Hello there people,

I've recently taken the plunge and upgraded from Mandriva 2008.1 to 2009.1, in the process having KDE 4.2 foisted upon me. After some use, I thought I'd try and point out some (perhaps trivial to others) things that are really bugging me. Some are personal gripes, some are perhaps quirks people haven't experienced in their setups. I'm really trying to stay positive so I'm hoping that what follows may be useful.

The Panel
I configured the panel in 3.5 to take up an absolute (95%) amount the screen. This worked well with my working habits; I use my laptop either as-is or connected to an external wide display. In 3.5, the taskbar would automagically resize itself as krandr detected the external screen. In 4.2 I am obliged to resize my panel every time I start a new session (because it starts at laptop resolution then eventually figures out I'm using an external display when krandr starts). It is becoming quite boring to do this now. Perhaps I have missed a way of configuring this permanently?

KTimeTracker
karm used to be able to export a task history in a useful calendar-style format which I used for raising invoices for my clients, with totals and an easy-to-scan task history. This new improved version doesn't, and it was the most useful feature for me. (I'm using karm KDE 3.5 and have removed the newer version).

General oddness
I'm noticing some strangeness when using dialogues (either with compositing on or off):


Sometimes this happens when I hit alt-f2 to start a task. Generally things tidy up when krunner redraws (when it's found something, for example) but it's quite odd.


This also happens, randomly. It can be less-than-helpful when it occurs somewhere you might need to be able to see what you're typing, like KTorrent or KMail.


The same might happen with a different-coloured background, depending on randomness. This makes it easier to type, at least.

This happens external display or not.

Speed
I know my laptop (Novatech Revo 440 Pro Intel Celeron 440 1.6GHz - I think- with 2G memory and Intel 950 chipset) is not the highest spec in the world and the easy (but hateful) solution would be to buy a new one, but 4.2.2 seems much slower than 3.5, even with compositing switched off. This might be subjective so I won't reiterate it too much because people must be bored of hearing it. I don't know how to quantify it properly, really; certainly I'd say that 3.5 applications running in 4.2 appear to redraw faster than their 'native' counterparts, but I might be lying.

I'll try again perhaps with the next Mandriva release (it may be that there are things that have been addressed since KDE 4 was packaged) but productivity-wise 3.5 is still winning hands-down for me (in my day-to-day computing environment. YMMV).

Can I add more as I think of it or will I get grumped at?

Thanks for an honest post. We don't generally like flamebait, but at least you've gone and had a decent look at it.

1. Unfortunately, plasma panels don't support spanning across two screens (don't ask me the technicals), but what you COULD do is to create a second panel on the second screen: this panel is removed if the screen is removed and returns when you want to use a multi-screen set-up.

2. This should be reported as a wishlist item at http://bugs.kde.org.

3. These tend to be either driver bugs or Qt bugs, but if you upgrade to the latest Qt version (4.5.2) this oddness might go away. Also try using/upgrading your graphics card driver and check if you're using proprietary drivers. If it carries on, file a bug at http://bugs.kde.org.

4. There are vast speed improvements when using the latest versions of Qt, as well as in KDE 4.3. If you haven't already, try upgrading to these. If performance is still a problem, try switching off Nepomuk and Akonadi (In System Settings --> Advanced tab). If the problem still persists, use CTRL + Esc to check which processes are using the most CPU/Memory. If you don't use Konqueror much, you might appreciate some extra memory by opening Konqueror, going to Settings --> Configure Konqueror --> Performance and disabling preloaded instances (just change the number of preloaded instances to 0).

Thanks for the response!

Madman wrote:Thanks for an honest post. We don't generally like flamebait, but at least you've gone and had a decent look at it.

I know I'm going to have bite the bullet and switch at some point. So it occurred to me it might be useful to tell people why the bullet still doesn't have teeth marks in it.

Madman wrote:1. Unfortunately, plasma panels don't support spanning across two screens (don't ask me the technicals), but what you COULD do is to create a second panel on the second screen: this panel is removed if the screen is removed and returns when you want to use a multi-screen set-up.

That's not exactly what I'm doing. I generally tend either to use the internal display (on the train) or an external display (at home). I don't tend to mix the two - the laptop normally sits out of sight with the lid closed - so the panel stays on my main display whichever it is.

When KDE starts, the desktop appears in the top left-hand corner of the screen until krandr starts and resizes the entire desktop to fit my external screen correctly, apart from the panel which stays at the size it was before krandr started; about half the width of the screen.

In 3.5 this worked automagically because one could tell the panel to use a percentage of screen width, no matter where it was. Is this clearer?

Madman wrote:2. This should be reported as a wishlist item at http://bugs.kde.org.

