[kde] cannot cut/copy with dolphin
I can't be sure from when this problem occurs but its quite recent. I'm on KDE 4.11.2 and i cannot cut or copy files in dolphin with either the context menu or the CTRL+C and CTRL+V shortcuts. I tried installing konqueror and the problem is the same in there. The problem does not exist for a new user that i create. Copy/Move by dragdrop operations works fine. When i try to cut a file, the file briefly becomes light shaded (like it usually does when a file or folder is cut) but then restores itself to the normal icon in about a second. When i click copy on any file i do not get the paste option like i would expect it to. I do notice that klipper updates the file path each time i try to cut or copy. Do anybody know what could lead to this? -- Cheers! Kishore ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
Kevin Krammer posted on Sun, 27 Oct 2013 21:23:05 +0100 as excerpted: Those commercial/proprietary model proponents do have a point, that IS a weakness of FLOSS I think the problem with this statement is mixing terms for orthogonal properties into one. A commercial product is something that is monetarized, a proprietary product is something that only one entity has source access to, a FLOSS product is something that is also available in source to anyone. Since some of those labels are for orthogonal concepts, they can appear in different combinations. FWIW, that's actually why I chose to use both terms, commercial/ proprietary, instead of just one or the other by itself. The group of people (and their argument) I had in mind are rather specifically the proponents of /both/ concepts unified. There's commercial software that's FLOSS, but this argument is unlikely to be made there, because it's hitting too close to home -- they're often built on non-commercial FLOSS components so they're in effect arguing that the choice of components they made was a poor one. And there's proprietary software that's not commercial, but there too, this particular argument is unlikely to be put forward, because often, the argument actually applies to them to some degree as well (they scratched their own itch and then simply made the binaries public, but kept the sources to themselves). So it's the specific combination of /both/ commercial and proprietary that tends to put forth this argument, and as I said, they do have a point, but it's my opinion that the balance of things is still overwhelmingly against commercial/proprietary, even if they do score a minor point with this one argument. Tho arguably in ordered to make that clear, I should have specified commercial _and_ proprietary (both together, not just one), but I was attempting to abbreviate the concept and argument, and as often happens when I try that, someone came along to point out the gap I left with my impreciseness. =:^/ I guess I should be happy that people are paying enough attention to what I wrote to notice that gap. =:^) Plus of course that's a common pattern on public lists/newsgroups/forums anyway; someone stakes out an original position, then others come along and expand on it, filling in the gaps as well as calling attention to cases where it doesn't apply, thus inviting further adjustment of the original position, developing and honing the now common work until the whole is a far better product than any individual would/could have posted on their own. =:^) -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master. Richard Stallman ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] cannot cut/copy with dolphin
On Monday 28 Oct 2013 2:06:53 PM Kishore Jonnalagadda wrote: I can't be sure from when this problem occurs but its quite recent. I'm on KDE 4.11.2 and i cannot cut or copy files in dolphin with either the context menu or the CTRL+C and CTRL+V shortcuts. I tried installing konqueror and the problem is the same in there. The problem does not exist for a new user that i create. Copy/Move by dragdrop operations works fine. When i try to cut a file, the file briefly becomes light shaded (like it usually does when a file or folder is cut) but then restores itself to the normal icon in about a second. When i click copy on any file i do not get the paste option like i would expect it to. I do notice that klipper updates the file path each time i try to cut or copy. Do anybody know what could lead to this? I finally found the cause of this problem. It was related to kdeconnect! In the devices kcm of kdeconnect, your own PC is also listed as one of the available devices and it is possible to pair with it! It does not make sense but in my case my laptop was paired with itself and this was the source of the problem. Unpairing solved the problem! -- Cheers! Kishore ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] cannot cut/copy with dolphin
