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KDE 4.7.3 Is Here WIth More Fixes

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  • #11
    Originally posted by Shining Arcanine View Post
    I have issues with crashes on logout too. I assumed that it was due to a bug in the Intel graphics drivers, because I have a system with an Nvidia graphics card that does not suffer from that problem. There is also an issue where the system disables compositing at every login and I must manually enable it through Alt+Shft+F12. It is rather annoying, but it only happens on the system with Sandy Bridge graphics, so I assume that the graphics driver is at fault.

    The stability might be due to bugs in the graphics driver, which isn't KDE's fault and the reason newer versions of KDE suffer from them could be that they are more reliant on properly written graphics drivers because they offload more things.
    I had logout problem with opensource ati driver (not with catalyst). I solved it by editing /etc/kde4/kdm/kdmrc and changing line #TerminateServer=true to TerminateServer=true
    Change take effect after reboot.

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    • #12
      Originally posted by schnelle View Post
      I had logout problem with opensource ati driver (not with catalyst). I solved it by editing /etc/kde4/kdm/kdmrc and changing line #TerminateServer=true to TerminateServer=true
      Change take effect after reboot.
      The problem and workaround you mention is also mentioned in the Kubuntu Changelog / Known Issues and I believe is a X server crash and/or KDM issue, but we are (at least I am) talking about a KDE application/library crash at logout and it also shows a KDE crash report information window about it - the X server does not crash and you can close the bug report window to continue with the logout.

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      • #13
        Originally posted by hdas View Post
        The problem and workaround you mention is also mentioned in the Kubuntu Changelog / Known Issues and I believe is a X server crash and/or KDM issue
        What's funny nobody from Kubuntu bothered to fix this issue. They didn't even push workaround and newbies probably don't even know how to fix this. At least in 11.04, because I didn't try 11.10.

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        • #14
          Originally posted by hdas View Post
          But I cannot help to see that they advertise all these fancy features like social integration, semantic desktop, composting effects and other random things nobody cares about, while standard features get neglected.
          You're absolutely right. That's why I gave up on KDE a few months ago. Why do I need a file transfer bandwidth graph in the notification area when the notification system itself is riddled with display/graphical bugs?? At least some of those new features would be useful if they worked properly. Last time I cheked semantic desktop could hardly find anything I was looking for. On gnome they don't announce their "semantic desktop" stuff at all and it works. What a difference!

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          • #15
            Nepomuk.

            Has anyone noticed the truckload of Nepomuk fixes? It seems Nepomuk pains are (finally/at last/whatever) becoming a thing from the past.

            Originally posted by hdas
            <sarcasm>I am waiting for comments who will say I should use Gnome/TWM or update my graphics driver or change distribution or bug denial reports or a constructive but poor workaround, including not using the taskmanager at all.</sarcasm>
            hdas, instead of that, install Icon Tasks. Yes, it will remind you of Unity, but at least it can close tasks properly.

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            • #16
              @Alejandro,

              It is very nice if they have indeed improved Nepomuk stability. But my point is why release it at first place and integrate it heavily when it is buggy. After all, most people do not need it.

              I could probably use Icon Tasks or even some of the other task managers for KDE. But apparently the problem is with kwin (the window decorator/manager) not sending the right signals to taskmanager when one closes a window - at least that is my (possibly incorrect) understanding after wading through the bug threads. But my bigger gripe is that it was working before, so this is a regression, and to me a very obvious and intolerable regression - a feature that is expected to work flawlessly on even ancient desktop environments - so I am disappointed that they released this software at first place.

              @devius,

              Furthermore, just when I thought I somewhat understood semantic desktop, and it seemed somewhat cool, although a niche feature and not useful to me, they add something called "activities" stuff to the mix. Why do does a regular user need to know a new fancy desktop concept and paradigm every time they have a point release in 6 months, and that too a broken one at it.

              Also, obscure names like nepomuk, akonadi or strigi, and their related error messages are even more baffling.

              @kraftman,

              What is even funnier is that the KDM problem with X server crashing at logout has been so common that I had disabled the reset X server feature a long time back (about 2 years ago, on my Gentoo Linux system). But somehow upstream apparently has no problems on any of their machines I guess, so it is still there in the default config file.

              On a different note, I also wonder what is the point of all these different distributions, and why don't they share bug fixes and config files freely among themselves and upstream. Its nice to talk about choice, but currently it seems they more or less offer the same fundamental thing, all of them duplicating most of the effort. I can see that Slackware, Gentoo, Debian are different in a deeper way, but I don't see a huge difference between Debian/Ubuntu/Mint/Fedora/Suse/Mandriva in terms of functionality.

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              • #17
                Originally posted by hdas View Post
                This is probably not the best place to rant about things, but AFAIK unfortunately KDE 4.7 has a severe taskmanager bug where entries from closed applications remain in the taskbar. While there are several variants of this problem, and unfortunately too many bug reports about it, I am primarily talking about bugs.kde.org # 275469. I would also refer to bug #'s 277010, 278869 and # 224447. I am although happy to see that this obvious bug is currently being looked at by developers.
                I cannot reproduce those problems here but I am using the rather excellent icon tasks taskbar replacement http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php...content=144808.

