First review of KDE 2.2

There is a nice and favorable review of KDE 2.2 available here.

The author does make some mistakes and some propositions that do not seem too clueful (Gecko instead of KHTML? Try KMozilla..), but it's still a nice read.

I do agree about the need for better integration between the kdepim programs and kmail, however.

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Comments

by Hypothalamus Cow (not verified)

I've used GNOME for a year or two now and decided to try out KDE since the screenshots look nice and the KDE website promised a lot in this new release. I had tried KDE 2.0 but never got Konqueror working properly so I deleted the installation. Here's my first impression of 2.2:

1. Upon installing the binary packages and before rebooting, the kwm window manager ran super slow. It'd take several seconds before clicking a window's title and before the window actually moved. I then changed the theme of my desktop-- the window border style changed but oddly the background didn't. So I install libasound and reboot.

2. Once rebooted kwm worked fine-- probably some library/ldconfig problem. Now the background was the one specified in the new theme, but I didn't like it. Ok, so everything seems to be working fine now. The menu fade in stuff was annoying, especially since it was flickery and not smooth like Win2k. Alright, so there's probably a way to turn it off.

3. I tried changing my background image. The first time I clicked the "Browse..." button, it popped up a dialog box with an image preview and filenames were sorted in case-sensitive order. A much nicer looking file browse dialog box compared to GNOME's. I changed directories and selected an image and hit Ok. It turned out I didn't like the background I selected, so I hit the "Browse..." button again. The dialog box popped up but it was pointing to the old directory, so I had to renavigate back to the background directory. That was annoying. Secondly, this time the dialog box didn't have an image preview and filenames were sorted in case-insensitive order (wtf?). I don't know if I want to trust KDE for my data if it can't pop up a dialog box in a predictable way.

4. aRts builder was disappointing. I tried following the tutorial for creating a network, but artsbuilder crashed when I tried to run it. Sigh. So much for thinking it would replace Buzz.

Well KDE has a lot of promise, but even though the version is a .2, it seems like a .0

by Thinker (not verified)

OK. First things first. I _love_ KDE 2.2. I compiled all the source for it on my nifty Sony Picturebook and it works great, except for 1 little annoying bug.

After I click on the Start Menu, there are only (2) ways to get it to dissapear.

1) Click on a link contained in the start menu
2) Click on the "K" icon at the base of the menu.

I cant just click outside the menu to make it go away. Is there some way I can fix this? I've heard a rumor that it is cause by a bug in qtlibs.

Thanks,

Thinker

The rumor is true. QT has a bug. qt-copy from KDE cvs has the fix, but I don't think any Trolltech-released version does yet. You might try changing widget styles, I have heard a different rumor that says it depends on what style you are using.

by Daniel (not verified)

We only need a hardware configuration-instalation KDE app into Kcontrol and a system adm (like ximian setup tools). I hope things like this will make KDE compite with windows, that is an operating system. I hope. Could be it posible? with scritps under the app that could be maintain by the distro.

by not me (not verified)

There was a project to make a KDE frontend to the Ximian setup tools (the backend is completely independent of GNOME). However, the last post on the mailing list was July 15. Despite the valiant efforts of Charles Samuels, I don't think the project is still alive. (I guess that person from Ximian who didn't want to move to joint CVS was right, huh?)

by Jens (not verified)

Guys (and gals ;),

I'm a little disappointed in the 2.2 release. The ones before were better. But maybe I messed things up - you tell me. (I'm using the Debian unstable builds) Let me explain.

a) Konqueror does not do Javascript if called via kfmclient (ie Alt-F2, click on your home icon, etc). If I call it via the konqueror binary it works. How in the world could such a blatant show stopper bug be missed? It wasn't there in 2.2beta1.

b) The objprelink process may be a nice thing in theory but here it hasn't improved speed at all. (The Debian binaries are supposed to be built with objprelink.)
I have a K6-2 500MHz and each Konqueror window still needs about 4-5 seconds to appear, during which the CPU meter is fixed at 100%. When a popup, well, pops up, then 2-3 seconds pass with half-redrawn konqueror windows.

c) Neither has the startup time increased. (about 30 seconds) I already removed the Netscape plugin search. The whole GUI also still seems a little sluggish.

d) The printing system is very nice, and I really LOVE the configuration utility - but it cannot cope with password-asking CUPS servers yet (I get an endless number of password prompts, and then it often crashes). This is also a bug that I would call obvious.

