system>prefs>appearance..................

This is a design decision made by Canonical. They want the buttons on the
left for two reasons: they are covered by notifications at times and they
have plans to put something on the right with 10.10. You can edit gconf
manually to place the buttons on the right or my personal favourite is to
use Ailurus and it has a setting to use GNOME default buttons.

Ailurus is useful for many things and is worth installing. It is like Ubuntu
Tweak. I have both installed, just because I am a KDE user and you can't
have too much of a good thing (changing settings). ;)

Auilurus: http://code.google.com/p/ailurus/

Edit gconf: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=19413

<rant>
Have they actually talked to people? I thought the point was that
Ubuntu was supposed to be friendly and usable - this is all fine if
your only target market is MacOS users, but they're likely to lose a
lot of those of us from both a Unix and Windows background, making
stupid decisions like this! Why don't they leave shoving idiot ideas
down your throat to Microsoft (it's the one thing that they're
actually good at) and stick with what people actually feel comfortable
with.
</rant>

Anyhow, thanks - I've given Ailurus a go (sounded less scary than
editing gconf, and it's done the job a treat.

Just got to see what other little surprises 10.04 has in store for me now ...

Oh, and my monitor thanks you too - now that it has a respite from
being punched out of frustration ...

I get where you are coming from. From what I have heard Ubuntu is getting it
too. They sense that they have done a bad job of communicating to users. I
am not sure where this is headed. There was a groundswell of anger over the
button issue.

My opinion is that Ubuntu has a great community and Ubuntu takes it for
granted. Too bad. They have set up projects like Brainstorm to listen to
users, but it appears that they do not act on the suggestions. So people
started posting decisions that bothered them under Launchpad as they would
for a bug in a programme. This has been going on for some time. There is a
feeling out there that there is a disconnect between Canonical and the
Ubuntu community. I am not sure how large it is, but it is growing fast.

In my own case, I switched from Ubuntu to Kubuntu with Intrepid and have not
looked back. I still use GNOME on my netbook, but install Kubuntu and then
GNOME, without Mono. I am involved in several Linux communities and Ubuntu's
is still the best, but I can't say the same for its parent. The global Linux
trend is for less Mono. Some distros have removed it entirely. Fedora,
Ubuntu's biggest competitor, comes without it, although it is still
available in the repositories. I can't see why Ubuntu is swimming against
the current on this one, except that they are being controlled by developers
who are enamoured with it for some reason.

Quite frankly F-spot sucks, but it is being promoted by Ubuntu which has
removed the GIMP for space reasons (which is ironic because Mono uses more
space) and overlooked several better photo managers. The word is that
Banshee will replace Rhythmbox in 10.10. More Mono when there is no need to
go that route. Mono is a very divisive issue in the Linux community. It
comes from MS via Novell and is regarded as a poison pill by many, including
me, for no other reason than allowing MS to continue its FUD campaign
against Linux alleging patent infringement. Mono's various licenses are not
simple to understand (intentionally I think) and MS will only say that
Novell users are free to use it.

So your rant is not alone. There are many grumblers out there who disagree
with decisions that go beyond design, but to the very heart of what free
software should be. Canonical is out of step with many of its own users for
many reasons. I suggest that the heart of the problem is with the leadership
of Canonical. They used to community to enable it to grow and now see that
they are big enough to go it alone. Shuttleworth summed it up when he said
that Ubuntu is not a democracy. That says it all.

Is there an easy way to switch from Ubuntu to Kubuntu or do I have to do a fresh
install? Is it also a LTS?

No need to "switch" per se - just add the kubuntu-desktop to your ubuntu
system via synaptic. There may be another package that is needed to add
the kde login option to the menu but it's been awhile.

If you can, I think a clean install is always better. I once had Kubuntu
installed and added in the Gnome-desktop. Things got screwed up after a while
after some updates contaminated KDE. But that was a couple of versions ago.

It's the same distro, just different packages, so no need for a
re-install (IMHO). I've run multiple desktops for over 10 years and
never had a problem because of it. They use different config files and
different config directories.

But if you were running kde 4.x, I'm sure things got screwed up, but not
because of multiple desktop choices

I run both KDE and GNOME (plus XFCE, Fluxbox and LXDE). GNOME can cause
problems with other desktops. For example, if you run Nautilus in KDE or
XFCE then you will lose your desktop. The trick is to run nautilus with the
--no-desktop switch. The command looks like this nautilus --no-desktop. This
problem is not permanent, Once nautilus is shut down then you get your
desktop back.

There are other problems, but most are not serious. I find it useful to have
more than one desktop environment because if one fails then you can fix it
from the other. Most KDE problems can be fixed by deleting the .kde folder
which gives you with a fresh beginning. However, if you have a partial
upgrade then you may not be able to get into a desktop environment until the
upgrade is completed. This also means that it is good to have a second
environment.

ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php

gconf-editor

apps/metacity/general/button_layout


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