[arch-general] ? regarding latest Dont Panic updates, and KDE4
I've been downloading iso's on dialup for some days, so havn't updated much on my OS's. Last time I updated Dont Panic on my new machine was 20080709. A pacman -Sy, followed by pacman -Su rung some alarm bells when it said arts was going to be replaced "yes, or no?". Well ages back I'd read that arts wasn't going to be in KDE4, so this looked like an upgrade to KDE4. Said yes to that, and then see a mention that extra/kdeplasma-addons is going to replace kdeaddons, and kdeplasma is definately KDE4 from my reading the fedora list for Fedora 9, and the Kubuntu list where KDE4 is an option with Kubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04. To see where this is going I say yes to the plasma stuff, and yes there is definately an upgrade from KDE3.5 to KDE4 in progress. One question is how new this upgrade is. I ask because an hour or so ago, the upgrade was in the 500+MB IIRC, but just having run pacman -Sy, and pacman -Su, the upgrade is now 643.38MB. Looking at the list of KDE packages to be upgraded, the only one that is not being upgraded to KDE4 is kdelibs, which shows an upgrade to kdelibs3-3.5.9-1. Should I perhaps wait a couple of days before doing the pacman -Su, so as to make sure that the transition to KDE4 will have all the necessary packages available? The second question, as I've seen a whole bunch of problems with KDE4 on mainly the Fedora list, but also on the Kubuntu list where folks using Hardy Heron 8.04 have decided to try KDE4, rather than the default KDE3.5, is, does KDE4 run ok on Don't Panic, without totally screwing up the desktop, that currently is working fine under KDE3.5? I'll start downloading the packages as I'm on dialup, so there is plenty of time for answers. I get about 150MB in 9hrs, so bearing in mind that during the daytime I'm doing other stuff on the Internet, I'd estimate about 45-48 hours is needed to download all the packages before they start to be installed. So the clock is ticking as from now. Answers please before the package downloads finish, and I'm stuck with KDE4. Just a bit of fun as the list is quiet. I suppose sooner or later I'll find some distro or other has KDE4 as default, and will have to go with it, but having seen many problems on the Fedora list, admittadly with kde-4.0, with promises that things would be better with kde-4.1, and of course Don't Panic is upgrading to kde-4.1.0-1, so perhaps I'm worrying about nothing. Nice distro, but I really do wish that Andy would fix Jacman. Nigel.
Nigel Henry wrote:
The second question, as I've seen a whole bunch of problems with KDE4 on mainly the Fedora list, but also on the Kubuntu list where folks using Hardy Heron 8.04 have decided to try KDE4, rather than the default KDE3.5, is, does KDE4 run ok on Don't Panic, without totally screwing up the desktop, that currently is working fine under KDE3.5?
As per Arch's own news announcement (http://www.archlinux.org/news/402/) KDE4 does not carry over your KDE3 settings. And even if you copy them over by hand, many of them appear to be inapplicable in KDE4 at best, and might even break stuff at worst. So yeah, it looks to me like KDE4 will "totally screw up your desktop that is currently working fine". If you want to stay with KDE3 short term, this forum thread tells you how. (i.e., add a bunch of Ignore's to your pacman.conf.) This will probably get a bit unwieldy to do long-term, however.
I suppose sooner or later I'll find some distro or other has KDE4 as default, and will have to go with it, but having seen many problems on the Fedora list, admittadly with kde-4.0, with promises that things would be better with kde-4.1, and of course Don't Panic is upgrading to kde-4.1.0-1, so perhaps I'm worrying about nothing.
I only gave KDE4 a cursory glance, but I have to say, so far I'm not that enamored with it, for the exact reasons you mention - i.e., "totally screw up your desktop that is currently working fine" - and without gaining much in return, near as I can tell. So I'm looking for a long term solution to stay on KDE3. The KDEmod repo is a possibility. A couple of things give me pause about using it though: 1) it's not really "stock" KDE packages; they're split into modules; they're heavily patched; etc., and 2) what I'd really like to do is be able to run KDE3 and 4 side-by-side, which I don't believe KDEmod will let me do. So I've actually been toying with the idea of starting my own repo to a) support KDE3 on Arch on an ongoing basis, and b) make it available side-by-side with KDE4, for people who want to potentially use both. This isn't as nutty as it sounds, as KDE3 development is probably drawing to a close pretty soon (it looks like maybe 3.5.10 is slated to be the last version in that series?) and so I'm guessing (hoping?) that the code won't require too much packaging and maintenance. I've even started taking some steps in that direction, and am starting to build the KDE packages with the mods I mentioned. (i.e., rename the packages to kde3-*, move them to a kde3 group, install them in /opt/kde3, etc.) I've got 4 of the 19 packages in the kde group done so far ... If anyone has any interest in using (or contributing help to) these packages, please let me know. DR
David Rosenstrauch wrote:
If you want to stay with KDE3 short term, this forum thread tells you how. (i.e., add a bunch of Ignore's to your pacman.conf.)