These are just some things that I noticed after the upgrade. Most of the time it's the speed, but I simply don't see why a 500MHz machine with 448MB of RAM should be too slow for desktop use. I'm not claiming Gnome is faster or whatever, there are just my current feelings about KDE.

Please enlighten me, what am I doing wrong?

by Danny (not verified)

about the objprelinking and speed stuff:
1)delete your old .kde directory, you probably will see an improvement in speed.
2) The bottleneck _on your specific system_ may very well be not the relocations of symbols (done by the CPU) but the loading of apps + data from disk. This is way YMMV with objprelinking.

D.

by Jens (not verified)

Hi,

thanks. to 1) this might be important. When I updated to 2.0 final from the beta builds my .kde dir was about 200 MB (!!!) from old cache files, .nfs* files, etc etc etc

btw: my $HOME is on NFS but that doesn't make a difference, I already checked.

to 2) I have a 4G IBM UW-SCSI disk that does about 13MB/sec according to hdparm, and between 1 and 8MB/s according to bonnie++. This disk is about 4 years old, and just about the fastest that would work on my motherboard - it only does DMA-33 for IDE disks.

But I would think the disk I/O performance should be enough.. ?

by Jaana Kunttu (not verified)

One problem is that you have more than 128MB memory. Rest of memory won't be cached because your motherboard doesn't have enough cache (512KB?). In LKML someone reported that kernel compilation time increased from 9min->13min when he increased memory from 128->256!!

by Paul Hensgen (not verified)

Have you installed and setup hdparm?

make a huge difference on my computer and i'm running the same binaries as you.

I have a k6-500 128MB and konq. takes around a second to load.

by Jens (not verified)

Actually, I use SCSI harddisks. :-)

But thanks for the info. I use hdparm whenever it makes sense (ie. with IDE).

by Arondylos (not verified)

Yeah, like the other people said, check in your mainboard's manual how large the "Cacheable area" of your mainboard is. On most K6-2 boards, it's just 64 MBs, and adding more memory doesn't make it faster. Newer Socket-7 boards might have a larger Cacheable area (128 MB?) but still, the amount of RAM you have is more suited to Slot-1 or better chipsets, which usually have a cacheable area of >=512 MB.

Hope this helps. (KDE 2.2 is *still* not exactly fast. Especially initial startup. I am forced to use icewm on an old PC (K6-2 333, *cough*, "old") just because it's as fast as Win95, while KDE2 just takes too long (although it has way more features). On my desktop box (Duron-800, 256 Megs RAM), it's definitely usable though.

The hdparm trick (enabling DMA or better Ultra-DMA) is a good one, too. Also, try both with 2.2 and later 2.4 kernels. The 2.4 series had (still has!) some issues on the Virtual Memory balancing side AFAIK.

I'll try copying $HOME/.kde to a ramdisk on system startup to improve system speed, that's my last real idea for making initial startup faster - dunno if it'll work.

After that, it's optimizing the startup source code itself.

Have fun,

Yours Arondylos #8-)

by Krame (not verified)

Yes, On my machine it takes more time to start KDE ( after login ), than to start Linux/X/kdm.
I have some old K6 motherboard, but I can't find any "Cacheable area" in manual.

by Arondylos (not verified)

ok, have you already tried the other stuff (except the weird ramdisk idea)?

anyway, do you know the board vendor or what kind of chipset is on the chip? (you might find that out by looking on the board), maybe an Intel 430 TX or something?

http://www.wimsbios.com/ might also be interesting to find out your Board vendor/Chipset.

