KDE Does Its Second 4.7 Release Candidate

[mugginz]

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).

Well, if someone says to you that an alternative desktop is perfect, you'll be right to be skeptical and assume that they're "not being fair"

I think that it's legitimate to place some trust in the overall experience reported generally in the larger world though. If it's more common to be told that KDE is crashy then it is to be told that Gnome's crashy, and it's from a broadly based sample, then that carries weight.

When the majority of people report that Windows is the best choice for their requirements, I don't have to like it, but I do have to accept that's how it is.

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.

But if someone's being unfair, the best response isn't to become unfair yourself.

I think you should got the point now.

Well I think I know what you're trying to say, but I myself can't agree that it's right.

We're both entitled to our own opinions, but we're not entitled to our own facts.

[kraftman]

I think that it's legitimate to place some trust in the overall experience reported generally in the larger world though. If it's more common to be told that KDE is crashy then it is to be told that Gnome's crashy, and it's from a broadly based sample, then that carries weight.

Well, this will be different for both of us. There's your own experience and there's also mine. There are also different sources we are basing on. Some time ago Blackstar was blaming kmail saying it's buggy, but I checked Evolution bug tracker and situation wasn't better.

When the majority of people report that Windows is the best choice for their requirements, I don't have to like it, but I do have to accept that's how it is.

Yes, but in this case it's the fact if the majority of people report that Windows is the best choice for their requirements. Let's say there's a group of 100 people and 70 says Windows is the best for them, that's a fact. However, when we'll be basing on some other sources like google, some sites etc. it won't be a fact. It will be a matter of believing.

But if someone's being unfair, the best response isn't to become unfair yourself.

True, but that's one of my weaknesses I'm trying to get rid off.

Well I think I know what you're trying to say, but I myself can't agree that it's right.

We're both entitled to our own opinions, but we're not entitled to our own facts.

That's for sure. ;>

[rvdboom]

Well, I don't really see the point of this discussion but, for the record, KDE is rock solid and has always been on my Slackware systems, which are the closest you can get from vanilla KDE sources, just as everything else in Slack.
Any memory usage comparison is useless anyway, until you're 100% sure that once loaded, both DE provide the exact same amount of services.

[mugginz]

Well, this will be different for both of us. There's your own experience and there's also mine. There are also different sources we are basing on. Some time ago Blackstar was blaming kmail saying it's buggy, but I checked Evolution bug tracker and situation wasn't better.

Looking at the bug trackers can be deceiving though.

I was a KMail user for years. I used various parts of Kontact. When I switched to Evolution, I found it to be much more stable. Even though the bug trackers may suggest otherwise. And it bears mention that Evolution is hardly a bastion of stability itself. I personally haven't had crashers, but its performance when compared to Thunderbird is not brilliant to say the least. This was with imap based email as apposed to pop3. Perhaps KMail is now solid with pop3 and perhaps even imap. I don't know because the latest install of KDE I have here is 4.6.2 and things may of been improved recently.

This is another case where getting a list of bugs open may not tell the whole story. You have factors to deal with such as both programs may have different numbers of users, the one with more users may be subject to a higher probability of bugs being reported as apposed to being simply put up with.

Either way, my experience has led me from Kmail to Evolution to Thunderbird.

The idea of an integrated into the desktop email/groupware type package I found to be most attractive, but it's implementation had be going elsewhere sadly.

Yes, but in this case it's the fact if the majority of people report that Windows is the best choice for their requirements. Let's say there's a group of 100 people and 70 says Windows is the best for them, that's a fact. However, when we'll be basing on some other sources like google, some sites etc. it won't be a fact. It will be a matter of believing.

But trends have some relevancy. Of course nothing beats 100% coverage of the populace with an accurately filled out survey, but when that's not possible, all we have are trends.

[mugginz]

Well, I don't really see the point of this discussion but, for the record, KDE is rock solid and has always been on my Slackware systems, which are the closest you can get from vanilla KDE sources, just as everything else in Slack.

So we can put Slackware along side Arch.

Any memory usage comparison is useless anyway, until you're 100% sure that once loaded, both DE provide the exact same amount of services.

Well in my mind as long as the software stack you're using fits well into the hardware that's available, I don't see it as a deal breaker in any way. The difference between KDE and Gnome as far as memory usage I didn't consider to be that big. When they can both be run on 512M machines I fail to see it being an issue. Some others though like to trumpet the "I've got the smallest memory footprint environment, therefore it's better" argument. To me it's largely nothing more than that.

If someone does state that their chosen favorite is their favorite because it has the smallest footprint, and then it's shown another one now does, well that's a bit awkward for them.

[kraftman]

@Mugginz

That's nice and fair. I couldn't agree more.

[Awesomeness]

Firstly, I must say I'm surprised that you find Kontact stable and reliable, but that maybe because you're using a version that's now using akonadi.

Currently I use Kontact 4.4.11 on SC 4.7RC which uses Akonadi for the address book only. KMail is still the 'classic' one.

I'd given up on Kmail/Kontact and friends before the switch. But speaking of akonadi, when KDE first started using it I was met with errors complaining of things not starting upon login that affected it. I think it was something to do with a database backend or something to do with the indexer or something.

