On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 8:35 PM, James Rayner wrote:

On Sat, Aug 9, 2008 at 8:20 AM, Nigel Henry wrote:

...

Some days ago I ran the updates for my Don't Panic install, which said that KDE 3.5.9 was being upgraded to KDE4. I let this go ahead having asked on the list if there were likely to be any problems with KDE4.

I also have recently installed Fedora 9 which comes with KDE4 as default, so this is not a pop at Archlinux, but more with KDE4, which I'm finding is virtually unuseable. I'm posting this from Fedora Core 2, which has KDE 3.2.2-14.FC2.2.legacy Red Hat, and apart from the odd konqueror crash when accessing certain web sites, there are no problems. KDE4 is a whole different ball game.

I hear a lot of this, but never any specifics.

And a search for KDE or even KDE4 on the bug tracker doesn't bring many bugs up. Not ideal search terms given the amount of apps, but you'd expect more than 10 results for something "virtually unusable"

So maybe it'd be a good idea to file bugs about this "virtually unusable" DE.

Or pull the old PKGBUILDs from SVN and create your own repo housing the old KDE packages.

On Samstag, 9. August 2008 03:35 James Rayner wrote:

So maybe it'd be a good idea to file bugs about this "virtually unusable" DE.

I can speak only for me and the whole problems be kde4 at itself why i still use kdemod3. So if you want bug reports about problems from changes or problems of the mainstream than you have to say it but i don't think that the arch bug tracker is the right place for this.-) Or to say it other words: The packages be so good as possible and there is nothing what can be done more or better. But for me kde user and fan of the kicker the actual panel is more a joke than something what i want to use. See you, Attila

On Sun, 10 Aug 2008 02:52:30 pm Shridhar Daithankar wrote:

On Saturday 09 August 2008 20:38:27 Attila wrote:

...

Or to say it other words: The packages be so good as possible and there is nothing what can be done more or better. But for me kde user and fan of the kicker the actual panel is more a joke than something what i want to use.

Could you please elaborate? I am curious to know what is so wrong.

Except for an applet for system activity monitor, I don't miss anything on panel. Although it took over couple of days to get back back to where I was with KDE3.5.9.

I've found a number of little annoying things, like icons you've put on to the menu bars, don't seem to 'stick' once the system is re-started. Richard

On Montag, 11. August 2008 02:38 w9ya@qrparci.net wrote:

Yes I am well aware that things may improve to make kde4 not only better but eventually perhaps even a better environment. But it is hardly that now. i.e. Pick just about any of the pieces and try something you use to do. Like printer management, window-shading, auto-updating in the default file-manager (now dolphin,), proper power-system management... NONE of that is working, let alone correctly. Restarting dolphin to see the file changes is just plain sad. And these are just a few of the MANY examples available.

Thanks for the warning about printer management because if this doesn't work i will get killed by my girlfriend.-) I hope in 4.2 there will be a way to config konqueror instead of dolphin as the favorite file manager. See you, Attila

On Montag, 11. August 2008 20:41 Shridhar Daithankar wrote:

See if this helps. Try the tip for setting konqueror as default application in inode/directory entry.

Thanks for this and the other hints. I will try them the next time as i boot my test partition.

This does not remove dolphin but at least makes konqueror available for file management in the menu

No problem, i don't want to remove dolphin, i only don't want to use it.-) There is an applet which offers to run the different profiles of the konqueror and with it i can run "konqueror --profile filemanagement" too. But this is not the same as you suggest. See you, Attila

On Monday 11 August 2008 03:27:56 richard terry wrote:

On Sun, 10 Aug 2008 02:52:30 pm Shridhar Daithankar wrote:

...

Except for an applet for system activity monitor, I don't miss anything on panel. Although it took over couple of days to get back back to where I was with KDE3.5.9.

I've found a number of little annoying things, like icons you've put on to the menu bars, don't seem to 'stick' once the system is re-started.

Yes, lots of small things are broken. Power management is definitely a big one. I had posted a long account of my KDE4 experiences to this list sometimes back. I have filed bugs in KDE bugzilla, 167809,167811, 168482 etc. I also have a list of bugs to be filed, not to mention adding votes. I hope kde4.1.1 is out soon, patching lots of these small bugs. -- Shridhar

Shridhar Daithankar wrote:

On Saturday 09 August 2008 20:38:27 Attila wrote:

...

Or to say it other words: The packages be so good as possible and there is nothing what can be done more or better. But for me kde user and fan of the kicker the actual panel is more a joke than something what i want to use.

