Submitted by Ah, it’s that time of the year again. We already had this up on the sidebar, but I figured we’d turn it into a proper front page item – mostly because I want to discuss the move by the Ubuntu team to no longer install GNOME 2 as the ‘classic’ desktop option – which pretty much ends any and all involvement for me with Ubuntu (KDE 4 here I come). There’s more to this than just that, of course, so those of you who do like Unity still have enough reason to upgrade.
Unity has seen improvements – especially the inclusion of a fallback 2D variant is an important addition to the still relatively new desktop shell. Several aspects have been visually refreshed, and the Software Center, too, has been overhauled for its version 5.0 release. It’s got a new interface, which includes, among other things, more ways to bring specific applications to prominence – something application developers selling stuff in the Software Center will surely enjoy.
Sadly, all this comes at a price: GNOME 2.x, which was the fallback classic desktop option in the previous release, has been removed from the default install image. Of course, it’s a simple apt-get install away, but now it’s not just a second class citizen – it’s a third class citizen. GNOME 2 is slowly but surely dying, and with both GNOME 3 and Unity not being to my liking, I’ve decided to make the jump to KDE 4 (any distribution suggestions? Debian-based please!). Xfce was also in the running, but for some reason, it didn’t fit me very well.
As far as email clients go, Evolution has been replaced by Mozilla’s Thunderbird. The GNOME Display Manager, gdm, has been replaced by LightDM, which has also been themed to fit into the Unity look and feel. In yet another brain-dead annoying decision, Synaptic has been removed from the default installation as well. Ubuntu One will be shoved into our faces even more, so that’s another something to look forward to. In the meantime, Canconical maintains that Ubuntu is still something expert users can enjoy.
“Ease of use, stylishness and key tasks such as safe web surfing, document sharing, office productivity and personal clouds for music, files and photos are central to the Ubuntu experience,” Jane Silber, CEO of Canonical, said, “That’s why Ubuntu is now a global phenomenon – not just for system administrators, developers and expert users, but for a growing community of home users that want a simpler, safer way to use the PC.”
You know the drill here – the update manager will perform the upgrade to the new release. For new installations, go grab it from the download page.
Yes, now is easier to install GNOME Shell.
Is that the codename for this release? Oneiric Ocelot?
I’m hoping the next release is called Pete Puma…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKyhTX9LQEA
Jerking Jackal
Masturbating Monkey
Wanking Walrus
Sucking Squirrel
Lascivious Lama
Obscene Ox
Oily Ostrich
Naughty Narwhal
Fapping Fox
Demented Dolphin
Mischievous Mole
Retarded Rat
Farting Frog
Asshole Alligator
Bastard Badger
Bitchy Beaver
Creepy Crane
Crooky Cat
Dubya Donkey
Depressed Duck
Erect Eel
Facebook Finch
Gay Gorilla
Horny Hamster
Idiot Iguana
Jealous Jellyfish
Kewl Koala
Lame Lemur
Looser Llama
Masochistic Meerkat
Newbie Newt
Obese Orca
Pedo Panda
Punk Panther
Raptor Rabbit
Snarky Shark
Sneaking Snake
Tourette Tiger
Whacky Whale
Yankee Yak
Zombie Zebra
Umm, forgot about Cynic Cobra and Hysterical Hyena.
Edited 2011-10-15 19:55 UTC
Your names for Ubuntu…
Man, this was really funny…
ROTFL
I really hope NOT. A “pete” is a blowjob in Argentina
I really hope NOT, too. Nobody wants a puma doing him a blowjob. Well, Stallman may risk it if the blowjb is properly licensed according to GPL v3.0 or later…
From now on, to me, Ubuntu will lie in the past. It was a great ride, until 9.10 (which was the best release for me). I’m deeply sorry such a large community just swallowed what sabdfl wanted. Unity is just not the interface for me, goodbye Ubuntu, and thanks for the last LTS release, at least the work I’ve done to make you popular will last one or two years more.
Edited 2011-10-13 18:39 UTC
I don’t like Unity either.
Posted on Kubuntu 11.10.
Though I like Kubuntu a lot; I really prefer the simplicity and minimalism of Xubuntu
I like my ubuntu-minimal install with vi, lynx, and screen just fine. Slackers.
why did you prefer install ubuntu-minimal instead of… say… debian?
Two releases each year with the latest updates to vi and lynx, of course! You wouldn’t believe the difference between lynx 2.8.8dev.5-1 and 2.8.8dev.9-2; it’s like going from a C-64 to a C-128.
Thom, this is my desktop running Kubuntu 11.10:
http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/609/desktopkde472kubuntu111.jpg
They say a picture can be equivalent to a 1000 words, don’t know how many words a video is worth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AIgyGmHH50
If you like it you like it, if you don’t you don’t. Is KDE perfect ? No, Does it work ? Yes.
Is it Good ? Matter of opinion, personally I love it, but I also happen to like E17 also.
What frankly amazes me is that anyone is still trying to push bloated Linux clients on the desktop when you have this amazing thing that could easily be the future that you COULD and SHOULD be pushing instead.
I am talking about Expressgate/Splashtop which if you haven’t tried it is bloody brilliant. Instead of trying to get rid of Windows? You give the user both but with NONE of the normal hassles of Linux. NO CLI, NO forum dances, NO 6 month upgrade driver borkage, all of that is just…poof!
Instead what you have is this truly insanely fast Internet OS that does the web in 6 seconds from button push to running, and that is even with a HDD and not a SSD, you got web and chat and email and media, and it all “just works”. Oh and it also extends battery life. on my EEE I get 6 hours under Win 7 HP and 8 hours under Expressgate. So if I don’t need Windows apps, but just the web? BAM, there it is, all nice and neat and perfect.
So I don’t get why anyone still cares about these distros that frankly haven’t gained any ground when you have this amazing game changer you could be pushing instead. Instead of killing Windows you just go around it and give the user CHOICE. Windows for when they need Windows app, EG/ST for when they don’t. It just needs the community behind it and writing apps for it.
Instead it will most likely be ignored for the latest Ubuntu Manic Monkey or whatever its called, which will gain zero share and for the masses won’t even be a blip on the radar. Kinda sad really, it would be like somebody went back and gave the community the designs for the iPad before Jobs ever came out with it and they said “Nahhh, we think this CueCat thing is gonna be a smash!”
Unity is the biggest piece of garbage… I tried using it in 11.10 today, but I always end up getting pissed to the point of wanting to turn the computer off. Bugs, Bugs, and more Bugs! KDE 4.0.0 was better during it’s first painful release.
Goodbye Ubuntu, Hello Debian. (or Haiku!
)
Edited 2011-10-13 21:48 UTC
You can install Gnome 3 Shell, it is better. Not buggy.
But it doesn’t fit my needs yet.
Even with existing extensions.
Debian stable is high on my list too
I recommend giving Kubuntu a shot. You’re already familiar with Ubuntu’s peculiarities, and the 11.04 release was quite good. Much better than their previous efforts. There were some nepomuk crashes but they don’t affect functionality. They may be gone in 11.10 anyway.
Since some machines are reported to have trouble with KDE, a couple of notes, if I may.
– Firstly, those reporting trouble are nearly always using the binary blob graphics drivers. Don’t use them, use the open source drivers, exspecially for AMD/ATI cards.
– Kubuntu 11.10 includes a non-default package called “kubuntu-low-fat-settings”. Install this if you are trying to run Kubuntu on older hardware.
