Bye bye KDE?
I have been using current KDE since most of my Linux time (having converted over from WindowMaker to KDE 2 back in 2002). But currently, I am seriously pondering to ditch KDE since KDE upstream seems to be wildly decided to kill KDE.
I have accidentally upgraded my desktop box to KDE4 because I missed putting KDE on hold before doing a major sid update after a couple of months. KDE4's first regression immediately showed itself - the right display doesn't get any attention from KDE. It just shows up in a grey checkerboard background, it doesn't have a panel, it doesn't have a menu, right click doesn't work. It looks like the only thing one can do with it is dragging windows onto it.
With help of #debian-kde, I quickly found out about this bug in Upstream Bugzilla, which is referred from #529487 and which was marked as Duplicate of this bug in upstream bugzilla, which is one and a half years old and was marked as "severity wishlist".
Despite the splendid job that the Debian KDE team has done to sort out the KDE4 mess, it looks like KDE upstream has managed to break Dual Head Setups for one and a half years and doesn't seem to be too interested in providing KDE4 in a way that it can be compared with past versions. This is very sad and will have me shopping for a new desktop environment soon, I am afraid.
Maybe it was not a so good idea to take away KDE 3 so soon and it might have been better to keep KDE 3 in Debian. Maybe it's time to re-introduce KDE 3 as co-installable packages? I would be willing to participate in this effort as a team member.
Which other Desktop Environments and/or Window Managers should I be shopping for? I'd like to have:
- Dual-Head support (preferably with the possibility to switch desktops only on one display, but that's something that even KDE 3 cannot do yet)
- Shortcuts like "gg:search words" or "wp:search words" to immediately open google, wikipedia, the BTS or the PTS
- Overlapping windows that are not automatically resized
- A terminal like konsole which allows me to have different session in tabs and to send my input to all tabs
- A clipboard handler that will automatically pop up a window asking me whether I want to open the URL that I just marked in a browser
- Integration with the Debian menu system I will try adding to this list over the next days when I notice a feature that I have accustomed to so badly that I don't even notice any more when I'm using it.
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asdfa on :
"since KDE upstream seems to be wildly decided to kill KDE"
Could you please be more careful with your words? Or at least more respectful with the work other people is doing.
The whole workspace (the "desktop") has been rewritten in KDE 4. That means that in the meantime there will be features that nobody has had time to code. That doesn't mean that upstream wants to do harm to KDE, and even less wants to kill KDE.
I'm sorry that your feature is not in a good shape. Several screens work in KDE 4, but only in certain setups (that I can't tell, because I don't know what's the difference between Xinerama or Twinview or else, because as the big majority of users I don't have 2 screens). Maybe you can help with this instead.
Besides, you can install KDE 3 from stable if you accidentally upgraded, and it works really well side to side with other KDE 4 applications. That's what I'm doing.
Again: please, be respectful. KDE is way more than just the workspace, and you are applying the word kill to a huge community.
Rob Wilderspin on :
I moved from KDE3 to awesome several months back and have been very happy with it on a dual-screen, multi-desktop setup for heavy-duty sysadmin work. The tiling functionality is, well, awesome for the way I work with terminals, but for Marc the good news is that awesome supports many different ways of arranging windows and they're not all tiled. If you want "normal" behaviour (overlapping, not tiling) choose the floating method. You can have some desktops as floating, some as tiled, it's up to you, and have awesome send windows automatically to the right desktop based on their name/class.
Awesome works with all the proper freedesktop standards, so has the system notification tray and menuing you expect, including the Debian menu by default in the Debian package, and you can still use whatever tools you want for those other parts. I use konsole as my terminal, for example, despite the regressions from in it from KDE3 to KDE4 (ie, loss of decent profile support).
Marc 'Zugschlus' Haber on :
It still has this effect. I recently read an insightful article which I missed to bookmark saying that "rewriting is a mistake". That article was right. With a rewrite, you lose features and get new interesting bugs. You throw away a tested and debugged code-base.
If it only were one feature, I wouldn't be so disappointed.
I can't. You cannot assume that everybody using your packages is an apt C++ programmer. I am not.
Hans Bonfigt on :
"Rewiriting is a mistake".
With respect to "KDE", sure it is. The only solution to clean that mess up is to throw it awy and move the whole "communuty" to WIN32, where it belongs. Recently I heared "gnome" being already there, as some parts are now based on "mono".