Is it possible to add a generic "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" wishlist item or is that being too flippant?

I understand that progress/evolution is important but if it's at the expense of someone else's productivity, this can't be a good thing. Admittedly, I have found the (temporary) solution, but you get the gist.

Madman wrote:3. These tend to be either driver bugs or Qt bugs, but if you upgrade to the latest Qt version (4.5.2) this oddness might go away. Also try using/upgrading your graphics card driver and check if you're using proprietary drivers. If it carries on, file a bug at http://bugs.kde.org.

I'm using the Intel driver as supplied with the default install of 2009.1 (x11-driver-video-intel 2.7.1). Perhaps things will improve with the next release (I don't like installing it if I can't get it out of rpmdrake because I know I'll break something...)

I'll try using the Xorg-supplied driver rather than the Intel one to see whether that solves the problem. I hadn't thought of that until you suggested it.

Madman wrote:4. There are vast speed improvements when using the latest versions of Qt, as well as in KDE 4.3. If you haven't already, try upgrading to these.

I did an update yesterday which spent forever downloading and updating the kernel and perhaps some other bits (I'm very bad and don't look too closely at what it's doing). I've noticed a slight speed increase since and read people's (better) experiences with 4.3 so will have a look and see if it's in any sources. (See not liking to break things above).

jamesc wrote:Is it possible to add a generic "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" wishlist item or is that being too flippant?

I understand that progress/evolution is important but if it's at the expense of someone else's productivity, this can't be a good thing. Admittedly, I have found the (temporary) solution, but you get the gist.

You have to remember that KDE 4 has had many complete re-writes in many of its applications since 3.5. I would hardly even call them the same desktop. That's why many features present in KDE 3 are not in KDE 4, but there are also many features in KDE 4 that aren't present in KDE 3 (as I have no doubt you've noticed).

jamesc wrote:That's not exactly what I'm doing. I generally tend either to use the internal display (on the train) or an external display (at home). I don't tend to mix the two - the laptop normally sits out of sight with the lid closed - so the panel stays on my main display whichever it is.

When KDE starts, the desktop appears in the top left-hand corner of the screen until krandr starts and resizes the entire desktop to fit my external screen correctly, apart from the panel which stays at the size it was before krandr started; about half the width of the screen.

In 3.5 this worked automagically because one could tell the panel to use a percentage of screen width, no matter where it was. Is this clearer?

This is a known problem with plasma, I already submitted a bugs.kde.org wishlist item and a brainstorm idea about this. The same problem occurs for widgets on the desktop. I am not sure whether a fix is planned or not.

TheBlackCat wrote:This is a known problem with plasma, I already submitted a bugs.kde.org wishlist item and a brainstorm idea about this. The same problem occurs for widgets on the desktop. I am not sure whether a fix is planned or not.

Hope so -- it seems a pretty fundamental usability issue; I can't believe I'm the only person working with this setup. A Heath Robinson solution appears to be to use Kicker instead of a plasma panel.

I've added a few bug reports for the things I've been experiencing, but the speed issue seems to have cleared up slightly with an upgrade to some of the QT libraries (from Mandriva update). I'm forcing myself to use 4.2.4 more and more, albeit with some KDE 3.5.10 applications for 'comfort.' One of my month-old bug reports still appears to be 'unconfirmed', though, which is mildly disheartening.

Still - we should get 4.3 with Mandriva 2010.0 so things can only get better.

Note that if the bug assignee for your report is something like unassigned or null @kde.org then it is likely that the application is unmaintained. In other cases the application simply has many bug reports ( such as Konqueror ) so they only ocassionally get looked at.

There are packages of kde4.3.1+qt updates (though I think qt is updated in the main update repos also) made by Helio Castro, mandriva's official kde maintainer on the kde servers. Many people run it without any trouble, for me it runs better than 4.2.4, though still not at 3.x speeds

http://www.kde.org/download/

mandriva italia backports (non official) makes backported drivers for intel, many people report success with those too on the mandriva forum

http://mib.pianetalinux.org/

I would like to add my opinion here.

It would be very interesting to make some sort of "open source decision taking" project, even post-factum, and reveal the reasons why KDE4 was designed the way it is, and why KDE3 support has dropped to such a low level.

I will tell why I ask, and why I feel somewhat bitter about this:

KDE3 has made a lot of progress, both in usability and performance, from the day it launched. As the linux community developed, there were also many people who relied on it. Though it is not perfect (I for one thing do not really like the way KDE handles processes - if you see a window that doesn't mean you will be able to isolate a process responsible for that window and upon need kill or restart it).

