[Discuss] First impressions of KDE4

[John Blomfield]

Hi Alan,

I have added kde-full so we shall see if that improves the stability of 
Dolphin. This does of course lead to some software bloat Squeeze + 
kde-full gives 4.59GB compared to Fedora 12 3.06GB but there may be a 
few useful apps amongst all that extra stuff that I might use?
 That desktop applet I mentioned is actually named Folder View (not 
DesktopView). But this seems to be a feature of KDE4 that the desktop is 
not the same as the folder "Desktop" in the file tree and you can only 
put icons on the desktop via the method you mentioned "right click on a 
menu item". ie. you can't put arbitrary files on the desktop only in the 
Folder View.

Konqueror does seem to be stable but for some reason the KDE4 version 
does not provide access to "Storage Media" i.e. other partitions, 
whereas Dolphin has now added this feature.

I am inclining towards Fedora12 at present since the whole experience is 
much more user friendly, a nice package manager "yum extended", much 
better than synaptic etc. and nice system configuration GUI's. I used to 
be a firm supporter of Fedora until they ditched KDE3.5 in Fedora 9 with 
an non functional KDE4.000.  Now they have produced Fedora 12 with 
KDE4.3.4 they might win me back.

John




John Blomfield wrote:
> Alan W. Irwin wrote:
>> Hi John:
>>
>> On 2010-01-10 16:59-0800 John Blomfield wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Alan,
>>>
>>> Coincidentally two days ago I noticed that Debian had moved KDE 
>>> 4.3.2 up to testing (Squeeze) AMD64 so I decided to have a look.
>>> [...]The result so far is pretty disappointing.  I still can't move 
>>> panel icons to where I want them on the panel. KDE just puts them 
>>> either on the left or right for no particular reason and they can't 
>>> be moved only removed.  I couldn't figure out how to put an icon on 
>>> the desktop. I save a text file to /home/john/desktop and although 
>>> it was there in the file tree no icon appeared on the desktop.  
>>> Dolphin crashed after 30 seconds!
>>> [...]
>>> Debian KDE 4.3.2 is definitely not ready as far as I am concerned.  
>>> The point of a graphical desktop for me is that all the GUI's work, 
>>> its a mouse driven environment.  I am also a touch typist and I am 
>>> not adversed to using command line when it makes little sense to do 
>>> otherwise but if there is a quick visual GUI to do the job I prefer 
>>> to use it.
>> [...]
>>> Hopefully, the Debian KDE folks will get rid of some of the bugs in 
>>> the next few weeks.
>>
>> What is your graphics chip?  My experiences with XAA versus EXA have
>> convinced me that good X configuration is essential for KDE4 to work.
>>
> My chip set is nvidia nForce 570 SLI.  I have never played with X 
> configuration so I have no idea what XAA and EXA are!
>> Moving panel icons is straightforward.  Hit the cashew on the right 
>> of the
>> panel to configure the panel, then drag and drop each icon to wherever
>> you want it to be on the panel.
>>
> That was easy! But why is it such an obscure action, the menu after 
> hitting the cashew which I had previous tried gave no clue?
>> To put an application icon on the desktop, find it in the classical 
>> menu,
>> and right click.  That gives you the choice of putting the 
>> application icon
>> on the desktop or the panel.
> I have now fired up Fedora 12 which proved a lot simpler than Debian.  
> Fedora provide me with a window on the desktop called something like 
> DesktopView. Its an applet that you can install from the "add widget" 
> menu on the Desktop.  This displays the contents of the Desktop Folder.
>> I never use the desktop surface (except to
>> make a pretty background picture behind my GUI's (e.g., xterm and
>> konqueror).  So I cannot help you at all with dolphin, but my 
>> understanding
>> is that konqueror has been a stalwart file manager for years so why 
>> not try
>> that rather than dolphin?
>>
>> Also, I was just remarking to Barbara that System Settings is really 
>> lame
>> to have an icon view rather than tree view, but then I looked 
>> further, and
>> you can configure the classic tree view!  So that is what I did, and I
>> am pretty happy with the result.
>>
>> Do you have the kde4_full package installed?  That should get you 
>> everything
>> you need on Debian testing.  Conversely, if you don't have all of 
>> KDE, then
>> it might not work very well.
>>
> I would have assumed that installing a complete KDE Squeeze CD should 
> have given me a "kde4_full" package? However, I will give one last 
> check to see if something is missing.
>> Also, if you are using Intel hardware, make sure you are using EXA.
>> (For other kinds of graphics chips, I don't think XAA versus EXA matters
>> so much, but good X configuration is essential.)
>>
> How do I know if I have "good X configuration"?
>
>> The final and most important advice I can give you is once KDE gets 
>> confused
>> by strange entries in configure files in the .kde4 directory tree, it 
>> stays
>> confused.  Thus, after a bad experience with KDE4 (or, say, 
>> downloading the
>> remaining packages in kde4_full, or reconfiguring X), my advice is 
>> always
>> start fresh by completely removing .kde4 or at least moving it out of 
>> the
>> way.  Just in case you don't know how to do that on the command-line 
>> from an
>> xterm,
>>
>> mv .kde4 .kde4_20100119
>>
>> Then logout and try again to configure KDE4 from scratch just the way 
>> you
>> like it.
>>
>> Note, there were three times yesterday I almost gave up because KDE4 
>> just
>> plain wasn't working, but installing kde4_full helped a lot, and 
>> reconfiguring X/intel to use EXA finally solved the last issue.  I 
>> still was
>> running into trouble after both those moves until I remembered the 
>> above "mv
>> .kde4" trick to start with a fresh configuration after any major change.
>>
>> KDE4 has been fine for me ever since I made my report yesterday so I 
>> think
>> the stability question has been answered (at least if you avoid 
>> dolphin).
>>
>>> From my good experience (for essentially the same version of KDE 
>>> packages
>> you have on Squeeze but backported to Lenny) and assuming you haven't 
>> been
>> using the "mv .kde4" trick, I would advise trying again using that 
>> trick.
>>
>> Good luck!
>>
>> Alan
>> __________________________
>> Alan W. Irwin
>>
>> Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and 
>> Astronomy,
>> University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).
>>
>> Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state 
>> implementation
>> for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting 
>> software
>> package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the 
>> Loads of
>> Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
>> (lbproject.sf.net).
>> __________________________
>>
>> Linux-powered Science
>> __________________________
>>
>
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