– The latest KDE SC is 4.7.2, which included some worthwhile performance improvements for kwin.
http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2011/08/rendering-at-60-frame…
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTg1Mw
– On very low-end hardware it may be possible to get a further significant boost in performance by running KDE with OpenGL ES 2.0
http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2011/07/running-kwin-with-ope…
Distribution suggestions:
– The most popular two KDE4 distributions are OpenSuSe and Kubuntu. Only the latter is Debian based, and a new version (11.10) has obviously just been released which provides KDE SC 4.7.2.
– For a very stable but staid KDE4 distribution based on Debian, MEPIS fits the bill.
– PCLinuxOS is a nice rolling-release KDE4 distribution, but there is a longish testing period before new versions are released. This distribution was originally a fork of Mandrake, so it uses RPM packages, but it has a quirk in that it also uses apt and synaptic as the package manager. Go figure.
– Another Debian-based stable but conservative distribution is Kanotix, the “inventors” of the LiveCD concept.
http://kanotix.com/changelang-eng.html
– A more cutting-edge distribution based on Debian Sid is aptosid. Debian Hot & Spicy! Life on the wild side.
http://aptosid.com/
– Chakra is an interesting newer distribution based on Arch which is slowly climbing up the popularity stakes. Be warned that package management uses pacman, which does not support package signing.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=chakra
– Mandriva is still around, and still a very solid but largely ignored distribution. It is not Debian-based.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mandriva
– Almost the same comments apply to the venerable Slackware
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=slackware
Lots of choice. Right now I’d have a good look at Kubuntu 11.10 myself. The previous version, 11.04, I found to be quite solid and reliable.
I’m getting ready to dive into Chakra, which seems highly recommended as a showcase for the latest and greatest in KDE4 (using an update model they call “semi-rolling release”).
But as parent mentioned, not Debian-based, a child of Arch instead.
Yes, but then I can just delete my Humble Indie Bundles, as almost all of games from them are painfully slow with open source drivers…
Yes, I have to agree here. The open source drivers are not up to standard yet for 3D gaming.
I personally don’t use a personal computer for 3D gaming.
I have to say that I am a big fan of GNOME 2.x and I think that it’s the best environment I have ever worked in. The problem, as I see it, it that GNOME transitioned to a very new and very different system with no migration path whatsoever.
All the GNU/Linux distributions that ship GNOME will have to transition to 3.x eventually due to, for example, security issues, even though it is an incomplete environment when compared to version 2.x.
Ubuntu is not at fault here. Although I dislike Unity, I understand their reasons.
Unfortunately, I’m not comfortable working with Unity, GNOME 3.x, Xfce or KDE and I must have GNOME 2.x for a while. Having said that, I’ve just uninstalled Ubuntu from all of my computers. More room for Gentoo and Debian.
Edited 2011-10-13 22:04 UTC
GNOME 2.x wasn’t “that great”, but it did do the job very well.
GNOME 3.x would be absolutely perfect if it was not for the GNOME Shell.
Hopefully, with enough pressure, the GNOME developers will start to listen and re-work GNOME 3.x so it does not center around GNOME shell.
GNOME 3.x is a really great foundation for a kick-ass desktop. I just hope the potential isn’t lost.
All your points are right.
But I believe there are many people out there liking GNOME Shell, otherwise Fedora was on a lightning bolt decline.
I’m one of the people liking Gnome-Shell, or rather where it shows potential to be once it matures. People forget how long it took Gnome 2.x to come up to speed.
I can see where people wouldn’t be fond of the new metaphor though. luckily for all of us there’s a wide range of choice when it comes to desktops.
When Gnome 2 came out I disliked it so much (slow on old hardware, especially Nautilus then the worlds slowest file manager)that I switched to Xfce 3 for a couple of years until I returned to GNOME.
I am off to Xfce once I have to upgrade after Lucid LTS is no longer supported next year.
The Cairo GLX dock is very good. It works well in standalone Compiz it also integrates nicely with Xfce just as it does with Gnome 2.
I might go for Xubuntu or maybe Debian. Maybe I will give Mint a spin.
Parsix 3.7r1 was released recently with GNOME 2.32. Installable live CD, Debian-based. And doesn’t Linux Mint still use GNOME 2? Yeah, it’s customized, but it’s GNOME 2; my biggest annoyance with it is that when searching Google, Firefox returns the results through annoyingly busy Mint-branded pages served by Google. Bleh.
Also, when pretty much every distro has switched to KDE4, every once in a while someone would release a special “KDE3” edition. I won’t be surprised if this happens with GNOME 2 once all of the major distributions have switched to GNOME 3.
I’m actually somewhat surprised at the Unity hate here.
I TOTALLY get the Gnome 3 hate, and Unity circa 11.04 hate… but this new one is everything the first one should have been. Nary a crash or memory leak in nearly a week’s worth of continual use, and all the functional things I didn’t like have been addressed.
I wonder if its just the whole “but I can’t put launcher on the *bottom*!” thing, or what. I think it is quite good, now my favorite (over Win7, OSX, and any other Linux desktop).
It’s just the lack of customizability. Almost everything is hard coded. That’s not nice. That’s hardly the Linux spirit.
I understand it might evolve eventually. Then will be a good time to get it. In the meantime, however, Ubuntu should have provided support for the Gnome 2 series for at least two more releases. Canonical is alienating its user base. That’s hard to understand IMO.
There’s no hate about Unity or GNOME Shell here. It’s just that they are silly interfaces for the majority of people that used computers in the past, such as Windows XP (what, haven’t you ever used XP?). I’m actually thinking of Windows 7 as a viable desktop now, since I’m not fond of GNOME Shell, XFCE (lack of polishment), KDE 4 (heavier, too overwhelming UI).
GNOME Shell is fast, light and attractive UI. But since I can’t get the actitivies with a right-mouse click (and I was informed that X wouldn’t let that happen) there is no point using it on a 20″ LCD panel going to Activities corner every single second.
Edited 2011-10-13 23:36 UTC
you mention KDE4’s UI is overwhelming: is that the standard UI or the netbook UI (which I’ve heard makes things much simpler/”intuitive”)?
(I haven’t used KDE4 yet but will give it a go soon)
The standard desktop UI.
There’s too much stuff to configure and you can spend a lot of time to make it look like you want. Not to mention the default ugly tiny fonts, which don’t come anti-aliased, and buttons are really small. Etc.
Like what?
Essentially everything if you are not into bells and whistles and other distractions. It basically boils down to switching off most of the stuff. It also helps to install some less shiny and more readable themes.
The whole desktop looks and behaves as if was designed for winning a contest of most obnoxious UI. To its defence, looks like others (G3) have followed this trend.
I have actually managed to make KDE behave and look like a desktop for grown-up users (it take 1-2 hours of fiddling with settings). With this it works OK but is substantially more resource hungry and unstable than G2 or XFCE. Why bother if XFCE is one mouse click away.
You can use Super-Key (Windows icon on most keyboard) to to access activities then type a few word for your desired applications or right one of applications to open a new window. You know that because you have intensively used Gnome-Shell on previous topics.
WorLord pondered…
I guess it really is true, you never get a second chance to make a first impression…
–bornagainpenguin
My usage log for Unity on Ubuntu 11.10 was something like the following:
1. Open a web browser and maximize
2. Browse
3. Go to click the back button
4. Unity bar pops up, I accidentally made Dash appear instead of clicking the back button
5. Click escape, click the back button more carefully, and continue browsing
6. Eventually try clicking “back” again, same thing happens
7. Look for setting to change the way the unity bar pops up — there is none
8. Install gnome 3
Er… yeah, there is. o.O
Granted, one must open CCSM, and that tool is… complicated. But I kind of like all those options.
