KDE Does Its Second 4.7 Release Candidate

[kraftman]

Perhaps yours are too fast. Perhaps Gnome2 needs a quad core. I did find KDE 4.5 and Gnome2 broadly comparable from a performance perspective on a Celeron III 1.2GHz and a netbook. This quad core runs both fine from a performance perspective as well as I've noted.

And KDE runs fast on my box while Gnome doesn't.

To believe that would seem to suggest that you're not a programmer then.

You don't have to believe. You can stick to your personal experience if you wish.

Again with the copying.

As I've said above, you have a history of making remarks along the lines of "If you're having issues with KDE, it's your distro, not KDE"

You also say KDE is rock solid.

Then you acknowledge that it has issues.

When I say "it's your distro, not KDE" it's simply my opinion based on my experience. Again, no logic. It's rock solid and if someone or even me experience some issues it doesn't mean it's not rock solid. It doesn't crash on my box, so it's rock solid then.

[mugginz]

one thing about the bloating between kde and gnome in the memory aspect you are both wrong, Linux at kernel level has many cool trick in how optimize memory that make my kde uses 600 mb while gnome uses 1gb useless because linux will map more memory depending on your system speed, total memory, latency, file system, etc to make use of those 3gb unused you have in your pc in the form or preloading or various form of caches, heavy used libs keep loaded in ram to reduce the loading time of application, browsers like opera release memory very slowly to give you the fast load of previous pages, etc.

Both desktops are subject to the behaviors of the kernels' memory management. Some desktops may perform more disc I/O than others. As disc I/O is generally cached when memory is unused, it pays to remove this factor when measuring memory usage of code. If you want to measure disc usage then that might be relevant, but it's a different metric. It suggests different resource requirements.

in the stability area all is very gray cuz you are comparing apples to tires, gnome2 is a decade old DE technologically speaking compared to kde4/QT4.

Which I've noted. I prefer the look of KDE, and its "technology model"

It's KDE's stability profile I'm not thrilled by. Regardless, when you're under time pressures, and you have work to get done now, you need software that's reliable.

It's issues like that which made me switch desktops. Stability first, features next.

for example gnome2/gtk don't use opengl or any know form of hardware acceleration in their drawing api until very recently when cairo got in enough good shape and even now is not fully used in gnome2, hence you need a completely extenal app for compisited desktop like compiz (compiz != gnome)

Gnomes Metacity does compositing.

I've used Compiz with both desktops though. KWin has some features that are nice to have with a KDE desktop. Some have to forgo those in order to go with Compiz's performance advantage.

on the other hand kde have been pushing very far stuff like raster rendering, opengl 2+, opengl ES, safe multithreading, plasma, really heavy use of XCB and many complex X11 extension like Xrender or XFixes in composited enviroments, true AA lines and text, etc that relies heavily on the GPU drivers or proper DDX acceleration. to prove my point run gnome and kde using vesa without any form of 3d accel and you will notice that gnome2 in most apps don't show many slowdowns except for some apps on the other hand half of the kde eyecandy get automatically off and the other half suffer a lot in the perfomance category.

Again, relatively irrelevant in the context of this discussion. KDE might be "working harder" but if it falls over, then it's all for nothing. Sometime the less glamorous and simple solution gets the job done better. Not always, but sometimes.

because of that a bug in the graphics driver will be very noticeable in kde while in gnome it can affect only some applications, so yes an old nvidia blob or an old kernel + oss driver combo or fglrx any version will make kde very fluffy and tend to crash but that not means gnome is better or more stable, it is simply not using them hence ovbiously won't affect it.

Hence testing with a broad range of hardware when trying to build a view of stability it a good idea.

in the case of Dbus im not sure how deep gnome use it since gnome devs have gconf/corba/etc from long ago but kde relies heavily on dbus for IPC so you will notice any bug in dbus inmediately with kde4 maybe not so much in gnome

Well dbus replaced bonobo for Gnome, and DCOP for KDE. Both desktops use it.

on the memory use of kde per se is tricky because kde4 and kde3 to some extent too tend to reuse library and component heavily, so sometimes you can see an app like okular showing use of 100mb of memory but 95mb are virtual or shared with other applications or libraries, so is very common see 3 apps using 100mb each but each one use only real 5mb and the other 95 are shared among them cuz those 95 are stuff like QtCore.so and libdbus.so and common parts of many kdelibs, etc.