Kishore Jonnalagadda posted on Mon, 28 Oct 2013 14:06:53 +0530 as excerpted: I can't be sure from when this problem occurs but its quite recent. I'm on KDE 4.11.2 and i cannot cut or copy files in dolphin with either the context menu or the CTRL+C and CTRL+V shortcuts. I tried installing konqueror and the problem is the same in there. The problem does not exist for a new user that i create. Copy/Move by dragdrop operations works fine. When i try to cut a file, the file briefly becomes light shaded (like it usually does when a file or folder is cut) but then restores itself to the normal icon in about a second. When i click copy on any file i do not get the paste option like i would expect it to. I do notice that klipper updates the file path each time i try to cut or copy. Do anybody know what could lead to this? That's a very interesting problem. I have little idea what this issue might be, but the fact that it exists for your normal user but NOT for a new user indicates it HAS to be something in your normal user's config. That means the problem should be resolvable by bisection. =:^) The general idea of bisection is to repeatedly test whether the problem is there or not, cutting the test space (the number of config files in this case) roughly in half each time, depending on the results of the previous test. More specifically, nearly all of a user's kde config is found in the $KDEHOME directory (normally ~/.kde, tho some distros will default that to ~/.kde4 or some such), so your first test will be to verify that the problem disappears if you start with a clean $KDEHOME. To do that, while either not running kde (perhaps from the text-mode commandline) or while logged in as superuser so your user's kde config isn't being used, rename the ~/.kde directory to something else, say ~/.kde.backup. Then login to kde as that user and confirm that the problem no longer exists. Assuming it doesn't, you've confirmed that the problem is in a config file somewhere in your $KDEHOME directory. Next, within the $KDEHOME directory, pretty much all the config is in two subdirs, $KDEHOME/share/config, and $KDEHOME/share/apps. Most of the actual /config/ is in config (duh!), while apps is other application data, so we'll guess it's in config and try the same process with it. Again without kde running as that user, delete the new test $KDEHOME dir created by the test, and rename the backup copy back to its original name. Then navigate to $KDEHOME/share, and rename the config subdir to something else, say config.backup. Again login as that user and check if the problem exists again or not. If it doesn't, you've now confirmed the problem is within the config subdir; if the problem exists, it's NOT in the config subdir, so try apps. Now assuming it's in config, again without kde running as that user, blow away the config subdir created by the test, and COPY the config dir from the backup back in place. Then with the backup still in place to be safe, cd into the the newly copied config dir (NOT the backup!), and delete the few subdirs and about half the files. Repeat the login test. If the problem exists, then you know the problem is in the half you did NOT delete. If the problem does NOT exist, it's in the half you deleted. Repeat the process again, deleting the files created in the last test and restoring all the files you now know are good, while testing half of the half you know is bad. Continue repeating until you either isolate the problem to a single file, or you're comfortable simply deleting the remaining bad configuration and redoing it. Once you reach a single file, you can either stop there if you're comfortable blowing it away and reconfiguring whatever configuration it saved, or continue the process in that file by switching from a file manager to a text editor for further testing, working first with sections of the file and then with individual lines, until you either nail it down to a single line and know where the problem is, or you decide you can blow away the bad config that remains and reconfigure it by hand. The first couple times you do this, it's hard. After doing it a few times, you'll start to get the hang of how kde organizes its configuration, and for most problems you can shorten the process considerably by choosing the correct configuration file (or at least the handful of files with a common name, say the several plasma* files if it's a plasma problem) the first time. Even here, you /could/ try dolphinrc and/or klipperrc right away, and maybe you'll be right and one of them is the problem. But the trouble is, this doesn't sound exactly like a klipper problem, and dolphin doesn't have a whole lot of configuration for the problem to hide in and nothing in its configuration that looks remotely related, so those files may or may not contain the problem, while our chances at finding the problem in $KDEHOME are very
