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2009.1 Initial Impressions


viking777
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It has been pretty quiet in the cooker forum just recently so I thought I would liven things up a bit by providing you with my thoughts on my recently installed copy of 2009.1. I cloned my 2009 partition then switched repos to cooker and proceeded with the update (about 550Mb I think). This all went very well and most things worked first time, the only exceptions are those I will report below.

 

1) KDE4 doesn't work. All you get is a white screen and two warnings, one saying that phonon doesn't work (when did it ever?), the other saying that plasma has crashed (hence the lack of desktop). Now most people would find this a problem, but I don't, because having KDE4 not working at all is markedly superior to having it working the way it normally does. And no, I haven't filed a bug because KDE4 is a bug. Enough said.

 

Booting into KDE3 everything is running pretty well, the only problems I have come across are these:

 

2) I still have the same critical problem with Krusader root mode as reported here: https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=44721 . For me this is a real show stopper since I would rather stop using Mandriva than stop using Krusader (it works perfectly well in OpenSuse Factory). However I will stick with it as I am sure it will get sorted out in the end. In the meantime it gives me an opportunity to try out Dolphin. I have heard quite a few criticisms of Dolphin up to now, but I must say I quite like it, certainly preferable to Konqueror although nowhere near as good as Krusader when it works properly. Trying out Dolphin led me to discover my next problem.

 

3) I expect all distributions to have access to a root mode file manager, so the first thing I tried to do with Dolphin was launch a root instance. I normally do this with Alt/F2 followed by 'kdesu dolphin'. This doesn't work. My next attempt is to launch the KDE menu editor and edit the dolphin entry by ticking the 'run as different user' box and run it as root. This doesn't work either. In both cases the kdesu dialog box pops up but after password entry it does not launch the program. I also tried this with konsole and it wont launch in this fashion either. I then tried it with konqueror and got this:

 

 

 

The requested operation could not be completed

Cannot Initiate the file Protocol

Technical Reason: Unable to Launch Process

Details of the Request:

URL: file:///usr/share/doc/HTML/index.html

Protocol: file

Date and Time: Friday 21 November 2008 11:59

Additional Information: Cannot talk to klauncher: Not connected to D-BUS server

Description:

The program on your computer which provides access to the file protocol could not be started. This is usually due to technical reasons.

Possible Causes:

The program which provides compatibility with this protocol may not have been updated with your last update of KDE. This can cause the program to be incompatible with the current version and thus not start.

You may have encountered a bug in the program.

Possible Solutions:

Update your software to the latest version. Your distribution should provide tools to update your software.

Contact your appropriate computer support system, whether the system administrator, or technical support group for further assistance.

 

The red highlighted line is exactly the same error message I get when I try to launch Krusader root mode.

 

If you can't live without a root file manager (and I can't) then the only way to launch one is open a terminal, su to root and then run 'dolphin' or 'krusader' from there, this will work although for some reason when you launch a program that way you get appalling font rendering, no idea why.

 

4) Sounds. I hate system sounds. All the little beeps and buzzes do my head in, so I just turn them all off from within kcontrol (Sound & Multimedia/System Notifications/Quick Controls/Apply to all applications/Turn off all - Sounds). This normally works, but in cooker it doesn't.

 

5) On another KDE related matter the login manager (kcontrol/System Administration/Login Manager/Convenience tab). I don't wish to enable auto login , as with a laptop - which can be easily stolen - it is too much of a security risk. However I do like to have the user preselected and the password focused. This function does not work in cooker but then it hasn't worked in any other Mandriva distribution either (from 2008.0 onwards).

 

6) Last but not least - DVD's. When I put a movie DVD into my tray it is detected and shows up in the storage media tray applet. However the only functional option on the menu is to open it with Dolphin (or eject it). There is not much point in opening a DVD with Dolphin, the idea is to play it (normally the menu includes the option - 'Play DVD with Kaffeine'). To investigate this further I opened Kaffeine manually and tried to play it from within the program itself. It replied 'Folder found when file expected' and just opens the DVD in Dolphin. The next trial was to open it with Mplayer. Needless to say it worked perfectly (because almost everything does in Mplayer).

