Re: KDE wins Linux Journal´s Editor Choice Award

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Re: KDE wins Linux Journal´s Editor Choice Award
by raindog on Thursday 16/Nov/2000, @08:45

I've had to abandon KDE2 due to its apparent extreme instability. I tend to blame it on Linux-Mandrake rushing out their 7.2 version in time for xmas though.

Nonetheless, I haven't had to return to "MS BS" (though I still have to use it sometimes at work.) Instead I typed

lynx -source http://go-gnome.com | sh

and now I run Helix GNOME without a hitch. I do like KDE's underlying architecture better though, so I hope both Mandrake and the KDE team resolve these issues. (And let me start up two KDE sessions at once so I can use my machine over VNC, dammit!) Uh, sorry for that outburst, I've been pretty frustrated lately.

Rob

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Re: KDE wins Linux Journal´s Editor Choice Award
by David Johnson on Thursday 16/Nov/2000, @10:24

Have you actually tried building KDE from scratch? Most of the problems I have been hearing are coming from one of two distros, and yours is one of them. I can't help but suspect the package. I do see some annoyances here and there, but no grave or critical problems. Konq has crashed only once in three weeks, and the same site that crashed it hung Netscape.

If you don't want to rebuild from scratch, try a package from a different distro.

ps.s Your lynx "solution" sounds eerily reminiscent of some Slashdot posts from the time of GNOME-1.0, where it was common to see "I fixed GNOME by installing KDE".

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Re: KDE wins Linux Journal´s Editor Choice Award
by raindog on Thursday 16/Nov/2000, @13:19

I hadn't thought about trying another distro's packages (and neither would a typical end user, in all probability) - but I may just give it a try just because I'm desperate to use kmail. ;)

And yeah, the irony of KDE being suddenly less stable than GNOME isn't lost on me. I agree that it's most likely Mandrake's packages causing the problem - they really rushed it out for the holidays.

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Re: KDE wins Linux Journal´s Editor Choice Award
by Eric Laffoon on Thursday 16/Nov/2000, @10:25

I know that a few people seem to have problems with KDE 2 in Mdk 7.2 but mostly they are niggling problems due to a number of little customizations Mdk did. Of course the worst problems have been from people trying to add the 7.2 rpms to earlier distros. That has been a disaster writing two programs in the same space.

I compiled KDE 2 on Mdk 7.1 and I can't remember how many weeks my desktop has been continuously running or the last time konqueror crashed. (I'm pretty sure it was in the beta) KDE 2 continues to be rock stable.

Regarding running Helix... I have not been a GNOME fan due to it's mass instability that seems to have finally been cured with it's 1.2 release. I loaded the Mdk 7.2 beta on a machine and had a look and while it appeared very solid it did not have a lot of the functionality of KDE 2. Further, the interface decisions on a number of programs I ran were infuriatingly unintuitive.

What I noticed first though was, in my subjective opinion the depressing browns, and monkeys everywhere was a look that turned me off. Of course that is the really puzzling thing. The 7.2 beta I loaded had Helix-GNOME installed... so I'm trying to figure out why someone would say they had to install it on 7.2 when it was already there and selectable at log in???

BTW my friends did not like the KDE 2 implimentation in Mdk 7.2 and they did an install from source in the /opt directory. It seems that anyone who is comforable running Lynx is not put off by "./configure && make".

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Re: KDE wins Linux Journal´s Editor Choice Award
by raindog on Thursday 16/Nov/2000, @13:15

Actually, while I grew up with the command line myself, that particular lynx command is just the Helix GNOME's web site's single instruction for installing HG. They tell you to get a root prompt and copy and paste that line, which to me still seems kind of hard for ex-Windows users.

See, I'm now trying to evaluate Linux desktops with an eye for installing them on non-technical people's desktops -- since at least half a dozen of that kind of person have asked me about Linux recently -- so I'm doing my best to avoid doing things they wouldn't do. (Obviously the exception is when I write my little applets, but even then I've been trying to write in such a way that people using it won't have to compile anything. And of course when my machine blows up, as it did when LM7.2 decided to install XFree86 4.0.1 after I'd asked it not to.)

I found a lot of things confusing about HG, but they were similar things to KDE2's changes from KDE1 - how themes are handled, keyboard shortcuts, window manager differences, etc. I agree the default theme (Sweetpill Eggplant or something like that) is kind of odd. I eventually settled on a theme that mimics the QNX Photon interface, and it's very easy on the eyes. (Tried to import it into KDE2 and the theme importer crashed.)

And at least in the LM7.2-final ISO's I downloaded, there is no Helix GNOME, just GNOME 1.2 with a bunch of Helix apps and themes tacked on. You get a Linux Mandrake splash screen, there's no helix-update, etc. But I installed using the so-called developer option, so who knows, maybe it just decided I didn't need HG.

At any rate, I realize I'll get a much more stable installation if I build KDE from scratch. But I can't tell end users -- like my parents -- to build their KDE from scratch, so I'm not going to either. This means KDE is held hostage to the whims of the individual distros' packagers, but frankly, it needs to be that way if it's going to be at all useful to Windows refugees (and let's not pretend we don't need them.)

KDE could really benefit from an easy installer/updater like Helix has, especially if the KDE one didn't require any command line interaction at all. I thought I heard Shawn Gordon's people were working on such a thing but that was quite a while ago.

Rob

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Re: KDE wins Linux Journal´s Editor Choice Award
by Hetz on Thursday 16/Nov/2000, @16:25

Hi,

I'm working for a company which you'll hear lots of it on next month (specially Redhat users which we target our product to - other distro's will follow - it's market share and it's not my decision)

I have worked with BERO from Redhat Germany to make the RPM's for Redhat 6.2 (if you want to see which company I am - type: rpm -qip on the kdegraphics rpm), and I must say that the current RPM's which are avaialable on KDE FTP site for Redhat (most of them are Bero's work) are rock solid! He managed somehow to compile QT and KDELibs with Netscape plugin support without requiring motif even!

So yes, some packages sucks on other distro's (specially the RPM's which are on Mandrake 7.2), but I suggest for you to look if your Linux distribution got more updated.

You can check this by looking at the RPM filename - the last number before the .i386 is the release number of that packages. example: kdebase-2.0.0-7.i386.rpm means this rpm is on the 7th version of compiling - which means - many bugs were removed from the package.

Enjoy KDE 2- and to all KDE Developers - keep up the good work!

Hetz

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