For my part, I’ve entirely forgotten that Unity prefers to “intellihide” the launcher at all. I hate it when bits of my UI hide themselves, so I have it set to always visible… meaning, I don’t have the problems you describe.
Edited 2011-10-15 20:27 UTC
I don’t quite get how people can move to KDE from Gnome. For me applications are much more important than DE. If I move to Xfce I can stay on Gnome apps. If I move to KDE, I’ll have a hard time using Gnome apps there (they just look and feel afwul). I’m not changing my favourite apps for a DE. So the only natural choice is moving to Xfce.
BTW, I’m not in a hurry either. I can happily live with 11.04 for a while. I have hopes that either Gnome Shell or Unity will become more customizable and it’s just a matter of time someone comes along with a proper interface for power users. Let’s not forget Gnome 2 was almost never used “vanilla” style. Every significant distro (especially Ubuntu) customized and patched it heavily. That’s what will happen to Gnome 3 and its two current shells, Gnome’s and Unity.
KDE4 has great support for GTK applications. The look and feel GTK applications under KDE4 is such that they are indistinguishable from Qt and KDE applications at first glance.
I’ll do a screenshot as proof when I get home if you like, but really, you are very much out of date, this has been fixed on KDE for ages. The only problem these days is that KDE applications look terrible under GNOME …
KDE4 has far, far better support for and integration of GTK applications than GNOME has support for KDE/Qt applications.
As for GNOME applications (as opposed to GTK applications) such as Nautilis and Evolution … just drop them as they bring in a whole heap of GNOME dependencies. Use Dolphin for the File Manager and Kontact or Thunderbird as your email/calendar/PIM application and you will be sweet.
Partially true.
KDE doesn’t have better integration of Gnome/GTK+ apps than Gnome has of KDE/Qt apps. But they are surely difficult to tell apart. Cross desktop integration has improved greatly in the last couple of years. When in Gnome I often mistake Qt4 applications for being GTK+ and GTK+ for being Qt when in KDE (when it was installed).
Visually KDE4 is much nicer looking than Gnome 2.x. If just that silly nepomuk-semantic-desktop-stuff would stop crashing and start being actually useful.
The KDE desktop itself is not a problem. The problem is Dolphin & Co, and the way KDE wants to be integrated tightly towards these K* apps.
KDE itself alone is a blasting desktop. But dude, using Dolphin for 5 minutes can give you a headache. Not to mention other useless K* apps. I mostly use GTK apps which are the preferred and used by millions.
The only K* app I admire is K3B. But Amarok, KSCD, and other King-kong names… I just don’t choose them. Let’s be sincere. Who is the one who uses KOffice here? Two people on earth?
Dolphin is a very good file manager. It can be easily configured
http://dolphin.kde.org/features.html
from a single-pane bare minimum keep-out-of-your way file manager as simplistic as Windows explorer:
http://dolphin.kde.org/images/view_mode_1.png
all the way through to a split-window, tabbed, full-featured, all-the-bling-you want mode:
http://dolphin.kde.org/images/all_features.png
As for the application names, users don’t see them. On the menus, you run Dolphin by clicking on the menu entry labelled “File Manager” which comes under the “Utilities” section.
KOffice is about to be replaced, BTW, with Calligra Office 2.4 for KDE4, which is now in beta:
http://www.calligra-suite.org/
Have a look around, you might be surprised by what this new about-to-be-released Office suite can do. Calligra Office suite, BTW, is split into a core an a series of front-end UIs. Also about to be released is Calligra Active, designed to run on touchscreen tablets under Plasma Active. AFAIK this is the only free Office suite designed to run on tablets.
You don’t need to run KSCD to play CDs, there are many other music player apps which you can use instead. Amarok will happily play CDs. If you don’t like Amarok, run Clementine. If even Clementine is too much for you, run Bangarang.
http://www.clementine-player.org/
http://bangarangkde.wordpress.com/
If you just want a media player rather than a music collection browser, run VLC.
NOTE: many of these apps do not have a “k” in their name.
Edited 2011-10-14 00:26 UTC
It’s not about K in their name. Many of those look inconsistent with Oxygen, which is a so-so theme (buttons too small). (OSX wanna-be?)
I didn’t know about Caligra, but I doubt it represents any threat to replace LibreOffice. By the way, I will never use a touchscreen, since I find it too fatiguing moving fingers.
About Dolphin, actually the fonts in your screenshots look pretty ugly. I consider ugly default fonts a show stopper.
Edited 2011-10-14 00:32 UTC
I agree, XFCE has shown serious improvement these past few years. If and when they decide to move to GTK 3, it will become a serious solution to empty space left behind by GNOME.
sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback
ubuntu classic will be available at log-in
you can use gnome apps in kde just fine
Then it’s a good thing that KDE has them. Rather a lot, as it happens.
… and I’ve been using it for at least the last four years or so. The whole Unity thing has been very poorly handled. They brought it in and basically said “this is how things are gonna be – take it or leave it.”
Sounds like a lot of people are “leaving it” (me included). It was “change for the sake of the developers”, not for the good of users.
The interface of Gnome 2 was fine, and that’s all that mattered to me (and many others).
Time to try Kubuntu or Xubuntu.
You could give ROX Desktop, LXDE or Xfce a spin. I’ve just removed KDE4 from my Gentoo system, falling back on the solid Gnome 2.32 (with Compiz-Fusion obviously). KDE4 is to unfinished for proper daily usage. Sluggish, slightly unstable. It feels like a mix of alpha and beta quality software. And with odd drawing artifacts, not unlike Syllable, SkyOS and AROS.
There is also WindowMaker/GNUStep (possibly with Cairo Composite Manager for the bling – works with OpenBox as well).
No need to lie.
Huh? What are you talking about?
KDE SC 4.6.x or 4.7.x, which comes with the most recent Linux distributions, is perfectly stable and well performed. It is fast, slick and powerful. It is the most advanced desktop software platform available.
What are YOU talking about?
Geezz, do you have to contaminate every subject with your lame KDE propaganda? yes, we all have used KDE and we know its current state you want to live in denial? is ok, its your problem, but stop the enless discutions about it.
FTA:
FTA:
I am on-topic. Your post is the contamination in this thread.
Lay down the kool-aid please and be rational about this.
Neither PC-BSD nor KDE4 in gentoo have been overwhelmingly solid. It is overall really nice but with annoying drawbacks. Applications launch slower than similar gtk+-apps, there are odd drawing artifacts when switching from one desktop to another, or opening/closening windows (this is possibly an issue with my ATI card and proprietary drivers), and the nepomuk-stuff keeps crashing and returns no useful information. This might be related to kde4.6 in gentoo rather than anything else, since the kde4.6 is only partially 4.6 and partially 4.4 (kdepim).
KDE4 is slick and powerful, definitely. It is very sexy – but it is not fast, and it is resource hungry much more than Gnome 2.32. I don’t know about Gnome 3 because I’ll never use that. Gnome 3 was the reason why I changed my use flags to allow for a KDE-installation. KDE4 was the reason why I changed the use flags back.
I’m not totally buying the stuff about “most advanced desktop software platform”, but it is not entirely inaccurate. It is like a fantastic feast meal, but also undercooked. I’m looking very forward to KDE4 in another two years. It is very promising.
