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KDE Does Its Second 4.7 Release Candidate

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  • KDE Does Its Second 4.7 Release Candidate

    Phoronix: KDE Does Its Second 4.7 Release Candidate

    KDE.org has announced the release of the second release candidate for the forthcoming KDE SC 4.7 build. KDE SC 4.7 is set to be released later in the month, but this is one last chance to test this desktop environment update and catch any last-minute issues...

    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
    And in true KDE form, they even include brokenness in their announcement in the form of a broken link.

    Currently, http://kde.org/info/4.6.95.php goes nowhere

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    • #3
      @mugginz: If you told this to KDE people insead of just here it would get fixed faster

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Tsiolkovsky View Post
        @mugginz: If you told this to KDE people insead of just here it would get fixed faster
        The issue has been already noted before I posted here.

        The issue was a bit on the amusing side to me, and a little bit annoying as well.

        As a long time KDE user, suffering through the 4.0/4.1 debacle in the hope that a reliable desktop would be finally forthcoming at some point in the future, I waited patiently release after release, only to finally switch to Gnome in the 4.5 time frame. When I did, I was presented with a much more reliable day to day experience, however, compared to KDE, seemingly much less feature rich. After acclimatizing to Gnome, I found it was pretty much on par for the core stuff, and very much more robust.

        I had noted to several people the various bugs/crashes/issues I was having with KDE only to be essentially told that it wasn't really KDE's fault at all, and that the real culprit were those pesky distro packagers. No, the bugs were being introduced by evil forces external to the KDE folks, and that I should swap to distro A, then B, then maybe even C, because that crash was the distros fault, and that all my stability answers were lying just around the corner, with that one blessed KDE based distro that did something that all the others didn't do, not crash. I was left to wonder why KDE was so non fault-tolerant as to be rendered unstable by the act of putting it into a Linux software suite that was complete enough to provide a fully functional environment.

        I grew weary, and swapped to the "other guys'" desktop in the hope of finding a stable desktop, and indeed that's what I found.

        When news of the 4.7RC2 was posted here, I thought to myself now might be a good time to test KDE again to see if it'd finally become stable enough for day to day usage only to run up against the linkage breakage in the official KDE statement. Obviously not a biggy, but perhaps indicative of the level of quality control in general practised by those over in KDE land. It was that simple issue that brought back vivid memories of some of those old crashers reminding me that no, maybe I'm just better off with what I have now.

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        • #5
          @Mugginz

          I can't believe what you wrote is true for gnome3.

          I had noted to several people the various bugs/crashes/issues I was having with KDE only to be essentially told that it wasn't really KDE's fault at all, and that the real culprit were those pesky distro packagers. No, the bugs were being introduced by evil forces external to the KDE folks, and that I should swap to distro A, then B
          Sometimes it's not a DE fault, but broken drivers or some services like dbus etc. Like I said many times I had many problems with gnome2 and I found KDE4 to be much more robust and stable.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by kraftman View Post
            @Mugginz

            I can't believe what you wrote is true for gnome3.
            What I wrote relates to my experience with the KDE 4 series, Gnome 2 series, and now with Ubuntu's Unity interface.

            As someone who wanted KDE to be stable, I mean reeeeaaaalllly wanted it be because I liked its feature set and UI, I finally gave in.


            Originally posted by kraftman View Post
            Sometimes it's not a DE fault, but broken drivers or some services like dbus etc. Like I said many times I had many problems with gnome2 and I found KDE4 to be much more robust and stable.
            Oh, I know drivers can be an issue, that's why I tested with varying hardware. Also, service sub-subsystems can also be culprits as well, hence my preparedness to initially trust those assuring me to swap distros, which I dutifully did, only to be again disappointed by a lack of stability.

            I think it speaks to how hardened KDE is or should I say, how KDE lacks fault-tolerance in that it seems so improbable that it can be implemented or rolled out in a way that provides a stable solution for a desktop environment.

            At this point I should acknowledge that Gnome isn't absolutely perfect from a stability perspective, but it almost is. But more importantly, when compared to KDE, I've found Gnome to be leaps and bounds more stable. That may be because it's less ambitious as a platform, but I can live without ambitious and grandiose software if it's stable and reliable.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by mugginz View Post
              Oh, I know drivers can be an issue, that's why I tested with varying hardware. Also, service sub-subsystems can also be culprits as well, hence my preparedness to initially trust those assuring me to swap distros, which I dutifully did, only to be again disappointed by a lack of stability.
              I'm wondering: What the heck do you do with Plasma Workspaces that they are not stable for you?
              I use Plasma Desktop, Kopete, Kontact, KTorrent, Juk, Marble, KWrite, etc. all the time and experience no crashes at all since ages. Rekonq occasionally misbehaves because of a problem with QtWebKit and Flash which is why I use Firefox. Other than that: No problems at all.
              Maybe that's because I don't have other bullsh't installed that KPW can use like PulseAudio or Phonon-GStreamer crap.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Awesomeness View Post
                I'm wondering: What the heck do you do with Plasma Workspaces that they are not stable for you?
                I use Plasma Desktop, Kopete, Kontact, KTorrent, Juk, Marble, KWrite, etc. all the time and experience no crashes at all since ages. Rekonq occasionally misbehaves because of a problem with QtWebKit and Flash which is why I use Firefox. Other than that: No problems at all.
                Maybe that's because I don't have other bullsh't installed that KPW can use like PulseAudio or Phonon-GStreamer crap.
                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. 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. Also, have you ever tried to use remote ical calendars with Kalender that contain appointments with international times that require time zone conversion. Long story short, don't bother. It mis-converts times and dates making it a no go for this use case.

                Of course Kmail was quite the clusterf*ck when using imap, at least when compared to Evolution (and that's saying something) but I've dumped Evolution and gone back to Thunderbird. It would seem that the Canonical guys are of the same mind here.

                Had crashes with Kopete but as I was using a webcam with it it could very well been a driver issue though other software was happy with that camera/driver combo such as Gnome's Cheese app and Skype.

                Last time I used Rekong I found it too immature for my tastes as at the time I was a Firefox user which felt much more complete and had the plugin support I liked. I generally liked KTorrent and probably still consider it superior in some ways to Transmission.

                Wasn't thrilled with KWin's performance, though as I've used Compiz with KDE in the past, especially when during the time period when KDE's KWin didn't support compositing, I don't have a large problem substituting KWin with Compiz even now though it's less integrated.

                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 don't doubt some people have a pleasing experience with KDE, but my experience with it backs up what others have complained about with regard to KDE's reliability in that it needed more of it

                As for the complaints of KDE's memory footprint, I found that aspect to be completely satisfactory, even though it was a little higher than a Gnome 2 desktop, but completely fine for a machine of 512M or more which most machines these days has. Memory is cheap.

                Oh, and give me Dolphins feature set over that of Nautilus any day, just give me Dolphin with Nautilus's reliability.
                Last edited by mugginz; 12 July 2011, 11:56 AM.

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                • #9
                  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.

                  JACK audio is a must for those wanting to do the Ardour thing though I guess. At lease JACK and Pulse can be made to work together if required.

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                  • #10
                    When booting the lappy to see what version was the last one I had been using I was met with a pretty KDE desktop.

                    I then got the version number.

                    Lastly, and laughably, I was met with this when I logged out.

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