Could you please elaborate? I am curious to know what is so wrong.

I'll bite. * *All* my kde3 settings are gone and I'd need to manually port them over to KDE4. * The KDE3 color schemes are gone. I'd need to manually port my colors over to KDE4. * The widget style I like to use is gone. The ones provided are not very similar. * The window decorations I like to use are gone. The ones provided are not very similar. * Kpersonalizer is gone. I liked this util very much, as it allowed me in one fell swoop to set all my shortcut keys to emulate Windows. Without it I need to manually set all my shortcut keys. And that's just what I was able to come up with in a 1-hour test drive. Bottom line: I was faced with the prospect of many hours of tweaking just to get my desktop back to the way I like it. And there didn't seem to be any compelling benefits to KDE4 to offset this aggravation set. I'm more than open to hearing counter-arguments as to why someone thinks it's worth the switch. DR

Attila wrote:

On Montag, 11. August 2008 18:07 David Rosenstrauch wrote:

...

I'm more than open to hearing counter-arguments as to why someone thinks it's worth the switch

I'm frustated as you but i must say that there was no way for the arch devs to make it right for everyone. Imagine that there is no kde4 in the repos and than you will read a lot of "i want kde4" wishes instead of "i want my kde3 back".

I have no qualms with what the devs did. KDE4 is out, and so the Arch devs have to upgrade to it. (And in fact, IMO, they even were pretty cautious about the upgrade, waiting several months until 4.1 was released before upgrading.) Arch is a distro that uses "bleeding edge" software, and we all know that going in. And if somebody wants to use old packages, the onus is on them to make it happen. My qualms are with the KDE4 software itself. I'm not saying it's bad. (In fact, I'll admit that I've barely even tried any of the new functionality.) It's just that it's a very big a change to a lot of important desktop functionality that I rely on, and would be too disruptive for me to switch over right now. I probably could get used to it over time, though, which is why I'd like to be able to install KDE 3 and 4 simultaneously, and so be able to switch into KDE4 and kick the tires every now and then, without having to completely wipe KDE3 off my system. The state I'm in now (keeping KDE3 via a number of IgnorePkg directives in my pacman.conf) is not sustainable long-term, so I'm going to have to get a bit more proactive soon and come up with some solution. DR

Attila wrote:

Is there a reason why you don't use kdemod3?

I probably will wind up using it. (Since the alternative seems to be creating and maintaining my own KDE3 repo.) I've been reluctant to use it so though, since I don't really agree with their approach: * They build break KDE into small, modular packages, instead of just using the packaging supplied by upstream KDE. I use most of the apps that KDE supplies, and so don't care about the modularity. * They patch the upstream KDE packages in a number of ways. I strongly prefer to use packages that are as unpatched and plain vanilla from upstream as possible. DR

Attila wrote:

On Montag, 11. August 2008 20:38 David Rosenstrauch wrote:

I have had the same feeling as you and take first a look at it in my arch64 test partition. If you have such a possibility too or a virtual machine with archlinux than give it a try.

...

* They build break KDE into small, modular packages, instead of just using the packaging supplied by upstream KDE. I use most of the apps that KDE supplies, and so don't care about the modularity.

In the first moment as i only read this on their homepage i think the same as you but now i must admit that i enjoy removing some of this little apps which i never use.-)

...

* They patch the upstream KDE packages in a number of ways. I strongly prefer to use packages that are as unpatched and plain vanilla from upstream as possible.

The patches been well documented and you can browse through their svn repository. I can understand you again and the only thing what i can say is that i don't have the feeling that they have useless patches.

Still again this be only my minds and no commands.-)

See you, Attila

I took the plunge and switched over my 3 arch boxes to kdemod3 yesterday. Seems pretty solid, and as I chose to install the kdemod3-vanilla option, it's probably about as close to stock kde3 as I'm going to get. There's still one or two little customization tweaks that they've added that I'm not too fond of, but they're pretty minor, and I'll probably be able to find a workaround. Definitely major kudos to the kdemod guys for all the hard work on making this available to everyone. DR

Nigel Henry wrote:

Any help on getting access to kscd would be welcome, as it's nice to be able to play some tunes.

Try pacman -S kdemod3-vanilla. That's pretty much the equivalent of the stock KDE packages, albeit, in modular form, and with a few tweaks. (And, yes, kscd and the rest of the kde apps you know and love are included.) Shouldn't be too onerous a download now that you've already got the base installed. (And obviously somewhat smaller than kdemod3-complete too.) DR

On Wednesday 13 August 2008 00:07, David Rosenstrauch wrote:

Nigel Henry wrote:

...

