Listmates, Having been a leading pessimist of KDE4 since a crippled 4.04 was dumped on the openSuSE community on 11.0 and then more disappointment dumped again with kde 4.1 in 11.1, I have been skeptical if the desktop, which from first looks was something developed by teenagers on way too much Jolt Soda, would ever get to a usable state. Well for the past week I took the plunge again with openSuSE's 4.3Beta1 1- click install on my spare drive, and ... I never thought I would type these words, but I like it! It is more than usable as a primary desktop. That's not to say it doesn't still need a lot of tlc, but the bugs are largely run of the mill bugs that just need cleanup and aren't showstoppers. One of my biggest bitches has been the fish_kio functionality and the inability to connect to boxes across the internet (fish over lan worked). Well, fish over the internet isn't broken, it's just really screwed up! What that means is that you can actually get fish to connect to a remote box (you just have to repeatedly try the same connection 3-25 times have it connect- crash-disconnect until it actually succeeds in connecting and establishing a session for the first time) The upside? Once you establish the connection to your remote host the first time, fish will re-connect to it as usual. No kidding. Why it craters after connecting and before a fish session is established the on the first 3-25 times is still up in the air, as well as why it continues to work just fine after that... but it does. I have given kde4 on heck of a shakedown and added 15 or so new, along with a couple of old, bugs to bugs.kde.org. Here is a short list of the bugs from the shakedown of kde4 in the past few days (just add the "ID" at the end of: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id= if you want the details) ID Summary 195247 KDE4.3beta1 knotes causes SegFault in Kontact 195259 kmail "message structure" needs show/hide button 195505 Composer Standard Templates Defaults Not Reset After Default Pressed & OK 195635 Konqueror "Tabbed Browsing" Settings Do Not Take Effect until Restart 195808 File Manager Does Not Restore Saved Profile 195697 F8 (show hidden files) Requires Manual Focus on File List 158985 kbattleship freezes when attempting to join lan game 195528 Detail View: Clicking in space between File/Folder name and Size fails to place Focus 195533 kmail: No indication shown for Unread Messages in Collapsed Thread 195343 New sub-basket does not respect color scheme 195623 Basket Groups Not Expanded and Systray Icon Won't Restore Basket App 195489 Organization should be Formatted Name if no Family or Given present 195493 Groupware Integration Authentication Fails after Session Timeout 195523 "Formatted Name" Listbox needs to be accessible outside "Edit Name" subform 195367 fish_kio Fails in kde4.3 for konqueror, kate, kwrite, etc.. 176599 Wish - KfontViewer needs 'next->file' 'previous->file' and 'mark/tag' features 189583 Ability to add submenu "like editors" to kicker panel from classic menu If you have been staying away from kde4 until it was "usable" (as I was), well, "It's Usable!" in 4.3 Beta. The more users that take the plunge now and find the little snafus in their favorite apps and bug it to bugs.kde.org, the quicker it will be "Cleanly Usable" Now all I have to do is figure out how to get 4.3 Beta loaded on my Arch drive and I'll be golden! Seriously, I thought I would load kde4, see what had improved and be disappointed again, probably trash my elegant kde3 install with cross-configuration issues in the process, and have to dump the drive and reinstall. Was I ever pleasantly surprised. If you have been in the same holding-pattern lately in your thinking about kde4 as well -- I bet you will be pleasantly surprised as well ;-) Thank God .. There is hope for KDE4 after all! P.S. To really see the desktop effects as they should be, you need to adjust the "Animation duration" to something that is reasonable for your hardware (it is set to a terrible default for any newer hardware) In kde control center > appearance > desktop effects (then in the individual effect settings) try a setting of about 250ms and go up (most likely) or down by 50ms at a time until the effects smooth out and look right. 250-280ms worked fine on my laptop. I suspect the default is off by a factor of 10 from its intended setting which makes the effects look jerky and crude compared to the compiz effect they were based on. (the default is probably 25ms when it was intended to be 250ms) Anyway, it sure make the effects look much better. The kde4 desktop effects still don't compare to the equivalent compiz effects and there is no equivalent to certain compiz effects I really like (Expo, etc.), but what is there looks pretty darn good for KDE4 all things considered. Give it a go... Now where can I get 4.3 Beta for Arch? or at least a good howto on how to download the build dependencies needed to build from source. I'll check the wiki ;-) -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com