[kde-freebsd] Call for Testing KDE 4.2 for FreeBSD

[Freddie Cash]

On February 1, 2009 11:03 pm David Johnson wrote:
> > The KDE FreeBSD team is happy to announce the first public
> > Call for Testing for KDE 4.2. Over the past weeks we have
> > focused on the complex and very time consuming task to get
> > KDE 4.2 running.
>
> Here are some random notes of mine. Some are tips, some are problems,
> some are just observations.
>
> * I am getting the "vista-effect" as my older 2.8Gz P4 / Radeon 9000
> aren't up to the task of KDE4. I have desktop effects turned off. I've
> heard some rumours that Qt 4.5 may improve things, but I really do need
> to get a new computer. The days of refurbishing older hardware by
> installing *Nix may be drawing to an end...

You definitely should not be getting a "vista-effect" with that hardware.  I 
also have a P4 2.8 GHz CPU, but with crappy onboard Intel i915 graphics (8 
MB shared RAM), and 2 GB of RAM; and I don't have any noticeable slowdown in 
the GUI.

The only time things are slow is when I try to load multiple apps at once, 
and the harddrive grinds away.  Once apps are loaded, things are smooth and 
quick, and the desktop is always smooth and quick.

I even ran with desktop effects on with KDE 4.1 for a couple of weeks, but 
there were visual glitches with the Intel graphics.

> * All my KDE3 apps are showing up in my menus. I've even set
> XDG_DATA_DIRS, to no effect. Does anyone know of an easy way to segregate
> them out into their own menu?

That's because there's only 1 application launcher menu, for all your 
installed apps, whether they be KDE3, KDE4, GNOME, XFce, X11, etc.  If you 
don't want an app to show in the menu, you either have to manually edit the 
menu, or uninstall the app.

What you're asking for is like running Windows Vista, but having all your 
Windows XP and Win98 apps show up in a separate menus.

> * The main menu is very slow, whether it's kickoff or classic. Opening up
> a submenu may take ten to fifteen seconds, with some noticeable disk
> activity. Very annoying.

That's not right.  Something strange is going on, but not sure where to even 
begin diagnosing something like that.

-- 
Freddie
fjwcash at gmail.com