I recently installed Linux Mint 13 and I'm very happy with it so far.

http://www.linuxmint.com/

If you want a KDE desktop then I recommend Kubuntu. I have tried them
all and find Kubuntu the easiest to use. It has all of the advantages
of Ubuntu without the problems associated with Unity. I have not used
Mint KDE, but question their dedication to KDE when they have so few
developers and are already split with Cinnamon and Mate. Mint KDE
seems to be an afterthought which shows lack of direction to me.
Kubuntu is dedicated to only KDE and has been around since the
beginning and is now independent of Canonical. Win. Win. Win.

Others to consider would be openSuSE and Fedora with KDE, but that
involves learning a new package management system.

As for a new laptop, there are many that work well with Linux. The
only manufacturer that I would steer clear of for lack of Linux
compatibility is Toshiba. It might be worthwhile taking a live disk
with you to the store and re-booting their machine with the disk in.

Has anyone got any tips before I purchase my next laptop? My inspirion 1525 is
collapsing and currently running ubuntu 12.04

I hate, hate, hate the desktop and propose kubuntu for my new, yet to be decided
laptop. Currently looking at zoo storm with no operating system but I am not an
IT expert and the thought of going into terminal gives me panic attacks.

My needs are similar to anyone writing/publishing a book with a large number of
photographs.

System76 comes with Ubuntu. You just need to add KDE or kubuntu-desktop and
switch the session to KDE or Kubuntu when you login. It is far easier than
re-installing. Installing Mint 13 would be a hassle and you get no
advantage. You get a couple of Mint applications and Mint theme and lose
the advantage of being able to upgrade. Mint has no upgrade tool. You must
do it yourself or re-install when you want a new version.

I love the simplicity of upgrade manager and want to keep that. I want to avoid
having to do clever things with synpatic and terminal, even though I have
changed the software a few times. I have even been in terminal once or twice but
it is way out of my comfort zone.

The unity desktop is really annoying. I liked the drop down menu we had until a
couple of upgrades ago. The first time it changed I managed to get the drop
downs back but I understand that is no longer possible, hence the move to
Kubuntu.

I will look again to see if there are other options as Kubuntu was my immediate
choice. It seems to do everything I want and looks the no hassle alternative so
I looked no further.

If you want to have everything pre-configured then System 76 is a good
option but you'll pay heavily for the privilege of not having to get
to grips with package management yourself ( and may need to anyway ).

Installing Kubuntu onto a Zoostorm laptop would be my suggested route
and also using a USB flash drive to do the install, since you are
running Ubuntu it's a very easy job to create this. Look for Startup
Disc Creator. During install you can select to have updates and also
neat stuff like flash installed at the same time - do this only if you
have a fast and reliable internet connection. I've found that these
two options can lead to failed installs so prefer to not check them
and do the updates afterwards.

As for package management there are two ways basically, the software
centre where programs are shown as icons or the full package manager
where you type in what you are looking for. Each has its plus / minus
points but both really are just a case of selecting an application you
want and clicking on 'Install'. The system takes care of the rest :-)

Also terminal commands are useful when needed and whilst most users
rarely, if ever, need to resort to this there's plenty of help and
mostly it's a case of copy / paste commands.

d> I want to avoid having to do clever things with synpatic and terminal

Kubuntu 12.04 is good for five years and it has an upgrade path from 12.04
to 14.04 and then 16.04. Nothing in Linux comes close except perhaps a
rolling release and even there you may need to re-install periodically. You
need to remember that Kubuntu and Ubuntu offer two upgrade paths and you
need to be aware of the differences.

There is LTS and regular releases. LTS comes out every two years in April
and you can upgrade directly from one LTS to the next without installing
the intervening releases. Last April's release, 12.04, was LTS which stands
for long term support. LTS also means more stable because there are fewer
upgrades of kernels and packages. Regular releases come out every six
months. 12.10 is a regular release. The upgrade path for that is every six
months versus every two years. The trade off is that you get the latest and
greatest applications, but it may not be as stable. For most users the best
upgrade path is LTS because it is less hassle and most people do not need
the latest features or want to deal with possible breakage of packages.

The problem with Mint, IMO, is that it does not offer either a rolling
release or an upgrade tool. In trying to strike a balance it serves neither
user type. Instead you are stuck in time and must re-install every six
months or at the end of the support period. You can change your sources and
cross your fingers but that is for more advanced users and Mint caters
to newbies and Windows refugees. I wish Mint would stop sitting on the
fence. Their is too much indefinite about them to suit me. They cannot
decide between Cinnamon and Mate. They pretend to be for newbies, but do
not offer an easy upgrade tool. They support KDE and have a Debian edition.
You cannot try to be all things to all people. I would be happier if they
said this is what we are and delivered a good product instead of lots of
okay ones. To me it is indicative of confusion about who you want to serve
and what you want to be. I used Mint for a couple of years and have
installed their Debian edition as well. I do not dislike Mint. It just
makes me uncomfortable. I like to know that there is a plan besides trying
to beat Ubuntu in Distrowatch rankings.

