Should I upgrade to KDE4.2?

[SparkieSteve]

Hi all!

Got a quick question...

Should I upgrade my 11.1/KDE4.1 system to KDE4.2?

I'm a fairly inexperienced user, but the install process seems pretty straight-forward, so that's good.

But, what about my settings and applications? I'm using a pretty clean/virgin install at the moment, but it did take me a while to get wireless working (think I'm using ndiswrapper and KNetwork Manager, but it's all a bit hazy now! ), and I've just managed to get Amarok (1.4.1) working great, and connecting to my MP3 player - will I have to set up these things again? That would be a bit of a pain!

I would like to move to 4.2 as people have said good things about it. I find 4.1 very stable for me, but then I don't use any widgets or 3D (old 1Ghz Athlon, 756Mb, Gforce3 64Mb). I do find that it seems a little 'sluggish', and I sometimes get strange mouse behavior in Firefox (related to the right mouse button doing strange things)

Will the update remove/upgrade any of my existing programs? Like firefox, network manager, and Amarok? (don't want to loose bookmarks).

Sorry for all the questions, I was trying to keep it short!

Thanks for the assistance.

Steve

[geoffro]

Works really well for me.
There's been a lot of discussion on the subject recommend a forum search
Like here
/Geoff

[SparkieSteve]

Thanks geoffro.

Didn't want to bloat that thread with my specific questions.

I have looked at a few of the KDE4.2 threads for a bit of background info, and to get a general idea of what to expect, but none of them seemed to address my specific issues of loosing my wireless, and Amarok.

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?

Steve

[Axeia]

Both Amarok and the wireless settings should remain as functional as they are now, both are kde3 apps and pretty much left alone.

If somehow either one does not function properly, 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.

[SparkieSteve]

Fantastic. Thanks.

Looks like I'll probably upgrade later tis afternoon then.

Thank you.

Edit: Oh, forgot to ask. I read that KDE4.2 is 'Factory'. Not too sure what this means. Can anyone explain. Only read it once tho, so that may not be the case anyway.

Steve

[norrell]

I found this on Planet SUSE: Howto install KDE 4.2 on openSUSE « The Blog is Hot
I think it's interesting and useful for your decision.
About the right click strange behaviour in firefox, i read it's a bug that will be fixed in next release. A workaround can be the installation of the mouse gestures add-on.

[geoffro]

I use the kde4 amarok (2.0.1) which is a LOT netter IMHO

/Geoff

Originally Posted by Axeia

Both Amarok and the wireless settings should remain as functional as they are now, both are kde3 apps and pretty much left alone.

[geoffro]

By factory it means that it is in the dev version of OS.
The next stable version will probably not be before 11.2 and in that case kde4.3

/Geoff

Originally Posted by SparkieSteve

Fantastic. Thanks.

Looks like I'll probably upgrade later tis afternoon then.

Thank you.

Edit: Oh, forgot to ask. I read that KDE4.2 is 'Factory'. Not too sure what this means. Can anyone explain. Only read it once tho, so that may not be the case anyway.

Steve

[caf4926]

I'm with geoff on this: A caution required. Development repo's can be troublesome for the inexperienced.

Amarok 2 is truly great. Geoff, I updated to this after reading your + comments. A week or so ago

[SparkieSteve]

Originally Posted by geoffro

By factory it means that it is in the dev version of OS.
The next stable version will probably not be before 11.2 and in that case kde4.3

/Geoff

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