[arch-general] ? regarding latest Dont Panic updates, and KDE4

[Shridhar Daithankar]

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