KDE SC 4.6 Release Candidate 1 Makes It Out

[yotambien]

I expected KDE 4.6 to bring different panels in each activity, but alas they may not come even with 4.7

Ah! So it's not my lack of patience with the TERRIBLE KDE's UI to configure activities: the option doesn't actually exist, right?

[mat69]

This sentence is surreal.
[...]

How come?

As we say in .de the devs should come back to the carpet (from being afloat) and style a running KDE for the average hardware/software stack that people are running today. That would not exclude optional fancy stuff.

Uhm that is actually how it works in KWin.

[BlackStar]

Out of curiosity which graphics drivers are you using. The key difference I am aware of with kwin is that it requires some new features than compiz which some drivers don't do overly well.

This is on the nvidia blob (260.29 or something like that). I san compiz --replace and performance jumped back up to where it should be. Now, I'm trying to find a way to keep window decorations with Compiz on KDE - holy convoluted configuration batman.

I'd still prefer to a fixed KWin, though.

[BlackStar]

How come?

You don't need nepomuk for akonadi.

[yotambien]

As we say in .de the devs should come back to the carpet (from being afloat) and style a running KDE for the average hardware/software stack that people are running today. That would not exclude optional fancy stuff.

Uhm that is actually how it works in KWin.

Uhm, not so sure about it. You may remember that big bug/request about fake transparency (not a KWin example, I guess). The problem was that the only way to get that kind of eye candy is through compositing. The answer from KDE people was around the lines of "abandon your ancient hardware and buy a new graphics card". They only had to add: "and develop the drivers". They even got a patch to add this feature--which I happened to like and use in KDE 3.5 times--but they didn't accept it. It has to be said that KDE4 has some nice effects here and there that don't require compositing, though.

Similar story with KWin's compositing effects. They are slow and some of them need I don't know what super-advanced features. Compiz people somehow got it right. I understand that the developer of KWin is a volunteer, and unfortunately he doesn't know how to implement those features in such a way that most people would enjoy an optimal desktop experience. But at least let's get the record straight.

[Awesomeness]

they speak of merging kdelibs and Qt, which will make KDE 5 or 6, with more problems.
Did the Qt devs say something about that idea?

Neither Nokia/Qt nor the majority of KDE people were in favor of a merger.

[Shining Arcanine]

This sentence is surreal.

As for KDE 4.6, I wish KWin would somehow double in performance. Kwin is the greatest stumbling block when moving from Gnome/Compiz to KDE: with the former, Opera, Firefox and Chrome scroll 100% smoothly (85fps on my monitor). With the latter, all three browsers fall to half or one third that rate and feel awful.

Do you have 4GB of RAM or more without MTRR cleanup enabled in the kernel? The issue is that the MTRR registers are not being properly configured by the BIOS, such that MTRR cleanup needs to be done by the kernel to fix them:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/linux/+bug/210780

[Shining Arcanine]

By the way, if you are one of those people, try booting with "enable_mtrr_cleanup mtrr_spare_reg_nr=1" added to your kernel commandline parameters.

[Awesomeness]

I use 4.4.5 / 4.4.7

Hey genius, this thread is about SC 4.6. No one cares about your outdated software lineup.

And: Kick that g'dam HAL out! Make "semantic-desktop" optional.

WTF are you talking about? SC 4.6 kicked HAL!! And the semantic features are optional since day 1!!!

I don't remember correctly

Yeah, that's evident throughout your whole post.

[devius]

No shit. There is a bug with the ATI proprietary driver that causes the mother of all annoyances - minimmmize a window and restore it, tada: X crashes. Solution? Disable (took me a while to figure this one) minimize effects in KWin.

This happens with 4.6? In 4.5.3 I can minize and restore all I want with whatever animation I choose and nothing bad happens.