Whoop! Forgot to paste the thread URL: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=52416 DR
On Wednesday 30 July 2008 22:14, David Rosenstrauch wrote:
David Rosenstrauch wrote:
If you want to stay with KDE3 short term, this forum thread tells you how. (i.e., add a bunch of Ignore's to your pacman.conf.)
Whoop! Forgot to paste the thread URL:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=52416
DR
Thanks David. I was going to ask about that, but got distracted in replying to someone on another list. Nigel. Btw. thanks for your initial reply. I may let the upgrade to KDE4 procede on this machine, and see how it goes. I do have another instance of Don't Panic on another machine, and may well try to keep that running KDE3.5. Apt-get on my Fedora, and Debian based installs tells you how many packages are going to be upgraded. Pacman doesn't do that, and I havn't counted them, but there must be, in just scanning through the list about 120. Just how many are deps for the transition from KDE3.5 to KDE4, I've no idea. As I say, I'll probably let the transition from KDE3.5 to KDE4 procede on the new machine, and see what the new KDE4 looks like, and whether it performs as expected.
Just upgraded an arch box I've not done any upgrades on for over 12/12 (didn't even had /etc/pacman.d/ directories, not sure when they changed. Had one problem - gcc-libs had to be manually upgraded, because x wouldn't start and was missing a file I think called libgcc_s.so.1. However after that everything seems to work fine, though unfamiliar format cf kde3.5 Regards Richar
On Wednesday 30 July 2008 22:14, David Rosenstrauch wrote:
David Rosenstrauch wrote:
If you want to stay with KDE3 short term, this forum thread tells you how. (i.e., add a bunch of Ignore's to your pacman.conf.)
Whoop! Forgot to paste the thread URL:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=52416
DR
Thanks David. I was going to ask about that, but got distracted in replying to someone on another list.
Nigel.
Btw. thanks for your initial reply. I may let the upgrade to KDE4 procede on this machine, and see how it goes. I do have another instance of Don't Panic on another machine, and may well try to keep that running KDE3.5.
Apt-get on my Fedora, and Debian based installs tells you how many packages are going to be upgraded. Pacman doesn't do that, and I havn't counted them, but there must be, in just scanning through the list about 120. Just how many are deps for the transition from KDE3.5 to KDE4, I've no idea.
As I say, I'll probably let the transition from KDE3.5 to KDE4 procede on the new machine, and see what the new KDE4 looks like, and whether it performs as expected.
The KDEmod repo is a possibility. A couple of things give me pause about using it though: 1) it's not really "stock" KDE packages; they're split into modules; they're heavily patched; etc., and
Just to clarify, KDEmod uses only 2 patches: - The background of the splash screen, it says "KDEmod 4.1" rather than "KDE 4.1" - There is a KDEmod label in the KDE about dialogs http://kdemod.ath.cx/bbs/viewtopic.php?pid=5300#p5300
2) what I'd really like to do is be able to run KDE3 and 4 side-by-side, which I don't believe KDEmod will let me do.
It looks like they are planning to do this. http://kdemod.ath.cx/bbs/viewtopic.php?pid=5295#p5295
Daenyth Blank wrote:
The KDEmod repo is a possibility. A couple of things give me pause about using it though: 1) it's not really "stock" KDE packages; they're split into modules; they're heavily patched; etc., and
Just to clarify, KDEmod uses only 2 patches: - The background of the splash screen, it says "KDEmod 4.1" rather than "KDE 4.1" - There is a KDEmod label in the KDE about dialogs
http://kdemod.ath.cx/bbs/viewtopic.php?pid=5300#p5300
2) what I'd really like to do is be able to run KDE3 and 4 side-by-side, which I don't believe KDEmod will let me do.
