Should I upgrade to KDE4.2? - Page 2

VinDSL · #11 (**permalink**) 03-Feb-2009, 17:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by SparkieSteve

To be honest, as long as I don't have to set up my wireless again, everything else I can deal with!

Anyone upgraded to 4.2?

Did you loose any functionality?

Maybe this will help you...

Truthfully, the only reason I settled on openSUSE is because it worked out-of-the-box with the weirdo WiFi 'card' in my Toshiba. For some reason, the ODM (Toshiba doesn't make lappys - they resell them) decided to stick the internal WiFi 'card' on the USB bus, not the PCI bus, sooo... MANY distros won't recognize my WiFi card without a LOT of fiddling around.

The only reason I'm telling you all this is to demonstrate that I DO NOT want to repeat this experience, any more than you do!

I originally installed openSUSE 11.1 KDE 4.1 on my lappy, but decided to try GNOME, and ended up liking it better. Then, I found out I could run KDE 4.1 AND GNOME on the same machine (actually at the same time, if I wanted), so I installed them both. Last week, I decided to move to openSUSE 11.1 KDE 4.2 and WOW, what a difference! This week I decided to move to Factory, blah, blah, blah...

Through all of this, I never lost my WiFi, my email, my Firefox bookmarks - nothing!

There are no guarantees in life, and I'm NOT a betting man, but I'd be willing to wager that you won't have any problems moving to Factory either.

If you're worried about it, you could always do a mirror image of your HD using Clonezilla, Acronis, or whatever. Then, you'll have all your bases covered.

SparkieSteve · #12 (**permalink**) 04-Feb-2009, 15:07

Thanks for your thoughts there VinDSL.

Got a day off work tomorrow, with only a quick martial arts class booked so far, so I think I'll give it a go tomorrow.

I'll let everyone know how it goes for me.

Steve

SparkieSteve · #13 (**permalink**) 09-Feb-2009, 09:42

Well, as promised, I'm letting you know how the update went (from a noob's perspective of course)

Used the one click install from a link posted earlier on the thread, and it worked a treat. No dependency issues, in fact, no error messages at all!

All my apps are still around, and wireless worked fine.

So, a lot of fuss about nothing for me!

I do have one issue with phantom icons on the desktop that wont go away, but I'm looking into that on another thread KDE4.2 broken icons on panel - openSUSE Forums .

Seems as tho my strange mouse behavior in firefox has stopped since I've updated KDE too

Cheers guys!

Steve

VinDSL · #14 (**permalink**) 09-Feb-2009, 14:59

Hrm...

Well, I finally ran into a bug(?) - let's call it an anomaly.

For some reason, when I boot my lappy with the KDE 4.2 interface, a couple of .kss windows pop up on my desktop. These are 'Screen Saver' files. It just started a couple of days ago.

It doesn't really cause a problem - I simply close these windows - but it's irritating all the same.

I think I'll reinstall the extra screen saver package and see it that helps. A lot of these savers are from way-back-when! The properties show some are from 2003 or whatever...

Glad to here your upgrade went okay!

In Fx, I turn off 'autoscrolling' and 'smooth scrolling'.

Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> General -> Browsing

That seems to make a difference on my machines.

else_where · #15 (**permalink**) 09-Feb-2009, 19:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by SparkieSteve

I'm still a little confused. I am thinking that KDE4.2 is released by the KDE team as stable and finished, but as far as Opensuse as on Operating system is concerned, I should really only be using the version of KDE that was provided on the DVD as this is the one tested with OS11.1?

Am I on the right track here?
So to have a guaranteed happy KDE/Opensuse relationship I should wait till 11.2?

So, if I use the 'factory' repo to upgrade to KDE, it won't auto update unless I've set that up with the updater applet right? So I can stop it marching on to the alpha/Beta version on 4.3, and hence, keep it stable.

Sorry for the noob questions, but I'm still trying to figure out the 'lay of the land' so to speak, in Linux/OpenSuse/KDE

Thanks everyone, I'm learning loads here!

