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[Air]

Wrong place, wrong time? From what I can tell A lot of people don't like KDE 4, and with good reason.

It's very slow, and even in my day of using it three different things crashed. I'm not sure if I want to find something with KDE3, or just try normal Ubuntu. Most likely the latter since Anything with KDE3 in it is most likely old, and I'd have to update to KDE4 sooner or later.

[Thad]

Wrong place, wrong time? From what I can tell A lot of people don't like KDE 4, and with good reason.

You know, sometimes people accuse me -- usually with good reason -- of using certain threads on this board as a blog, something where I'm the only one posting and there's no interaction.  However, those are usually cases where I start the thread and nobody replies, not where I just start writing in a thread without bothering to read the first few pages where other people talked about the same subject.

[Air]

READING THREADS IS SO FUCKING HARD

I JUST WANNA POST, MOTHERFUCKER

[Kayma]

*sigh*

KDE4 was kind of shitty. KDE4.1 is pretty solid. I use it on my main PC (as Kubuntu) when I'm not playing a game (which isn't actually very often) and I'm quite happy with it... so long as I keep my widgets locked. Nothing like clicking and dragging erroneously, then having to nuke your config file.

Not a fan of most K* applications, though... but that might just be 'cause I'm so used to Gnome. I'll take Firefox over Konqueror any day.

[Rico]

So, I picked up a remarkably cheap second desktop off of eBay on a whim today and was thinking about popping MythTV on the thing and playing around with it.

I was going to install Ubuntu because it's apparently the NEXT BIG THING.  2.8GHz single-core P4 with a gig of RAM and my Hauppage card does hardware mpg2 encoding, so I'm not that worried about performance issues especially for a lark project, but does anyone have any different suggestions before I get this thing in the mail?

[Thad]

KDE4.1 is pretty solid. [...] Nothing like clicking and dragging erroneously, then having to nuke your config file.

You and I have different definitions of "pretty solid".

And sorting the programs by description instead of name is still a deal-breaker for me.  And does the "view desktop" widget finally toggle properly?  It didn't last time I tried.

[Kayma]

You and I have different definitions of "pretty solid".

 

Well, come on, it's Linux. It's just no fun if shit doesn't go awry, leaving you configuring for hours. But yeah, we've got a long way to go before KDE finds that marriage between good looks and usability. It's still for the power user at this point.

And sorting the programs by description instead of name is still a deal-breaker for me.  And does the "view desktop" widget finally toggle properly?  It didn't last time I tried.

The program grouping is annoying as fuck, no denying that.

[Thad]

But yeah, we've got a long way to go before KDE finds that marriage between good looks and usability. It's still for the power user at this point.

See, 4's not, and that's kinda the problem.

[Rico]

Moderately depressed that my relatively mainstream D-Link wireless card did not work out of the box in Ubuntu (I looked it up prior to install and it looked like it did but apparently only 1 of the 3 revisions does whoops?).  I got it working, but should I really have to install ndiswrapper utilities through apt in the terminal and manually set my SSID and WEP key through terminal commands as well?

I'm just glad I wasn't trying to use WPA (Thanks, DS Fat!)

I can already tell it's going to be a joy to install a TV Tuner and muck around with MythTV.

[Thad]

Yeah, wireless support under Linux is still pretty poor.  I've mentioned before that I had to disable the wireless card in my Mac Pro because it brings down the router -- in fairness, that's the Windows driver's fault (XP-64 driver support is probably the very worst at this point), but yeah, having to wrap a Windows driver to run under Linux is an ugly hack to begin with.

It was still way, way easier to set up under Kubuntu than Gentoo.  (BTW, I heard the other day that Gentoo was going to cease development, but neither Wikipedia nor the Gentoo main site seem to say anything about it, so I'm going to assume the info was wrong.)

[Wood]

So, has anyone tried KDE 4.2 yet?

[Thad]

That's a great question, Sora!  Has anyone tried software that WILL NOT BE IN ALPHA FOR ANOTHER WEEK AND A HALF yet?

But I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave you to puzzle that one out for yourself.

PS: I hear there's a Thundercats movie coming out in 2010.  Have you seen it yet?

[Thad]

...Since I'm sooner or later probably going to have to switch to KDE 4, and since most of my complaints with it to date have been regarding its launcher, I decided, for S&G, to try using Kicker on KDE 4.

It somewhat mitigates my complaints (the show desktop button works, even with the custom keyboard shortcuts I'd set for it), but for some reason Alt-F1 doesn't pull up the K menu.

Also, it still doesn't let me alt-tab into programs on other desktops, or start-tab to other desktops.  (I'm sure there's a keyboard shortcut that WILL switch between desktops, but I can't find the setting for it and recall something being off with it the last time I tried, though I can't exactly remember what.)

...So how's GNOME these days, anyway?

Most likely I'll just stick with Hardy and KDE 3.5 at least until 4.2 comes out.  (I'll need the 3.5 version of Kicker if I'm going to keep this kludge up anyway.)

EDIT: I AM sorta tempted to start running more of the KDE 4 apps under 3.5.  I switched to ktorrent 4 months ago; it's far superior to 3 in that it doesn't bring down my fucking network after a few hours of use.  Kate 4 and Konqueror 4 look pretty keen too, from my experience.  (Though, oddly, I prefer the backport of Dolphin to the 4 version, even though the 4 version is the original.)

EDIT 2: Tried about 2 minutes with the new version of Akregator.  Some of the things about the new interface I hated (entire column devoted to number of new posts, eating up totally unnecessary real estate if the number happens to be 0), some I liked ("author" field on message list -- though it STILL doesn't show the author on gamespite).  I didn't have time to draw any more conclusions than that, as that's when the fucking thing crashed.