Still, KDE *is* rather slow, _especially_ on initial startup. Usually, I startup KDE just once per day - since I don't usually have to reboot. That is rather wasteful energy-wise, but the computer has to run anyway here so it doesn't matter. It's just an ugly workaround though :)

by Jens (not verified)

I've tried:
- wiping .kde
- moving .kde to local disk (before #1 :)
- a different SCSI host adapter
- building KDE from source (OK, that was 2.1)

Not much change. My mainboard chipset is an ALI M1533 or something like that.

Thanks a lot for all the insight! :)

by Arondylos (not verified)

I suppose you have an Ali-5 chipset, unfortunately Ali doesn't really provide generic chipset information (or I couldn't find it). A vendor which uses this chipset is Asus, and their board supports 128 MB with 512 kB Cache; if you have just 256 kB second Level cache, your cacheable area will likely be at 64 MB.

So, verify that you have 512 kB cache and try ripping out RAM so you only have 128 MB. This *might* not improve startup time too much (since at startup, memory fills up from below AFAIK, and even with KDE fully loaded you might not yet be at >128 MB) but interactive speed, hopefully.

Also, what kind of SCSI adapter do you have?

Do note that I'm just another non-developer, I haven't even read the KDE startup source code yet...

-Arondylos

by Gregory W. Brubaker (not verified)

There are always 2 states on the Taskbar: Normal, and darkened... Things that are the active view are darkened, while everything else looks normal...

However, there are three states:

Active, Open, and _Minimized_

I suggest that we highlight the active state, and darken the minimized states...

(I do realize that the "darkened" are really depressed... However, still rest my case)... as with would more properly follow the scheme, and help you now just what windows arent currently open, when you have alot of different things open...

However, I do find interesting the colapsing of items by type that currently exists...

But still, find this feature an easy and good one...

Thanks,
Gregory W. Brubaker

by Daniel (not verified)

don KDE uses components from OpenOffice ? There are lot of great components 100% profesional code. It will do KDE going faster .. we want an "excel" ? well .. we take the OpenOffice component, we make a port and we have the apps. Its is faster than code it from down. Why reinvent the weel ? OpenSource is based on it, i mean, use the code of other coders.

by Cullmann Christoph (not verified)

Have you ever looked at the OpenOffice code ?
It would be much more work to clean & fix the code, understand the OpenOffice libs and port it to QT than enhance our current KOffice project.

by Daniel (not verified)

I am talking about pieces of OpenOffice. Not the whole of it. Only some important components like the print support for example.

by Daniel Molkentin (not verified)

This is completely rediculous. Mainly for 2 reasons:

1) For the printing, we do have equal or even better code in place alreasy

2) For the visual stuff: Using many widgetsets is a very bad idea. You want to have not more than one (and that is Qt) at one time.

3) Qt provides an API that makes stuff easier to code than using native C++.

So what you basically want is having a look into the other Office Suites code and copy wherever it make sense.

btw: We already do this kind of code sharing with the ABI Word authors (dunno about OO).

I keep hearing, and am confident in my own right, that the single biggest obstacle to end-user / desktop / workstation *nix adoption these days is the lack of confidence in ability to retain old data, i.e., Microsoft Office files, and to exchange files with MS Office users.

The word just doesn't seem to have gotten out there that StarOffice/OpenOffice has good filters. Perhaps if KOffice imported SO/OO's MS Office filters this would change. Would that have similar techinical obstacles the ones you described above, or is that code more portable?

Best of all worlds would be if KDE, GNOME, and others cooperated with Sun and the OO developers on common, portable MS Office filter code, or at least frequently and closely worked together on this issue, sharing info, etc.

Really, a near-maniacal focus needs to happen on MS Office filter development. That is far more important than adding KOffice feature #185, or even development of KDE 3.0. There are many nice-to-haves; this is a must-have.

The single best thing you could possibly do for *nix is to have *nix-wide high-quality, confidence-worthy MS Office file filters and import/export capability as soon as possible.

DataViz Corporation has accomplished this on a commercial basis for MacOS with MacLinkPlus. Thanks to it, Mac users can just use AppleWorks or other apps instead of MS Office for Mac, and can save files in a dizzying array of formats from virtually any application.

