I'm running KDE 4.8.4 under Deb Wheezy and the most frequent and visible KDE issue I have is that items (active/open programs) frequently tend to overlap in the panel.

Has this already been fixed in 4.9?

Thanks!

has this always been an issue?
does a new/diff user have this problem?
does changing the theme alleviate it?
is there something unusual here like a large number of apps running or a small sized panel?

up'ing to 4.9 would not be a bad thing

Yes, this has been an issue for as long as I've been running Wheezy (say, 6 months+)

I have multiple installs of Wheezy - a couple 32bit and a few 64bit - all have this issue. so I don't think its just specific to a user on one of my installations. One machine has Intel GFX, a couple Nvidia, another ATI so I don't think its a driver issue.

I'm using the default (oxygen?) theme

I'm not one for having loads of apps and windows open - I never have more than 4 virtual desktops or 6 apps open, tops.

I only ever have 1 panel, covering the full width of the bottom of the screen.

It doesn't happen all the time but pretty frequently and I'm not sure what causes it. When it does happen there is normally a gap the width of 1 app on the left hand side of the taskbar area when the overlapping occurs.

I have learned not to bother upgrading Qt, GTK, KDE or GNOME under Debian. For me to upgrade to KDE 4.9 I would have to upgrade to using Debian sid or another distro as all hell usually breaks loose under apt when you upgrade one of these key components to the OS I find.

I'll try switching theme to see if that fixes it. Is one theme known to be more stable than the others?

Actually, it seems Debian sid is still on 4.8.4 too so I'd be looking at switching distro if this really started to annoy me but to me the advantages of sticking with Debian outweigh switching to <other distro> - I've tried all the other main distros overthe last 16 years but Debian is the only one thats gained my trust. All distros have flaws of course, just I think Deb has less.

Purely my opinion - I don't want to start another distro war!

seems to be a known bug and not just Debian, see https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=293687 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=832753 http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get- ... nager.html

does opening or closing an app fix it?

OK - thanks google01103. Looks like its not fixed in 4.9 and no-one has yet pinned down its cause from reading the KDE.org bug report comments :/

I've experienced this issue before - best solution is to have an application (like Juk for instance) which will appear when the tray icon is clicked - and will close again when clicked. This usually resets the Task Manager and allows it to work properly again.

These bugs are often due to bugs in Qt itself. Since the Graphics View framework from Qt is being deprecated, there's no chance of seeing them fixed. On the plus side, some people are working on a replacement of the task manager using QtQuick, which will solve these issues, hopefully.