SJVN barfs on KDE 4 on openSUSE 11 and Ryan Paul at Ars Technica disagrees.
Thread moved to Soapbox
saahne wrote:
>
> ‘SJVN barfs on KDE 4 on openSUSE 11’ (http://tinyurl.com/6984ym) and
> ‘Ryan Paul at Ars Technica disagrees’ (http://tinyurl.com/65ndhz).
>
>
the kde 4.04 rant is a bit old and not necessarily reflective of KDE4’s
current state as demonstrated in the 4.1 beta (using the openSuse facory
repo which is almost a nightly update).
Personally I’m finding kde4 and kwin very stable but can’t say the same yet
on all the apps I’ve tried - still using the 3.5.9 versions of Konqueror
and knode and after the latest upgrade getting no sound in Amarok. And yes
plasma needs added functionality but it’s not crashing and having the kde3
panel available does help.
–
Suse 11.0 x64, Kde 3.5.9, Opera 9.x weekly
Well this probably needs to be moved to soapbox, and I
suspect it will be, but to me the whole pile of moaning
about KDE4 is silly. Nobody forced you to click on
KDE4 and install it as your desktop. You took a gamble
and you lost when it didn’t turn out to be all you thought
it was going to be. So for now, install KDE 3.5 and
wait until 4.X impresses you so much that you can’t live without
it…or don’t. I’m sure there are still OS2/Warp folks out there
wondering what people see in a Start Menu. Logically every application
icon should be available on the desktop. ;^)
I think one difference with open source and corporate software is that when
a company takes a new direction there’s not much that can be done from a
users perspective other than continue to use the old stuff until you no
longer can. There’s nobody moving the platform forward and the IP
ownership prevents anyone else from moving it forward.
With open source it’s possible to keep an active group carving on
KDE 3.5 until the end of time. So in a way KDE has already forked.
Does it even matter?? From what I have seen on the KDE devel group, they
have every intention of making KDE4 everything KDE3.5 was with the added
benefit of some new tech…that IS NOT FINISHED…read the fine print on
the installation screen…‘less mature’…maybe next time they should
put ‘Ass broken. Install at your own peril’ and avoid the whole debate.
I think what has everyone’s gnads frosted is that they are working more on
the new tech and less on ‘making it KDE3.5’…but 3.5 functions are coming.
In the meantime if you don’t like KDE4, pretend it doesn’t exist.
I’m sorry for the folks out there having problems
with 4.X stability, but it runs flawlessly on my P4 2.8 with 1GB of memory.
It also runs flawless under a VM which has only 512MB of memory allocated
on my AMD 3800+ 2GB rig at work. KDE isn’t your problem, it’s the drivers.
Exactly, the words “not as mature” are akin to buying a Lion instead of a cat advertised as “not as cuddly”!
But if by stable you mean “slow as a snail on dope”, or “able to slow down even the fastest machine”, then yeah it’s rock solid :D.
> But if by stable you mean “slow as a snail on dope”, or “able to slow
> down even the fastest machine”, then yeah it’s rock solid :D.
Sorry I’ve experienced none of that. Runs fine and you can see the
hardware isn’t ‘all that’.
> Exactly, the words “not as mature” are akin to buying a Lion instead of
> a cat advertised as “not as cuddly”!
>
> But if by stable you mean “slow as a snail on dope”, or “able to slow
> down even the fastest machine”, then yeah it’s rock solid :D.
>
In fact I forgot I installed it on an HP laptop with a 1 Ghz Duron and 512MB
of memory. It’s not that bad on it either. I think if you are having
performance issues, you need to look elsewhere. KDE4 isn’t causing it.
Where else is there to look though? It’s a HP dv6645 laptop, 2 gigs ram, AMD 64x2 1900 CPU, Nvidia 8400gs video card with the Nvidia driver from the repos.
Plus it’s the same on every machine I’ve tried KDE4, so it’s not the machine.
