Kde 4 Unstable: How Stable?

I was wondering, is anyone here using the Unstable KDE 4 repository? How stable is it in practice? How does the usability and stability compare to the Stable branch? It is not like stable is entirely stable itself (with constant plasma crashes during logout). However, from what I have heard many of the problems in KDE 4.0.x have been fixed in trunk, which is what unstable is based off of. So do people here think it is worth switching to unstable? How careful are they to make sure it is working before releasing an unstable release? There is also software I might want (I need to try it first) that is only in unstable, like Amarok 2.

I'm running UNSTABLE at the moment on openSUSE Factory - and I don't find it any more unstable than STABLE personally - take this with a grain of salt though as everyone's machine and software config is going to be different.

As for speed, etc., I went to UNSTABLE at the same time I went to Factory - my machine seems snappier, but I don't know how much of that has to do w/ KDE and how much has to do w/ the 2.6.25 kernel and gcc 4.3 (which I've read gave a nice speed boost to openSUSE 11).

Every time I have tried UNSTABLE on 10.3, I had to revert back to stable. Initially there were issues with the Qt4.4 snapshots they were using, and it was just crashing the install. Then I believe they went to using qt-copy from KDE SVN, and then I only had the issue of not keeping plasma running for a few seconds. The most recent version I installed for some reasosn removed the qt-dbus packages when upgrading, and at that point I wasn't able to launch KDE4 at all, crashed immediately due to the missing dbus connectivity.

I'll get around to trying it again soon, though 4.0.3 should be appearing in the STABLE repos very shortly, so I'll probably wait until I've played with that.

The situation on factory is probably a little better, since the environment is being designed for KDE4 and there aren't some of the hiccups and path issues with legacy KDE 3.5.x on 10.3.

OTOH, the only clearcut advantage to using UNSTABLE over STABLE right now is the potential performance improvements from Qt4.4. Many of the useful functionality additions or stability improvements from trunk are being backported to STABLE whenever possible, even if it's not happing in official SVN. As 4.1 shapes up, the difference I suspect will become more pronounced, though.

Just my 2c...

Cheers,
KV

How difficult is the downgrade? It should just be a matter of switching the repositories and then reinstalling all the red items, right? I'll probably wait for 4.2 and if I am still having problems give it a try.

It's that easy, I just disable one set of repositories and enable the others, then update. The only difference is to downgrade, you need to "force" the updates, but it's easy enough by just selecting the STABLE repo and just selecting update all pacakges.

I'm actually giving it another shot, the latest UNSTABLE packages are downloading as I speak. So if nobody hears from me again for the next couple of days, it means something has gone catastrophically wrong and I'd suggest staying away from UNSTABLE...

Cheers,
KV

The best way is to stay for the moment with
KDE 3.5.7 "release 72.6"
wich is the official version included in the download pack of suse.org

NjB

The best way is to stay for the moment with
KDE 3.5.7 "release 72.6"
wich is the official version included in the download pack of suse.org

NjB[/b]

Bah, that's too boring :-)

I have to be on the edge! If I were to still run 3.5.x, I would at LEAST update to 3.5.9 from the build svc.

I had previously a version of openSUSE 10.3 KDE 4.0 I had downloaded from KDE web site.
Too much problems and particulary with compiz-fusion that never worked
And an incompatibility that obliged me to erase kdebase4-ksysguard to install kdebase3-ksysguard wich was necessary for compiz-fusion installation.
So I installed the official version of openSUSE 10.3 KDE 3.5.7 and now everything is OK
Also I forgot to say that even K3B didn't wanted to be installed with KDE 4.0

Sorry, I prefer to wait next month in april it is annouced openSUSE 11.0 with KDE 4.0 certainely.


:lol:

NjB

I haven't had any of those problems. ksysguard didn't want to install, so I just didn't install it. k3b is working fine for me. I know that KDE 4.0.x isn't perfect. However, at least for me and the way I do things the benefits more than outweigh the drawbacks. Therefor I use KDE 4. Besides minor annoyances like plasma crashes on logout there are really not many drawbacks for me when using KDE 4 compared to KDE 3, but lots of improvements. I know unstable has even more improvements, the question is how serious the drawbacks are.

The best way is to stay for the moment with
KDE 3.5.7 "release 72.6"
wich is the official version included in the download pack of suse.org
[/b]

Actually, KDE is up to 3.5.9, and openSUSE has perfectly stable packages available for it, so I'd advise that as the best way to go. The openSUSE build service is a powerful advantage that openSUSE has, and it permits them to be able to provide stable up-to-date packages built agains the release version of the distro.

KDE 3.5.7 is playing it safe.

Too much problems and particulary with compiz-fusion that never worked
And an incompatibility that obliged me to erase kdebase4-ksysguard to install kdebase3-ksysguard wich was necessary for compiz-fusion installation.
So I installed the official version of openSUSE 10.3 KDE 3.5.7 and now everything is OK
Also I forgot to say that even K3B didn't wanted to be installed with KDE 4.0
[/b]

Not sure if I'm understanding entirely, but KDE4 includes it's own composited window manager, so you shouldn't need compiz-fusion.

The issue with kdebase4-ksysguard is a known one, due to the devs being unable to alter the paths of some of the components, which would require one to overwrite the other.

Haven't had an issue with K3B, or any other KDE3 app within KDE4, so that may have been a corner case. KDE4 and KDE3 will happily co-exist (with the exception of the ksysguard error above... )

I'm actually giving it another shot, the latest UNSTABLE packages are downloading as I speak.
[/b]

Just an update, KDE 4.1-unstable did install, and it works, and I'm frankly impressed. Of course, I haven't pushed it yet, but I'm immediately impressed by the "snapiness", in fact Konqueror has blown me away with how much more responsive it is for web browsing.

No doubt that there will be kludges, and I sort of dread keeping it updated with rolling extracts, but it does bode well. The current SVN supports Dashboard widgets, which will be interesting to see, so I'll probably throw caution to the wind and update over the next few days.

Just my 2c...

Cheers,
KV