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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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-
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.
- will I have to set up these things again? That would be a bit of a pain!