Judging a DE exclusively on an experience in Gentoo doesn’t seem fair to me. You’re tweaking and tuning in an individual way, and if something isn’t working, Gentoo lets you have all kinds of configurations that might not work quite so well. All that configurability comes at a price: you’re likely to be running a unique and somewhat broken configuration if you’re building such large software repositories and changing things midway.
My experience with KDE4 in PC-BSD is similar, and other persons using different distributions have the same experiences. I’m not the first, nor the last to consider kwin to be sluggish.
Gentoo allows for quite a bit of customisation, but do not overestimate it. There are safe use flags and unsafe use flags. I’m sticking to something rather conservative and solid, and having used gentoo for many years, almost since its beginning, I’m quite certain of my own skills.
Clearly a PCBSD issue then. Kwin is not sluggish in other contexts. If Kwin itself was sluggish, it would be sluggish everywhere.
I am being perfectly rational about this.
None of your reported performance or stability issues occur on any of the many KDE installations I have done, and I have done quite a few, over a wide range of Intel/Intel and AMD/ATI hardware.
If KDE4 itself were the issue, then it would be an issue for everyone, and I too would have seen such issues. You are ascribing to KDE4 issues which have nothing to do with KDE4. You are at least two years behind the curve.
I do have a highly recommended tip … don’t use proprietary drivers, especially for ATI cards.
If you prefer “close to the metal” distributions, then Arch Linux (with open source graphics drivers) is quite nice with KDE4.
Edited 2011-10-13 23:20 UTC
Go figure, your experience isn’t the same as his.
Or maybe there are bugs in software that pop up with certain configurations and not with others. Maybe?
I’ve used Nouveau and KWin still slows down after a while. Actually, no, I’m lying. I’m also being paid by Microsoft to astroturf KDE4 threads in hopes it won’t take over the desktop and diminish Windows’ marketshare because it’s so good.
Your KDE praise is getting tiring, really. We get it — you like your DE of choice. Maybe others DON’T appreciate cluttered UIs, 1000 options to configure apps and a desktop environment that gets in your way all the time. Or maybe it doesn’t work correctly with our hardware, and every new version is the one that supposedly fixes the problems. You don’t have to convince everyone to switch to KDE to feel happy about your choice, you know..
Maybe, but what has it (the fact that Gentoo and PC-BSD are borked) got to do with KDE4? Bugs which crop up only with certain configurations and not with others happen to all software, not the least with GNOME. Get real. Frankly, you sound like you are desperate to come up with something, anything, which you can irrationally hold against KDE4.
If people don’t like it then they don’t like it, fine. No problem. BTW, the reason for having options is to let people set it up exactly how they like, so it DOESN’T get in their way. Unlike GNOME, KDE excels at this.
The only reason why I mention all these things is to raise a counterpoint to all the disparaging that goes on. The likes of Jason Bourne’s comments, for example, claiming that there were no good KDE applications when he doesn’t even know many of them that exist. Or claiming that people would be bothered by the occasional “k” in the name of an application, for that matter a name that they didn’t even see on the menu. People should just try it for themselves, and decide for themselves.
Ill-informed naysayers who are desperate for people NOT to try it will happily post utter rubbish to forums such as this disparagining something which they know nothing about and haven’t even tried themselves. It is their voices which need to have an opposing voice. It is dead easy to spread negative vibes and criticism, and it can be very effective at stopping people from trying something.
My concern is that people will listen to the naysayers and hence miss out on something that could be very good for them.
Edited 2011-10-14 02:05 UTC
And who the heck are you? “The KDE Messias?” you sound like a psychotic obssessed with a peace of (buggy) software. People who will try KDE will prolly get to the same conclusion that many have made and is this: KDE is not the wonder you describe, period.
I am one who “mentions all these things in order to raise a counterpoint to all the disparaging that goes on”.
Baseless disparagement, such as yours.
In other words, you are zealot.
How exactly does my saying simply that “actually it has good apps and it runs very well” make me a zealot? Hmmmm?
What does your determination to try to disparage something, for no stated reason and with no evidence in support, make you?
Im showing the same evidence you are showing, nothing, you are showing some meaningless links to meaningless webpages as you always do.
I see. Your nothing is a bona fide, 100%, undisputable, gold-plated nothing and my nothing is only nothing because you say it is nothing.
OK, fine. Whatever.
Im so glad you are getting it.
I have used KDE on Arch since 4.2 and finally gave up about a week ago.
I have fairly powerful hardware (a 3 gigahertz core 2 duo, 4 gigs ram, 9800 gtx video card), yet I had persistent random freezes in every version. The entire desktop would just freeze for 5-10 seconds during which I could do nothing. It would then eventually unfreeze and all the queued mouse events from my frustrated clicking around would fire simultaneously.
Dolphin would randomly fail mounting drives that a simple mount command was able to do successfully without a hitch.
I’m not sure what nepomuk is or what it’s supposed to do, but all it did do was make my computer curl up in pain until I finally disabled it.
Recently, when I upgraded to the newest version on the next boot I literally did not recognize my desktop anymore. It decided that it will go into ‘activities view’ or something to that effect on boot up. I never used activities. Didn’t even know they existed, but now they were being shoved down my throat.
I finally got fed up and wiped all traces of KDE from my system. I’m running a tiling window manager now and I’m much happier.
That’s interesting. I just tried the Kubuntu live CD and KDE is very snappy. The machine has an old NVIDIA graphics card, 1GB of memory and a 2.5GHz processor. Even running from the CD everything is very responsive, menus and windows react right away. Of course loading new apps is a little slow because of the CD speed, but otherwise I’m very happy with it.
Different hardware and different distros will make a huge difference in performance, I guess.
In and of itself, KDE performance is as you describe. “very snappy”. “very responsive, menus and windows react right away”.
It does, however, strictly rely on the underlying system, the proper working of the kernel and drivers. If these are not working properly, KDE4 does not contain any work-arounds, and the overall system may perform very poorly.
It is important to keep it crystal clear, however, that KDE4 itself is not broken, or poorly performed, as you have testified to. If KDE4 itself were broken, it would be broken for everybody.
If your underlying system works, KDE exhibits exactly none of the behaviour you mention. It is fast and responsive in and of itself, as long as the underlying system and drivers work properly.
Activities are not “forced down your throat” in any way. You can ignore activities entirely if you want to, there is absolutely nothing about activities that you must use.
Just to explain what activities are … you might find the when you are browsing the internet you like your desktop set up one way, but when you are working on a document you like it set up another way. “Activities” simply let you save, and later reload, different setups of your desktop. You can have a setup for every purpose if you like. You can even have different setups (or activities) loaded on different virtual desktops. It is very powerful and flexible, and no other desktop software provides this power.
However, I say again, if you don’t want to use this feature, you don’t have to. You are not forced to use activities. Just use the one all-purpose desktop setup all the time, just as other desktops constrain you to.
Edited 2011-10-15 08:45 UTC
This changes everything.
I totally agree, I am running the latest 4.7.1 I believe and it is fast! and stable. I am running it on Chakra Linux which is Arch linux based and super slick.
I just tried it, and are impressed. I did not like Unity earlier, but they are getting close to something I can use now.
If only they would allow me to move the taskbar to the bottom, since I really hate having it on the lefthand side of the screen… I don’t like the mentality where they refuse to listen in on the community on this request as it seems this is one of the most common complaint about Unity. Until they do I will not use it, if they do I will actually use it (unless Gnome 3 have sorted out their own issues in the meantime).