 

Well that is it to date (although I have only had it for a couple of days so I might well discover other things later on). If you disregard KDE4 (which is what everyone should do) it is working pretty well, although I find it pretty difficult to distinguish it from 2009. The Krusader error is a major problem for me but that (and KDE4) aside it is going pretty well.

 

One last question. Are there any release notes for 2009.1? I have searched all over for them and I can't find them. I would just like to know what has changed from 2009.0, as to me it doesn't appear to be very much.

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And no, I haven't filed a bug because KDE4 is a bug. Enough said.

Don't hold back now!

 

The red highlighted line is exactly the same error message I get when I try to launch Krusader root mode.

 

Can you try from a console after "su -" and see if that works?

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KDE4 is certainly not a bug. Just a beta (or very beta-speaking about the latest 4.13) DE.

Gnome IS a bug,though... Slow, bloated, aimed at total noobs, with all the usable user config options packed under the highly buggy and unintuitive gconf environment.

Sine I am bored with KDE 3.5.X (which is STILL the best, most stable and most feature-rich Linux DE available) I have discovered XFCE4, which is a Gnome DE, but some ten times faster, ten times less buggy, and ten times more intuitive.

Maybe I will also install KDE4 after 4.2.0 is out- but Gnome is not an option for me... I already had enough of that crap. It simply becomes worse, more bloated and more buggy with every new release.

Edited by scarecrow
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Chris H.

Can you try from a console after "su -" and see if that works?

 

Yes it does work, I said that later on in the post.

 

Edit. I think I may have misunderstood you here Chris, I see from a post on the other forum that there now seems to be some difference between kdesu su and su - . This is news to me. Anyway to cut a long story short su - does absolutely nothing. You have to start a root terminal and then launch the program that you want a root instance of in order for anything to work. PS I do hope the people at Mandriva are not going to cripple it with this nonsense, that is why I stopped using Ubuntu with their insistence on that sudo crap.

 

Spinynorman

The development plans are here. I'll pin a link to them - and the release notes and errata when they appear.

 

Thanks for that, I will have a read of that later.

 

Scarecrow

KDE4 is certainly not a bug. Just a beta

 

If you renamed KDE4.1 to KDE 4alpha1 you would be flattering it. I don't really mind this because I love new stuff (why else would I be using Cooker?) but the major problem with KDE4 is that it is being utilised by every distro manager as the default KDE desktop. This is not acceptable because not everyone has the patience/desire/ability/back up strategy to cope with its failings. I already read a post on this forum recently where somebody said they are going back to Vista because of problems with (amongst other things) KDE4. This type of complaint is, I am sure, not unique. Just how much are distro managers willing to compromise their products with this unacceptable DE? I am not saying that you have to get rid of it altogether, but surely at this stage in its development it should be an option not a default?

 

Gnome IS a bug,though... Slow, bloated, aimed at total noobs, with all the usable user config options packed under the highly buggy and unintuitive gconf environment.

 

I didn't really want to get into the Gnome/KDE debate, it is too controversial , but it is obvious that you dislike Gnome almost as much as I do. For me Gnome is a bit like self-flagellation, some people like that kind of thing but it isn't for me (although I must admit I have tried it recently(Gnome that is not self-flagellation :D ) as KDE4 is so bad). The problem for me with Gnome is that it is always the opposite of what I want. Everything that I think should be simple to configure is difficult, everything that I think is irrelevant to configure is easy. Everything it does by default I don't want it to do, and everything it doesn't do by default is just what I want. I have spent some serious time with it and I must admit that if I had to choose between it and KDE4 then I would choose Gnome, but luckily at the moment at least there are alternatives.

 

I have discovered XFCE4, which is a Gnome DE, but some ten times faster, ten times less buggy, and ten times more intuitive.

 

I am really glad that you have discovered 'sanctuary' in XFCE. Needless to say I have tried it and it is certainly better than Gnome and KDE4, but for me it doesn't give me what I want whereas KDE3 does.