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On 10/27/13 12:24, Michael wrote: Hi peops, I somewhat force myself to use KDE (once again), even though I am very likely to get annoyed rather fast when it comes to the KDE-specific kind of issues. Issues, I have never seen with any other project to that extent. And I ask myself, if others are annoyed too there or am I just a whiny little bitch and no one else really bothers there? To describe the kind of issues I am referring to, some examples: 1.) KSysGuard: I just closed a program via its own menu (file - close), wondered why even after several minutes (and even now, half an hour later) KSysGuard still showed that process, so I did look with ps and to my surprise, the process is *not* there anymore, but KSysGuard shows it nevertheless in the process table. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=261255 2.) Panels: Changed the alignment on one panel (for DualHead mirrored panel setup), one should think now the alignment is changed like in any other tool (mostly word processing tools I guess) but well, it is not, widgets and stuff still want to fall to the left. I guess because of that and other bugs there, several issues arise. http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=67t=94642 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=248186 http://askubuntu.com/questions/116040/how-to-right-align-widgets-in-panel-in-kubuntu-11-10 3.) Widgets, plasmoids, generel KDE features: Yeah well, really nice design (mostly), but from a usability standpoint? Often a mess. First one sees a feature and thinks Great and later on he might realize how bad that feature is implemented. I don't want to get into details yet, as this mail is going to be long enough already, but if there is any need and someone has no idea what I am talking about here, just ask. But remember, I don't say all and everything is implemented badly, with KDE-stuff it just looks to me the tendency is there that stuff gets implemented in a rather weird / bad / less- to un-usable way. 4.) Weird messages and... stuff: Be it annoying phonon messages that a audio device was removed, though it definitely was NOT, power-manager framework telling me it doesn't work because of... yada yada, but it does work nevertheless, starting others DEs stuff while KDE is running (or the other way around) might screw things up bigtime, configuration tends be be trashed every now and then, from one moment to the next (in the process of configuring KDE for example, so no change to the installed packages or other changes to the system) KDE may start to behave weird. Like starting KDE-apps (dolphin) takes several minutes while other apps just start fast as before, context-menu might need *minutes* to open, shutdown-, reboot-, logout-popup takes minutes to show... And a bunch of other stuff that might just happen when using KDE that somewhat feels... well... awkward, weird, annoying. Bottom line, it feels like a lot of rough edges and that those edges might be smoothed out eventually, but apparently it looks like they don't, as where I pointed out links to bugtracker or forum-posts, the issues are as old as Methusalems grandpa. With other DEs (Gnome2 + 3, Mate, Xfce, LXDE, e17) I have never seen that amount of roughness. They might have other issues, like the apparent need the Gnome-devs feel to get rid of every useful feature ;) (well, I could be more fair there, but I am on a KDE list anyway, so no need for gnome-devs-understaning, right? *g*), but I always had the feeling the rough edges were smoothed out from release to release. I was not always happy with the way issues were addressed, but at least I could understand why it makes sense for some or even most users to have an issue resolved in that particular way it was addressed with. Granted, not all issues will face on every system, something triggers the issues, sure. Not all users will think some stuff is implemented weird and in a rather un-usable state (even if I think something must be wrong with them then, as I can even understand the Gnome-decisions and way of implementing things!), not everyone has the same need and idea for a feature and how to implement it. Some may never have any issue whatsoever, be it just coincidence or they just don't use that particular feature or at least not in a way that the issues would show itself. So, that all said, what do you guys, users and maybe even developers of KDE, think? I don't want to come around as rude or overly harsh, as really, I think KDE is a great Desktop Environment, it just has some really rough edges. Is it just me, or are others also thinking KDE could / should invest more efforts in QA and maybe less in implementing new stuff? I know, send patch yada yada... that does not apply here, at least not well enough. Optimistic greetings Michael ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html. I
Re: [kde] cannot cut/copy with dolphin
On Monday 28 Oct 2013 10:31:12 AM Duncan wrote: Kishore Jonnalagadda posted on Mon, 28 Oct 2013 14:06:53 +0530 as excerpted: I can't be sure from when this problem occurs but its quite recent. I'm on KDE 4.11.2 and i cannot cut or copy files in dolphin with either the context menu or the CTRL+C and CTRL+V shortcuts. I tried installing konqueror and the problem is the same in there. The problem does not exist for a new user that i create. Copy/Move by dragdrop operations works fine. When i try to cut a file, the file briefly becomes light shaded (like it usually does when a file or folder is cut) but then restores itself to the normal icon in about a second. When i click copy on any file i do not get the paste option like i would expect it to. I do notice that klipper updates the file path each time i try to cut or copy. Do anybody know what could lead to this? That's a very interesting problem. I have little idea what this issue might