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KDE's Plasma 2 Has Become Somewhat Usable

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  • KDE's Plasma 2 Has Become Somewhat Usable

    Phoronix: KDE's Plasma 2 Has Become Somewhat Usable

    KDE's Sebastian K?gler has written how the Plasma 2 shell has become "somewhat usable" for early adopters and KDE enthusiasts for the technologies that will really be taking on the Linux desktop in 2014...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    The early QML migration pays off.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Awesomeness View Post
      The early QML migration pays off.
      The early QML migration broke Plasma badly enough that I seriously considered switching away from KDE to something actually usable. Having the entire Plasma desktop crash and restart (or worse, not restart) every half hour or so is not a good end-user experience - and this is with nominally stable KDE releases, not the beta or developer version.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by makomk View Post
        The early QML migration broke Plasma badly enough that I seriously considered switching away from KDE to something actually usable. Having the entire Plasma desktop crash and restart (or worse, not restart) every half hour or so is not a good end-user experience - and this is with nominally stable KDE releases, not the beta or developer version.
        I'm sure no one else is going to bother to check... so I did.

        He's complaint comes down to: They rewrote something using brand new tech, and a brand new language, under essentially a brand new toolkit... And missed a crash that is triggered by a triple-race condition.

        Triple race? What do I mean? There's a list of notifications. And if a new notification is being "inserted" at the same time notifications are being "removed" DURING a timer event that only pops every 10mins... You get a crash.

        Is it a valid bug? Of course it is. Good on them for fixing it. But I'm sure it was a MAJOR pain in the ass to track down, and probably would've been next to undetectable during testing (unless a dev hit it) via reading the code, or via analysis tools.

        Bugs happen, bugs get fixed. The cycle continues lol
        All opinions are my own not those of my employer if you know who they are.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Ericg View Post
          He's complaint comes down to: They rewrote something using brand new tech, and a brand new language, under essentially a brand new toolkit... And missed a crash that is triggered by a triple-race condition.
          No, my complaint comes down to this: part-way through the supposedly stable and mature KDE 4.x series, they introduced a bug in Plasma Desktop that it made it practically unusable for me because it crashed so often. If you haven't experienced this kind of crash, what that means is that every half hour or so the taskbar would disappear and my desktop would be unusable for several seconds as all the windows rearranged themselves. Then about 20-30 seconds later Plasma would restart and they'd all do it again. (Sometimes it didn't and I had to manually restart it.) If you read the bug report this is a fairly common crash too.

          If that was an inevitable, understandable consequence of rewriting Plasma using new technology, then they shouldn't have done that as part of a stable release series aimed at end users. It's about the level of stability I'd expect from a 5.0 release.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Honton View Post
            That happens because KDE is forced to go Qt5. Qt4 is dead now, way more dead than GTK2. That is how things go down when you are not in control of your most crucial dependencies. Digia calls the shots. Digia gets the CLA. KDE can do nothing but brute port and crash. Still they KDE applaud what ever new direction Qt takes, be it rewriting everything in declarative language or waste time on Blackberry support. Qt is just another MIR or Upstart.
            Honton I know youre trolling but I dont care. KDE wasn't "forced" to go to Qt5, they could've stuck with Qt4 until Qt6 hit. They moved to Qt5 because QML is a great idea
            All opinions are my own not those of my employer if you know who they are.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by makomk View Post
              No, my complaint comes down to this: part-way through the supposedly stable and mature KDE 4.x series, they introduced a bug in Plasma Desktop that it made it practically unusable for me because it crashed so often. If you haven't experienced this kind of crash, what that means is that every half hour or so the taskbar would disappear and my desktop would be unusable for several seconds as all the windows rearranged themselves. Then about 20-30 seconds later Plasma would restart and they'd all do it again. (Sometimes it didn't and I had to manually restart it.) If you read the bug report this is a fairly common crash too.

              If that was an inevitable, understandable consequence of rewriting Plasma using new technology, then they shouldn't have done that as part of a stable release series aimed at end users. It's about the level of stability I'd expect from a 5.0 release.
              No, I didn't hit it. Like I said, triple-race-condition. And I highly doubt they -introduced it- in 4.11.1 or 4.11.2. The bug you linked was filed against 4.11.2. But the notification applet got rewritten in 4.10.0

              Without tracking down git logs... If it was introduced in 4.10.0 but you didnt start hitting it until 4.11.2, then its probably a case where the bug was laying dormant and another change-- probably even a bug fix for a different bug-- created a situation where the race was available to be raced and therefore the bug was exposed.

              I'm not saying you're wrong Makomk, or that its not a valid bug-- it is. But the situation, especially one like this, is never as easy or simple as "They screwed up." Hell, the fact that I never hit it -at all- could mean that the root cause was a case of library versions on your system, or other applets on your taskbar, or a specific app pushing notifications, honestly the possibilities are endless..
              All opinions are my own not those of my employer if you know who they are.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by makomk View Post
                If that was an inevitable, understandable consequence of rewriting Plasma using new technology, then they shouldn't have done that as part of a stable release series aimed at end users. It's about the level of stability I'd expect from a 5.0 release.
                If you want to blame someone for it, then you have to blame the beta testers for not reporting the issue early enough. I was affected by it, and it was annoying, but it's a one-off issue that got fixed. Things happen, not much you can do about that.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by makomk View Post
                  The early QML migration broke Plasma badly enough that I seriously considered switching away from KDE to something actually usable. Having the entire Plasma desktop crash and restart (or worse, not restart) every half hour or so is not a good end-user experience - and this is with nominally stable KDE releases, not the beta or developer version.
                  This seems confined to a specific problem with notifications. Well, I use Colibri and I don't have any issues at all.
                  But your personal problems are not the point. Fast porting process to Qt5/KF5 because of QML is.

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                  • #10
                    Looking forward to some smooth, per-pixel scrolling afforded by Qt5. Isn't that right?

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