Even on the default install before I started adding any software it was sluggish. Not slow as in an obvious fault, but sluggish, especially when compared to KDE3/Gnome/E17/XFCE/iceWM on the same machine, same driver etc’. Even Vista runs well.
It takes 10 seconds to resize a window, and if I move the mouse too fast it forgets what it was doing and just leaves it as it was, after waiting 10 seconds of course.
Resizing a desktop thingy is also slow, again if I move the mouse too fast, it “forgets”.
It just feels slow, the main menu takes too long to pop-up, windows open and close too slowly etc’. It works ok, but feels sluggish, like driving a truck compared to a small car.
And if it needs a higher spec video card, well, all I can say is Vista revisited! What’s the point?
>
> Where else is there to look though? It’s a HP dv6645 laptop, 2 gigs
> ram, AMD 64x2 1900 CPU, Nvidia 8400gs video card with the Nvidia driver
> from the repos.
> Plus it’s the same on every machine I’ve tried KDE4, so it’s not the
> machine.
Maybe you’ve got a corrupt install DVD?
> Even on the default install before I started adding any software it was
> sluggish. Not slow as in an obvious fault, but sluggish, especially
> when compared to KDE3/Gnome/E17/XFCE/iceWM on the same machine, same
> driver etc’. Even Vista runs well.
> It takes 10 seconds to resize a window, and if I move the mouse too
> fast it forgets what it was doing and just leaves it as it was, after
> waiting 10 seconds of course.
> Resizing a desktop thingy is also slow, again if I move the mouse too
> fast, it “forgets”.
You have some serious issue, no idea what, but that is not normal.
> It just feels slow, the main menu takes too long to pop-up, windows
> open and close too slowly etc’. It works ok, but feels sluggish, like
> driving a truck compared to a small car.
> And if it needs a higher spec video card, well, all I can say is -Vista
> revisited-! What’s the point?
Onboard Intel cheese wiz shared memory video card on my home rig,
GeForce 6600 128MB on my work machine using VMware SVGA driver routed though
whatever ancient nVidia driver I have that I installed when I installed SuSE
10.3. The laptop, LOL prolly an 8MB card… NO performace sluggishness and
these are not high spec anything machines.
I tried the early live cd’s of kde4, and it seemed pretty glitchy, so I installed VirtualBox in my suse 10.3 and installed openSuSE11-KDE4 inside that. Just to keep an eye on how it’s coming along. Everything installed with no hitches and ran out of the box (no pun intended). Did the kde upgrade from the factory repo, and kept snapshots along the way. It’s handy to just revert to a snapshot when you play around till you screw up something. I also check kdelook.org once in a while to see how many add-ons, service menus etc. are being listed. I’m thinking I will probably do a clean install of suse11-kde4.1 when it is released. Even though kde3.5.9 is awesome. And when I switch, I will know my way around the new desktop better. And I still get a kick out of rotating the compiz cube with 10.3 on one side, and 11 on the other.
4.04 is relevant, in that it is what most users are going to see right now when they install KDE 4 from openSUSE or Fedora. That is what you’re offering up to people, so people have a right to judge based on what they’re getting.
I agree that KDE 4.0.x is rather unstable, but KDE 4.1 (beta 2) is truly another experience. I have had it installed for 3 weeks now, and experienced no direct problems relating to KDE. Some of the newly-ported QT4 applications such as Konqueror are still buggy, but the desktop itself is quite stable. My only complaint is that I’m missing some system settings which I became accustomed to in KDE 3. For example, how do enable KDM4 to automatically enable Num Lock? Except for these few issues, however, I am quite impressed. I’m positive that openSUSE 11.1 will be a great success when it is bundled with KDE 4.1 final.