Any help on getting access to kscd would be welcome, as it's nice to be able to play some tunes.

Try pacman -S kdemod3-vanilla. That's pretty much the equivalent of the stock KDE packages, albeit, in modular form, and with a few tweaks. (And, yes, kscd and the rest of the kde apps you know and love are included.)

Shouldn't be too onerous a download now that you've already got the base installed. (And obviously somewhat smaller than kdemod3-complete too.)

DR

Thanks for the advice David. That's downloading now. Nigel.

It's still there, and now wih tabs (uefull whn connecting to everal server at once) # pacman -Qo /usr/bin/krdc /usr/bin/krdc is owned by kdenetwork 4.1.0-2 On 13 août 08, at 11:30, RedShift wrote:

While we're on this topic, anyone know where krdc has gone?

Glenn

While I'm answering in this thread. I try something when upgrading: cp -r ~/.kde ~/.kde4 Then kde4 start right, I kept a lot of my settings, and since then, it running nicely, no problem. I juts recompiled the xine-lib with pulseaudio support to get sound working, but kdepim is there, kate is there, konsole is thre. I lost my panels organisation, but, indeed, it(s not so much a nightmare like everyone in this thread seems to think. -- slubman site: http://www.slubman.info/

Nigel Henry wrote:

On Wednesday 13 August 2008 00:07, David Rosenstrauch wrote:

...

Nigel Henry wrote:

...

Any help on getting access to kscd would be welcome, as it's nice to be able to play some tunes. Try pacman -S kdemod3-vanilla. That's pretty much the equivalent of the stock KDE packages, albeit, in modular form, and with a few tweaks. (And, yes, kscd and the rest of the kde apps you know and love are included.)

Shouldn't be too onerous a download now that you've already got the base installed. (And obviously somewhat smaller than kdemod3-complete too.)

DR

Hi David. Many thanks for suggesting the vanilla version of kdemod3. Things are now back to where they were before the upgrade to KDE4.1.

Anyway, I've done, with some help, what I set out to do, and got KDE3 back on my Archlinux install.

Thanks to all on the list.

Nigel.

Glad to hear it, Nigel, and happy to help. DR

Arvid Ephraim Picciani wrote:

just my two cents: complain at the upstream. It's their fault. kde declared 4.1 production ready. archlinux just provides binary packages for the latest stable upstream package. If you don't like that, archlinux is the wrong distro.

Exactly as I said earlier in the thread: "I have no qualms with what the devs did. KDE4 is out, and so the Arch devs have to upgrade to it. (And in fact, IMO, they even were pretty cautious about the upgrade, waiting several months until 4.1 was released before upgrading.) Arch is a distro that uses "bleeding edge" software, and we all know that going in. And if somebody wants to use old packages, the onus is on them to make it happen."

Yes kde4 IS EPIC FAIL. but thats really not archlinux' fault. I installed gnome.

I'm reserving judgment on it till I've had a chance to really use it in a major way. It might turn out to be great for me in the long run. But I'm a bit busy right now, and it's just too much of a change to my environment for me to take on right now. So, dunno - "epic fail" seems a bit premature for me right now. DR

On Mittwoch, 13. August 2008 00:25 Arvid Ephraim Picciani wrote:

I'm following kde development since 5 years, and read about 1/4 of kde base code. I'm sure it's going to work for the majority of users around 4.3.

Not with 4.2 ... not nice to hear.

Not for me. But i'm weird ;)

What be your reasons why it will not works for you? I ask because i give me time until 4.2 to decide where i want to go. See you, Attila

On Monday 11 August 2008 19:09, David Rosenstrauch wrote:

Attila wrote:

...

On Montag, 11. August 2008 18:07 David Rosenstrauch wrote:

...

I'm more than open to hearing counter-arguments as to why someone thinks it's worth the switch

I'm frustated as you but i must say that there was no way for the arch devs to make it right for everyone. Imagine that there is no kde4 in the repos and than you will read a lot of "i want kde4" wishes instead of "i want my kde3 back".

I have no qualms with what the devs did. KDE4 is out, and so the Arch devs have to upgrade to it. (And in fact, IMO, they even were pretty cautious about the upgrade, waiting several months until 4.1 was released before upgrading.) Arch is a distro that uses "bleeding edge" software, and we all know that going in. And if somebody wants to use old packages, the onus is on them to make it happen.