 

In the name of sanity, I care for Linux and want it to go from strength to strength, but it will never do so if it throws Alpha products at new users. It may be very necessary for KDE to try out such software as plasma, phonon, nepomuk and solid, but for Gods sake do it in development releases and let people like me try it out. Don't ever inflict it on new users and destroy the reputation of Linux in the process.

Edited by viking777
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There's no point discussing KDE 3 in Cooker, as there will be no KDE 3 in 2009 Spring. It is being dropped. We will maintain some KDE 3 packages in order for important KDE 3-based apps which are not stably ported to KDE 4 to work, but we will almost certainly not ship a working KDE 3 desktop in 2009 Spring.

 

KDE 4 in Cooker is being changed very rapidly - it went from 4.1.72 to 4.1.73 overnight and then up to 4.1.80 (4.2 beta 1) almost immediately. So it's very likely you had a mix of different packages, which is why it would fail. You have to wait for it to stabilize at a given version.

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Edit. I think I may have misunderstood you here Chris, I see from a post on the other forum that there now seems to be some difference between kdesu su and su - . This is news to me. Anyway to cut a long story short su - does absolutely nothing. You have to start a root terminal and then launch the program that you want a root instance of in order for anything to work. PS I do hope the people at Mandriva are not going to cripple it with this nonsense, that is why I stopped using Ubuntu with their insistence on that sudo crap.

 

su and su - have always been around. Putting the - after it just means that you are in the environment for that person, ie ~/ goes to the root directory not to thr directory of the person you were. It also means that some environment settings and paths are available to you that maybe weren't just as su.

 

Sometimes things work with it, sometimes it's not needed.

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There's no point discussing KDE 3 in Cooker, as there will be no KDE 3 in 2009 Spring. It is being dropped.

 

Adam, FWIW I think that is a big mistake, I don't see why I or anyone else should be railroaded into using a fourth rate DE just because the KDE team say it is ready for use when it patently isn't. Still I am sure there will be a way around it, install from source?, use another distro? use an older version of Mandriva? Whatever it is I won't be using 4 until it matches the functionality of 3 if it ever does.

 

su and su - have always been around. Putting the - after it just means that you are in the environment for that person, ie ~/ goes to the root directory not to thr directory of the person you were. It also means that some environment settings and paths are available to you that maybe weren't just as su.

 

Thanks Chris, I wan't even aware that there was a difference let alone what it was.

 

And now back to today and a word of warning for Nvidia users. I just received an update to dkms-nvidia-current which completely stuffed my graphics. I had to remove it via a console login and then reinstall my nvidia drivers manually to get back to a working situation. The reason I think that it doesn't work is that it has the version number 180.08 ( which I presume must match the number of the driver you are installing - at least that was the gist of the warning message I got when it couldn't start the graphics system). Unfortunately this version hasn't been released yet, not even as a beta (180.06 is the latest).

 

If you use Nvidia and you are offered this update my advice would be to decline for the time being unless you happen to have found the Nvidia driver to match it.

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Dropping the old KDE is not just the decision of Mandriva. If the KDE krew decides to drop it then supporting it would take extra effort and resources, and this is something Mandriva just can't afford.

Not to mention that supporting both KDE 4 and 3.5 didn't make any good for Mandriva 2009 too. Instead of one stable KDE release now we have two mixtures: KDE 3.5 with KDE 4 apps or the opposite. None of them working perfectly.

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I appreciate that it is the KDE team that are driving this but not everyone is being led. Here is a quote from the PCLinuxOS release announcement for their latest Beta:

 

 

We decided to use KDE 3.5.10 as our default desktop as we could not achieve a similar functionality from KDE 4. We will however offer KDE 4 as an alternative desktop environment available from the repository once we stabilize it.

 

That is the correct decision, Mandriva's is not.

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Yup, but PCLInuxOS is a minor distro aimed just at easy desktop usage, and with limited packages (not even x86_64 packages are available), so, they can errr... afford it.

Mandriva is a major disto, and it just has to follow the trend- as was done by OpenSuSE, Kubuntu, Debian Sid, Fedora, ArchLinux, Gentoo... you name it.

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