All in all a good release from Ubuntu, and the first one with Unity that works (i.e. does not crash all the time or look like shit).
I too can’t really understand why everyone hate Unity so much. I really like the simplicity of pressing Win key, typing app name (or part of it) and hitting Enter. I was waiting for this all my life (-. This feature alone was one of the best improvements in Windows Vista/7. And it works with file/folder names too!
Now for some advanced usage I always have Guake terminal installed. Just hit F12 and you have instant shell with tabs. Hit F11 and you are fullscreen.
Keyboard shortcuts are another thing worth memorizing. It just makes everything so much faster.
I hate to say it, but Linux on the desktop has failed. Even with windows of opportunity from the Vista/7 disaster, Linux has failed to do what Apple and Microsoft succeeded at.
I think things went wrong when the open source developers started doing radical changes with the user interface for desktop operating systems.
Is it really so hard to understand the concept: “The desktop metaphor works for desktop computers”?
I’ve got an Ubuntu 11.04 installation sitting on another partition on my hard drive. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it yet. I’ve stopped using it ever since upgrading to 11.04. Maybe I might replace it with Mint or Fedora.
Edited 2011-10-13 23:05 UTC
Not to mention going through the entire hassle of moving everything back to NTFS partitions, and all those ext4 you cared with love for the last few years. All to go back to Windows, with that bitter feeling of indifference from the creators of Linux DEs. We users were the ones who converted more people than any developer out there. If there is someone who is responsible for Ubuntu’s popularity and Linux overall, it’s us, the public.
My feelings go even bitter when I see numbers like Linux is 1% of overall desktop market. I mean… at some point I ask myself, is this hassle all worth it?
Linux Mint main developer said that will be shipping 2 versions of his distro. One with GNOME 2.32 and other with GNOME 3.2. As far as it seems, the G2 version will have all apps updated, and the G3 version may be or may not be GNOME Shell as default.
I’ll admit, i was skeptical at first. I remember the UNR days and i wasn’t looking forward to it.
I tried 11.04, and yes, it was lacking … but i honestly didn’t understand what all the damn fuss was about.
Now in 11.10, i can say it’s quite solid and even pleasant to use. You might not agree with the ideas and/or methods behind it, but then that’s your problem isn’t it?
Should you happen to dislike it, then you are free to install whatever DE you wish. No one is limiting your choices or freedom to choose between DE’s.
Me personally … i liked KDE 1/2/3, i liked gnome 1.4x and 2.x. I don’t like KDE4 (at all) and i don’t like gnome3. I do like unity because it stays out of my way (mostly).
I’ve used wmaker as my main wm for ages, i liked that a lot too and guess what … unity is faster to use since it lets me search for stuff and find it instantly.
Zealots will be zealots and new things are, by default, bad and evil.
Sure, i could get all my work done with screen/tmux, (al)pine, (e)links, vi(m), etc, etc. But you know what? I don’t want to. I’ve been in this game long enough to just want something that works and stays out of my way. Unity does that for me (mostly), and i think they (canonical) are doing a fine job.
I’m quite convinced that at least half of you didn’t even try it out … and i mean really try it out, not dismiss it after 5 mins. It’s not very customizeable (sp?), that’s true, although a lot of the behavior can be changed using gconf-editor and ccsm with the unity plugin. This will come, in due time. I remember the days of manually editing gtkrc files to “customize” gnome.
I have other problems with ubuntu, unrelated to the DE. For example: / should not be mounted rw in single user, the initrd should remount it rw from ro, etc, but that’s off topic.
Honestly, i’m starting to get old-ish in this game. I first started using linux 15 yrs ago. Had to recompile the kernel for everything, no modules.
I’ve seen and used a lot of window managers. As a DE, unity (at least IMHO) is very good, if not almost perfect. Customization will come in due time and extensions will too.
I don’t like how canonical handled the “transition” or should i say “non-transition” and how they forced it upon developers though, but i don’t get involved in politics. If i don’t like what i see, i move on and don’t whine about it.
Kr,
-Kevin
That… was the first mature and reasonable thing I have ever heard anyone say about Unity. And then there was all of that non-zealotry about desktop environments! Thank you for injecting a bit of Reason into this topic.
I largely agree with your sentiments of pragmatism. My tastes are slightly different, but I certainly respect your own.
*tip of hat*
Have to agree P13 (aka Kevin). Unity is not that big a deal. Bugs will get worked out and frankly the unity interface stays out of my way most of the time. I do wish I could make the icon’s smaller than 32 pxl, but otherwise the system works for the most part. I liked the old CTRL+F2 functionality and being able to edit my last used but otherwise it’s still works and you sometimes have to type a little more. It’s not a deal breaker.
I look forward to it’s changes that will eventually come but otherwise it works. I still have my shell commands and I’m still more productive with unity than I am with Windows 7 or Mac. But that is mean.
All systems can be better. If you are not happy with the one you have then use one that you are happy with. If you are just unhappy with everything then code your own or start participating in the various communities with constructive criticism. Stop the pissing and whining about the glory days of way back win.
I don’t mind having Unity installed. I don’t even mind having it as a default desktop (although it won’t stay long that way on my desktop). BTW, it doesn’t exactly work OK, during 5 minutes I spent trying it I found a handful of major usability issues or bugs (anyone knows why Firefox menu takes 2 seconds to open under Unity?).
What’s bad about Unity is that Ubuntu in pursue of some design goals keeps breaking other desktops (particularly Gnome 2 and Compiz). Even in XFCE I can occasionally see some artefacts (scrollbars, notification, power management) which take some time to fix.
If things continue that way (that is if the amount of work needed to maintain the desktop further increases) that will be a clear signal to jump the ship and go to a vendor who actually cares about opinion of users (Mint? someone else?).
I’ve run Kubuntu for a few years now, since the emergence of KDE4. There has been some troubling moments on the way for sure.
11.04 has been the best so far. I actually use it for work on my Core i7 ASUS. When I read “sluggish” from posters here I do break out a smirk. Not a word I would use for any OS on modern day hardware IMO.
If you want to run 11.04/11.10 on a 5 year old PC, then sure you will notice a difference between GNOME/KDE/XFCE/etc.
I am running Kubuntu 11.10 on my netbook with only a 1Ghz AMD C-50 APU. It isn’t old, but it certainly isn’t powerful either.
Using the open source AMD/ATI graphics drivers and the kubuntu-low-fat-settings package makes Kubuntu 11.10 run perfectly well even on this low-resource machine. It runs better (more responsive, etc) than the Windows 7 OS that came with the machine.
At home I also have an Athlon_64x2 2Ghz machine with a low-end Radeon HD 4350 graphics card, also running Kubuntu with the open source Radeon graphics drivers. This machine also runs KDE4 very well indeed, and I might point out that the system itself is six years old now, although I did update the graphics card early in 2009.
If anyone doubts the open source graphics drivers, apparently they are good enough for Windows …
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_linux_wec7&n…
When you say things like this everyone knows you are lying through your teeth.
Pffft. Why would I lie? The under-powered netbook perfomance index is discussed here:
http://blog.thinkteletronics.com/archives/99
“In summation this netbook is one of the best on the market for multimedia and gaming but it lacks the chops for productivity”
The Windows experience index gave it a score of 2.8, which is very modest. It is kind-of OKay-ish for Windows, given that it is inexpensive one would give it a barely passing grade. Its best feature is its graphics capability. Given that it has to run anti-virus and I-don’t-know-how-many different “updater” monitors, it is quite burdened down when it comes to actual performance other than graphics.