                On that note, why do they need to offload more drawing things to the graphics processor - I understand it is more efficient, faster and all that, but CPU's are already fast enough and extremely stable at doing such stuff. (I can imagine even a lowly netbook CPU like Atom or Fusion will do just fine on such drawing operations.) So why release some untested crap and break things.
                It depends on how much you want to be doing with your processor at the same time. Graphics processors are orders of magnitude faster at some operations. Basically unless you have enough people testing the software before it is released (that is on a wide enough range of hardware) it will be untested (this is almost by definition).

                PS. I know of two good software based compositors. One was in versions of OSX up to Lion and the other is the one in Enlightenment version 0.17. Both took a *lot* of effort to get right.

                Unfortunately some parts of the Linux Graphics stack still suck and until somebody actually uses those features and the get tested and debugged they are going to continue to suck.
                Last edited by kayosiii; 02 November 2011, 07:23 PM.

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                • #18
                  Originally posted by kayosiii View Post
                  I cannot reproduce those problems here but I am using the rather excellent icon tasks taskbar replacement http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php...content=144808
                  Surrender, hdas. Resistance is futile. Icon Tasks owns everything else

                  Anyway, in KDE 4.8 the taskbar, like anything else in your Plasma desktop, gets a rewrite in QML (to support tray icons along tasks), and those Akonadi and Nepomuk names are gone. The solution for all your issues may be weeks away. About Icon Tasks working where the normal Taskbar fails... that probes the bug is in the taskbar. I've tried Smooth Tasks, also with good results. If you install Smooth Tasks and expand all tasks, you get a very Default Taskbar-like look.

                  Also, this is Free Software after all. If you want a stable Nepomuk layer, you need testing and someone willing to bugfix. The second part was achieved two months ago, and we are already feeling the difference. Remember that Nepomuk is the same thing Microsoft tried and ditched (do you remember WinFS?), so it's 10x more complicated to try a never tried before thing.
                  Last edited by Alejandro Nova; 02 November 2011, 11:55 PM.

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                  • #19
                    Networkmanager?

                    Originally posted by hdas View Post
                    This is probably not the best place to rant about things, but AFAIK unfortunately KDE 4.7 has a severe taskmanager bug where entries from closed applications remain in the taskbar. While there are several variants of this problem, and unfortunately too many bug reports about it, I am primarily talking about bugs.kde.org # 275469. I would also refer to bug #'s 277010, 278869 and # 224447. I am although happy to see that this obvious bug is currently being looked at by developers.

                    What is unfortunate is that many distributions are shipping it right now in their stable releases, including Kubuntu, Sabayon etc. I tested Sabayon in a virtual machine and it had this bug of closed tasks remaining in task manager. Worst more, I saw a review of Ubuntu on Distrowatch the other day and these days the reviews are so shallow that they miss out on obvious bugs - so much that I think you can see it in their attached screenshot (if I am correct). (I should add that in a quick run of Kubuntu in a virtual machine today, I was not able to see that bug.) It looks that Linus's Law that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" is not so true after all.

                    While this bug was the primary reason I have reverted back to KDE 4.6, there are numerous other stability issues. KDE crashing on logout is a usual happening. Also there are random Nepomuk crashes and messages -- worst, I do not care for it or need it and do not know why is it part of the main distribution. Apparently the Changelog in KDE 4.7.3 claims to have fixed some of the Nepomuk issues. However in my opinion, KDE 4.7 should be marked as not-ready for production and should not be used until many of these bugs are fixed. It would come as a disappointment to those who are using anything stable (even if something ancient like Windows XP perhaps where basic things work).

                    Overall, the stability of KDE as fallen dramatically since KDE 4.5. I found a few hard hitting bugs in KDE 4.6, but 4.7 has gone really low. I appreciate the immense hard work the KDE developers put in, especially that it is mostly all volunteer effort and I also understand that developers are free to work on whatever projects they are interested in. But I cannot help to see that they advertise all these fancy features like social integration, semantic desktop, composting effects and other random things nobody cares about, while standard features get neglected. I would add that last time I checked few months back, the kde networkmanager or knetworkmanager project is still not in a good shape - what good is all this social integration if you are not connected to the internet or you still have to use konsole to connect to internet to use a shiny interface for tweeting. Ironically, I am using nm-applet (from gnome) currently on my KDE 4.6 desktop.

                    <sarcasm>I am waiting for comments who will say I should use Gnome/TWM or update my graphics driver or change distribution or bug denial reports or a constructive but poor workaround, including not using the taskmanager at all.</sarcasm>
                    I've never been a fan of this stack. For normal Network/Wireless the KDE wicd client is really enough. Only if you want to do vpn connection via GUI is not supported by wicd.
                    So ask your distribution, whatever you use, to implement wicd with KDE or give the users a choice.

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                    • #20
                      Originally posted by kraftman View Post
                      What's funny nobody from Kubuntu bothered to fix this issue. They didn't even push workaround and newbies probably don't even know how to fix this. At least in 11.04, because I didn't try 11.10.
                      It isn't always that simple. Workarounds often cause problems in other areas or for other people. Usually defaults are chosen that work with as many systems as possible.

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