From KDE.NEWS (July 11th):
As a response to recent negativity on the Internet, we’ve been working with Groklaw to get a story running detailing facts about questions such as “Releasing KDE 4.0 was a mistake”, “I am forced to use the kickoff menu”, “The whole KDE4 desktop interface is radically new”. among others. Thanks go out to Pamela Jones for giving the KDE community a chance to rectify certain points that have recently been said in public. This way, we hope to make it easier for journalists to put KDE’s direction, recent decisions and put simple myths into the right light.
When I first installed Suse 11.0, I didn’t see any option to choose the desktop I wanted. After install I was automatically running KDE 4.0. I prefer having a choice.
4.0 was glitchy, crashed a lot and I’m not sure if I will ever get used to Plasma. When I put a file temporarily on my desktop I expect it to be a file not a widget. I use my desktop like an actual desktop. I put stuff there until I’m done with it then file it.
When 4.1 hits the repos I’ll give it another try. I may get over my dislike of Plasma, I may not, but until KDE4 runs properly I don’t even want to try.
The KDE 4 LiveCD only installs the KDE 4 desktop. The Gnome LiveCD only installs the Gnome desktop.
The DVD installer lets you choose from KDE 3, KDE 4 and Gnome. It only clearly states that KDE 3 is mature and stable while KDE 4 is in development.
To those with LiveCD installs, they didn’t get to pick their desktop, or see that disclaimer. I think the same disclaimer should be on the download page, and that there should have been a KDE 3 LiveCD as well.
First for the numlock its Configure Desktop>Keyboard & Mouse>Keyboard icon look for Numlock on KDE Startup That’s the ticket.
Now to be fair KDE 4.04 is deplorable the 4.1RC is waaay better. How to update has been stated many times here & likely will continue to be until 11.1 when it does though it’ll be so much better here,no more KDE noise.
The second KDE 4.1 is released, they need to push it out as an update.
Ah, I see. Thanks. No matter. Fortunately I know how to install whatever DM I want. I just like to choose what I want on my system before the final install.
I’d been running 4.1 beta2 on Kubuntu, and it was horribly slow. I installed opensuse11 from the KDE4 live CD, and it was a lot faster and much more responsive, but YAST repeatedly crashed when I tried to install an RPM that wasn’t in the repositories. I uninistalled KDE4, installed KDE3, and everything is beautiful.
I expect that to be fixed in time, but I have a big big problem with the way Konqueror’s role has been stage-managed. I’m used to using Konqueror with fluxbox, and it’s a wonderful way to fill in the limitations of a window manager. They said that Konqueror would not be affected, but that’s not what I’m seeing. There’s no filter bar. Maybe the filter bar will be restored, but I don’t like waiting to find out.
Being a web browser/file manager means Konqueror is the only file manager that can be operated by html links. This is a terrific capability that no one ever talks about, and it makes Konqueror indispensible to me.
My idea for a KDE fork is relatively modest, but it would be big enough. I say: don’t fork KDE, just fork Konqueror. I’d like to see a standalone version of Konqueror that is meant to do what Konqueror was origininally meant to do, i.e. everything., and not to conform to someone’s idea of a managed desktop experience. It’s only purpose would be to be the most powerful desktop application ever. I would call it “Liberator”. Of course, it would require KDE libraries, but it would be free of the demands of KDE desktop organization. I don’t really have the right to expect Konqueror to be designed with my Window manager in mind. A forked Konqueror would be a way of claiming that right.
There may be other, simpler solutions, e.g. plugins.
I intend to tenatively pursue this, but I don’t know anything about programming and development, so it’s liable to take a long long time (e.g. never) if no one else is interested. I wonder if this would addresses anyone else’s issues with KDE4.
Here’s an old screenshot of a homepage that I created for Konqueror. Note that there are links to applications, directories, files, and webpages. In some cases, e.g. YouTube, Konqueror is actually instructed to use firefox to open the webpage.
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/6186/kpagemk3.png
Unfortunately the html page was lost, my current konqueror homepage isn’t quite as cool.