KDE 4 Upgrade to 4.1 Beta 2 recommendable?

Hi there,

i can hardly refuse to add the KDE4-Factory-Repo and upgrade KDE4, but up to now, my experiences with changing Desktop Environments haven’t been this good and in nearly all cases i ended up reinstalling my System.

Is anybody here allready upgrading? And if so, what has to be done and what shouldn’t? Has the Standard-Repo to be removed and is “zypper dist-upgrade” the correct way to upgrade?

Thanks for your advises!

Make sure you have kde3 or other desktop to fallback on first
It’s working for most, but not for me.

If you have KDE 4.0.4 installed (default in suse 11), then its definitely recommendable because 4.1 is just leaps and bounds better than 4.0.4 in terms of functionality and stability. If you have KDE 3.5.9 installed, you might not be happy switching to a less stable desktop.

As far as upgrading from 4.0.4., enable KDE 4 Factory Repo in Community Repos. Then go to Yast Software management and select upgrade all packages if newer version is available. This should bring your KDE up to speed.

If, after upgrading, you meet a black screen when logging into KDE 4.1 (plasma silently crashed), simply delete or rename your .kde and .kde4 folders in your home directory.

Thank you, for your replies.

Yes, i am upgrading from KDE 4.04 and due to your opinions i am going to upgrade after lunch today. I am very curious. After all i read in the last hours, there have been a lot of improvements and bugfixes.

KDE 4.0.4 made me switch to the Gnome version of openSUSE just because it was very unstable. And I didn’t want to risk upgrading to the beta so I’ll wait for the stable 4.1 release.

I intend to reinstall (completely wiping my KDE4.1 beta) when a stable version of KDE4 arrives – because I had to break some dependencies and force-fit the 4.1 beta upgrade. So I can’t trust it as a mainstay for the entire year of openSUSE 11.0

I upgraded from an install of 4.0.4 just a day or two ago (luckily, it appears, right after some bugs, including knotify?). Anyway, 4.1 is actually more stable for me, and has quite a bit of general improvements.

I would say go for it, if you don’t get too scared from a possible (though not probable) rescue if things go wrong…:wink:

Sometimes the packages aren’t updated in the repos at the same time, which can cause problems (like plasma not starting). If you find yourself at a black screen with just the mouse cursor, remember Alt-F2 is your friend. You can launch Yast with it.