KDE Does Its Second 4.7 Release Candidate

[Akka]

Try with a different version of soprano.

and Kde works well with PulseAudio and Gstreamer for me.

[devius]

I'm with mugginz on this one. That is exactly my experience with KDE (and subsequent return to gnome) in almost every detail. Just to add to the list of injuries suffered by Kontact I have to mention the fact that at version 4.6+ syncing contacts and calendars with Google Contacts and Calendar simply stopped working. I tried most "fixes" but none worked and I wasn't alone in this. In the bug report they said it was a distro packager's problem (seems familiar?), but I was using Arch which AFAIK uses plain vanilla KDE code in its packages. BTW, my advice to anyone wishing to try out KDE, please do yourself a favor and DON'T even think about trying plain vanilla KDE compiled from source or something like that. It manages to be even more buggy than KDE that's packaged in distros. Especially openSUSE does a wonderful job of ironing out most of its kinks.

PS: I have a machine running openSUSE 11.4 with Gnome 3 and it's very stable. I haven't had a single crash yet. Yes it lacks even more features than gnome 2 but the features it has work very well and I don't have to deal with all that crap of configuring databases and connections to akonadi and contacts using KIO slaves and whatnot...

[mugginz]

Try with a different version of soprano.

and Kde works well with PulseAudio and Gstreamer for me.

Yes, KDE worked well with PulseAudio for me as well, I was only addressing the comment that seemed to be suggesting it was a viable thing to do to disable Pulse if I was having KDE/PulseAudio interaction problems. PulseAudio adds some functionality that goes away when you resort to a vanilla ALSA situation that I'm not prepared to do without. During the 4.4 to 4.5 era there there were some quirks but they were ironed out.

As for the various Phonon audio backends that have been made available, I can only remember one of them being any good. I don't know it the GStreamer one worked well with everything or not. The current 4.6.2 install is using the Xine backend and audio problems weren't really on the issue list for that machine but then it's almost never used these days.

As for the soprano issue, it'll only get upgraded if I dare test the full release version of 4.7. I wont be going near the RC's. Also, I'm not real sure I'll bother with the 4.7 series because I'll need to be prepared to try at least five different distros with it to establish a base line of reliability. If I report that 4.7 has an issue and when I get asked which distro I'm using and I say for example openSUSE I'll only be told that I'm being silly and that I should try Arch or Fedora, or Linux from Scratch, or maybe something really weird like Kubuntu. Committing to test 4.7 will essentially be committing to test it with at least five distros.

[kraftman]

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.

What's about it? It works on KDE.

[mugginz]

What's about it? It works on KDE.

Well it goes like this.

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.

Which brought me to my comment as follows:

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.

Then further on I mentioned just before your post:

Yes, KDE worked well with PulseAudio for me as well, I was only addressing the comment that seemed to be suggesting it was a viable thing to do to disable Pulse if I was having KDE/PulseAudio interaction problems. PulseAudio adds some functionality that goes away when you resort to a vanilla ALSA situation that I'm not prepared to do without. During the 4.4 to 4.5 era there there were some quirks but they were ironed out.

As for the various Phonon audio backends that have been made available, I can only remember one of them being any good. I don't know it the GStreamer one worked well with everything or not. The current 4.6.2 install is using the Xine backend and audio problems weren't really on the issue list for that machine but then it's almost never used these days.

So I pretty much said that aside from one period, KDE generally works well with PulseAudio so I'm not sure of the purpose of your post.

[kraftman]

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.

Unity is nice, but it's not rock stable yet. Gnome 2 wasn't so perfect for me.

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.

There are other factors as well. Otherwise I would experience the same problems or most of them. I'm running Arch Linux right now and KDE simply doesn't crash. When I ran Kubuntu I experienced some problems, but those problems were strictly related to Kubuntu (and it seems nobody cares to fix them). I ran Chakra and it was also rock stable (uses packages from Arch). The same about Fedora KDE spin, so while it's rock stable on my box I can't simply agree with you. I can't say about Kontact, because I don't use it.

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.

Maybe that's the case, but I'd like to know for what faults it should be tolerant? Maybe it will be better for everyone to fix mentioned faults?

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.

When I ran Gnome 2 on Fedora I had much better experience with KDE. Gnome 2 was less ambitious, but it had even more bugs per line of code. Maybe there's a difference in severity of these bugs, but there's no easy way to check this out.

[mugginz]

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.

Unity is nice, but it's not rock stable yet. Gnome 2 wasn't so perfect for me.

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

On the very rare occasion I have had Nautilus disappear, but that's simply required a click on an icon and to navigate back to where I was. Dolphin has done the same for me as well, so on the file manager front they're both imperfect, only that in Nautilus's favor, I can count on one hand the number of crashes as apposed to Dolphin which I found to be far less stable, though more featurefull.

I guess there are analogues here to the graphics driver debate, in that there is no perfect and crashproof Linux desktop, but various people find differences of opinion on which one is the most stable. I'm mearly relating my experiences with KDE to put along side those experiences of others that maintain that they've never, never ever had one single solitary crash with KDE. I'm skeptical of such claims, as they're so different to mine, but I'm not prepared to call them wrong, only different to what I've personally found to be the case.