be, but the fact that it exists for your normal user but NOT for a new user indicates it HAS to be something in your normal user's config. That means the problem should be resolvable by bisection. =:^) The general idea of bisection is to repeatedly test whether the problem is there or not, cutting the test space (the number of config files in this case) roughly in half each time, depending on the results of the previous test. More specifically, nearly all of a user's kde config is found in the $KDEHOME directory (normally ~/.kde, tho some distros will default that to ~/.kde4 or some such), so your first test will be to verify that the problem disappears if you start with a clean $KDEHOME. To do that, while either not running kde (perhaps from the text-mode commandline) or while logged in as superuser so your user's kde config isn't being used, rename the ~/.kde directory to something else, say ~/.kde.backup. Then login to kde as that user and confirm that the problem no longer exists. Assuming it doesn't, you've confirmed that the problem is in a config file somewhere in your $KDEHOME directory. Next, within the $KDEHOME directory, pretty much all the config is in two subdirs, $KDEHOME/share/config, and $KDEHOME/share/apps. Most of the actual /config/ is in config (duh!), while apps is other application data, so we'll guess it's in config and try the same process with it. Again without kde running as that user, delete the new test $KDEHOME dir created by the test, and rename the backup copy back to its original name. Then navigate to $KDEHOME/share, and rename the config subdir to something else, say config.backup. Again login as that user and check if the problem exists again or not. If it doesn't, you've now confirmed the problem is within the config subdir; if the problem exists, it's NOT in the config subdir, so try apps. Now assuming it's in config, again without kde running as that user, blow away the config subdir created by the test, and COPY the config dir from the backup back in place. Then with the backup still in place to be safe, cd into the the newly copied config dir (NOT the backup!), and delete the few subdirs and about half the files. Repeat the login test. If the problem exists, then you know the problem is in the half you did NOT delete. If the problem does NOT exist, it's in the half you deleted. Repeat the process again, deleting the files created in the last test and restoring all the files you now know are good, while testing half of the half you know is bad. Continue repeating until you either isolate the problem to a single file, or you're comfortable simply deleting the remaining bad configuration and redoing it. Once you reach a single file, you can either stop there if you're comfortable blowing it away and reconfiguring whatever configuration it saved, or continue the process in that file by switching from a file manager to a text editor for further testing, working first with sections of the file and then with individual lines, until you either nail it down to a single line and know where the problem is, or you decide you can blow away the bad config that remains and reconfigure it by hand. The first couple times you do this, it's hard. After doing it a few times, you'll start to get the hang of how kde organizes its configuration, and for most problems you can shorten the process considerably by choosing the correct configuration file (or at least the handful of files with a common name, say the several plasma* files if it's a plasma problem) the first time. Even here, you /could/ try dolphinrc and/or klipperrc right away, and maybe you'll be right and one of them is the problem. But the trouble is, this doesn't sound exactly like a klipper problem, and dolphin doesn't have a whole lot of configuration for the problem to hide in and nothing in its configuration that looks remotely related, so those files
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On Monday, 2013-10-28, 09:42:07, Duncan wrote: Kevin Krammer posted on Sun, 27 Oct 2013 21:23:05 +0100 as excerpted: Those commercial/proprietary model proponents do have a point, that IS a weakness of FLOSS I think the problem with this statement is mixing terms for orthogonal properties into one. A commercial product is something that is monetarized, a proprietary product is something that only one entity has source access to, a FLOSS product is something that is also available in source to anyone. Since some of those labels are for orthogonal concepts, they can appear in different combinations. FWIW, that's actually why I chose to use both terms, commercial/ proprietary, instead of just one or the other by itself. I see. I read the / as a way to suggest replacability, especially since the context on the other side was just FLOSS not something like FLOSS/. The group of people (and their argument) I had in mind are rather specifically the proponents of /both/ concepts unified. There's commercial software that's FLOSS, but this argument is unlikely to be made there, because it's hitting too close to home -- they're often built on non-commercial FLOSS components so they're in effect arguing that the choice of components they made was a