If a commercial company can do usable and commercially viable MS Office filters, I think open source developers need to rise to that challenge. After all, isn't the whole point of open source that you guys can do better than commercial developers? And, what more important feature could there possibly be for the future of *nix than MS Office file filters?

I keep hearing, and am confident in my own right, that the single biggest obstacle to end-user / desktop / workstation *nix adoption these days is the lack of confidence in ability to retain old data, i.e., Microsoft Office files, and to exchange files with MS Office users.

The word just doesn't seem to have gotten out there that StarOffice/OpenOffice has good filters. Perhaps if KOffice imported SO/OO's MS Office filters this would change. Would that have similar techinical obstacles the ones you described above, or is that code more portable?

Best of all worlds would be if KDE, GNOME, and others cooperated with Sun and the OO developers on common, portable MS Office filter code, or at least frequently and closely worked together on this issue, sharing info, etc.

Really, a near-maniacal focus needs to happen on MS Office filter development. That is far more important than adding KOffice feature #185, or even development of KDE 3.0. There are many nice-to-haves; this is a must-have.

The single best thing you could possibly do for *nix is to have *nix-wide high-quality, confidence-worthy MS Office file filters and import/export capability as soon as possible.

DataViz Corporation has accomplished this on a commercial basis for MacOS with MacLinkPlus. Thanks to it, Mac users can just use AppleWorks or other apps instead of MS Office for Mac, and can save files in a dizzying array of formats from virtually any application.

If a commercial company can do usable and commercially viable MS Office filters, I think open source developers need to rise to that challenge. After all, isn't the whole point of open source that you guys can do better than commercial developers? And, what more important feature could there possibly be for the future of *nix than MS Office file filters?

by Skal Loret (not verified)

Look, I a a newbie. I am so new I still have the tags hanging offa me. So new I still haven't gotten the clearcoating. I'll admit it. There, I said it. Good to get that out of the way. Send the smarmy remarks to any device you want, except one of mine.

Having said that, I have tried to install 2.2. Ghod knows I have tried. Keerist, peeps, can there not be an easier way to install something?

I am not without "certain technical skills", or a certain degree of modest intelligence and capability to learn new concepts, but installing 2.2, for me, is a non-starter. I have tried 2 different distros, to get it isntalled on Mandrake 8.0, and both times it wanted stuff that was presumably not here and I was unable to find. Gah. Not fun, considering the DL times at 50.7 connect speeds(I live very much in the broccoli...).

So, my question is: All this geek stuff is great for whiling away the empty hours of the day, and certainly better for you than hanging out in some dark and sleazy barroom, but can there not be a better way for the less geekoidal amongst us to Make Things Work?

Just asking...

by Moritz Moeller-... (not verified)

First: Wait a few days untiöl the rough edges of packages the worst bugs and so have gone. Then download all .rpms for your KDE _supporting_ distribution (SuSE, Debian, Mandrake,...).

rpm -Uvh *.rpm

If some dependencies are not met, use rpmfind.net to find out which package might be missing and install it. NEVER install packages not for your distribution.

Never use --nodeps unless you have heard from a very knowledgable person that it is okay.

After that ask on newsgroups for help, if you face problems.

by Sage (not verified)

I think the point the new user was trying to convey is that fact that why the heck does installing things on Linux have to be so darn complex. I've been using Linux off and on for about 5 years, I'm no expert, but I can feel my way around pretty well. I can't even get KDE 2.2 to run on my Mandrake 8.0 box either. I've done everything you said to do, and still nothing, I've uninstalled 2.1.2, and tried to reinstall...nothing. Nothing but conflicts, and dependancies. I personally don't have all day to search for the libraries needed, it's a waste of my time and other users as well. Suffice to say, that's one of the benefits of a Winblows box, you just click setup and away you go, and in less than 2-3 minutes your using your new software. Until installing programs is THAT easy, newbies like the author, and even non-newbies like myself will only play with Linux and never adopt it. BTW, those that think urpm saves the day, think again...it has it's limitations. One file, one download, one install, that's what is needed to make Linux work for everyone. There are great products out there, too bad half the Linux users will never get to see them due to their pain in the butt installation dependancies and conflicts.