Shouldn't happen if you use distro defaults. If you try to be smarter than the distributor who has years of experience packaging the best combination of KDE software and its dependencies, you'll likely fail.

Also, have you ever tried to use remote ical calendars with Kalender that contain appointments with international times that require time zone conversion.

No.

Of course Kmail was quite the clusterf*ck when using imap, at least when compared to Evolution

I use it with IMAP all the time with tens of thousands of mails. No problems at all.

Wasn't thrilled with KWin's performance

Update your drivers.

Last version of KDE I used in any meaningful way was 4.6.2, though by that stage my main machine had been converted to Gnome. As 4.6.2 was a bug fix release, and I still had crashes with it, it was about the last hope for KDE in my mind.

I didn't. The few pieces of KDE software that crash (mostly rekonq with Flash) are not part of the Software Compilation.

I forgot to address PulseAudio.

It's absolutely essential that a desktop I use can be happy with it. When you want to use hotswappable audio hardware in the form of say Bluetooth headsets for use with voip, or other such stuff, PulseAudio is mandatory if you're not into hacking config files for what other OSes consider such trivial functionality.

PulseAudio ? esp. in conjunction with Flash ? has the habit for me to randomly mute all sound. No idea what's causing that but as I don't have headsets, I don't need its functionality anyway. Ploain ALSA is enough for me.
I just mentioned PulseAudio because I don't use it and maybe (just maybe) some behavior not experienced by me can be related to that.

At least on my system applications that directly link to GStreamer (like Cheese) constantly crash and on top of that music players using Phonon can't even seek when using GStreamer as back-end. Bugginess of multimedia-related applications may or may not be related to GStreamer. VLC works better here.

[Awesomeness]

I actually find Unity to be more stable than KDE. And I'm using an ATI card with FGLRX!

So you're using the second most bashed GPU driver in Phoronix history (after Poulsbo) and complain that a more demanding KWin has worse performance for you than Compiz?
KWin's composite back-ends are all newer than Compiz and for that very reason they are written using more modern OpenGL features.
I regularly use two systems: A laptop with GeForce 9200M and a desktop PC with a really low-end Radeon HD card.
I forgot tomention one thing: On the laptop I have to disable the KWin blur effect because the driver misbehaves and causes Xorg to eat away all CPU.
On the desktop PC I simply use the FOSS drivers. They work fine. Even blur.

Fun fact: Proprietary NVidia drivers of the 260.x series can cause glibc crashes which in turn cause lots of KDE software (and anything else that uses a certain glibc call) to crash. So even non-graphics-related stuff can crash because of broken GPU drivers.
IIRC distributions that use eglibc were no affected.
NVidia's 270.x drivers are fixed.

[smitty3268]

If it crashes KDE but it doesn't crash Gnome that's not interesting to you?

This whole my desktop is better than yours argument is getting old.

But I thought i'd just throw in that the dbus developers were quite honest in admitting that the bug was in their code. They didn't want to commit the fix right away because they cared more about preserving backwards compatibility for GNOME than fixing the crashes that KDE was having. Eventually, it was shown that the fix would maintain compatibility in all but a very obscure case that no one was actually hitting, and they decided to fix it.

The reason KDE was having problems and GNOME wasn't was simply the fact that they were using it much more heavily. It was a race condition, when multiple processes were trying to access dbus at once that could cause problems. GNOME simply never had more than a few random apps using it occasionally, and KDE was using it all over the place - so the problem could have occurred on either desktop, but in practice the random crashes only really affected KDE.

[mugginz]

So you're using the second most bashed GPU driver in Phoronix history (after Poulsbo) and complain that a more demanding KWin has worse performance for you than Compiz?

Oh, I'm aware that FGLRX has bugs. But I wasn't using KDE with the AMD card generally. I'd swapped from KDE to Gnome for day to day use before I bought the 5870. My main card previous to that was an nVidia 9800GT, an 8600GT before that. Basically, I'd always run nVidia cards for my Linux boxes until I needed a card to support a triple monitor configuration.

I've found Compiz performance to be superior to KWin on Intel graphics as well.

KWin's composite back-ends are all newer than Compiz and for that very reason they are written using more modern OpenGL features.

And when KWin performs badly with the drivers I have, as apposed to the drivers I want, I switch to Compiz.

I regularly use two systems: A laptop with GeForce 9200M and a desktop PC with a really low-end Radeon HD card.
I forgot tomention one thing: On the laptop I have to disable the KWin blur effect because the driver misbehaves and causes Xorg to eat away all CPU.
On the desktop PC I simply use the FOSS drivers. They work fine. Even blur.

And for those who don't need the most OpenGL performance available, the FLOSS drivers are a good bet. Not everyone has that option. Also, last time I checked the FLOSS drivers didn't support triple head on an AMD card but that may of changed recently.

Fun fact: Proprietary NVidia drivers of the 260.x series can cause glibc crashes which in turn cause lots of KDE software (and anything else that uses a certain glibc call) to crash. So even non-graphics-related stuff can crash because of broken GPU drivers.
IIRC distributions that use eglibc were no affected.
NVidia's 270.x drivers are fixed.

I tracked nVidia's drivers fairly closely when I was using an NVidia card with KDE. I wasn't prepared to stick with old drivers.