But in general, it is very often a goog idea to rewrite code from scratch, for various reasons: - maybe new APIs are availeable which can do certain tasks more efficiently - the naming scheme for variables and functions can be reworked for clartity - after a programmer has certain experiences both with the APIs and with his own application, he (or in rare cases she) will be able to write more efficient programs und tends to use a more standardized set of tools.
"Historically grown" products like CATIA or asterisk have reached the state of 'unmaintainability', every single, simple feature has an unintended side effekt.
In addition: A complete rewrite takes much less time as usually estimated. BTDT.
Jon on :
I am currently of the opinion that a complete rewrite is never a good idea. I know it is very appealing to "plan to throw one away", but I can't think of ANY examples of it actually working.
Consider how long it took apache2 to finally unseat apache1 (and the number of apache1 installs that STILL remain).
Look at how different Linux 2.6.30 is to Linux 2.2.*, achieved carefully and incrementally, managing regressions as they went.
Fixing issues in asterisk etc. will be very hard "in situ" but not impossible.
Andreas on :
Did you ever consider a tiling wm? I went away from gnome two months ago and I am very happy with awesome. I'm using a dual-head configuration and the two screens can be switched independently.
The rest of your list is either configurable with the lua config or not possible (as the overlapping windows).
Marc 'Zugschlus' Haber on :
Yes, that's why I explicitly asked for a setup that allows overlapping windows.
anon on :
Yeah please reintroduce kde3! For me the upgrade broke the integration of addressbooks with different applications. For instance twinkle no longer knows addresses from kaddressbook and korganizer no longer knows birthdays from kaddressbook. Downgrading would also save me the 150MB mysql database for akonadi, so please could we get stable kde back?
visnotjl on :
I have benn using xfce for a good amount of time. Of course it has not most part of the frills that can be found in kde, but it is really very light. Outdated workstations, not worth upgrading, really revived with Debian stable + xfce.
I think it deserves a try..
Wouter Verhelst on :
You're not really looking for another desktop environment; you're just looking for a different UI. There's a difference.
What you could do is switch to a window manager that does not have the issues you refer to, but that does have support for a freedesktop.org system tray. You could then continue using most of the KDE applications you've been using so far, and still have a working dual-head setup. After all, the applications themselves don't care on which screen they are started -- only the window manager (which, in the case of GNOME or KDE is part of the desktop environment) does.
Marc 'Zugschlus' Haber on :
Yes, you're right
And which one would that be?
(name) on :
Sadly, my KDE-days ended with KDE4. It's too unstable for my taste: I tried 4.2.99 yesterday and it crashed pretty much instantly after logging on. For the time being all my PC's run XFCE except for one Kubuntu Jaunty install that uses KDE3 thanks to Tim Pearsons' effort to provide those repos.
Alexandre Franke on :
Dual-Head support (preferably with the possibility to switch desktops only on one display, but that’s something that even KDE 3 cannot do yet)
I'm not sure what kind of support you're looking for but I successfully use dual head with GNOME.
Shortcuts like “gg:search words” or “wp:search words” to immediately open google, wikipedia, the BTS or the PTS
GNOME Do allows to do such things.
Overlapping windows that are not automatically resized
Works in GNOME.
A terminal like konsole which allows me to have different session in tabs and to send my input to all tabs
Terminator?
A clipboard handler that will automatically pop up a window asking me whether I want to open the URL that I just marked in a browser
Glipper might do that.
Integration with the Debian menu system
I guess GNOME does that.
Marc 'Zugschlus' Haber on :
Yes, GNOME is one of the alternatives. However, what I see from GNOME on friends' Ubuntu and Debian desktops doesn't look too appealing to me. So I know that GNOME would need a serious amount of tweaking to be a comfortable working environment for me.
(name) on :
Konquerors "web shortcuts" are called "keywords" in Firefox Konsole's "Send input to all" was reintroduced in 4.1 "Copy Input To". "open the URL that I just marked in a browser" -- Firefox uses middleclick for that, clipman for XFCE has actions like klipper btw.
Marc 'Zugschlus' Haber on :
Actually, I want these things to integrate with the desktop. I am pretty well aware that I can cut&paste URLs into a browser which I have manually started before (not only Firefox is able to do this), but the comfort of the KDE setup is that KDE actually offers to start the browser for me.
