A week of KDE4 usage

[Alex Schuster]

Billie Walsh writes:

> On 05/09/2011 06:49 PM, Alex Schuster wrote:

>> I'm somewhat diesappointed with KDE4. I'm using it since 4.2, and it's
>> become much much better - but still, there are just so many bugs. Is it
>> just me, or it this normal? Would you suggest other people (being
>> unskilled uses, not hackers) to use KDE4? What OS and desktop
>> environment does your Mom's PC run?
> 
> I've never hesitated to suggest Kubuntu to someone unfamiliar with 
> Linux. I usually tell them that there is a bit of a learning curve to 
> make the changeover. I suggest that they dual boot with whatever they 
> are using and play around with Kubuntu when they have some spare time 
> until they get used to it. That's pretty much how I made the switch from 
> Windows to Linux. After a while I realized that I hadn't booted into 
> Windows for weeks. I never looked back after that.

I also suggested Windows people to give Linux a try, and they were okay
with it. It works different, but for most purposes (mail, WWW, some word
processor) there's no big difference. And they were happy that they no
longer got their PCs infected by viruses or spyware. But htey were no
power users. And thast was before KDE4.

>> I never used a distribution list with kontact, so I tried this for
>> myself. I created a new contact group 'Testgroup' in kaddressbook and
>> added some people with their e-mail addresses. Kmail then knows about
>> this Testgroup (it auto-completes it) - great, I think before KDE 4.6
>> addressbook and kmail did not exchange their data, Kmail did not know
>> about the people in the address book. But when I send a test mail,
>> nothing happens. It turned out that the mail is being sent to
>> Testgroup at myhost.my.domain, and not to the members. This seems to be a
>> known bug that was already fixed, but it's happening again. [1]
> 
> I tried Kmail once years ago and absolutely hated it. Haven't tried it 
> since, and with all the issues I read about on the help lists I wont 
> ever try it again.

Actually, I'm quite okay with kmail, although there's some more
problems. Sometimes it shows new mails in my IMAP inbox that I already
deleted, the solution is to log into my mail server, start mutt, and let
it purge these mails. It also hangs sometimes, especially if my IP had
changed, but that's not always the case. I close it, and if it doesn't
restart because there's still a hanging kontact process, I kill it. And
I avoid to delete IMAP folders, or I navigate really quickly out of the
folder, because if not kmail will crash. And I really would like to use
multiple tabs, but when other tabs are open, mail in those folders is
not being checked. Umm, actually that's a lot of bugs. Maybe you are
right, but I got used to Kmail, and I tend to prefer the KDE application
over other alternatives.

> I used Thunderbird in Windows when it was first released. When I 
> switched over to Linux I continued to use Thunderbird. It just simply 
> works. No fuss, no muss. Creating a distribution list is very simple.

I _do_ use thunderbird on Windows (right at the moment), and it also has
its problems. Like hanging when quitting, and eating 100% CPU time until
I kill it. And it tends to not remember that I want my folder views
threaded. But it's okay for me.

[FTP with dolphin]
>> get the password and downlaod the file. BTW, I wouldn't have been able
>> to download it with dolphin anyway [3], because it has German umlauts in
>> the file name.
> 
> I use Gftp. OK, I know it's not a "K" program, but it's much easier to 
> use that any of the "K" programs. Sorry. Save everything to the 
> bookmarks. One click and I'm ready to upload and download. Well, two 
> actually. One for the bookmark menu and one for the actual site. I keep 
> everything set up so that when I click on a site it changes the local 
> directory to where it's supposed to be as well as the remote directory. 
> It's simple.

I'll have a look... ah, right, I've used in the past already. I guess
there are lots of FTP frontends, but if you say it's working fine, why
not use it. I have no problem with Gnome applications, although I would
prefer to use dolphin if it were working correctly, as it integrates
better into my KDE desktop. I thought about krusader, but there I find
no bookmark facility.

> One thing you mention, about the warning box's. I find that sometimes 
> they wind up behind anything else on the desktop. they should pop on top 
> of whatever, but............

By now I know about this effect, but when it first happened it took me a
while to figure out what's going on. The application seemed to hang, and
I killed it two times until I saw what was going on.

	Wonko
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