Plasma alternative

[Duncan]

Anne Wilson posted on Sun, 18 Oct 2009 08:19:57 +0100 as excerpted:

> On Sunday 18 October 2009 05:43:37 James Tyrer wrote:
>> Ryan Rix wrote:
>> > Andrew Mason wrote:
>> >> Plasma it's self is pretty easily replaced, any of the desktop
>> >> shells will work.
>> >
>> > And it's VERY easily customisable to fit your tastes more than any
>> > other desktop shell...
>> 
>> Well, it is, in theory at least, customizable but I have to say that
>> because things can only be set by dragging the mouse that it isn't
>> easy.
>>   The problem is that when you extensively customize it, the
>>   instability
>> starts to be a real problem.  Don't take this wrong, I like the Plasma
>> DeskTop, or would like it if it weren't for the instability.  Then
>> there is the matter of taste: I would like to have a Plasma theme that
>> matched the application and window manager themes that I am using.
>> 
> While instability was a problem in earlier versions, by 4.3 I see
> practically none.  I suspect that some problems are caused by
> interactions between applications and/or customisations.  This
> inevitably makes it hard to track problems down, so filing bug reports
> with maximum supporting information is the only way to stand a chance of
> solving a problem such as this.

I'm actually of the same opinion as Anne on this one. =:^)  The 4.3.x 
series has been stable enough... 

For me it's just that not everything works... yet.  There's bugs filed 
and they know it doesn't work.  And it'll be fixed, eventually, but it 
(well, some of it) just doesn't work yet.

But stable... yes.  OTOH, that might be because I'm not running OpenGL, 
and Composite, while slow on my old Radeon 9200 at the size of desktop 
I'm running, /is/ quite stable.  Of course I won't touch proprietary 
drivers and would tend to blame them for instability if people are 
running them, even if it might not be them, simply because they're a 
black-box and nobody can verify it, and if the manufacturers don't like 
it there's one thing they can do to fix it, open the drivers, but the 
older r200 series Radeons, while slow, do seem to be rock stable with EXA 
and composite, at least.  Intel's the only other semi-modern graphics 
chipset with open drivers, and their drivers are just coming off the low-
point in stability as everything gets put back together again after they 
took stuff apart and fixed it.  I understand some of their hardware works 
well, other of it not so well, and the vast majority of it, works well 
*IF* you have the correct combination of X, driver, and settings (and X 
and driver may require going back two years to get a stable setup), but 
not so well otherwise.  And of course their newest Polsbo or whatever it 
is mobile chipset is another story entirely, apparently they bought the 
graphics for it and neglected to negotiate to open the specs, so that's 
100% closed, at this point, even worse than Nvidia, which has at least 
the basic functionality in the nv open driver.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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