Now starting KDE4 as SO different a windowmanager, guys you might as well call it NewDE or any other name you wish. As you say a huge amount of code was rewriteen, may I ask - WHY ? Did you suddenly find a conceptual error in KDE3 ? Why didn't we (the users) know about it ? I may understand that you as developers need some inspiration, and hence starting a very-very new project is indeed an exciting thing. But please don't forget (even though many of you develop KDE as a hobby in your spare time) that people somehow rely on your product. For the moment I can only conclude that KDE4 is designed to "look nice", and being "usable" has been reduced in importance. All these widgets, plasmas and dashboards - I guess there are many people which will say "wow! this is cool!" and then switch back to something that does the job.

In that light, I call the users and developers to start up a new monitoring project. There are screenshots on KDE webpage - nice. Why not put for every new KDE4 feature the corresponding KDE3 counterpart and say look, it was bad, we made it better. I bet you're NEVER going to do that, you know why ? because you improved in maybe 10% of what KDE3 was doing. All the rest is either worse (less flexible, restricted, buggy or unstable) or simply new. Alright if it's so new - just give it a new name (I suggest GLDE - a Good-Looking DE), start a new project and be happy. Why stop developing a product where you invested so much work already?

And finally - a software product with that many misfeatures should never have a major version 4.

@dich:
Because of the move to Qt4. There was a lot of changes from Qt3 to Qt4, so KDE applications had to be ported to the new toolkit. A pretty good opportunity to fix old problems and rewrite where necessary. For example, Kicker (the panel) in KDE3 was in such a bad state (code-wise) that it probably would be more troublesome to port it to Qt4 than a completely rewrite.

bcooksley wrote:Note that if the bug assignee for your report is something like unassigned or null @kde.org then it is likely that the application is unmaintained. In other cases the application simply has many bug reports ( such as Konqueror ) so they only ocassionally get looked at.

It's been assigned to a person but nothing seems to have happened since. However, it's possible that this functionality has been improved with KDE 4.3.1 though I have yet to test it.

aapgorilla wrote:There are packages of kde4.3.1+qt updates ... many people run it without any trouble, for me it runs better than 4.2.4, though still not at 3.x speeds

I upgraded today after reading this thread and 4.3.1 is a significant improvement over 4.2.4, to the extent that I can see myself running it now as my day-to-day desktop environment. I consider this to be a good thing. I still haven't taken the jump completely - I'm still running KMail from KDE 3, for example - but it seems much more polished and pleasurable to use. I attribute this mainly to the increase in speed I'm experiencing (which could also have something to do with the updated Intel drivers).

aapgorilla wrote:mandriva italia backports (non official) makes backported drivers for intel, many people report success with those too on the mandriva forum

Marvellous. This has solved the 'strangeness' I was experiencing. Thank you.

dich wrote:I will tell why I ask, and why I feel somewhat bitter about this:

I have to agree with you on this but the thing is, ultimately, that at some point things have to move on for progress to be made. Subjectively, I suspect my opinion that KDE 4.2.4 was a step backwards as far as my day-to-day environment was concerned will ring true with many other people who have tried to make the switch. This is true for those of us who at one point in time decided to make the switch from another operating system to Linux; there will always be a moment of adjustment which is inevitable for progress to be made.

I think the most galling thing for me is that it there was a certain inevitability about the change given that Mandriva (my distro of choice) appear to be making it clear that KDE 4 is the way forward even though the people who actually use it weren't necessarily in agreement, leaving 3.5.x pretty much abandoned. The frustration borne from this had me trying out other desktop environments before realising that 3.5.10 was really where I wanted to be.

I would've liked to see applications being ported 'as is' (that is to say without changes to how people are expected to use them, even if they're re-written) before 'improvements' are made. The problems I experienced with KArm/KTimeTracker are particularly indicative of this even though they are trivial when weighed up against the advantages of a rewrite.

However, my initial impression of 4.3.1 is that I like it very much and it has gone a long way to resolve the displeasure I felt at having been strong-armed in to 4.2.4. Shame Konqueror isn't working (There was an error loading the module Dolphin View.) but I'm confident this'll get fixed and I've managed to make Dolphin behave how I want it to - so now I can get on using my computer as I want to (rather than having developers tell me what's best) until 2010.0 comes out.

My 2¢.

The error loading Dolphin View may be fixed by running "kbuildsycoca4 --noincremental" and ensuring that all KDE packages are up to date.

bcooksley wrote:The error loading Dolphin View may be fixed by running "kbuildsycoca4 --noincremental" and ensuring that all KDE packages are up to date.

Hm. I don't know what this actually means, but it didn't work anyway after a lot of output. However, this version of Dolphin is now behaving as I'd like it to so I can hold off until Mandriva 2010.0