poor one. And there's proprietary software that's not commercial, but there too, this particular argument is unlikely to be put forward, because often, the argument actually applies to them to some degree as well (they scratched their own itch and then simply made the binaries public, but kept the sources to themselves). Exactly. So it is important IMHO not to repeat the omissions but to show that the comparison was non-sensical in the first place. So it's the specific combination of /both/ commercial and proprietary that tends to put forth this argument, and as I said, they do have a point, but it's my opinion that the balance of things is still overwhelmingly against commercial/proprietary, even if they do score a minor point with this one argument. I don't think they have a point because they conciously conflate areas to which there criticism does not apply into the same abbreviation. More over using an abbreviation that covers the one aspect of the competing product that has least to do with their allegded advantage/disadvantage comparison. Tho arguably in ordered to make that clear, I should have specified commercial _and_ proprietary (both together, not just one), but I was attempting to abbreviate the concept and argument, and as often happens when I try that, someone came along to point out the gap I left with my impreciseness. =:^/ Well, you could have used a + instead of /, same number of characters, no? :) Anyway, I was mostly commenting on the second part of the comparison, see above. Cheers, Kevin -- Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer KDE user support, developer mentoring signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On Monday, 2013-10-28, 16:10:16, dE wrote: I think KDE is not suitable for production environment. Just for casual enthusiasts. I guess it will depend on the definition of those terms. I am sure the people who use KDE as their work place environment will enjoy learning that they are enthusiasts in yours :) As of your problems -- if you continue to use KDE, you'll get used to it. For e.g. now removable disks will now show up in device manager. Removable disks show up in device manager for quite some time now. But I guess it might also depend on the definition of now. Had that since KDE3 times, so now would several years back :) Cheers, Kevin -- Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer KDE user support, developer mentoring signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
Hi Duncan, Hell! Don't take it the wrong way, but I strongly suggest you rethink your way of communicating on mailinglists. You went in such lengths in absolutely unrelated topics and even with slightly related topics you went by far, far, far, far to deep. It was really no pleasure at all to read it all, which I had to as courtesy demands it, as I did ask for feedback. And what I took from your 25.457 characters in 441 lines and 4270 words would fit in roundabout 10-20 lines. If you really feel the urge to go into such detail, do everyone on the list a favour and divide your mails in two parts. One where you try to stick to the topic as closely as possible and a second one which you mark as detailed stuff or whatever fits the situation. So others can choose to read it all, or just get the essentials out of it. As for me, I am really in no way interested how you configured your KDE, how much you like gentoo, what features gentoo has, what assumptions and possible ways to debug all those possible issues have, especially not in SUCH DETAIL (including the redundant repetition that happened several times). But enough critics... let's get to your mail. Am Sun, 27 Oct 2013 16:47:08 + (UTC) schrieb Duncan 1i5t5.dun...@cox.net: Michael posted on Sun, 27 Oct 2013 07:54:09 +0100 as excerpted: Hi peops, I somewhat force myself to use KDE (once again), even though I am very likely to get annoyed rather fast when it comes to the KDE-specific kind of issues. Issues, I have never seen with any other project to that extent. And I ask myself, if others are annoyed too there or am I just a whiny little bitch and no one else really bothers there? There are certainly issues with most desktop environments. [snip] All software tends to have issues, but this conversation here is solely about KDEs possible QA-issues and if you folks think the situation is worse compared to other Desktop Environments or not. So it is a rather limited scope I follow here and I humbly ask of you to stay on topic as good as possible as chances are the topic will get heated anyway. To describe the kind of issues I am referring to, some examples: 1.) KSysGuard: I just closed a program via its own menu (file - close), wondered why even after several minutes (and even now, half an hour later) KSysGuard still showed that process, so I did look with ps and to my surprise, the process is *not* there anymore, but KSysGuard shows it nevertheless in the process table. