[Discuss] First impressions of KDE4

[Alan W. Irwin]

Just an update.

The version of KDE4 (4.3.2 which has been unoffically backported to Debian
Lenny) that I am using reminds me of my experiences with KDE2.3 (which IIRC
was the first in the KDE2.x series to be usable, but with occasional
segfaults).  Similarly, for KDE-4.3.2 there have been some occasional
segfaults that caused the whole panel to quit working and segfault issues
with other KDE4 apps.

The other issue I noticed was they really screwed up klipper whose principal
function is to give you an archive of all previous cuts.  It feels like
"deja vu all over again".  I recall a much earlier (2.x?) version of 
klipper completely screwed up cut and paste on the desktop, and they seemed
to have reverted to that bad model for klipper-4.3 again.  The only solution
I could find to restore rock-solid cut and paste with klipper-4.3.2 is to
completely kill the klipper app.  That reduces the archive of past cuts down
to just the most recent one, but that is much better than putting up with
erratic results for cutting and pasting.

The segfaults are occasional enough so they don't interfere that much with
getting work done. Similarly the above workaround (turning off klipper
completely) is okay as well.  So after 11 days of experience I still think
KDE-4.3.2 is usable enough to continue with.

Thus, I have no plans to move back to KDE3.5 at this time, but I am
definitely looking forward to bug-fixed point releases of KDE4.3.x finally
making it to the backported repository.  That repository is two point
releases behind (4.3.4 was released in December) and about to become three
point releases behind (4.3.5 should be released this month).  The issue is
there is some log jam in the promotion process from Debian unstable (sid) to
testing (squeeze) for the mips architecture so unstable currently has
KDE-4.3.4 (and presumably will move immediately to KDE-4.3.5 when that is
released), but KDE-4.3.2 was the latest KDE4 version to be promoted to
testing (and therefore KDE4.3.2 is the latest KDE4 version available for the
backported repository for Lenny and KDE4 that I am using).

Alan
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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).
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Linux-powered Science
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