It runs Kubuntu 11.10 very well indeed. It boots faster, applications load faster, the machine is generally more responsive. It just feels generally quite a bit faster. Just about the only thing that works better under Windows 7 is the HWACCEL test for Firefox.
http://demos.hacks.mozilla.org/openweb/HWACCEL/
Considering that HWACCEL is a realtively new thing for Firefox under Linux but has been in place since Firefox 4 for Windows, and that this is primarily a test of graphics performance only, this is perhaps not that surprising.
Now, after having said all that … how do I profit? Whom do I collect money from? Why should I lie?
Edited 2011-10-14 04:48 UTC
Cognitive Dissonance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
I found a page all about how you must have reached that conclusion after reading what I posted:
http://www.google.com/images?q=la+la+la+I+can%27t+hear+you&oi=i…
Linux Mint has been better than Ubuntu for nearly 4 years now. If you haven’t tried it yet, stop what you’re doing and give it a fair and unbiased shot. I do everything in Mint, install it everywhere I go, and also help newbies become evangelists.
Wii Emulation and Mario Kart? Check.
Super stable Gnome 2 Desktop? Check.
Libre Office, Firefox, Transmission? Check.
VLC, OpenShot, Gimp, and Cheese? Check.
The only problem with Mint is Brasero as the default CD burner. But there are 3 or 4 other options VERY easily installable either in the FANTASTIC software manager, or via the terminal and old school synaptic.
Linux Desktop is here, and it’s called Mint.
I have to admit, I’m not totally sold on the look and feel. With some tweaks though, I think it might be OK.
At least it’s different though. I totally approve of the moves MS and Unity are making away from the god-damned start menu + desktop icons paradigm.
Might not be perfect initially, but you gotsta try new things right?
No. You have to complain a lot about how GNOME/KDE mimics windows and when they do something difference you gotta complain that it’s different.
HappyGod blathered….
Heretic! Haven’t you heard? The almighty Shuttleworth has declared Unity shall not have any user set-able configurations. Like, say the ability to set the dock to the bottom of the screen…
–bornagainpenguin
You have a little foam in the corner of your mouth …
HappyGod snarked…
Artistic placement purely for illustrative purposes only I assure you! ; )
–bornagainpenguin
Think of Ubuntu to Debian as Red Hat to Fedora.
The community doesn’t really matter to the direction of Ubuntu because they are a BUSINESS trying to make MONEY. It’s their JOB to differentiate Ubuntu in the Linux and OS world, then to make money by doing that.
I switched after 5.10 and the reasons I left back then are the same reasons people are leaving now.
Don’t like Ubuntu? Go to Debian, LMDE, Arch, Suse whatever: They care as much as I do…
“You don’t like unity? F#@k you!” – Canonical
Actually, Unity seems to be an ironic name, isn’t it.
I haven’t seen it cause any kind of union between users, developers or distros…
After using Gnome Shell for a while in 11.10 beta, I couldn’t stand it anymore and went to Unity. If you are like me and use a lot of applications that are text over a white background, expose style task switching is really difficult because you can’t tell the apps apart when scaled.
I got quickly used to Unity and admit that while I don’t really like it, it just works..
Biggest issues with it:
-Still unstable (occasional crashes)
-Almost can’t be configured. Lack of configurability is stupid. People loves tweaking stuff, even if they don’t need to. It’s a matter of making your desktop a more personal experience…
-Application menu is designed by brain damaged monkeys, I don’t care because i just alt-ft and write the app name, but it’s easy to have a hard time with it..
It’s visually prety though, most people that came to the office and saw it were “whoaa linux got much better” so Canonical might have got the effect they wanted..
I think your list of issues will all be addressed. It is still new. That is, you don’t have issues with the basic idea, They just need to mature it.
Edited 2011-10-16 12:39 UTC
This is from the Linux Mint Blog…
Linux Mint 12 ^aEURoeLisa^aEUR will be released in November this year with continued support for Gnome 2 but also with the introduction of Gnome 3. The radical changes introduced by the Gnome project split the community. At the time of releasing Linux Mint 11 we decided it was too early to adopt Gnome 3. This time around, the decision isn^aEURTMt as simple. Gnome 3.2 is more mature and we can see the potential of this new desktop and use it to implement something that can look and behave better than anything based on Gnome 2. Of course, we^aEURTMre starting from scratch and this process will take time and span across multiple releases. Until then, it^aEURTMs important we continue to support the traditional Gnome 2 desktop. We^aEURTMre likely to release two separate editions, one for Gnome 2.32 and one for Gnome 3.2. We^aEURTMre also working in cooperation with the MATE project (which is a fork of Gnome 2) at the moment to see if we can make both desktops compatible in an effort to let you run both Gnome 2 (or MATE) and Gnome 3 on the same system, either in Linux Mint 12, or for the future.
The is also a Linux Mint Debian Edition you may wish to try. It’s available in gnome or XFCE.
Awesome news.
My biggest complaint about Ubuntu is the total lack of desktop-agnostic GUI system configuration tools. To cite a few examples, there is no way to configure the bootloader, the network, the keyboard layout, users, or samba without using a desktop-specific (usually Gnome or KDE) tool. These desktop-specific GUI tools change between different desktops, and they bring in a lot of unnecessary dependencies if you try to run them on a lightweight desktop. And they obviously don’t work at all if you break your system and don’t have X running. For these reasons, I have switched from Ubuntu to openSUSE, because they actually take comprehensive desktop-agnostic GUI config tools seriously. Ubuntu’s lack of interest in GUI config tools belies their claim of making Linux easy to use.
This is true,but do you like Yast2?
I would like to see some more GUI tools for instance the the ldap client tool in Yast is handy, but I’d be more than happy with a Gnome tool in Unity that did the same.
I’ve been using 11.10 for a month or so and it’s a lot better than 11.04. More stable, better interface, more polished just better. However, I’ve quite liked Unity from the outset – I’ve tried to like KDE and failed probably my fault and I’ll have another play later, for me Unity works.
Oh and I think Canonical is right the doc should be on the side.
Edited 2011-10-14 14:25 UTC
Actually, I just checked the packages in Synaptic (which you can install very simply with APT) and you cannot install GNOME 2. The GNOME 2 libraries are available, but not the whole desktop environment (gnome-panel etc).
Ubuntu has definitely declined in quality since Lucid – I found Maverick very reliable (even from the beta release), but I have had a lot of problems with both Natty and Oneiric: failing to recognise my Broadcom wireless in both releases, and now (on my laptop, the desktop machine is fine) the sound card is not functioning. Up until Maverick, it found all my hardware (on a Dell laptop) and it worked perfectly.
Also, both Unity and GNOME 3 have vaguely Mac-like desktop concepts, without all the functionality. The system tray is either crippled (Unity) or buried (G3), which breaks a lot of cross-platform applications. If they want a Mac-type Dock, give it the same functionality – like having it at the bottom (at least as an option), rather than glued to the side, and letting application developers give it a menu, and by the way PUBLISH THEIR API. The fallback version of GNOME 3 (which appears as “GNOME Classic” on Ubuntu Oneiric) has a vaguely G2-like experience, but it’s a cut-down one – you can’t configure the panels, for example.
I’ve switched over to KDE 4 as well, for my desktop machine (apart from the sound issue, Unity doesn’t work too badly on my laptop). Seriously considering getting a Mac, because Ubuntu was the only distro that worked reliably and it’s gone to the dogs.