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=261255 [snip] First point, most directly apropos to that bug, while I'd /think/ it would be obvious enough to note as it was my immediate first question upon reading the above, you didn't above and nobody seems to have noted it specifically in any of the bug comments either... Well, because it is save to assume no one would be that censored to deliberately set that value to 0 and because the default is something sane as 2 seconds? And of course because it was said more than once, that not every application / process did still show up after closing it. So your idea does not make much (if any) sense. What do you have the sheet/tab properties update interval set for? If it's set to zero, it's not going to update and of course the information will ultimately go stale. Similarly if the interval is maxed out... here the max it will let me enter is 1000 seconds, aka 16 minutes 40 seconds. You do mention half an hour so it should have updated in that time, but perhaps only once. ... default, 2 seconds [snip] 2.) Panels: Changed the alignment on one panel (for DualHead mirrored panel setup), one should think now the alignment is changed like in any other tool (mostly word processing tools I guess) but well, it is not, widgets and stuff still want to fall to the left. I guess because of that and other bugs there, several issues arise. FWIW, I'd not think that at all. In fact, quite the contrary, just because I switch a panel from one end of the edge its on to the other, does NOT mean I want or expect the individual plasmoids to change alignment within the panel as well! I'd go so far as to consider it a bug if they did! Well, there is an option one can set for the alignment on the panel. It offers right, left and middle. for What else should that alignment be? http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=67t=94642 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=248186 http://askubuntu.com/questions/116040/how-to-right-align-widgets-in- panel-in-kubuntu-11-10 In general panel plasmoid alignment and spacing in kde4 plasma has ALWAYS been buggy at best. Well, figures. But at least other DEs have trouble with sane panel-behaviour as well, even if I'd say it is not as broken there it is more like they lack some feature to make it behave in a sane way, whereas in KDE it offers features that do not work - bug. At this point I'm not sure it's even possible to make it work
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
Am Mon, 28 Oct 2013 15:12:41 +0100 schrieb Kevin Krammer kram...@kde.org: Hi Michael, On Monday, 2013-10-28, 12:22:15, Michael wrote: Hi Kevin, Am Sun, 27 Oct 2013 13:08:10 +0100 schrieb Kevin Krammer kram...@kde.org: On Sunday, 2013-10-27, 07:54:09, Michael wrote: Granted, not all issues will face on every system, something triggers the issues, sure. Not all users will think some stuff is implemented weird and in a rather un-usable state (even if I think something must be wrong with them then, as I can even understand the Gnome-decisions and way of implementing things!), not everyone has the same need and idea for a feature and how to implement it. Some may never have any issue whatsoever, be it just coincidence or they just don't use that particular feature or at least not in a way that the issues would show itself. I guess this is at the heart of the problem, i.e. issues or weird behavior only triggered under certain circumstances. Computer systems have a huge variety of aspects, each potentially contributing to the observed behavior. And I guess that is not the point, at least it is not the primary point. Especially to negate such arguments I did provide some links to show that the issues are NOT limited to corner-cases or weird and unusual user setups. I didn't claim it was the full problem, just that large number of influences is at the heart of the problem. I feel without checking each ones claims how serious each and every issue KDE has is or how complex a bug-hunt would be, we can argue all day long how likely it is that any given issue is rather complex to track down. I can only speak for those issues that I found, reported and helped to track down with other projects (Xfce, Gnome, Mate, Linux Kernel, mdadm, mesa / radeon, smuxi (3) ...) and on average it was not *that* hard to track the issue down. How complex a fix was... well, no real idea as I can't code / don't know C or any other programming language, but most of the time it was a thing of minutes a fix was there, or at least the discussion on how to actually fix the given issue started when the fix was not so obvious or easy to get right. At least after all those years I tend to just think, the person who did program the code, knows his / her way around to find an issue many times rather fast. If KDE does differ there, no idea, but if so, why? I would tend to think something must be awfully wrong then. During analysis it is often estonishing how many different code paths can be executed depending on factors one wouldn't have considered at all. Well, let's stop right here the argument how complex any given issue might get, just try to answer why KDE has compared to other DEs more issues, if you even agree there. If not, why do you think many users (me included) have such a bad opinion about KDE in that regard? Especially since an observed behavior is often just a symptom. Fixing the symptom is nice short term but finding the cause is the