And this is why it pays to use the right memory usage measuring tools.

in the case of gnome3 you are beggining to see the same effect that kde4 had since now their are moving to hardware accel too, gnome3 can be unusable too with many drivers or version of those drivers due to driver bugs, hence that is why unity2d exist as a fallback (other scenario ofc is vesa or other X non accel driver )

I'm not discussing Gnome 3 because I'm not using it. If KDE and Gnome 3 are overly sensitive when compared to Gnome 2 then Gnome 2 still wins.

ofc gnome3 have the advantage that many outstanding bugs in 3dlibs or X11 have been addressed by now since kde4 found them first (google kde4.0 and slow text with nvidia and you will see for example) and mesa developers on the OSS have been adressing some bugs too (a while ago here you could read how kwin had to blacklist some OSS driver due to several bugs, today is almost nonexistant though).

This lends some weight to the maxim that "First doesn't always win"

so i guess the guy with arch and kde4.6.x have a nice pc with latest OSS stack or a recent enough nvidia blob, a recent dbus implementation like me and kde is rock solid for him too (kubuntu here with r600g driver git) maybe in your kde previous you hitted a buged driver (nvidia 160.x.x.x i think it was or mesa 7.10.x or inferior) or even a bugged dbus version in your distro that make kde unstable but won't affect gnome2

Ultimately if there's a broad feeling that KDE 4 series is generally more unstable than the alternatives the KDE team have some work to do.

now is true that a latest nvidia blob or git OSS stack + recent distro like kubuntu natty or arch or latest opensuse + a fixed dbus lib system should be rock solid with KDE 4.6.x in any decent PC core2 or athlon x2 or superior and any r300+ or g80+ gpu.

Yet it's not for my netbook, but testing 4.7 release with other hardware is warranted as well.

[kraftman]

Ultimately if there's a broad feeling that KDE 4 series is generally more unstable than the alternatives the KDE team have some work to do.

Yeah, get rid of some idiots.

[mugginz]

This is a proof of your stupid thinking - it seems you don't get KDE could use dbus in different way which exposed it's weaknesses.

I do get that but you don't seem to notice that if KDE is more sensitive than Gnome 2 to the sub-systems it relies on, then KDE should work on "failing gracefully"

What I do is just keeping the balance.

Wouldn't it be better to accurately reflect the broader landscape.

You're still manipulating, because if from my experience it's rock solid I can say that.

You can say it's rock solid in the face of having no other information to go on. When you're made aware of more information, such as others are having major issues with KDE, then it's appropriate to reflect that in further dialogue.

Even if some people experience problems with KDE I can still say it's rock solid

You can say it's rock solid for you, and that would be accurate. When you've been made aware that others are having problems with KDE, it no longer becomes appropriate to pretend that others don't have issues with the platform.

I don't know what KDE versions the problems affect, I don't know if it's KDE's fault or if it's something different. I can simply consider you're a troll or a liar and I can simply ignore your stance.

But why would you start worrying about being accurate now?

Perhaps, you should consider rethinking few things or just try to change your mentality. You tried to look smart, but you look dumb.

I get the feeling that everyone that's not you looks dumb to you. I guess I'll just have to try to live with your view of me.

[mugginz]

And KDE runs fast on my box while Gnome doesn't.

I'll put that with the other data points you've reported.

You don't have to believe. You can stick to your personal experience if you wish.

Mine, and that of others that post here and other places.

When I say "it's your distro, not KDE" it's simply my opinion based on my experience. Again, no logic. It's rock solid and if someone or even me experience some issues it doesn't mean it's not rock solid. It doesn't crash on my box, so it's rock solid then.

It may be rock solid on you machine, and if you said that I'd not have an issue with that statement.