Steve

There's three flavors right now for KDE4:

Stable - the desktop that shipped with openSUSE 11.1. This is static and will not change over the supported life of openSUSE 11.1, though security and critical bugfixes will be backported.

Factory - the desktop that will ship with openSUSE 11.2. Right now it contains the release version of KDE 4.2 with openSUSE patches, but given the timelines for 11.2, it will eventually contain 4.3 when released as that desktop will land in 11.2 (at least according to the plan right now).

Unstable - These are packages compiled straight from trunk, which is the developmental version of KDE (currently 4.3). These are not patched or modified, and are generally very close to upstream, and very likely to break from time to time at least until things stabilize for 4.3 beta.

There's some debate right now about whether or not the layout should change. 4.2 is a very solid release, but once 4.3 is relased, it means that there will no longer be a 4.2 option for openSUSE users under the current structure. There will likely be a separate repo made available so that users will have access to a well-tested 4.2.x versus brand new 4.3, which should help confuse things even further.

Hope this makes sense.

Cheers,
KV

francisco1844 · #16 (**permalink**) 09-Feb-2009, 22:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by else_where

There's some debate right now about whether or not the layout should change. 4.2 is a very solid release

Will other window managers continue to be supported? Specially KDE 3.X?

After a crash I thought I would try KDE 4.2 on the new install. Lost of productivity has been pretty high. Even the most basic things that I did not have any issues with in 3.X are hard to find in 4.X.

Installing apps in the panel seems a total mistery to me in 4.X.. the whole "panel" seems not intuitive. The panel sometimes does not pop up when I move the cursor on it.. etc, etc...

Going to try XFCE and Icewm. If this 4.2 is considered "stable" with all the issues I see, I would hate to see what is considered beta by the KDE team.

Sinepp · #17 (**permalink**) 10-Feb-2009, 00:22

In my opinion running 4.2 is no greater risk then running 4.1.3. The only thing to keep in mind is what elsewhere pointed out: There will be a change from 4.2 to 4.3 in the factory rep and this release can not be recommended for a productive system. So be sure to disable/remove the Factory Rep in time.

zmdmw52 · #18 (**permalink**) 10-Feb-2009, 01:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Axeia

... reverting back to kde4.1 is a matter of disabling the 4.2 repositories and running an upgrade unconditionally on the KDE Desktop pattern in YaST.

How does one "run an 'unconditional upgrade' on KDE desktop pattern" (not sure what is meant by that)
I have a similar problem, and can't login to KDE 4 after trying to upgrade to KDE 4.2. The desktop + icons crashed with some error message about desktop plasma having crashed. Now, on trying to Login to KDE 4, there is Error Message 'kdeinit4 could not be started' in a box and after that the screen blanks out.

caf4926 · #19 (**permalink**) 10-Feb-2009, 08:04

Open Yast Software Management
filter by repo

by default it will open on 'System'
the other repo's are below - select the one you want

Now look at top of UI and select Packages tab
in the drop box select 'Update all in this list unconditionally'

zmdmw52 · #20 (**permalink**) 11-Feb-2009, 00:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Axeia

... reverting back to kde4.1 is a matter of disabling the 4.2 repositories and running an upgrade unconditionally on the KDE Desktop pattern in YaST.

I don't see any KDE 4.2-specific repo's & so don't know which ones to uncheck (disable). All the repo's have KDE4 (or KDE3-which I want to keep). But I also don't want to disable the KDE 4.1.x repositories, as I want to 'downgrade' to KDE 4.1.x.

If it helps, here is the detailed lsit of all the repositories that I have in my oS 11.1 install, through zypper-

Quote:

From the above, whcih are the repo's to disable so as to have KDE 4.1.x and remove KDE 4.2, and how to proceed further ?

PS:
Do not mean to divert from the OP's thread (more of an 'upgrade' question, rather than a 'downgrade to KDE 4.1.x that I'm asking), but if it is seen as such, then I don't mind starting a new thread for the above question.

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