Initially when I first switched to 11.04 with the Unity desktop, there were bugs. Software updates seem to have fixed them for me. I guess I'm lucky

I also found that Gnome 2 was quite stable, again no Linux desktop is 100% crashproof and anyone that states that they are I'm skeptical of, but Gnome2 rarely had any issues for me but KDE displayed problems on a weekly basis. Again I should repeat that I liked KDE's features and general design better than Gnome, it was merely a case of being worn down by bugs and also Ubuntu's enhancements to the Gnome2 desktop that made it the over all winner in my mind.

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.

There are other factors as well. Otherwise I would experience the same problems or most of them. I'm running Arch Linux right now and KDE simply doesn't crash. When I ran Kubuntu I experienced some problems, but those problems were strictly related to Kubuntu (and it seems nobody cares to fix them). I ran Chakra and it was also rock stable (uses packages from Arch). The same about Fedora KDE spin, so while it's rock stable on my box I can't simply agree with you. I can't say about Kontact, because I don't use it.

As I've detailed in previous posts in this thread, I've found this style of statement to be common place from those defending the stability record of the KDE desktop. And I also detailed that I was indeed prepared to test in other distros because of my preference for KDE over Gnome2 if stability was there. I, like others have found KDE's stability to be left wanting. And you like others have found KDE's stability to be exemplary. I wish I had the same experience as yourself and had I, I'd be running KDE right now.

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.

Maybe that's the case, but I'd like to know for what faults it should be tolerant? Maybe it will be better for everyone to fix mentioned faults?

I've been using Gnome2 and now Unity as my day to day desktop for over a year and a half so I hope you'll forgive me if I can't be pin point precision specific with recalling every bug I encountered. As the KDE stability issue has been discussed in these forum previously I've piped up in those earlier threads as well making note of particular bugs. They might be a better source than the ones I've mentioned in this thread.

Ultimately though I found that over time I grew less and less prepared to put up with issues in KDE. I still have strong memories of the revelation though when I did switch to Gnome2 and that was that (to use an over used term) Gnome 2 kind of "just worked."

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.

When I ran Gnome 2 on Fedora I had much better experience with KDE. Gnome 2 was less ambitious, but it had even more bugs per line of code. Maybe there's a difference in severity of these bugs, but there's no easy way to check this out.

I'm not talking about looking at bug trackers and such to try and perform some kind of quantitative analysis of bugs per lines of code per desktop.

I'm talking about simply being able to get work done without dialogue boxes announcing to me that this or that has crashed, or being delayed by software not behaving in predicable ways.

[kraftman]

I'm talking about simply being able to get work done without dialogue boxes announcing to me that this or that has crashed, or being delayed by software not behaving in predicable ways.

I'm talking about the same. Like you said you have simply different experience than me and many other KDE users. Nearly everything what you wrote about KDE in this thread I can say the same about Gnome, from my pov and experience. When comes to stability, delays, dialogs, work everything is about mine and yours experience:

And you like others have found KDE's stability to be exemplary. I wish I had the same experience as yourself and had I, I'd be running KDE right now.

[mugginz]

I'm talking about the same. Like you said you have simply different experience than me and many other KDE users.

And many others have had similar experiences to me yet you insist that anyone's experience of KDE failing must be the fault of the distro, and not KDE itself. Why is it commonplace that Gnome be quite stable accross a variety of distros, yet KDE is only reliable with Arch?

Nearly everything what you wrote about KDE in this thread I can say the same about Gnome,

And you have. When reviewing posts I've made on Phoronix regarding KDE's lack of stability, even as far back as 2009, you've been there assuring anyone that'll listen that perhaps it's dbus or drivers or some other subsystem or sumsuch that's the real culprit.

from my pov and experience. When comes to stability, delays, dialogs, work everything is about mine and yours experience:

You've maintained that KDE is stability personified for a very long time now. Yet you've also acknowlegded issues it has as well. You should make up your mind.



Winding back the clock to September last year we have this statement from you.

No, dbus causes Dolphin to crash on some configurations. Maybe some other apps are affected too.

I guess that must always be the distros fault.



Looking at KWin for example, even its developer acknowledges it's not in as strong a position as Compiz and friends, yet you assure us that KWin has no issues. It must have no issues as you've stated that KDE has none. Or are all KWins failings those of drivers? Thought so.

[mugginz]

More from Sep 2010

1. It is a different thing an app crushing, and a different thing a window manager crushing...

2. If you believe KDE is less bloated, then you are wasting everyone's time here... Get back to school. BTW, having an additional set of libraries doesn't make a system bloated, but i won't waste my time trying to explain it to you.

Compiz is crashing sometimes too. I didn't saw Metacity or Kwin (without compositions) crashing. If you would be so kind and explain this I'd be thankfull. However, I really believe KDE is much less bloated. I don't like the idea - python everywhere. KDE apps share libraries and I'm not so sure about this when comes to Gnome.

Yet when I tested both desktops ->



Yet you consider Gnome more bloated and memory hungry. I thought it was commonly held that KDE used more memory than does Gnome.