Switch in Linux Distribution

The 64-bit Kubuntu 10.10 installation has been problematic. Several comments around the Internet have indicated this to be the case. The reason Kubuntu was chosen was that it contained the KDE desktop, and 10.10 was chosen because of it is the newest on the supported host operating system list for VMWare Workstation (being used for the Windows XP virtual machine). Standard Ubuntu comes with the GNome interface, which I am not a fan of.

The problems with Kubuntu mainly include general sluggishness, a problem that was never resolved after a little over a month of use (something not expected on a Phenom II quad code running at 3.2 GHz with 4GB of memory with a NDIVIA GTS-450). It would completely hose up at times (not lock up or crash) when doing even simple tasks like uncompressing files. Even after all the updates were applied (less the update to 11.04 Natty Narwhal), including KDE and all the fancy desktop effects were turned off, the problems persisted. Mounting a bunch of NTFS partitions (from the previous Windows XP installation) was also suspected to be a cause.

Therefore, the Linux Mint 10 (Julia) with KDE distribution, which is also based on Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) was chosen for the next installation. Linux Mint is another distribution based on Ubuntu/Debian. All the various commands mentioned in previous posts for Kubuntu also apply to Mint.

However, several issues were discovered in the various required tools that were not mentioned previously. There are some additional packages required for building GCC 4.6.0 and its prerequisite libraries (the GNU autotools) and for building CMake (specifically the ccmake GUI). The Linker Problem on Linux and New Make System posts were updated with new information about these dependencies. After a day of using Linux Mint 10, it is running as expected for a modern operating system on a fairly decent (though not cutting edge) system.