Kororaa - Nice distro shame about the name

[MidnightCowboy]

If like me your search for a suitable KDE distro involves a 2 hour download, 5 minute burn, half hour on the machine and then bin, you're probably feeling just as frustrated. I mean, how many obstacles can you pack into a piece of kit and then smile because it's free, open source and innovative? The fact is, to stand any chance of an increased user base, more things need to work out of the box and not crash every time you add a new widget.

Anyway, not to be beaten I looked at Kororaa yesterday. I hasten to add that since I downloaded this (Beta 1) a second beta has been released but my experiences were with the first.

Others have taken mainstream distros and made them more comprehensive and/or user friendly hence Mint and Zorin. Kororaa has adopted Fedora for their own exercise and from my experience have done a pretty good job. More things are included, system defaults enhanced and provision is made to easily install Flash and alternative drivers via a desktop widget.

Connection wise, apart from Netrunner, Kororaa is the only KDE distro to recognise both of mine out of the box.

This machine did have XP dual booted with Ubuntu 11.04 but I was impressed enough with Kororaa to replace it. This option was given during the install process and completed automatically without fault. My Windows partition was not affected and after the usual disk check XP booted again as normal.

For anyone wanting a full monty look, Kororaa seems to have achieved this and remain stable.

The only thing it didn't do for me was recognize my default screen resolution but this was soon changed from the system settings.

https://kororaa.org/

[AA78U]

Will Kororaa partition my drive for me or do I need to do that first?

[J_L]

Good results for you, but personally I'm not into beta software, especially regarding OS and security.

[MidnightCowboy]

Originally Posted by AA78U

Will Kororaa partition my drive for me or do I need to do that first?

On my system this worked automatically. I had XPSP3 dual booted approx 50/50 with Ubuntu 11.04.
It offered to replace my existing Linux installation and leave my Windows partition intact, which is what it did. Your experience though might vary. For a better idea of what you might face, I would post your system specs here with this same query before attempting an install.

https://kororaa.org/forums/

Remember too as J_L points out that this is still in beta. On my system all I've encountered is a momentary "Venetian blind" effect when opening LibreOffice documents and a couple of freezes with Firefox. The former may be related to desktop effects which I've activated (or your local graphics setup) and the latter happens on Windows too, so overall for a beta I'm finding it stable.

[Dedoimedo]

Did you go down the usual route of Kubuntu, openSUSE, perhaps Pardus?
Dedoimedo

[MidnightCowboy]

Originally Posted by Dedoimedo

Did you go down the usual route of Kubuntu, openSUSE, perhaps Pardus?
Dedoimedo

Sorry, but who is this question aimed at?

[Dedoimedo]

Ah ... well, YOU

But anyone can answer, I guess.

Cheers,
Dedoimedo

[MidnightCowboy]

Originally Posted by Dedoimedo

Ah ... well, YOU

Well, my need is based on a simple requirement. Whichever Linux I load must be able to connect to the internet without needing a forum search (difficult without a connection ) for this fix, that script or some obscure third party bit of kit which promises to make it work Like most in my part of the world this involves a DSL connection for cable and 3G modem backup for mobile broadband. The backup modem is essential here since the national pastime is to hang twice as many cables overhead as the poles were built to support and then spend hours fixing them when they all fall down

Everything "Buntufied" manages this quite well and having been severely berated by my tech for dismissing Unity without giving it a proper run, I did, and had to agree with him, it's good. Overall though the look of Unity doesn't inspire me too much. Bodhi continues to impress, but I've been maintaining my search for a likable KDE.

Whereas Pardus 2010 recognized my two connections, 2011 doesn't and this backward step seems to have been replicated by others including Kubuntu and SUSE which connect to "something" which is obviously so secret that they keep it to themselves. Attempting to ignore this stealthed connection and manually enter my DSL details to create another, results in either the password not being saved, a repetitive message saying "setting network address", "xxx is presented with no data" (Pardus) or just plain nothing.

Netrunner KDE does the business but won't ever win a best desktop competition. Imagine my surprise then when I discovered Kororaa. Not only does this thing work but it does it with quite some style. I have had the odd issue which I'm sharing thoughts about in their forum but nothing you won't see in other forums and considerably less than in most.

Although I've always wondered what folks do with the 10 seconds they save after installing something "faster", the only annoying factor for me with Kororaa is you can eat a packed lunch waiting for LibreOffice docs to open, but I fixed that by installing AbiWord instead.

Take Fedora15 and make it better?... not difficult, but to do it this well (from a newbies perspective) deserves a round of applause. Maybe there's a lot my inexperienced gaze is missing, but it does work every time I switch it on which compared to some distros is a bonus in itself.