Sage

by thierry (not verified)

Yes, it could be easier, but

>One file, one download, one install, that's what is needed to make Linux work for everyone.

If you think so, you have to wait kde2.2 to be in the official package of your distribution.

>that's one of the benefits of a Winblows box

windows never allow's you to download fifty percent
of the system (kde+libraries) and install it on the old
fifty percent (kernel+libraries...)

>half the Linux users will never get to see them...

Just wait 4 month and you have it in the next
release of your distribution.

regards

by Paul (not verified)

I can understand the author's frustration, and I completely agree with Sage. While a lot of Geeks continue to insist on the virtues of linux, the rest of us simply don't want to spend all day tyring to set up something that takes 5 minutes to do on Windows or Mac. We have families, or other interests (like reading or writing), or simply like to spend time outside on a nice day.

I just hope that linux can became easier to use for the average user. Let me just add that I really do support the concept of linux. It just doesn't seem practical for people. Not yet, anyway.

(Even as I type this, I have problems. My delete key is not working.)

by G. Brannon Smith (not verified)

Klipper is a great tool - but it could be so much better. It should:

1) Purge duplicate strings: if I highlight "qwerty", hl "foobar" and hl "qwerty" again I get two copies of "qwerty" in the list taking up two slots. Just have unique strings in the list.

2) Promote most recent string to front. It is logical that if I choose a string, I'm more likely to use it yet again. Move it to the front to reflect this.

3) Let user choose history size. Maybe some of us want to keep 20 or 25 strings around.

These would make klipper REALLY COOL.

by Carsten Pfeiffer (not verified)

You didn't test the one from KDE 2.2 yet, did you?

by J Pruitt (not verified)

KDE 2.2 just rules. It's clean, elegant, sophisticated, and easy to use.

Only one problem - my icons will not stay WHERE I PUT THEM - every time I log out and log back in, KDE rearranges my icons for me. :P *I* want to decide where my icons should be when I login!

As soon as I figure out the solution to that irritation, however, I would say KDE 2.2 has no flaws apparent to me. :)

by Tony Caduto (not verified)

I updated my suse 7.2 with the rpms from ftp.suse.com and I don't have that problem you speak of.
Use the command line version of Yast and get KDE 2.2 that way.

Tony

by mikecd (not verified)

Hello!

I've heard this will do what you are looking for:

Uncheck kcontrol->Desktop->"Align Icons Vertically". Icons will then be laid out horizontally, but you can put them where you want and they will stay.

by Justin (not verified)

Where is this kcontrol? Where do you find this exactly? Can you give more details on this? Right click or something?
THanks

by jd (not verified)

I have no idea if this always helps, but it did it for me:

open konsole.

Kill the kdesktop process:
#kill -HUP

Restart the kdesktop process:
#kdesktop

After this, no more annoying automatic rearranging of icons for me. Very strange, I must admit, because before I did this, restarting KDE didn't help. But it doesn't come back, even after restarting KDE... :)

by J Pruitt (not verified)

Thanks for the tips. :)

Unfortunately, neither disabling "vertical alignment" in the control panel, nor killing and restarting the kdesktop process, works for me.

Oh well. I guess I'll wait for 2.2.1. :P

FWIW, I'm running FreeBSD-STABLE (built KDE from ports).

by Andreas Silberstorff (not verified)

I loged out, went to a Textconsole via STRG-ALT-F1 and deleted anything belonging to me in /tmp. When I loged into kde next time my desktop looked as I wanted it.

by Cihl (not verified)

I like KDE a lot, but there's a really annoying problem in this latest version.

I'm using SuSE 7.2.
I downloaded all the files from the sourceforge.net and installed them with
rpm -Uvh --nodeps --force *

The problem shows when i start an app maximised. The position of the window doesn't align with the screen. KDE2 apps are a bit wider than the screen. Netscape (old one) appears at an offset of about 10x10 pixels. This is _extremely_ annoying.