My qualms are with the KDE4 software itself. I'm not saying it's bad. (In fact, I'll admit that I've barely even tried any of the new functionality.) It's just that it's a very big a change to a lot of important desktop functionality that I rely on, and would be too disruptive for me to switch over right now.

I probably could get used to it over time, though, which is why I'd like to be able to install KDE 3 and 4 simultaneously, and so be able to switch into KDE4 and kick the tires every now and then, without having to completely wipe KDE3 off my system.

The state I'm in now (keeping KDE3 via a number of IgnorePkg directives in my pacman.conf) is not sustainable long-term, so I'm going to have to get a bit more proactive soon and come up with some solution.

DR

I initiated this thread. I had been downloading Fedora 9 (6cd's on dialup) which has KDE4 as default), finished the downloads and burned the cd's, but chose to update other distros before installing Fedora 9. Bad move me thinks. Archlinux was going to upgrade to KDE4, and on asking a ? on the list there were mixed opinions. Anyway, I let the upgrade go ahead. Another bad move. leaving aside Fedora, which more or less appears to be a test ground, where Redhat can get feedback, which will help in their next release of Redhat, I believe that it may have been better if Archlinux had gone the way of Kubuntu/Ubuntu's Hardy Heron 8.04 release. Here KDE 3.5.9 is the default, but with the option of using KDE4. I have Kubuntu 8.04 installed, and using the default KDE 3.5.9. I don't know how installing KDE4 as the option works, whether it runs side by side with KDE 3.5.9, or replaces KDE 3.5.9. If Archlinux had made the KDE4 packages available as an option, I believe this may have been the best way to go. that way you could have installed another instance of Archlinux on some spare harddrive space, and tried out KDE4, without, as it has turned out for me, finding that you now have a KDE desktop that has gone back into the dark ages. I'm posting from Fedora Core 2, that is using KDE 3.2.2-14.FC2.legacy Red Hat. Apart from the odd Konqueror crash when accessing certain websites, there are no problems, and FC2 is ancient, and no longer supported. At the moment I'm trying to find a way to revert to KDE 3.5.9, without re-installing Archlinux. I've installed Gnome, which goes against the grain, as I don't normally use it, but just want a desktop that I can use after removing all the KDE4 packages, and at the moment is better than KDE4. Next step will be to find the packages to reinstall KDE 3.5.9, and attempt to reinstall them. Someone mentioned getting them from svn, and I have the install disk. Can I somehow get the KDE 3.5.9 packages off the install disk, and install them? I'll start a new thread for this, unless anyone here has any suggestions. This is a whole bundle of fun at the moment, and it's not like I use any of my distros for serious work. I can really understand someone needing to use their OS for their work, upgrading, and finding that the desktop has gone back to start ( "start" reference being to board games). Again I would like to restate, that this is not a knock at Archlinux, but at KDE4, which personally I feel is not ready for release as a replacement for KDE 3.5.9. Nigel, and expecting "Incoming"

On Monday 11 August 2008 22:18:13 Attila wrote:

P.S.: The problem with old settings is nothing new in kde and it seems that the kde devs have no interest to offer a working solution for it. I think everyone of us who use kde for a longer time have deleted more than one time the ~/.kde directory because something goes wrong after an update. And i'm sure that this will happens with kde 5.x too.-)

I agree and disagree. The ~.kde has been amazingly stable for me as far as kde3.x series has gone. My home dir has gone from mandrake 8 to slackware12 over the years and across the distro. Not a problem, not a single setting lost. With KDE4.1, it is ~/.kde4, and as pointed out in another mail by DR, it is incompatible. (Which is ok. The base desktop is not finished, I wouldn't expect a migration utility to up before that). Worse is both ~/.kde and ~/.kde4 are used. I kept ~/.kde for importing stuff as-and-when required and deleted it after few days. Log back in and my kmail config is empty. Just wow.. -- Shridhar

On Sun, Aug 10, 2008 at 1:08 AM, Attila wrote:

On Samstag, 9. August 2008 03:35 James Rayner wrote:

...

So maybe it'd be a good idea to file bugs about this "virtually unusable" DE.

I can speak only for me and the whole problems be kde4 at itself why i still use kdemod3. So if you want bug reports about problems from changes or problems of the mainstream than you have to say it but i don't think that the arch bug tracker is the right place for this.-)

I don't recall specifying what bug tracker. At least Shridhar got the point, filing bugs at the KDE tracker (they have one too!) *shrug* I'm running KDE4.1 now to see what the fuss is about. I used KDE3 pretty extensively last year, so it'll be an interesting comparison. James