It looks like they are planning to do this. http://kdemod.ath.cx/bbs/viewtopic.php?pid=5295#p5295
Thanks much for the info. I was not aware about the minimal patching. Good to know. In another part of their site, though, they mention that they're planning to focus on KDE4 going forward, and though they want to support KDE3 going forward, they're looking for someone else take that on. So I wasn't sure if this is something that was likely to happen. I think I'll get in touch with them about this, though, and see if maybe we can join forces. Thanks again, DR
On Wed 2008-07-30 17:18, Daenyth Blank wrote:
The KDEmod repo is a possibility. A couple of things give me pause about using it though: 1) it's not really "stock" KDE packages; they're split into modules; they're heavily patched; etc., and
Just to clarify, KDEmod uses only 2 patches: - The background of the splash screen, it says "KDEmod 4.1" rather than "KDE 4.1" - There is a KDEmod label in the KDE about dialogs
I think David was talking about KDEmod3, which *is* heavily patched. -- Alessio (molok) Bolognino Please send personal email to themolok@gmail.com
On Thursday 31 July 2008 01:40:20 David Rosenstrauch wrote:
Nigel Henry wrote:
I suppose sooner or later I'll find some distro or other has KDE4 as default, and will have to go with it, but having seen many problems on the Fedora list, admittadly with kde-4.0, with promises that things would be better with kde-4.1, and of course Don't Panic is upgrading to kde-4.1.0-1, so perhaps I'm worrying about nothing.
I only gave KDE4 a cursory glance, but I have to say, so far I'm not that enamored with it, for the exact reasons you mention - i.e., "totally screw up your desktop that is currently working fine" - and without gaining much in return, near as I can tell. So I'm looking for a long term solution to stay on KDE3.
I have upgraded and I would say it is better than kde 3 anyday. Maybe I should blog about it but I don't blog so here goes the short(?:)) account on my presarion laptop with nvidia 7000M video, nvidia binary driver. - main programs( at least for me), kontact, kopete, konqueror work just fine. There are couple of crashes in kontact on startup while importing kde3 settings but after that it works all fine. I haven't imported contacts/evets etc yet. Just mail. - suspend/hibernate does not work. There is a drop-down in lougout dialog but it does nothing. Invoking pm-suspend manually does not guarantee that machine will wake up nicely. In fact it did only once for me. http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=155261 claims that it works but it does not. Iam going to file a bug. So I am back to shutdown/reboot for my laptop. - the panel is resizeble and configurable. Check http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080729-kde-4-1-delivers-a-next-gen- desktop-linux-experience.html - it is possible to switch to classic menu style. Just right click on the big K and choose switch. - activities are nice but are not shown by default. Click on desktop cashew in top right corner, choose zoom out. It shrinks. Again click on that and you can add activity. - sound is extremely good. I have a collection of mp3 with widely varying default volumes. I had to constantly fiddle with volume to get sane output. No more. It just works sanely. I listened to some of the songs for the first time. :) - Display is crisp and nice, better than kde 3.5. Font rendering is better too. - do a system upgrade once a week or so. Arch is updating kde packages daily. There are 50+MB download per day for last 3-4 days. Not all updates are necessary. - kdeplasma-addon are not installed as a part of sysupgrade IIRC. So make sure you install it. - ok/cancel button order is switched. I couldn't find any way to turn it off. - open file dialog has strange gtk like bar showing each dir. in the path. Click on it to get back the editable directory widget. Also in config, enable bookmarks for shortcut folder that used to be on the left side of dialog for quick access. There are some changes to the default but no functionality is lost. - effects aren't working for me but that not a high priority. - no applet/program to monitor current cpu load and memory status. soarly missed. :( - everything is wide and spaced but it does not take any more space than kde 3.5. So it is good. - Personally I have switched desktop theme to aya(right click on desktop-> desktop settings), widget style to cleanlooks, and window decoration to plastic, to get a near kde 3.5 looks. I didn't like the black defaults at all but thats personal. - the bundled wallpapers are gorgeous. So much that I cried in joy. Change it and Enjoy it. The preview is good too. SVG all the way. - control centre and menu layout is changed. There is no option but to live with it but its not bad. Just different. Take some time and it will be good. I am sure I am missing few things but this is good for starters :) Overall it is good but there is lot of discovery to be done. I have done it on my only work machine so it was a bit of risk and I thought I made a mistake for a day or so. But some googling(actually a lot) brought me at least where I was plus some more. I would say go for it but stay with it for a 3-4 days at least. -- Shridhar
participants (6)
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Alessio Bolognino
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Daenyth Blank
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David Rosenstrauch
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Nigel Henry
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richard terry
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Shridhar Daithankar