real deal. Agreed, but see above. It often takes a concerted effort of many people to narrow down those candidates to the actually contributing factors in order to make a problem reproducable with enough reliability to analyse and fix it (including verification of the solution). Even though that might be the case for some cases, it can't be for the vast majority of issues, as I could easily reproduce most issues reliable on different boxes. Good :) I wasn't saying that all things are hard to reproduce, just that often narrowing down the variables to just the contributing factors can be time consuming. Well, life is no pony ranch, right? ;-) And yes, sometimes issues are really hard to track down. I myself know that for a fact. But I do know that many issues are visible in the code quite clearly too. Those are usually easy to fix then and make good candidates for contribution entries. In KDE's issue system they sometimes get labelled as JJ (Junior Job) to indicate that they are considered suitable tasks for people who have not dived into the code base that deep yet. But I hope you do not expect any given user needs to learn C / QT to actually fix even those easy bugs. A question I did ask already here and as you seem to be a KDE-developer (why else would you have such a fancy e-mail-address?)... please describe the expectations the KDE project / developers have for their users. And... 1.) Do you agree that KDE is more buggy than other Desktop Environments? 2.) If yes, why do you think KDE has so many issues? If no, how come many users have such a bad opinion about KDE? 3.) How could the situation change? For better not worse. :) There may be issues in one part of the stack that only affects some applications under some circumstances but it is not clear where in the stack the actual bug is. But for many other issues, it is quite clear where the issue
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 07:54:09AM +0100, Michael wrote: Hi peops, […] 3.) Widgets, plasmoids, generel KDE features: Yeah well, really nice design (mostly), but from a usability standpoint? Often a mess. Plasma is a constant source of annoyance for me. I never really understood the need for a second UI style next to the “normal” one. The many animations that can’t be switched off and low contrasts are causes of grievance for me. There are layout bugs (notifications on a friend’s machine pop up in three places simultaneously), redrawing bugs (flicker in the taskbar when switching desktops), UI bugs (the scrollbars don’t adhere to the usual GUI behaviour like middle-click) and feature regressions (ksysguard graphs are nigh-useless in a panel). 4.) […] configuration tends be be trashed every now and then, from one moment to the next (in the process of configuring KDE for example, so no change to the installed packages or other changes to the system) KDE may start to behave weird. Akonadi, the problem child for many, is a nice example with its (for this human) incomprehensible config and data file layout. When I back up my setup or want to sync two machines, I’m never really sure what files to include and exclude if I, for example, want to sync only my address book data between machines. I went akonadi-free for a while on the netbook, but eventually installed it again because KMail just fits best into my Qt-centric computing ecosystem (although I prefer Firefox as main browser). […] So, that all said, what do you guys, users and maybe even developers of KDE, think? I don't want to come around as rude or overly harsh, as really, I think KDE is a great Desktop Environment, it just has some really rough edges. Sometimes I find myself using XFCE or even Awesome on my netbook for their sheer speed and easy go on resources. But from a convenience standpoint, KDE beats them all with nice extra features (KIO, global keyboard shortcuts, range of consistent base-applications). And even though I have some issues with it now and then (like reliable and *easy* file transfer via Bluetooth), I come back to KDE every time, despite it taking 20 hours to compile on an Atom. ^^ Is it just me, or are others also thinking KDE could / should invest more efforts in QA and maybe less in implementing new stuff? I, too, sometimes think “It’s a grave bug and so old already, why doesn’t it get fixed?eleven?”, like bad scrolling distances in Dolphin. But I suppose part of why I can’t always be accomodated with my problems is my diminishing use case -- KDE on a weak netbook. Brightness control is really messed up on *my* machine right now (it works, but KDE and ACPI fight over control, so I get temporary lockups). But I’m not the majority, so I can’t expect everything to go smoothly in all cases. After all, you get what you pay for. ;o) I suppose right now the migration to 5.0 takes lots of developer resources, so I imagine fixing bugs in “obsolete” 4 gets even less attention. I attempted fixing bugs before (and sent a patch in two instances), but it requires lots of work to get into the code, especially in bigger projects like Amarok or KMail. I thought of not sending this, as it is more like a collection of bug whining, but after having spent lots of time on composing, it would be a waste of electrons not to send it. -- Gruß | Greetings | Qapla’ Please do not share anything from, with or about me with any Facebook service. You call this cappucino? It’s not even sprinkled with Parmesan! signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
