On Friday 19 December 2008 11:12:21 michael schuster wrote:
> michael schuster wrote:
> I downloaded the packages from solaris.bionimutton.org, installed
> everything on my Lenovo T60p (with ATI graphics :-() following the
> instructions (as far as I was able ;-), here's the status:

Michael, I hope you're having a wonderful Christmas somewhere in Germany.

Bear in mind that the binary packages on bionicmutton really are whatever I 
happen to push there at some time; they don't necessarily update. I'm pretty 
sure that since my last set of crash fixes I haven't updated them.

> 1) I can now log in and use KDE - I'm in KDE as I write this. SUCCESS!

Yay!

> 3) most changes to settings causes the settings manager(?) to crash - this
> is esp. unfortunate when it leaves the screen dark on dark or white on
> white :-(

This is systemsettings? Or do you mean dragging things around on the Plasma 
desktop? That crashed a lot on my Thinkpad as well, I never did sit down to 
figure it out and find that locking the widgets (via the cashew in the upper 
right, the RMB menu on the desktop or ^L) helps stability considerably.

> 4) something consumes a lot of CPU - I suspect this had to do with my
> graphics adapter, but cannot prove it.

Yes, this is really screwy on ATI X1300s (and similar - I have a system with 
an on-board X1200 and it just crawls when compared to my Eee; I need to borrow 
a X3870 to see if it's ATI's fault or just these old crufty chips).

> 5) screen lock still fails when I try to unlock, but xlock provides an
> adequate WA for me.

Joep and I were looking into that particular one. I got it to unlock about 1 
in 8 tries; the password verification is done correctly, but the results do 
not get back to the screen saver.

> 6) libsunmath.so.1 is still missing from the installation (although I may
> have messed that up, who knows? :-)

That's because the binary packages are too old. Since then I've produced a 
FOSSspro-libraries package, but it's not on there. I encourage you to build 
stuff yourself (but, um .. you have a history there :) )

>   biggest gripe, and, sadly, showstopper for me (unless someone can provide
> me with a W/A):
>
>       font sizes are TOO BIG.
>
> The initial settings (10 pt. for most) gives me fonts where I get about

10 pt is 1/7 of an inch. KDE is unusual in that it actually uses the DPI 
reported by X to calculate point sizes; that's 3mm per line, times 30 .. hm, a 
9cm screen height *does* seem a little small. Fits my Eee, not my T60.

> 30(!) lines on the screen. When I set them down to 8 (here the settings
> manager works nicely, no crash ;-), kde-aware apps seem to take those
> changes ... but thunderbird doesn't, and I yet have to find a setting in TB
> to set the font size for its' own menus and tree view, etc - basically, the
> non-mail content panels: these are still way too large, and where I
> normally see ca 30 email subjects, I now see about 10 - this is in effect a
> loss of screen real estate that I find hard to stomach.

I'm really not sure how to apply font settings to other applications outside 
the KDE domain.

That said, the fonts on my nv104 box are butt-ugly on the X1200; my nv101 
machine with a nv8500 is much nicer, but .. there's a different font engine 
involved between the two, and I might have done tweaking on the nv101 box. I 
don't remember. This kind of thing is part of our "runtime testing" stage in 
KDE deployment, when we need to start thinking about not the code, but the 
default configuration on Solaris.

[ade]

Reply via email to