Holger Schauer on :
Why don't you just go back to WindowMaker? I still run WindowMaker which understands netwm since several versions, which, for instance, implies that you can simply use fbpanel if you need a panel. You can use your favourite terminal (I'm currently using either xterm or gnome terminator) and it's integrated with the debian menu system. For the clipboard feature, I know of no automatic solution, but I've been using a handcrafted menu option doing something similar for some time (which I've discarded, because I'm using the keyboard to a much wider extent than the mouse, so the menu option was next to useless).
Marc 'Zugschlus' Haber on :
I have left WindowMaker seven years ago. I had never really understood its features and I guess that today's WindowMaker is quite different from what I have seen back in the early years.
And since I have to work on Windows for a considerable amount of my work time, a Linux desktop which doesn't me require to re-adjust every time I switch computers is preferred.
Gerard on :
I'm a not so unhappy kde 4.2 user. But what does realy piss me of is that when you tell what is wrong people always ask did you report the bug? And if you do so no one cares about your bug report.
Peter Eisentraut on :
I just put an xrandr script into my .kde/Autostart/ to set up the screens. Not pretty, but it works.
Marc 'Zugschlus' Haber on :
Only that the old NVidia driver that my dual DVI GeForce 5 FX depends on does not do xrandr.
Screen 0: minimum 3200 x 1200, current 3200 x 1200, maximum 3200 x 1200 default connected 3200x1200+0+0 0mm x 0mm 3200x1200 50.0*
Stefan Sarzio on :
Dual-Head support works just fine for me with KDE - since 4.1 or 4.2...and currently with 4.3 rc (kubuntu). I have different backgrounds and different plasmoids on each display.
The only drawback is that I have to use xrandr to activate the second display - the KDE systemsettings don't work for me.
Are you sure your problem is not related to updated drivers or xorg-xserver issues?
Keith Z-G on :
LXDE is looking promising as a desktop environment; relatedly, Openbox is very configurable if you put the time into it. Currently on some of my machines I've been using Openbox with Tint2 as a panel, and it seems to have pretty good dual-head support.
I've had much more success with dual-head support on KDE4.3 than the previous versions of KDE4, but I'm using NVIDIA twinview so it's not quite the same thing as most solutions. Even then, often the panel basically self-destructs when I'm trying to fiddle with or move it.
Personally I'm running Kubuntu, partially because someone has taken the time and effort to make KDE3.5 packages that can be installed alongside KDE4, and can use KDE4 apps within the KDE3.5 environment. The Debian maintainers might want to have a look at the work he's done, as I would expect it wouldn't be too hard to port the packages back to Debian: http://apt.pearsoncomputing.net
(name) on :
Nik on :
I like e17, though it may not meet all of your requirements. Recently, it has been morphing into a full-fledged desktop-environment, but it's not quite there yet. I use it simply as a window manager.
Dual-Head support (preferably with the possibility to switch desktops only on one display, but that’s something that even KDE 3 cannot do yet)
I have two monitors, and e17 switches virtual desktops on one monitor at a time. I don't know if there's a way to configure this to follow the more typical behavior, but I can't imagine any reason for wanting to.
Shortcuts like “gg:search words” or “wp:search words” to immediately open google, wikipedia, the BTS or the PTS
I don't understand this item. I don't know where you want to type these shortcuts, but e17 lets you bind hotkeys to arbitrary commands and window manager functions.
Overlapping windows that are not automatically resized
I guess this is a reference to tiling window managers, which e17 is not.
A terminal like konsole which allows me to have different session in tabs and to send my input to all tabs
If you like konsole, why not keep running it with a different window manager?
A clipboard handler that will automatically pop up a window asking me whether I want to open the URL that I just marked in a browser
Nope. e17 doesn't have anything to do with the clipboard. I guess you could keep running klipper in another window manager, but I use auto commands in urxvt to do stuff when I select URLs or other text. That's all I need since I use mutt for email. I can't think of anywhere else that I encounter URLs (except my web browser).
Integration with the Debian menu system
Yep, that works.
Now that e17 is in unstable, it shouldn't be too hard to give it a spin.
Jan on :
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2009/07/multihead.html
Maybe you could HELP instead of insulting the work of others.
Marc 'Zugschlus' Haber on :
The "work" so far has been killing off a working desktop environment and replacing it with something that is not nearly finished. And regarding the "help" you think that I owe, I already spend a lot of time with other open source projects. Even my day is limited.