KDE's KWin Gears Up To Advance At Faster Pace

[Tyler_K]

because with true multi-seat/"Zaphod mode" it only shows outputs deligated for the screen it was launched on...
as a RandR GUI, it's OK, i guess.

Right -- but as you seem to understand yourself, the bottom line is that what you have described is not a KDE issue, but rather is a randr limitation (randr does not currently support multiple Screens within an X Display .... though it most certainly supports multiple monitors attached to a single X Screen within a particular X Display).

I suppose that the KDE GUI could provide a better explanation as to why it won't work in the case of multiple X display Screens (:0.0, :0.1, ... :0.n), or across Displays (:0.x, :1.x) for that case I guess, but Meh.

Hopefully, by this time next year, all the hard work that David Airlie is doing towards that end will provide results that many of us wait upon

[dfx.]

Why do you think the monitor config. app is confused and useless?

because with true multi-seat/"Zaphod mode" it only shows outputs deligated for the screen it was launched on, at best.
and an empty window with just an error message like "graphical system does not support resolution changes or rotation", at worst.

like it is now for me, but that has something to do with RandR being inactive for some reason. probably because Xinerama is enabled, but before that it didn't want to let mouse cursor unto second screen.
this is probably not KDE's but X issue, since it also let's windows go between screens, which it shouldn't.

which doesn't change the fact that KDE's monitor config is just a GUI for RandR, analogie of xrandr. which is pretty useless on use-cases other than "one giant virtual screen from all the outputs"-kind of multi-screen.
yeah, it is useful _for that particular, most-widespread use-case_. not because it's so good, but because there is no other choices in any GUIs, and most people not even aware about other options.
as a RandR GUI, it's OK, i guess.

[dfx.]

Its great that you have logical order to the file system but not everyone does, and even the people who do its easier to just hit alt-f2 and start typing the name of the file you want than pull up dolphin and start going through folders.

and most people also use you-know-which OS. and i get more than enought frustration with consequences of their haphazard usage patterns and that OS's design as it is.
treating that kind of people and their habbits as the only target, and ackonwledging those patterns as legitimate is not a good way to go for the least sucky DE of best F/OSS OS out there :|

Slow-ass? really? I just give Nepomuk 512mbs of RAM in settings and forget about it. Its high enough that Nepo never uses that much, and can index at its maximum speed. Can't really call Nepomuk or Akondi ugly since they dont have a GUI... its all backend.
MySQL is a bit much of a dependency, I wish they'd switch it out for SQlite but thats just me *shrugs*

really. maybe it should be so in theory, but on my every (unoften) try it just would hog whatether resources where available indefinitely.
with which on my every act of disabling it, notifications on plasma would pop-up about how horrible, that it's switched off. every log in, and some times in-beetwen, until not long ago, when it finally shut the fuck up with some update.

"fucking around" is a bit much for Kopete vs Telepathy, and plain just wrong for Gstreamer. I'm glad to see Telepathy-KDE is coming along nicely, Kopete was never really my favorite application and the desktop integration is awesome. GStreamer...I cant even imagine what you were trying to get at. Phonon has always allowed you to use libVLC, libXine or Gstreamer without any problems thanks to the abstraction layers.

Kopete was almost unmaintained for years, from what i gather. they didn't even bothered with proper IPv6 support. at least now they doing something.
and Phonon... like there isn't enougt abstractions for multimedia already. for me, it also always glitchy: on pure ALSA it most of time unable to playback and poops text notifications instead into plasma about soundcard "being bussy", despite everything else working fine; and on PA it ignores sound notifications volume level from its config menu and "fart out" sounds with distortion, if any other playback is going on at that moment.
i pretty sure Gstreamer will suffice, and i heard that Gnome people prefer it too, so some more unification as a bonus. at least that way there are more chances, that someone would maintain it in the end.

