KDE 4.7.3 Is Here WIth More Fixes

[TheBlackCat]

Furthermore, just when I thought I somewhat understood semantic desktop, and it seemed somewhat cool, although a niche feature and not useful to me, they add something called "activities" stuff to the mix. Why do does a regular user need to know a new fancy desktop concept and paradigm every time they have a point release in 6 months, and that too a broken one at it.

You do realize that activities have been around since the 4.0 release, right?

[kraftman]

It isn't always that simple. Workarounds often cause problems in other areas or for other people. Usually defaults are chosen that work with as many systems as possible.

In this case it's enough to restart X server on logout. It's easily done by enabling single line in kdm configuration file:

/etc/kde4/kdm/kdmrc

#Terminate-server = true

[hdas]

@ TheBlackCat,

Sorry, I didn't notice activities till KDE 4.7. (At least I don't remember any activities button/bar, and I think the activities "desktop" is now default on a fresh profile.)

@ disi,

Its possible wicd is better. (I think at the time I started using networkmanager, it had more features than wicd, and if I remember correctly, the support for wpa2-enterprise wireless auth used at my university.) However, I am pretty content with networkmanager and nm-applet. nm-applet seems to have good support for vpn, but I ended up configuring manually without networkmanager.

I do feel KDE should maintain a networkmanager applet or some other applet for network connections. Given that nm-applet is fairly robust and mature, I think KDE should be able to offer something similar too.

@Alejandro, @kayosiii,

I guess I will try out Icon Tasks whenever I get time . For the problem of closed tasks not leaving the taskmanager, I believe it is present with taskmanagers other than the default one too, and as I mentioned, it is apparently an issue with kwin. I am also sticking to kde 4.6 for some time and perhaps won't even bother to look at 4.8.

[Alejandro Nova]

While this bug was the primary reason I have reverted back to KDE 4.6, there are numerous other stability issues. KDE crashing on logout is a usual happening. Also there are random Nepomuk crashes and messages -- worst, I do not care for it or need it and do not know why is it part of the main distribution. Apparently the Changelog in KDE 4.7.3 claims to have fixed some of the Nepomuk issues. However in my opinion, KDE 4.7 should be marked as not-ready for production and should not be used until many of these bugs are fixed. It would come as a disappointment to those who are using anything stable (even if something ancient like Windows XP perhaps where basic things work).

Basically, Nepomuk is there for programs that use Nepomuk. Try Bangarang. It loads as fast as XMMS, does 80% of what Amarok does, and then some things Amarok will never do. A library based music player at the cost of a library-less one, with MP3 searching essentially for free, that's only ONE of the thing Nepomuk is about. Also, persistent tagging of your files, ratings, and desktop searches.

AFAIK, the next step is to change the file visualization to be less like Windows Explorer and more like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9ifQvQCO7Y

See the folder animations? Those are there with Dolphin 2.0.

Pretty girls are pretty.

[TheBlackCat]

I would add that last time I checked few months back, the kde networkmanager or knetworkmanager project is still not in a good shape - what good is all this social integration if you are not connected to the internet or you still have to use konsole to connect to internet to use a shiny interface for tweeting. Ironically, I am using nm-applet (from gnome) currently on my KDE 4.6 desktop.

I may have missed this, but which distro are you using? A bunch of distros are shipping really ancient versions of the networkmanager plasmoid (I think kubuntu and debian are pretty notorious for this). If you are really using knetworkmanager and not the plasmoid (you need to check), then you are using something even more ancient that has been deprecated and unsupported for a long time, maybe even a couple of years.

[disi]

@ disi,

Its possible wicd is better. (I think at the time I started using networkmanager, it had more features than wicd, and if I remember correctly, the support for wpa2-enterprise wireless auth used at my university.) However, I am pretty content with networkmanager and nm-applet. nm-applet seems to have good support for vpn, but I ended up configuring manually without networkmanager.

I do feel KDE should maintain a networkmanager applet or some other applet for network connections. Given that nm-applet is fairly robust and mature, I think KDE should be able to offer something similar too.

I didn't mean in a better kind of way, but rather in a smaller more control kind of way. Straight to the point and not saving passwords in connection to some keyring pool stuff etc. like I remember from Gnome. (you can save passphrases or keys for wireless connections in wicd, but it is easy to remove the key etc.)
I use wicd purely to connect wired or to wireless networks (also wpa2 encrypted). You can define everything in the kde client, like what modules to use and which scripts to run or run scripts on connection, static stuff etc.
Just no vpn per default (which you actual could script yourself and put it into the client)

[Shining Arcanine]

Overall, the stability of KDE as fallen dramatically since KDE 4.5. I found a few hard hitting bugs in KDE 4.6, but 4.7 has gone really low. I appreciate the immense hard work the KDE developers put in, especially that it is mostly all volunteer effort and I also understand that developers are free to work on whatever projects they are interested in. But I cannot help to see that they advertise all these fancy features like social integration, semantic desktop, composting effects and other random things nobody cares about, while standard features get neglected. I would add that last time I checked few months back, the kde networkmanager or knetworkmanager project is still not in a good shape - what good is all this social integration if you are not connected to the internet or you still have to use konsole to connect to internet to use a shiny interface for tweeting. Ironically, I am using nm-applet (from gnome) currently on my KDE 4.6 desktop.

The original KNetworkmanager is no longer supported. Switch to the Network Manager plasmoid.

[BlackStar]

Wicd hasa never worked for me. The Network Manager plasmoid does and I like how it integrates with KWallet, but it's not nearly as smooth as the gnome-applet.

In any case, this is a significant issue with KDE. This is 2011 when all devices are connected to the network - the lack of good integrated network management capabilities is a losing proposition.

[Shining Arcanine]

Incidentally, I have Nvidia graphics (GTX 460M and 275.28) and the logout crashes I have are random. For sometime, I thought it had something to do with power management since it was easier to reproduce when I used to plug out the adapter from my notebook, then plug it back in, and then when I tried to log out or shutdown, the usual kde crash.

On that note, why do they need to offload more drawing things to the graphics processor - I understand it is more efficient, faster and all that, but CPU's are already fast enough and extremely stable at doing such stuff. (I can imagine even a lowly netbook CPU like Atom or Fusion will do just fine on such drawing operations.) So why release some untested crap and break things.

The idea is to reduce CPU utilization so that the CPU can do other things.

[Shining Arcanine]

Wicd hasa never worked for me. The Network Manager plasmoid does and I like how it integrates with KWallet, but it's not nearly as smooth as the gnome-applet.

In any case, this is a significant issue with KDE. This is 2011 when all devices are connected to the network - the lack of good integrated network management capabilities is a losing proposition.

Describing software as "smooth" is only understood by the person who said it.