If you want the absolute best in Linux it would be Arch Linux with OpenBox and tint2 panel. But you can also install KDE instead.
But if you MUST have debian… try aptosid (sid unstable with KDE).
Year of the *LOL*
Linux as a desktop client is so irrelevant, this comment itself is redundant..
To be honest, I’ve never claimed that Unity sucks, I claimed that is not for me and I find the GNOME Shell proposal more appealing. But is not only Unity what it botters me, is also the mac style global menu.
I’m on Fedora and have dumped Gnome… crashed X every 2 days… what a disaster.
Happy KDE user for 2 months now
Tom UK
hate to say this, but KDE 4.x has surpassed gnome on the
desktop. I was using ubuntu 10.04 but gnome was starting to annoy me so I tried Kubuntu and I have to say KDE is freaking great. I actually like it more than my windows 7 desktop and that’s saying a lot.
If you don’t like Unity, just use KDE, you can add it to any ubuntu install easily.
fruity user interfaces are the latest trend in desktop operating systems. they’ll get over it. see you in 10 years when tiled windows become all the rage!
Edited 2011-10-14 19:46 UTC
I can only add to the exhortations to try Linux Mint. It outdoes Ubuntu of old on several fronts (for me at least) and Mint 11 at least still uses Gnome 2. Funnily enough, I never really got along with Gnome until I tried Mint. Never really looked back since. You can also try a Debian-based version of Mint, by the way.
The current state of Unity just doesn’t cut it for me. Keyboard shortcuts are key to what I do, and I want them in mnemonically-sensible places. Since I started working with Macs more, I prefer to keep a fairly consistent set of keystrokes so switching between Mac and Linux machines isn’t a real bump.
Unfortunately, Unity hard-codes the windows key, and the keyboard shortcut preferences for compiz are a complete mess. Then there are other settings outside of compiz that purport to be keyboard shortcuts. I must be in some outlier of Canonical’s intended user base, someone who doesn’t want to take their fingers off the home keys constantly and thinks modifier keys are cool and function keys are definitely not – because for me, Unity is nearly unusable.
Fortunately, apt-get is all I need to work around this.
Edited 2011-10-15 00:17 UTC
I’m increasingly dissappointed by Ubuntu because it seems that each new release introduces so much noise rather than value. It also seems like change for the sake of change, rather like Windows…. which is what I go to Linux for to get away from.
Even if not Debian based, and definitely not distributions, and considering that you want to make some changes, I would suggest a bigger change:
FreeBSD
PC-BSD http://www.pcbsd.org/
OpenBSD http://www.openbsd.org/
NetBSD
and last but not least:
Open Indiana http://www.openbsd.org/
However the only “nixy” environment ready for desktop remains Os X.
If you want Linux and only Linux on desktop, and you liked old Ubuntu, I’d say give Linux Mint a try. Based on Ubuntu, Gnome desktop, as good as a Linux distro can be.
Fixing links:
OpenIndiana: http://openindiana.org
NetBSD: http://www.netbsd.org
In all the “Sturm und Drang” concerning destop environment changes it’s good to remember a few of things.
People who transition from Ubuntu LTS to LTS releases do not encounter such painful changes. Moving from Lucid to Precise, the user will encounter a Unity interface with two rounds of polishing and improvements. Seen in this light, the improvements in Oneiric make me cautiously optimistic.
The same applies to Gnome 3. Here the stakes are higher, but I see the same progress. 3.4 will be released in time for Ubuntu Precise and the freeze to Debian Wheezy, not to mention other, RPM based distros. With 3.2 already an improvement over 3.0, I am again cautiously optimistic.
Those who choose to upgrade every six months should be more open to changes and pain.
If you want to try it, I published a VirtualBox disk image of Kubuntu 11.04 i386 Desktop, stable version in
http://torrentbox.com/torrent_details?id=1476261
So, gave the latest KDE a try. As usual, a total and utter waste of time.
I do not have enough fingers to count the number of crashes I experienced the past 60 minutes. Twice, the crash reporter… Crashed. Kwin performance was horrible, as usual (YES LEMUR2 I USED THE OPEN SOURCE DRIVER). Way to ruin a once great project, guys!
Fully agreed. KWin is slow here too. It gets a little faster if I use “XRender” instead of “OpenGL”. But the overall feeling of using KDE is just crazy. Too many crashes. Not to mention the small buttons which are not configurable in Oxygen, oh and the Stupid Start Here Menu, which is like a menu inside another menu. Why don’t they just plain copy Windows 7.
I hate to say this but seems like it’s either Mint 12 or Fedora 16 from now on.
Edited 2011-10-15 21:24 UTC
Calm down Thom.
I too have (obviously) installed KDE, and I am running it now on my under-powered netbbok. It runs remarkably well, and it shows absolutely no sign of crashing.
Now Thom, if we are running the same applications, and the same desktop OS, but different kernel and drivers, and we are having diametrically opposite experiences, where do you imagine this difference in experience is arising from exactly?
So why do you blame the KDE project?
I have run all .x versions of KDE4, all on various different hardware configurations, using various different drivers, using various different distributions, and all experiences have been the same: crash-prone, and slow Kwin performance. And you’re STILL trying to tell me it’s not KDE that’s at fault here? Especially since the GNOME versions of the used distributions performed just fine?
Whatever dude.
I can’t think what you are doing wrong, it is beyond me. GNOME does include a number of work-arounds for parts of the kernel/driver stack that are supposed to work (but don’t always). I don’t believe that KDE does include kludges and work-arounds of this nature.
I, for example, have had no such trouble when running .x versions of KDE4 where x=2,4,6 or 7 (minor trouble with x=2 and 5), all on various different hardware configurations, using various different drivers, using various different distributions.
The minor trouble I did have with some versions of KDE4 was avoided either by disabling desktop effects, or using Xrender with desktop effects. Perhaps that may help in your case, but from your tone I doubt if you would think it worth your while to try. Such a pity, because KDE4 really does work very well indeed if the underlying kernel and drivers work.
I suppose this just re-enforces the point that in order for people to be able to use and enjoy an operating system on commodity hardware, it really must come pre-installed by the hardware vendor (as it is for Windows and OSX). Self-installed operating systems may fail in obscure ways (for any OS).
Edited 2011-10-16 22:28 UTC
Do you believe that kernel drivers and hardware have something to do with the crash dialog crashing?
I don’t know, I’ve never seen it crash on KDE4.
Presumably something caused a crash to bring up a crash dialog in the first place. Whatever bug that was, it could easily explain a subsequent crash of the crash dialog as well.
That is possible, of course, that the crash triggered some fundamental bug somewhere lower in the stack. However, usually the blame should work top-down, not bottom-up.
If kMail happens to crash, do you immediately file a bug against the kernel, or let Intel/AMD they have a bug in their CPU? Of course not, you first blame kMail, then if the maintainer can show that it’s somewhere in a library he/she passes down the stack so it can be fixed.
Thom (quite likely) found a few bugs in KDE, denying this won’t help anything.
Au contraire, it is clear that no such bug exists on any of my systems, which are running the same version of KDE. None of my systems exhibit anything like the behaviour which Thom describes.
All of my well-behaved, bug-free systems and Thom’s system have KDE (and KDE applications) in common.
The only thing that sets Thom’s system apart is “somewhere lower in the stack”.
This observation is not proof, but nevertheless it is a strong indication that the fault on Thom’s system does indeed lie “somewhere lower in the stack”. Certainly, given all the described symptoms (and lack thereof on other systems), that is the first place I would look.