Hi Frank, Am Mon, 28 Oct 2013 20:36:02 +0100 schrieb Frank Steinmetzger war...@gmx.de: On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 07:54:09AM +0100, Michael wrote: Hi peops, […] 3.) Widgets, plasmoids, generel KDE features: Yeah well, really nice design (mostly), but from a usability standpoint? Often a mess. Plasma is a constant source of annoyance for me. I never really understood the need for a second UI style next to the “normal” one. The many animations that can’t be switched off and low contrasts are causes of grievance for me. There are layout bugs (notifications on a friend’s machine pop up in three places simultaneously), redrawing bugs (flicker in the taskbar when switching desktops), UI bugs (the scrollbars don’t adhere to the usual GUI behaviour like middle-click) and feature regressions (ksysguard graphs are nigh-useless in a panel). I guess one has to be fair here. I guess KDE4 is designed to be feature-rich, beautiful, with many bells and whistles. One could argue, it is not designed to be stripped down to a bare minimum. I may be wrong, but I see it like a person walking in a car-salon, he wants to buy some means of transportation. As he is offered some cars, he complains that they need fuel, that they are so heavy, that they pollute the environment, that they need constant maintenance, that they need so much space. Don't go to a car-salon, if you really want a motorcycle or even a bike. But agreed, low contrast on the gauges, bad design decisions and the overall buginess, is something a car-owner does not want. Btw. what about that netbook-design? Isn't that something specifically designed for lower-end hardware? 4.) […] configuration tends be be trashed every now and then, from one moment to the next (in the process of configuring KDE for example, so no change to the installed packages or other changes to the system) KDE may start to behave weird. Akonadi, the problem child for many, is a nice example with its (for this human) incomprehensible config and data file layout. When I back up my setup or want to sync two machines, I’m never really sure what files to include and exclude if I, for example, want to sync only my address book data between machines. I went akonadi-free for a while on the netbook, but eventually installed it again because KMail just fits best into my Qt-centric computing ecosystem (although I prefer Firefox as main browser). Yeah, there are several features KDE offers, which are hard to not miss if one chooses to switch to another DE. But as time goes by, other DEs might fill the gaps. I really don't need much, Cinnamon or Mate are almost there. But, we'll see. And one thing is sure, other DEs do have a better QA-reputation, so we might get features without all the stability issues. […] So, that all said, what do you guys, users and maybe even developers of KDE, think? I don't want to come around as rude or overly harsh, as really, I think KDE is a great Desktop Environment, it just has some really rough edges. Sometimes I find myself using XFCE or even Awesome on my netbook for their sheer speed and easy go on resources. But from a convenience standpoint, KDE beats them all with nice extra features (KIO, global keyboard shortcuts, range of consistent base-applications). And even though I have some issues with it now and then (like reliable and *easy* file transfer via Bluetooth), I come back to KDE every time, despite it taking 20 hours to compile on an Atom. ^^ Eeks! Those gentooers... I really don't get them. :) Is it just me, or are others also thinking KDE could / should invest more efforts in QA and maybe less in implementing new stuff? I, too, sometimes think “It’s a grave bug and so old already, why doesn’t it get fixed?eleven?”, like bad scrolling distances in Dolphin. But I suppose part of why I can’t always be accomodated with my problems is my diminishing use case -- KDE on a weak netbook. Brightness control is really messed up on *my* machine right now (it works, but KDE and ACPI fight over control, so I get temporary lockups). But I’m not the majority, so I can’t expect everything to go smoothly in all cases. After all, you get what you pay for. ;o) Well, sure. Corner-case bugs that only face under rare and uncommon circumstances might have a lower priority. But first, we are not talking about these bugs, second, bug is bug, every bug should be fixed. Even if lower-priority bugs might take longer. I suppose right now the migration to 5.0 takes lots of developer resources, so I imagine fixing bugs in “obsolete” 4 gets even less attention. I attempted fixing bugs before (and sent a patch in two instances), but it requires lots of work to get into the code, especially in bigger projects like Amarok or KMail. Oh, KDE4 is more or less in maintenance-mode? Err... scratch that. As of now I still believe maintenance is something that does not apply well to the KDE-kind-of development-style,