You like to state that KDE is rock solid full stop. Sadly, that's not so.

[mugginz]

Ultimately if there's a broad feeling that KDE 4 series is generally more unstable than the alternatives the KDE team have some work to do.

Yeah, get rid of some idiots.

Are you saying the KDE dev team needs to get rid of some idiots? That seems a bit harsh.

I'd say perhaps that they could focus on stability and pause on developing the new feature set and pretty much leave it at that.

[kraftman]

I do get that but you don't seem to notice that if KDE is more sensitive than Gnome 2 to the sub-systems it relies on, then KDE should work on "failing gracefully"

Even systemd does rely on dbus, so rather dbus should become more stable.

You can say it's rock solid in the face of having no other information to go on. When you're made aware of more information, such as others are having major issues with KDE, then it's appropriate to reflect that in further dialogue.

I know what you mean. However, when someone will repeat KDE's not stable I can simply consider he's wrong or he's lying and then I can repeat it's rock stable. ;>

You can say it's rock solid for you, and that would be accurate. When you've been made aware that others are having problems with KDE, it no longer becomes appropriate to pretend that others don't have issues with the platform.

It's matter of believing. I usually try to be fair with others, but when someone starts saying KDE's not stable, it's crap etc. then I want to make some balance.

But why would you start worrying about being accurate now?

Because I want to describe better some things.

I get the feeling everyone that's not you looks dumb to you. I guess I'll just have to try to live with your view of me.

Nope and this was only about this thread. :P I don't consider you're dumb or something (I also look dumb sometimes and I have to live with this ;>). I just don't like when someone sticks, so hard to some words. I hate to be so correct, because I'm lazy.

[kraftman]

Are you saying the KDE dev team needs to get rid of some idiots? That seems a bit harsh.

Don't take this seriously, please.

I'd say perhaps that they could focus on stability and pause on developing the new feature set and pretty much leave it at that.

Maybe, but it seems they have slowed down lately.

[mugginz]

Even systemd does rely on dbus, so rather dbus should become more stable.

All software subsystems should be as stable as they can be.

If two desktop environments both rely on a software subsystem and one of those environments have problems that the other one doesn't, that'll look bad for that said desktop.

I know what you mean. However, when someone will repeat KDE's not stable I can simply consider he's wrong or he's lying and then I can repeat it's rock stable. ;>

But here's the thing. If KDE has issues on a subset of users machines, then it's not stable for everyone.
You may be able to say "because it works for me, everyone elses crashes are not relevant in the broader landscape" with a straight face. You may not be able to differentiate between yourself, and the broader world. It would seem to be the case.

It's matter of believing. I usually try to be fair with others, but when someone starts saying KDE's not stable, it's crap etc. then I want to make some balance.

But balance would be "It works here, I'm sorry to hear that it doesn't work well for everyone." but to say "no, you're wrong" when someone says they have KDE crashes then obviously that wont sit well with everyone out there. That's effectively what you're doing when someone says they're having trouble with KDE and you say back to them "KDE is rock solid."

But why would you start worrying about being accurate now?

Because I want to describe better some things.

Well now would be a good time to start.

[kraftman]

But here's the thing. If KDE has issues on a subset of users machines, then it's not stable for everyone.
You may be able to say "because it works for me, everyone elses crashes are not relevant in the broader landscape" with a straight face. You may not be able to differentiate between yourself, and the broader world. It would seem to be the case.

Keep in mind when I'm saying it's rock stable I'm talking for myself (maybe not always, but it's more complicated). Like I said before I can deny what some people are saying in some cases (usually when they're not fair with me).

But balance would be "It works here, I'm sorry to hear that it doesn't work well for everyone." but to say "no, you're wrong" when someone says they have KDE crashes then obviously that wont sit well with everyone out there.

I'm aware of this. However, when someone says "KDE sucks or it's not stable" the balance is "Gnome sucks or it's not stable, eventually KDE rocks and it's rock stable". ;> I'm using this way when I consider someone else isn't fair.

Well now would be a good time to start.

I think you should got the point now.