Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Some time ago I wrote that I am considering switching back to KDE 3.5 after few months with KDE 4.0/4.1-svn. Finally I did it.
Reasons are the same as in previous post — lack of stability and I for now I do not see bright future for KDE 4.1 (but this can change after release if developers will work on fixing bugs instead of adding new features/rewrites). With 4.1 svn snapshots there was guessing ‘what is broken today and how badly’ — mostly Plasma desktop was more or less unusable. For example panel which works in 4.0.72 stopped working with 4.0.73 unless enlarged to normal size, second panel nearly never worked (or even made Plasma crash each time).
So for now I am back on KDE 3.5 with few components from 4.1-svn (window manager, Okular, Dolphin) and wait for 4.1/4.2 releases to have something to test.
Tags: kde No Comments »
Thursday, May 1st, 2008 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
After few months of using KDE 4 (4.0.1 — 4.0.3 and then 4.0.68 snapshot) I am thinking about reverting back to KDE 3.5.9. Why such decision? Software is just not yet ready for each day use.
Plasma based desktop
Plasma based desktop is overrated — you need KDE 4.1 snapshot to get possibility to have more then one panel. But still no way to re-arrange “plasmoids” on it… Not to mention that they will have totally broken sizes:
Also padding between panel icons (bottom panel) is huge and non configurable. Option to group running tasks by desktop is missing too. And what for are “Zoom Out”/”Zoom In” options? I do not see sense in them.
Amount of plasmoids is small — few basic ones only so to have for example weather information I would have to launch SuperKaramba like it was under KDE 3.5.
Lack of PIM
KDE PIM team works on new features but it will be ready rather after 4.1 release. According to few developers current version is not yet recommended to each day use.
Remote desktop
KRDC from KDE4 is maybe better for developers but for me it is more broken then 3.5 version. I use it to VNC session to my WinXP laptop. With newer version I often have stuck Shift/Ctrl/Alt keys after switching to/from KRDC. And even if I selected option “keep passwords in KWallet” it asks me for VNC password each time :(
And I really like idea of “one window per connection” instead of tabs. I mostly use one connection so old style KRDC window is more usable for me.
System settings
Application is nice — but where is “Administrator mode” button for “Computer administration” modules? Normal user can launch “Date & Time” control panel and look at disabled GUI. In KDE 3.5 there was button to prompt for administrator password to alter configuration.
The annoying thing is that you cannot have settings application from KDE 3.5 and 4.x installed at same time. And KDE4 one do not set colours for KDE 3.x applications :(
Bugs
As everything KDE 4.x has bugs. I gave up on reporting new ones as they too often bit rot for eons with “UNCONFIRMED” state even if few other people write that they have same bug on their systems.
One of nasty ones is broken support of SFTP links… On one system I have account with /home/users/hrw/ as $HOME. I am unable to open/save files from that location as KDE Filerequster is unable to handle this due to fact that /home/ is not readable for users. At least Dolphin handle this properly…
Konqueror which is unusable because most of time it end working sooner or later due to “Unable to connect to klauncher” - WTF?
Another small annoyance: launch Dolphin and press “Ctrl-L” to edit location. Why it can not automatically select current location? I catch myself each time that I am writing insane paths due to old one not being removed.
Good parts
I like KWin composite effects. But this can be installed even on KDE 3.5 system so less problem.
Was there more good things? Probably yes — I maybe did not noticed them or not get used to them.
Tags: kde 2 Comments »
Monday, March 12th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
During last weeks I mostly work for OpenedHand company. In this time I became more and more addicted to some of programming related KDE apps. My usual set of working programs consists:
- Basket
- Great note taking apps which I use to keep 3-4 lists of ToDo items.
- KDESvn
- Subversion client which is nicely integrated in Konqueror window.1
- KDiff3
- merge util which is too good to not be used
- Kompare
- difference showing util which visualize changes (KDESvn can use it)
Another interesting apps:
- KScope
- KDE interface to Cscope — provides a source-editing environment for large C projects. Good thing if you want to work with things like kernel drivers. Linux.com had article about this tool quite recently.
- PicoCom
- Minimal dumb-terminal emulation program — very useful when it comes to talk with U-Boot on Neo1973 or talking to GSM Modem inside of that phone. Much better then
cu from uucp package as this one does not need any permission changes, extra spool directories etc crap.
Some of my readers use them, some use other stuff. If you know interesting application which can help me in doing my programmer/system integrator work then feel free to add info in comments.
Tags: kde openembedded openmoko 3 Comments »
Tuesday, February 20th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
There is no software without bugs. But there are bugs and BUGS. Second ones are annoying, well known and no one work on getting them fixed. Few examples:
FireFox/Iceweasel — many people use it, many people want to kill their developers. Why? It leaks memory, it eats memory, it can take 6GB of memory just because there is no more memory available in system. Problem exists in 2.0.x but also in 3.0 trunk version. No solution developed.
KMail — flagship of KDE PIM. It can fetch mail, send mail and do many other things with mails. And it can handle OpenPGP/GnuPG signed/encrypted ones. But a way how it handle them is horror. Whole UI freezes, no updates for several seconds just because someone decided to sign all his mails. Bug was submitted over 5 (FIVE) years ago, there was one major KDE release and many minor ones but bug is still present. No one even marked is as important.. No comments
I can live with first bug as for most of time I use Konqueror. But solving second one needs to wait until Mailody will get more usable so I will be able to switch to it. I lost faith that KDE PIM will get into more usable state then it is now.
Tags: bugs firefox kde 1 Comment »
Thursday, September 29th, 2005 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Today I decided to try KOffice 1.4.1 on my desktop as I wanted spreadsheet which can open MS Excel or atleast OASIS OpenDocument files and wont be called “OpenOffice.org Calc”.
After few hours of compile I started KSpread, loaded OpenDocument saved by OOCalc2 and I got so many error messages in terminal that I decided to skip another release of KOffice.
Who knows — maybe KOffice 2.0 will be finally working…
Tags: kde Comments Off