Can't comment on the compile flags because I run Arch, not Gentoo or kde-src. But if you've got problems, report bugs, and if you are still using KHTML...you're doing it wrong. KHTML has been replaced by WebKit, and even if you are still using Konquerer you can tell it to use a Webkit backend instead of KHTML.

ahh-huh, but Akregator does not seem to give a shit and still crashes (and Konqueror still hangs) even when WebKit is set by default. at least until i rebuilt kdelibs with safer flags (just "-O3" instead of "-O2" with a bunch of graphite options and stuff). i have no intentions to figure out, which flag exactly screwed it up, and why it happaned in khtml-related libs, since it beat up my patience too much already.

Lack of manpower/interest is kind of an ironic statement to make considering Martin just got hired to be a full time developer on Kwin and even before then he was doing weekly development updates on Kwin.

it is an ironic statement ! a way of saying: "FUCKING FINALLY !".
they should have concentrated on kwin status more, instead of doing some shit, like rewriting built-in half-assed plasmoids and fidling with elaborate frameworks for them, since they still had to remake everything (QML transition) anyway and either way plasmoid-writing didn't gathered much usefull popularity. which isn't surprising, looking at the state of built-in, KDE authors's own, plasmoids in comparison to KDE 3.X Kicker.
i'm not saying they shouldn't done any of that at all, but bringing kwin and overall WM-functionality in order to Four-point-_NINE_ release (and not _from_ four-point-nine release) would have been... nice.

How is it a fucked-up design, exactly? They are using the best of modern technologies available to them, and the ones they arent using they have plans to use such as QT5 and Webkit2. Thats the joy of the level of abstraction KDE chose to do, they can gradually replace the backends without it being too much of a big deal.

broken GUIs due to usage of decade[s]-old X functionality, CPU&mem leaking crutch-for-logical-disorder nailed dead unto entire base framework with humongous unnecessary dependency, big plasma rewrites without any substantial derivative plasma work (insufficency of quality-made & maintainable 3rd-party plasmoids) going around (at least it crashes very rarely now), crash/hang-level regressions on minor "bug-fixing" releases - seems pretty fucked-up to me.

modularization, Qt5 and Telepathy work, hiring the dude, etc. seems pretty good though. i just hope, that it won't turn to crap in practice.

Ericg, do you think dfx might be trolling and not really expecting a reasonable answer?

no, i don't expect an answer at all, let alone a reasonable one. i expressing an opinion of disgust and don't hope for much. mostly expecting only something, like you just did there, Ericg did better though, as you yourself acknowledged by this.
you're happy with how KDE4 turning up ? good for you. i'm not quite.

for me: it's fucked up, but, at least, it's not Gnome.
i would expect stunts like nepomuk/akonadi from there, and nice, modular things, like Telepathy & Gstreamer, from KDE. this whole KDE4 & Gnome3 thing is epic mindfuckery :/

[pejakm]

I successfully manage to compile KDE without nepomuk/soprano/akonadi stuff (IMHO bloat), so if anyone needs instructions, PM me.

[Tyler_K]

i actually did set up "Zaphod mode" on my 4.9.2 via static (xorg.conf) config file, and kwin does treat secondary screen as a separate, independent desktop space. but some parts of KDE still are confused about it, like, for example, it's monitor configurator is all fucked up and useless

Why do you think the monitor config. app is confused and useless?

[Ericg]

Could be a possibility, Bug, but he's not always a raving lunatic so I decided to go for optimism and hope he wasn't actually trolling this time.

[dfx.]

Anything in particular? I don't use multiple monitors too often, but when I did, it worked pretty much ok with two monitors having different resolutions.

depends on mode you're using. i prefer _true multi-screen_ aka "Zaphod mode" or multi-_seat_.
but nooo, having one giant uneven virtual screen from all the monitors, no-matter size or matrix/tube parameters, is the brink of fashion today... back in KDE 3.X i could even label separate screens, as if they were usual virtual screens, but only real. which they exacly are. but nooo, now everyone ass-backwardly spreads out multiple outputs on one "real" X screen and then puts DE's virtual "desktops"/screens on top of that :/
first, gimme my separate screens, then put your virtual crap on each of them, _separately_, damn it !

i actually did set up "Zaphod mode" on my 4.9.2 via static (xorg.conf) config file, and kwin does treat secondary screen as a separate, independent desktop space. but some parts of KDE still are confused about it, like, for example, it's monitor configurator is all fucked up and useless, and plasma's virtual desktop menu thinks it's one giant sausage-of-the-screen still. and i'm sure i will experience all the subtle fuck-ups eventually.