What's the problem?

by ik (not verified)

the problem can be solved this way :
maximize the window, or place it right, and then right click on the title bar , and click on 'store settings'.
enjoy !

by 2WhyNo (not verified)

Could someone post a recomended system requirement for a stable, full-featured and fast KDE 2.2 (kernel, glibc, compiler, other libraries, tools etc.)

I've got full-featured but not quite stable KDE 2.2, the speed is fine with PIII 750@825MHz 192MB and Athlon 900@945MHz 128MB, but horrible with celeron 266MHz 64MB (please don't say hardware upgrade).
I think it's more stable when I'm using Redhat 6.2+KDE 2.1.x, but now I'm using Mandrake 8.0.

So if someone could post a recommended a stable system, I'll upgrade right away.

Oh yeah, does Mandrake 8.0 RPM relocatable ? I usually install KDE on a different partition.

TIA

by aleXXX (not verified)

Recommended fast and stable system for KDE:
Slackware 7.0 on K6/200 128 MB :-)

Alex

hmm......so cld i get away with running x on slackware with 16 ram ??........and if i do change the config ltr, will i need to reinstall slack??

by Carbon (not verified)

I don't think your hardware power has anything to do with the stability. Look above for all sorts of horror stories about Mandrake RPMs. I would reccomend that you compile from source, shouldn't take long on either of the first two systems! Just make sure you compile qt from source as well.

by Jon Tillman (not verified)

After many hours of DL'ing across my ancient modem out here in the sticks, I installed the SuSE specific RPMs of KDE2.2, and for the most part, it rocks. However, there is one little problem that is threatening to make the whole thing an also-ran for me. Every 30 seconds or so, the screen pauses for about a second. No mouse or keyboard input, though it does get buffered and drawn when the pause is over. Perhaps this is a known bug? Need a little help here.

Vital Stats:
Kernel 2.2.14
KDE 2.2
X-Server 3320 11.0

by Chuck Taylor (not verified)

Perhaps you have the screen saver feature enable?? If so, you will find that it doesn't blank the screen. The cursors hide and everything is suspended but you still have a "normal" screen otherwise. This is an error and there is a fix. Check out the updates for 7.2. I see you have a modem so using Y.O.U. may or may not be a favorable idea. I have a cable modem and the Y.O.U works great.
Take care,
Chuck

by andre bueno (not verified)

I run kde2.1 using red hat 7.1.
download the new kde2.2 (all rpm)
and then instal it using
rpm -ivh --force --nodeps

the kde 2.2 not run, the messages are
when I run kdevelop (from gnome):

kdevelop: error while loading shared libraries: libfam.so.0: cannot load shared object file: No such file or directory

when I reinstal the kde2.2 using
rpm -Uvh *.rpm
the messages are the lib problens:
libSDL-1.2.so.0
libfam.so.0
efax é necessário pelo kdeutils-2.2-2
libxml2.so.2 é necessário pelo kdelibs-2.2-5

It never ceases to amaze me how people install RPMS --force --nodeps and are surprised when things don't work.

by Martin Karlsson (not verified)

Go to www.rpmfind.net and find the libraries that are missing. You just search with the engine for the files and they will tell you which one that contains that file. Download the files for RedHat 7.1 and install them with rpm -ivh . Are they already installed and you only need to upgrade use rpm -Uvh .

An advise for you and other "--nodeps --force" people. The messages given by rpm that files are missing and that it is not possible to install is because files ARE missing. Solve the dependencies and your system will work well.

www.rpmfind.net is a very good tool/engine to find missinng files. Use it!

Good luck!

Martin

by Marko Rosic (not verified)

I don't know if anyone else has this problem... but when I enable AA support, all non-TrueType fonts dissapear, also apps can't acces them anymore.
So I had to manualy setup every font where I've used Helvetica or Times.

If this is not me... than it is realy big bug.

Any clues?

by Bas Burger (not verified)

I have the same bug it is not you, but it is annoying as there is no use using TT fonts without AA as they look crappy then and i need them in gimp (aliased)...

Ah well, prob takes lot of time to catch up with win in this (very important) field, as this means you customers stay or leave...