[Cialug] New desktop ?

[David Champion]

Interesting... I've been running KDE 4.1 in Mandriva 2009 daily since 
last summer when I started with an alpha release. I only ran KDE 4.0 for 
a few hours... I could tell it wasn't ready for prime-time so I didn't 
use it.

Never had any stability problems with KDE 4. I have a PC at home that 
runs for months at a time with KDE up.

Don't run dual monitors daily, but I have done it. I used the nVidia 
tool to set it up (I think it's called nvidia-config or nvidia-tool or 
something like that), and it worked great.

The clock is just another widget. There are like 5 clock widgets (and 
probably more), if you don't like the default one, remove it and add a 
different one.

You could give Mandriva a try... it's similar to RH in a lot of ways, 
but they have their crap together better for the desktop experience. 
There's a Mandriva One live CD you can try if you don't want to install 
it. For installing & updating software, I like Mandriva's "urpmi" much 
better than yum / up2date.

-dc

Jeff Chapin wrote:
> Granted, some of these might not be KDE4 related, but due to a bug I
> list, I cannot test in gnome.
>
> Stability, mainly. Things crash. Alot. Which combined with some of the
> following make it exceedingly annoying.
>
> Other than that, missing features.
>
> I use it with 2 monitors -- One works at boot, the other needs to be
> reenabled every time I *log out*. Which involves adding a second panel
> -- again, since it forgot I had 2.
>
> And adding all the widgets to it.
>
> Which don't space themselves right -- since they are only allowed to
> autospace. Adding a clock and a task manger results in the clock
> claiming 50% of the space, and the task manager getting 50%, and trying
> to cram all the applications into that space. Evidently they have a 3rd
> party app that can be used to manually consume space, so I can give it
> x%, and the clock and task manager 1/2 of what is left. That would let
> me move the clock, but make the lack of task manager space worse. I have
> to reset my wallpaper everytime, as well.
>
> The system tray doesn't work -- I am guessing due to the fact that I had
> it on the second panel. At first, my icons only appeared in one small
> square on my desktop, since the default setting is some goofy container
> thing -- but I fixed that. Now the icons appear twice on my desktop --
> once on each monitor.If I tell KDE to put the tasks on the left screen
> on the left handed task manager, and those on the right, on the right,
> it does the opposite. Tasks on the left go on the right, those ont he
> right, go on the left. The alternative setting? yeah, that is to have
> all tasks on *both* task managers. This is related to the fact that you
> cannot make a single panel span 2 monitors, and need to set up a second
> panel on the second monitor.
>
> You cannot have 2 panels on the same edge of the screen -- they will sit
> on top of each other. Which means the setup I like and have used on
> every OS since win98 no longer works. I cannot have one panel with quick
> launch icons and one of open tasks.
>
> Sound randomly breaks. Sometimes mplayer works with sound, but not xine,
> or vice versa.
>
> I cannot test in gnome, since every time I log out, or reboot, it
> automatically logs me right back in again.
>
> In KDE (but not on a tty) the left and up arrows do not repeat. The
> other keys all do.
>
> The clock only supports 24 hour time. I am being picky here, but I am
> not in the military and seeing that it is 23:30 is not my preferred
> method of viewing the clock.
>
> These are all things I opened bug reports for. Most of them were closed,
> or I was told to go upstream, upstream told me to go downstream, and
> then the bugs got closed -- or I was told to fix them myself. I wish I
> could, as I would in a heart beat.
>
> I am sure most of these have work arounds, but I gave up finding them
> after finding so many work arounds that just create more issues.
>
> I have been contemplating a reinstall and/or a move to a different
> distro, but I spend so much time with redhat/centos machines that I can
> do things from memory -- and I have gotten my self in trouble trying to
> do things the redhat way on a Ubuntu machine before, and it took me a
> few weeks to find out what I was doing wrong. (Apparently you are not
> supposed to use apt-get from the CLI anymore -- it breaks things. So my
> first reflex of logging in and updating immediately after installing was
> breaking everything, and it took me a long time to figure it out)
>
> I'm sure one of these days KDE4 will be ready for a non-alpha release,
> but until that point, the fact that I was left the choice of an
> unsupported, unmaintained OS, switching DE, or using KDE, combined with
> the negative attitudes, and unwillingness to assist left a foul taste in
> my mouth.
>
> Right now, I just live with it, and I have found that I use my one
> Windows box more than ever (puke). Now I am glad that I have left it
> sitting around and hooked up with Synergy. I pretty much just use Fedora
> 10 to watch videos and listen to music any more, it is way too much
> effort to have to re set things up the way I like and find usable all
> the time, and things with no work around (like tasks appearing on the
> wrong screen or the panel on the second screen crashing once or twice a
> day)  that I just use the features that work, anymore.
>
> Running yum update often gives me some hope for the future, though
>
>
>
> Todd Walton wrote:
>   
>> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 3:35 PM, Jeff Chapin <chapinjeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>   
>>     
>>> That and the whole KDE4 being crap fiasco....
>>>     
>>>       
>> What do you not like about KDE 4?  I'm having trouble finding
>> something to not like.
>>
>> --
>> Todd
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