[kde-linux] Am I Alone?

[Anne Wilson]

On Tuesday 29 September 2009 18:13:05 David Baron wrote:
> KDE4 works fine for me, BUT ...
> 
David, you don't tell us which distro and which KDE version.  There's a lot of 
difference between 4.2 and 4.3, so we need to know.

> If one is using several plasmoids, desktops, etc., startup is
> sssslllloooooowwww. 

The only part I've found to be slow is network startup.  Could that be your 
problem?  Also, when I had an fstab entry to a remote drive that wasn't always 
available that was a huge problem.  Now I have it commented out and only 
enable it when needed.

> Startup status is not stable--desktops can be reordered

That is not normal.  However, if I tie activities to desktops, then I do see 
it.  I've disabled that, for that very reason.

> and that trashcan is always mis-sized and mis-placed until I unlock widgets
> and mouse the curser near it, then voile. 

Never seen that.

> Sometimes kmix and kxkb appear on
> the panel, sometimes not (must be restarted).
> 
Never seen that either, but networkmanager did occasionally jump out of the 
system tray onto the desktop.  The new knetworkmanage seems more stable, but 
time will tell.

> My wife does none of this fancy stuff, comes up lickitysplit, OK every
>  time. Tells you something.
> 
Yes, very often problems are caused by either desktop effects or dodgy 
plasmoids.  It's a matter of trial and error to tie them down - particularly 
since what causes a problem on one system doesn't on another.  As an example, 
when yawp came out I saw lots and lots of complaints that it was unstable and 
caused many problems.  I installed it on this laptop at the time, and I've 
never had any problems with it whatsoever.  Obviously, whatever upset it 
wasn't relevant on this laptop.  FWIW, the complaints seem to have stopped - I 
assume an update has fixed the problem.

> Konqueror? I haven't touched in in ages. Simply was too messed up to bother
> with. Opera, Google-chrome, and firefox are much much better. Liking google
> more and more.
> 
> Kmail? After a shakey start in early KDE4, works quite nicely. Crashes are
> very rare now. No complaints as long as network is duely connected.
> 
> Plasma is gett
> ing better and better and only the surface of it potential
>  has been touched. One can revert to the older schema if one desires and
>  keep applets on the panel or on dashboards. Very flexible, or will be.
> 
> KDE3 is a dead end. Since I compiled that starting when one could not
>  update it from Debian Sid, I have both 3.5.6 and 4.3. Can use 3 if 4 gets
>  really mussed but this has not happened in ages. My daughter still runs
>  3.5.6 because the kaboom did not work on her login. I'll get to fixing it
>  up but no rush.
> 
> My only real complaint now is the 3.5.6--most everything in it--is much
> quicker (on my PIII 600mhz clunker with an old matrox card so maybe don't
> blame KDE4 and progress!).
>
Yup - the new Xorg doesn't like these older cards.  What's more, we still have 
quite a lot of problems with other display cards.  It's a driver issue, and 
all the main players in the field are working on it.  This is yet another case 
where we just have to be patient, but should end up with something far better 
than the old stuff, and I don't suppose there is any possibility of saying how 
long it will take.

Anne
-- 
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