You can avoid the commandline for the most part, but you certainly should
not fear it. You can Google and copy and paste commands if you do not like
to type them or your memory is bad. The commandline gives more feedback
than graphical tools and you can usually see where to go to fix things. The
best graphical package manager for all Debian based systems is Synaptic. It
provides more useful information and it gives more control.

Unity has gotten a bad rap. I say this as a KDE user for over a dozen
years. I never liked GNOME 2. It was too dumbed down for me and Unity
suffers from a similar problem. But since its inception, a year and a half
ago, Unity has improved and outstripped both GNOME shell with its
extensions or Cinnamon which is based on GS with extensions and Mate which
is based on GNOME 2. It is very configurable and you can even add a menu as
well as remove overlay scroll bars and global menu and change the the
window controls to the right side. That way you get the best of both. You
get familiar interface parts and the newest ones like Dash and HUD. The
Launcher is very configurable as well. You can drag and drop previously
fixed parts and can add mouseover functionality. There are many new scopes
and lenses, too. The problem is that older versions such as 12.04 still
lack some of this configuration.

I usually update a couple of months after each release and have
not been watching for LTS. I do not need to be in the forefront of anything and
can wait for everyone else to test the new programmes so I (hopefully) never
have to do anything complex so I guess I get the best of both worlds. Synpatic
is good but my background in trying to get documents to people each using
different m$ application suites and then trying to get my PC to work with the
latest software programme installation has left me with a deep seated paranoia
of anything to do with installing software.

What I do need to do is leap from one file to another and one programme to
another several times an hour. Wandering the cursor around aimlessly hoping the
toolbar functions will miraculously appear and that the files I want, and only
the files I want, are open is just not efficient within ubuntu nowadays. It used
to do it so I hope Kubuntu will solve my problem. IMHO ubuntu is having
difficulty coping with file sizes and movement of files between folders too. It
is impossible to be definite because my laptop is 6/7 years old but I do have
heaps of file space so theoretically I should not have a problem.

I have upgrade manager set to a regular automatic update of approved and only
approved upgrades and this has, so far, worked wonderfully. I certainly have no
need for a M$ style product. The gimmicks in word got so annoying I think I
might try to resurrect Displaywrite 4 off the floppies if all I wanted was
office style letters.

Have you considered plugging in an external monitor? I find it very convenient
to have two applications running on different monitors. Another possible
solution might be to keep each application open in a different workspace, and
use the workspace switcher to access them as needed.

Mint 13 is an LTS, potentially good for five years. To me, that means you can go
for four-plus years, then install another LTS a few months after it comes out.

I've heard too many horror stories from people who tried the simple upgrade path
in Ubuntu, so I have never upgraded, always done a re-install. I keep spare
partitions to test new releases, but tend to stay on one release for a long time
on my "production system."

I ran Ubuntu 10.10 for the full 18 months. (It fixed some problems in the 10.04
LTS on my system, otherwise I might have stuck with 10.04 for a couple of
years.) I was very annoyed that it expired a couple of weeks before 12.04 was
released.

I am SOLD on Mint 13. As I type this, I have Pidgin, Firefox & Skype
running at the same time. I'm even co-DJing a radio show thru Skype. I did
have to run the Skype install in terminal though

I understand the fear of installing. When I first started in Linux a dozen
years ago, it was very different. I was using Mandrake (now Mandriva) and
lived in dependency hell for two years till I switched to Debian based
distros. Things broke all of the time. So I understand a bit of the concern.

However, we have come a long way. Linux invented the app store and most
people are familiar with the concept of installing apps from the iPhone and
Android. Installing an application from the Software Center or Synaptic is
just reading a name from a list with description. Putting in you password
and waiting. That should not induce too much fear any more. The fear is
most likely in messing things up once you have it they way you want. That
can happen just as easily with an upgrade as with an installation and is
not peculiar to Linux. Computers with all of the peripherals and
applications can be finicky. One can adversely affect the other or there
can be memory leaks and conflicts that freeze or crash even in the W
operating system. I suggest that you start small and make modest changes
and then once your comfort level builds then you try more.

