around 100 packages, which takes around 1 hr on average.
  • There is also enough capacity left that we can provide additional containers for Ninja’s to use packaging.
• For Yakkety, we now have QT 5.6.1, and we got Frameworks and Plasma 5.7.2 and for applications 16.04.3 almost done for Yakkety, and were looking for testers. The team are looking forward to applications 16.08, just hoping for an upstream release to get the PIM packages.
• For Xenial Plasma 5.7.2 has move a little further forward, but there is much to be done in backports to achieve this.
• Kubuntu CI System – Yofel has been working hard on improving the CI system, in addition to adding Slave Nodes, thanks to Linode too.
  • The next stage was to get the Build jobs in order, this has meant we have dropped 32bit builds from the CI, but we’ll continue to provide x86 32bit builds of Kubuntu.Focusing on only 64bit builds has resolved many of errors and fails.
  • They did run into an interesting error, where the Linode slave was so powerful it tried to open 20 concurrent connections to the KDE Git repo, and was promptly closed off by the 5 connection limit. A nice problem to have.
• Yofel will continue to work on the Stable CI builds, by getting a set of working configurations. The move back to Launchpad brings many benefits but right now its created a lot of challenges, that the team are working through.
• 2 additional Ninja’s have been added to the Team:
  • Rik Mills
  • Simon Quigly
• Clivejo put a big shout out to the 2 new Ninja’s, many thanks for excellent work and effort.
• As always we’re desperate for daily build and beta builds of Yakkety
• Bug Crush Sprint required http://qa.kubuntu.co.uk/

In Show Notes

Rick doing GOOD STUFF: http://picosong.com/Dk8m/

Outro

How to contact the Kubuntu Team:

• Website: https://kubuntu.org
• IRC: irc.freenode.net
  • #kubuntu
  • #kubuntu-devel
  • #kubuntu-offtopic
• Telegram Groups:
  • Support: https://telegram.me/kubuntu_support
  • Cafe: https://telegram.me/joinchat/Bpq8FwCyZ1kDx_bXTJGwqw
• Telegram Channel:
  • News: https://telegram.me/kubuntu
• Social Media
  • Google+
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Reddit
  • Linkedin

How to contact the Kubuntu Podcast Team:

• Google+
• Youtube

Show Hosts

Ovidiu-Florin Bogdan

• blog: http://ovidiu.geekaliens.com

Rick Timmis

• G+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RickTimmis
• Blog: http://sickrimmit.blogspot.co.uk/

Aaron Honeycutt

• blog: http://usefoss.com/

Show Schedule

Intro

What have we (the hosts) been doing ?

• Aaron
  • Working a sponsorship out with Linode
  • Working on uCycle
•  Rick
  • #Brexit – It would be Rude Not to [talk about it]
  • Comodo – Let’s Encrypt Brand challenge https://letsencrypt.org//2016/06/23/defending-our-brand.html#1

Sponsor 1 Segment

Big Blue Button

Those of you that have attended the Kubuntu parties, will have seen our Big Blue Button conference and online education service.

Video, Audio, Presentation, Screenshare and whiteboard tools.

We are very grateful to Fred Dixon and the team at BigBlueButton.org. Go check out their project.

Kubuntu News

• Kubuntu Dojo II

Elevator Picks

Identify, install and review one app each from the Discover software center and do a short screen demo and review.

• Rick: StopMotion – Simple Animation Creator
  http://www.qstopmotion.org/index.html#home

In Focus

Joining us today is Marius Gripsgard from the UbPorts project.

https://www.patreon.com/ubports

Sponsor 2 Segment

Linode

We’ve been in talks with Linode, an awesome VPS with super fast SSDs, Data connections, and top notch support. We have worked out a sponsorship for a server to build packages quicker and get to our users faster. BIG SHOUT OUT to Linode for working with us!

Kubuntu Developer Feedback

• Plasma 5.7 is unlikely to hit Xenial Backports in the short term, as it is still dependent on QT 5.6.1 for which there is currently no build for Xenial.
  There is an experimental build the Acheronuk has been working on, but there are still stability issues.

Game On

Steam Group: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/kubuntu-podcast

Review and gameplay from Shadow Warrior.

Outro

How to contact the Kubuntu Team:

• Website: https://kubuntu.org
• IRC: irc.freenode.net #kubuntu
• Telegram
  • Support: https://telegram.me/joinchat/BwCsyggaGq1Bt13ltuypkQ
  • Cafe: https://telegram.me/joinchat/Bpq8FwCyZ1kDx_bXTJGwqw
• Telegram Channel:
  • News: https://telegram.me/kubuntu
• Social Media
  • Google+
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Reddit
  • Linkedin

How to contact the Kubuntu Podcast Team:

• Google+
• Youtube