issue details was KDE 4: the good, the bad and the broken

[Draciron Smith]

Opening this as a separate topic so as to not hijack the thread.



On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 4:14 AM, Anne Wilson <cannewilson at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday 29 April 2010 06:43:57 Dotan Cohen wrote:
>> On 29 April 2010 03:32, Draciron Smith <draciron at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > On the bad side.
>> > Dropping of some beloved apps like kedit.
>>
>> I will add Kedit to the list.
>>
> ?? KWrite is the re-write of Kedit.

Huh? Kwrite I think predates Kedit. I remember Kwrite from KDE 0.x
I've been using KDE a long time. Kedit had a few less features and was
a whole lot lighter memory wise which is pretty important to me. Until
I finish writing my writer's editor when I'm working on a book I can
have 60 or so Kedit windows open on just the desktop I'm working on
the book on plus another 20-30 scattered around the other desktops.
Kwrite is just way too memory intensive to try that with.  That would
be on top Abiword and or Open office windows on that desktop plus my
normal stuff.

>> > An easy replacement for shortcuts is needed. One of the many things
>> > which once the Plasma desktop is actually working as described will be
>> > nice but right now there's no reasonable method to create one.
> This I can't understand.  You can drag shortcuts from the menu to the desktop,
> although I think that works better in Lancelot than Kickoff.  Personally I
> think it's easier to use the right-click on a menu entry and 'Add to Desktop'
> - that's in Kickoff, of course.

Yeah but there's no places there. For example user has network
connection mapped to another machine or a specific folder they want to
link too.

> If you use the core repos only you should have had no problems, other than
> those caused by major upstream events, such as the recent soprano/virtuoso
> update.  Such things feel major, but they are rare.

Yup using core repos. I've only added a few repos. Long ago learned a
hard lesson abut having too many repos added.

> Version numbers are significant to this question.  As you say, FF had a bad
> memory leak at one point.  X had a really bad one recently.  Neither of those
> can be blamed on KDE, although they have a major impact for users.

Mentioned the KDE version. Might be the X leak was aggravating things.

X.Org X Server 1.7.6
Release Date: 2010-03-17
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: x86-02 2.6.18-164.6.1.el5
Current Operating System: Linux localhost.localdomain
2.6.32.11-99.fc12.i686 #1 SMP Mon Apr 5 16:32:08 EDT 2010 i686
Kernel command line: ro root=UUID=[snip] noiswmd
nomoderesetLANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc
KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet LANG=en_US.UTF-8 rdblacklist=nouveau
Build Date: 14 April 2010  11:36:43AM
Build ID: xorg-x11-server 1.7.6-3.fc12
Current version of pixman: 0.16.6

KDE version is now 4.4.2 was 4.4.1 when this thread started.


> There is a great deal of work being done on sound.  I understand that over the
> coming months many of the current problems will be resolved, as improvements
> currently in testing are released for general consumption.

Coolness. Sound is one of KDE's bigger weaknesses right now.

>> > The loss of the ability to use a different image for each desktop.
>> > Initially I thought this a minor annoyance but I didn't realize how
>> > much I depended on this to keep track of what desktop I was actually
>> > on.
>>
>> I think that's back in KDE 4.5.
>>
> If you use Activities tied to desktops it's been back since 4.3, IIRC.

Hmm I'll have to actually read the documentation on that unless 4.5 is
coming out soon.

> I've not seen the problem in Fedora.  Again, it might help if versions were
> mentioned.

Did mention FC 12. Ironically the bugreporting tool itself seg faulted
while I was doing screen caps of some of the issues LOL. First time
I've ever seen the crash reporter reporting a crash of itself. I
should have grabbed a screenshot of it.   Sometimes it just goes away
other times it tells me my information isn't useful because I don't
have libs installed but I've installed those libs. When the link
failed I added the debug repository and installed half of it. If there
is some specific lib necessary for all bug reports I'm missing it
apparently.


> One thing needs to be remembered.  It's human nature to want our personal
> preferences and problems to be fixed immediately, but if insufficient time is
> taken to test on volunteer systems (which after all is what the kde-fedora
> repos are about) there are screams of anguish because something is not working
> correctly.  The distros are on a lose-lose situation here.

I understand that. I'm not jumping up and down and saying fix it now
or anything like that. If it didn't involve C++ coding I'd probably
jump in and help code. I gave up C/C++ in 96 and don't miss it one
bit.  Programming I like just not in C/C++. Let me write in Gambas,
Smalltalk, VB, Pascal, ASM and I'm a happy camper. I'll even tolerate
Xbase. Just don't make me use a semi-colen to terminate a line.  So
I'm always on the lookout for other ways to contribute that doesn't
involve using semi-colen terminated code. My mind just rebels at the
wasted keystroke per line it causes and the time spent wasted figuring
out which line I forgot or improperly placed the semi-colen.
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