I am a Kubuntu guy and have not found anything that can come close to KDE
in terms of its functionality and power, not to say configurability. People
is GNOME-osphere, that includes Unity, GNOME Shell, Cinnamon and Mate are
headed in one direction which is the opposite of KDE. That is fine if that
is what you want.

I resent dumbing down the interface. I resent having features stripped and
things simplified to the degree that they become harder to user and in some
cases useless. Nautilus is a case in point. Users of older versions may not
understand my point, but users of the newest will. Dolphin, the KDE file
manager, is head and shoulders better. You can actually use it. People will
use what they want.That is the way it should be. Just understand that it
does not have to be that way. You have lots of choice.

Incidentally, Linus Torvalds is back to KDE. He was originally a KDE user,
then flipped out as he is prone to do, when they went to KDE 4 some years
ago. In much the same way as some users have flipped over the loss of GNOME
2. He switched to GNOME 2 for a time and was not happy. When GNOME 3 came
out he denounced it and moved to XFCE. Now he is back to KDE 4. Who knows
for how long? My point is that you do not have to take what is given with a
distribution. You can modify it to suit your changing needs.

For an older computer you should definitely get a desktop environment/
distribution that will not eat up resources. That would be XFCE or LXDE,
IMO. There is no advantage to GNOME 3 based desktops such as GNOME shell,
Unity, Cinnamon or a KDE desktop. They all are higher end in terms of
resource consumption. The problem IMO is that when you simplify and remove
features that it should run faster than say, KDE which has way more
features. That is not the case. You are getting less without any benefit
--- unless you like things stripped down. My opinion on this is why not get
the whole enchilada and use only what you want and configure it to your
liking instead of getting something that you are unhappy with and then
grumbling.

(To the moderator this is off topic, but so are the people who prompt me to
be off topic, so I ask you to consider what I write before ruling it
controversial. I think some people are out of line and not being helpful
and hope that you will take this the right way. I am singling nobody out by
name. If you choose to not print this then I suggest that you deal with the
problem of people making unhelpful suggestions and trolling.)

I think that I have said enough about Mint. You either like it or not. In
my case, not. I have provided reasons which you can discount or not. It is
just opinion.

Mint users are getting to be tiresome to me. Their suggestion
for everything, even the smallest problem, is to install Mint. There is no
silver bullet.

Mint has the same kernel, the same drivers, the same GNU libraries, the
same bootloader and installer as Ubuntu. All are taken right from Ubuntu's
repos. Where it differs is the desktop environment, a few apps and
cosmetics. That does not make it better, just different.

Problem #1 is Mint users are asking people to switch from Ubuntu to Mint
which means re-installing which is a lot of work for many users. So when
they re-install everything that requires re-installing, the root directory,
is basically the same in Mint and Ubuntu. The desktop environment, branding
and theming are different. Most of that occurs once once X loads. You can
add the Mint sources to Ubuntu and vice versa. That is how similar they
are. You can add Mint themes, apps, menu, and desktop to an
Ubuntu installation. I have done it many times. Yet, for some reason, Mint
users persist in the notion that Mint is superior. That is blatantly false
and FUD.

Problem #2 is that it is not helpful to have only one solution to all
problems. And if that one solution is based on FUD it is destructive and
not helpful at all. This is supposed to be a help forum. You are supposed
to *read* what the person is *asking* and them try to help them out of it.
To suggest that if you install Mint or Puppy that your problem will go away
is not a solution. It is blowing somebody off.

If the question is what distro should I install then it is fair to suggest
Mint or Puppy. The topic here is kubuntu ubuntu. I see no mention of Mint
by the questioner. It is like the only contribution for some people is to
suggest Mint at every opportunity whether it is germain to the topic or
not. Are you serious that you see as helpful? You could be sending someone
on a wild goose chase, making more work and in the end they may end up
where they started, with the same problem. Granted a fresh installation can
improve most systems, but that could be accomplished with what they had as
easily as with Mint.

I am sure that Mint users are happy. That is good. But you do a disservice
to others who are not asking to re-install or make more work for
themselves. To me this is borderline trolling. You are lurking and then
getting in an advertisement in for Mint on an Ubuntu forum. It is trying to
build your favourite distro up at Ubuntu's expense. I defend Unity,
Canonical and Ubuntu perhaps more than I should since Kubuntu is no longer
related to any of them.

Problem # 3 is that this kind of behaviour is not healthy for the Linux
community. We need to grow and we best can do that by being constructive
and not destructive. I would like to see an end to the attacks on Unity and
Ubuntu and the senseless and unhelpful comments. Please read the question
and if you cannot answer it then do not look for it as an opportunity to
troll. I find this annoying and I am not even an Ubuntu or Unity user.