Plasma alternative

[James Tyrer]

Duncan wrote:
> 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.
> 
Yes, that is also a problem.  The TaskManager doesn't work properly in a
vertical panel.  There are issues with the caching for the DeskTop which
now look like may have been, at least partially fixed in 4.3.2.  I can't 
put anything but KDE-4 application icons on the Panel.

> 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.

You should be able to run OpenGL on the Radeon 9200.  That is the newest
card that does 3D acceleration with the Xorg/XF86 drivers.  However, you 
do need to select EXA for fast response.  Unfortunately, that will cause 
problems with some KDE-3 applications.

> Of course I won't touch proprietary drivers and would tend to blame
> them for instability ... .

I am using the Xorg "radeon" driver but that isn't the stability problem 
that I am having.

The main current issue is that Plasma still forgets configurations.  My 
specific problem is that the Trash widget forgets its size and location 
on start up.  I have two FolderView widgets on my DeskTop.  The one for 
the DeskTop was having problems last week but now seems to work OK. 
However, the other one must be moved and resized every time that I start 
my KDE-4 session.

-- 
James Tyrer

Linux (mostly) From Scratch
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