Besides working fine with SSDs (I know, not everybody has them), you do realize Nepomuk is just a service and as such it can be, brace for it, disabled.

1) hoggin the living shit out of CPU, volatile memory and persistent storage devices is not "working fine"
i have 6 HDDs on my desktop, almost 6Tb overall. i don't need no "search service" beyond simple locate & find, because everything is in order.
2) i don't need it, i disabled it, but it doesn't remove that crap out of my system, nor does it free me from compiling MySQL for it.
at least now they made KDE not to complain and whine about it being disabled. after it been disabled, by me, because fuck that.

Nepomuk works great. At least much better than the other Linux equivalent I have tried. The nepumuk tagging and indexing is very usable, and it give every application that use it a decent and search functionality with sharable data.

overall: not for my use-case. and this is not exactly the stuff, that worth be nailed into the DE's guts.

[bug77]

Ericg, do you think dfx might be trolling and not really expecting a reasonable answer?

[Ericg]

ah, and don't get me started on slow-ass useless glitchy ugly crap of nepomuk/akonadi with their MySQL requirement and idea of file-indexers in general (i already have logical file order in a file-system, fuck off from my HDD and CPU, please !).

Its great that you have logical order to the file system but not everyone does, and even the people who do its easier to just hit alt-f2 and start typing the name of the file you want than pull up dolphin and start going through folders.

Slow-ass? really? I just give Nepomuk 512mbs of RAM in settings and forget about it. Its high enough that Nepo never uses that much, and can index at its maximum speed. Can't really call Nepomuk or Akondi ugly since they dont have a GUI... its all backend.

MySQL is a bit much of a dependency, I wish they'd switch it out for SQlite but thats just me *shrugs*

at least now they starting to use things like Telepathy and Gstreamer. guess someone tired of fucking around.

"fucking around" is a bit much for Kopete vs Telepathy, and plain just wrong for Gstreamer. I'm glad to see Telepathy-KDE is coming along nicely, Kopete was never really my favorite application and the desktop integration is awesome. GStreamer...I cant even imagine what you were trying to get at. Phonon has always allowed you to use libVLC, libXine or Gstreamer without any problems thanks to the abstraction layers.

indeed !
even now, when i updated from 4.9 to 4.9.2 i got instability issues as regressions, like khtml being broken, and everything depending on it going apeshit, if being compiled with the same flags as on 4.9.

Can't comment on the compile flags because I run Arch, not Gentoo or kde-src. But if you've got problems, report bugs, and if you are still using KHTML...you're doing it wrong. KHTML has been replaced by WebKit, and even if you are still using Konquerer you can tell it to use a Webkit backend instead of KHTML.

BUT things like that, no matter how frustrating, still are the LEAST of KDE's problems. in comparison to fucked-up design and lack of manpower/interest in crucial parts, like kwin.

Lack of manpower/interest is kind of an ironic statement to make considering Martin just got hired to be a full time developer on Kwin and even before then he was doing weekly development updates on Kwin.

How is it a fucked-up design, exactly? They are using the best of modern technologies available to them, and the ones they arent using they have plans to use such as QT5 and Webkit2. Thats the joy of the level of abstraction KDE chose to do, they can gradually replace the backends without it being too much of a big deal.

[bug77]

The multi monitor support don't read the EDID information from the monitor. Because of this you can not save settings for a specific monitor.

I think is is actually by design, since KDE seems to be centered around workspaces now.
Anyway, I've been using KDE 4 since 4.0. With about a 2y hiatus, mostly at work. So you can understand my confusion when people go around complaining the KDE is inferior or buggy. Sure, a few releases have been a bit problematic, but nothing I couldn't work around. A bug is not critical just because it happens to affect you.