Of course it’s not proof, and the whole point of the stack is that you start at the top. As I said: blame starts at the top. You start with the thing that crashed, let the maintainer of that software figure out the root cause.
More to the point, just check out the current bugs filed against Dr Konqi: https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=drkonqi
There are several yet-to-be-fixed crashers there. To assume that the KDE software is free of bugs is just supremely naive.
You are reading a techie website yet you seem to have little understanding of what could make software unstable.
The problem with trying to force your opinions on others is additional frustration as now not only do they have to work through issues with KDE they also have to put up with people repeatedly saying “Well it works fine here so you must be wrong”.
At best you could encourage people who are having issues to raise a bug report and if many people chime in with evidence of the problem it will probably be confirmed and then fixed.
At worst (what you are currently doing) is just denying the possibility that although something works for you it may not work for others.
For example, it is not a good idea for people who do not have type 1 diabetes to inject insulin just before or after meals, but injecting insulin can work great for people who do have type 1 diabetes.
Au contraire I have many years experience at debugging and fixing software, even on real-time systems, highly complex systems and embedded systems (where diagnostic tools are often minimal, and bugs are very hard to track down).
The very first step is to figure out when and where it works, and when and where it doesn’t work. Once you can reliably make it fail, the next step is to figure out what is different about when and where it fails compared to when and where it doesn’t.
If there are a lot of different systems where it doesn’t fail, and a few where it does, then by far the most likely site of the fault is in the places where the systems differ, rather than the places where they are common.
Der. Let me teach you how to suck eggs …
Edited 2011-10-17 22:17 UTC
I agree with the grand-parent, you haven’t demonstrated a sound approach to bug hunting. You’ve basically just shown that you’re going to divert blame from KDE no matter what. The only solid crash-information that Thom provided was that the crash-handler crashed, and your diagnosis was “the kernel or some hardware”. The fact that Thom blamed KDE was the right thing to do! Even if he’s wrong, you start with the thing that crashed: if KMail crashes blame KMail first, if Dolphin crashes, blame Dolphin.
Just open up the KDE bug tracker, you’ll find a bunch of reasons why applications could have crashed. You can’t take bugs in KDE as a person affront to your virtue.
The KDE devs could certainly never take your “stick-your-head-in-the-sand” approach, if they want the fruits of their labour to improve.
I think you’re just offended that people rag on KDE once in a while and you try to somehow balance it out by claiming there are no problems because YOU didn’t see them. Then again, you rag on GNOME once in a while too; probably just a case of some confirmation bias.
This just demonstrates your inability to see things from more than one perspective.
Indeed. There is plenty of scope for the bug in Thom’s system to be amongst one of these:
http://reports.qa.ubuntu.com/reports/kernel-bugs/reports/_kernel_on…
… most of which, on the face of it, have nothing to do with KDE4.
We are discussing the most likely location for bugs on Thom’s system.
How is this in any way denying that Thom’s system is not working?
Edited 2011-10-17 22:42 UTC
The below quotes from your posts are irrelevant when attempting to understand the root cause of a issue with a system that you do not own, we know your systems work fine and do not require further pointless repetition:
Edited 2011-10-18 17:36 UTC
So … Thom submits a bug report to the KDE team. The bug report says this: “the crash handler crashes”.
KDE devs say … “Ran crash handler, could not duplicate. No fault found. Can you please provide more info on your system so that this bug can be duplicated”?
… and straight away we are into debigging the underlying layers of Thom’s system.
After receiving information on Thom’s system the root cause is investigated, and KDE devs say … “Problem reported to downstream developers”.
Sigh!
Edited 2011-10-18 22:13 UTC
BTW, on my Acer Aspire One 522 netbook, I experienced this bug for Kubuntu Oneiric:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/818730
Even though this bug freezes the netbook when I try to use the BCM4313 wifi via the KDE4 network manager, I do not blame KDE4 for this.
It truns out that the problem is actually with the unstable Kernel module “atl1c”, which is the driver for the wired ethernet. I used the wired ethernet during the install (via the LiveCD, or in the case of my netbook, the LiveUSB), and once I had Oneiric installed, I blacklisted the ethernet driver atl1c because I normally use the wifi.
I will monitor progress of this bug. In time it will get fixed, and I will then un-blacklist the atl1c driver.
What I won’t do is go on internet forums and complain loudly that the KDE4 wifi manager is broken.
Edited 2011-10-18 00:18 UTC
I don’t get it when people say KDE is resource hungry and slow, WTF are you people running it on a 486?
On a half way newer PC it runs extremely well and the hardware acceleration/desktop effects have a built in feel where as Gnome with compiz feel like it’s been tacked on and hackish.
If you don’t like unity, don’t use there are lots of other options and some are actually better than gnome.
I am having the same experience, and it is apparent that most other people mare too. Where it is working properly, KDE (in and of itself) works very very well indeed.
However, it is equally clear that some hardware/driver combinations do not support KDE well at all. Some people are indeed, apparently, having a poor experience. There is clearly more work to be done for some hardware configurations.
Edited 2011-10-16 07:53 UTC
Gnome 3 with Gnome Shell is the first Linux desktop environment which is suitable for me and does not look like a bad copy of Windows or OSX. At least at home.
Maybe 90% of the time I have only one window open, my browser. Gnome 3 (or is it Gnome Shell, I don’t care, I’ll just call it Gnome 3) keeps all those unnecessary app launchers and switcher away and pretty much just tells me what the time is and how is my battery doing. That’s precisely what I want from my desktop.
Sometimes when I have another windows open (usually Picasa and Pinta or NetBeans and Terminal), I do miss some sort of app switcher that would stay visible all the time. But since most of the time app switcher are just a distraction, it’s better this way. It would be really nice if I could right click the favorites bar (or what ever it is called, the dock that is shown in left hand side when hitting Windows key or moving mouse to upper left corner), and set it be visible all the time while I’m programming and hide it again when I’m not.
At work, where I have to run many different programs and have closer to 10 windows open all the time, I guess Gnome 3 would be frustrating to use. Managing many different windows and running apps would probably be quite hard without some sort of app launcher/switcher all the time.
Anyway, because Gnome 3 rocks for me, I switched from Windows 7 to Ubuntu few months back.
Unity on the other hand is the ugliest desktop environment I’ve ever seen.
Although GNOME Shell looks to be the only thing with future (I mean, significantly adopted), perhaps when Wayland works with it, then I will be able to activate “Activities” through a right-button mouse click, without having to keep the mouse coming-and-going thing.
But I was thinking here. One of the darnest things Linux got in this past 20 years was not innovation. But a lot of idiotic fanboys. There were quite a few in university, who found themselves as little gods just because they knew how to setup an rc.conf manually in nano. Some of those are spread in important open source projects, who believe they need to reinvent the wheel. And that’s the problem my friend.
Edited 2011-10-16 20:08 UTC
I hope you do know there are keyboard shortcuts instead of moving the mouse to the top left corner:
“System (Windows) key or Alt+F1 – these key combinations will take you to the overview or back to the desktop.”
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet
GUI holy wars aside, a much more interesting question is how this “Software Center” thing will pan out. For those not in the know, Ubuntu’s Software Center just started selling paid (closed source) apps. However, Ubuntu has a rather bad habit of breaking binary compatibility between releases, so if Ubuntu breaks binary compatibility in the next release and the developer of the paid app doesn’t issue a patch, what will happen? Will you get a refund?
Edited 2011-10-17 13:03 UTC