[Kayma]

ATTN: Mac and Linux users: Free, full copies of CrossOver and CrossOver Games are available today. I've never used it, but uh, people like it. I guess.

[Thad]

Shorter Windows 7 feature list: A bunch of shit OSX already does.

[Brentai]

I'll be happy with just "shuts down properly".

[Thad]

So would I. 

[Thad]

Also, it still doesn't let me alt-tab into programs on other desktops

Found it; it's actually in the same place as in KDE 3, so I can't blame KDE 4 for my inability to find it.

It's in System Settings -> Window Behavior; there's a checkbox that says "Traverse windows on all desktops".

So maybe I'll screw around with the thing a little more.  I'll probably have to make the switch sooner or later -- 4.2's due out in January; maybe that'll be the magic number.  In the meantime, I am officially behind the times on Kubuntu releases.

EDIT: Yeah, actually it's working more or less satisfactorily now.  Still can't upgrade to Intrepid because I'm using the KDE 3 Kicker/tray/whatever you call it.  (EDIT 2: Panel.)

Some of the OpenGL effects are obnoxious, while some, like transparency and drop shadows, are pretty much essential from a basic usability standpoint, and reveals that KDE 4's UI design isn't nearly as stupid as it seems without OpenGL.  Others fall somewhere in-between; the Alt-Tab effects are neat in theory but don't play well with transparency (picture a bunch of transparent windows all stacked one on top of the other -- like exposing the same film more than once).  The Expose-style shit is keen, but I think you can get that set up in KDE 3, too.

From what I understand, the fancy OpenGL shit also doesn't turn off when you're using a fullscreen program, which is stupid; obviously I won't be using KDE 4 for gaming.

EDIT 2: Akregator 4 still crashing.  I suspect it's because I copied over my settings from 3; it might work better if I nuked them and started from scratch.  But I'm not sure I'm ready to expend that kind of effort.

I also can't seem to get my volume keys to work; I think it's something to do with KMix 4 not wanting to play with the KDE 3 panel, but I'm not 100%.  But that's not a deal breaker; I think I've got all the deal-breaker shit resolved at this point.

EDIT 3: MPlayer, when using the OpenGL output, has some serious picture problems; frequent white flashes.  Assume this is a conflict with all the other OpenGL shit KDE 4 does (see EDIT 1, "which is stupid").  The other graphical outputs don't want to play nice with my video card, so I'm going to have to find a workaround...

...later, because it's 1 in the morning.

(And no, I don't really expect most people care about my exhaustive list of things wrong with KDE 4.  But these make for excellent notes for the NEXT time I come back and see if all my gripes are fixed!)

EDIT 4: Okay, yeah, the video flicker is due to a well-documented conflict between the ATI proprietary driver and Compiz.  I figured as much.  Will see if there's a fix; otherwise I guess I can remove Compiz and lose all those OpenGL desktop effects, which are less important than a functioning movie player.

EDIT 5: ktorrent 4 has been eating cycles and memory like candy.  This may have nothing to do with KDE4 as a whole, as I've been using ktorrent 4 even under KDE3 for the past several months (ktorrent 3 has a nasty tendency to flood the router with bad packets until it brings our entire network down) and it behaves similarly there sometimes.  I'll need to play with it longer to figure out whether this was a fluke.

EDIT 6: figured out the volume problem; turns out I needed to set it up in KDE 4's system settings even though I'm using KDE 3's version of kmix.  So that just leaves the video flicker.  Which may not have a fix except for turning compiz off.

[Thad]

...so yeah, have pretty much been running KDE 3 apps under KDE 4 since that last post.  It worked pretty well at first, but I'm increasingly having issues with performance and stability.  (My Akregator configuration managed to get hosed the other day; I figured that was a good reason to try the new version again, but the shortcut keys still don't work and it still crashes if you look at it sideways.)

Decided to try the 4.2 beta.  It seemed to run faster but Kickoff STILL wouldn't fucking sort programs by name so I didn't bother fucking with it any more.  Am convinced at this point everyone at TheKompany is a moron.  I MAY rig it up like I had 4.1, with the KDE 3 panel, but I don't want to bother right now.

Am back to running KDE3 for the moment.  Will see if it performs better than 4 has been.  So far so good.

[Thad]

Getting pretty exasperated with my current setup.  The KDE4 version of KTorrent that I'm running under Hardy has a leak, and frequently crashes.  There's a newer version that's at least supposed to fix the crash problem, but it's not available for Hardy.

Can't use the KDE 3 version of KTorrent because it floods the network with bad packets and kills the router.

I used to use a BT client called Deluge.  I don't remember why I stopped but I remember it had some really stupid fucking interface things going on -- IIRC you had to deselect files individually, so if you wanted 1 file out of a torrent with 100 of them, you had to right-click the other 99 and click "don't download".

But maybe it's fixed by now -- could give it another shot, I guess.

I still don't want to upgrade to Intrepid, because that would force me to use KDE 4.  I'd like to use the more recent, more stable KDE 4 apps, but not KDE 4 ITSELF.  The KDE 4 version of Akregator doesn't respond correctly to keyboard shortcuts, and crashes like Launchpad McQuack.

Speaking of crashes, Firefox has become an unstable bastard since the latest update too.

And MPlayer routinely crashes or won't play videos properly.  That one I think is ATI's fault.

...which reminds me, I should reboot.  I updated my ATI driver days ago and then forgot about it.