Netbook Reference

[Christophe Olinger]

Hey plasma folks,

Last evening I followed #plasma on irc while the super cool opensuse
build service for plasma-netbook was tested. Here my experiences:


1) Getting the image on a stick
I'm sure there will be plenty of blogging around on how to get the
image. The one we worked with was on
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Netbook/images/
There was a raw.tar.bz2 and a tar.bz2. The second one was the good one
(around 500 Mb). I downloaded and eventually after extracting the
image to my home folder used the usual dd method to get it on my stick
(2Giga). The dd command took around 15 minutes. Reboot and.. voilà.
Plasma-netbook is served.

Summary: The whole process is super easy and I would say resistance is
futile, you HAVE to test it.


2) none KDE comments:

* My internal wireless  was not detected. I usually connect using wifi
on my Samsung NC10. As installed OS I have kubuntu karmic with wifi
working out of the box. I'm sure it works OOTB in opensuse too so
there was probably some module missing in this specific build. I'm
sure this will be worked out eventually, since wifi is kind of
necessary for a good netbook experience (if your next ethernet socket
is in the basement) :-)

* I sort of expected a type of livecd experience. Boy was I surprised
when the whole thing flew on my samsung (512 Mb ram). Composite
enabled. It was at least as fast as my installed OS.

*  I “only” had 137 Mb free on my 2 Gb usb stick, but why would I need
space on the stick anyway.

* Dolphin refused to mount my internal hard-disk. I have to admit I am
no longer used to having a root user. I'm pampered or spoiled by sudo.
So probably there is an easy solution to this. I just don't know it.

Summary: Expect a super nice experience that probably is the same as
the real deal.


3) Obvious plasma-netbook errors

* The window list widget normally found in the right corner was not
present (I was told that it is a known bug)
* The new system notifier applet (known as the “i”) was not there.
notmart immediately knew what the problem was.
* When I am focused on a window and then click on the “hidden system
tray icon list” arrow, my windows become hidden when I close the list
again.
* Opening the runner with alt+f2 immediately unhides all my hidden
windows. Closing runner hides my windows again. I am not sure if this
is a normal behavior.

Summary: the plasma-netbook used in this build has a few rough edges
but all in all a good starting point for the weekly plasma-netbook
testing saga.


4) What I would like to see for plasma-netbook (suggestions for discussion)

* The activity bar could have a “no activity selected” state. For
example, when I am focused on a dolphin window and want to switch to
SAL I unhide the top panel and it looks as if SAL was already
selected. I know I have to click again on its activity entry but it
somehow fels strange.
*  In SAL you can put favorites in the upper bar by clicking on the
star icon. Since I hava a crappy touchpad, almost everytime I want to
hit the “favourite” I accidentally remove it because I hit the red
minus. Maybe dragging the icon in some sort of bin or off the
favourite bar should be a preferred way of deleting icons?

If I have a long vertical newspaper, the mouse should continue at the
top when it hits the bottom so that I can continue pulling the page
down.

Cheers and looking forward to what comes next

Christophe (nick: binarylooks)