ROFL

Story: Why I'm running boring ol' Debian Lenny, the short versionTotal Replies: 12
Author Content
tuxchick

Dec 30, 2009
11:19 PM EDT
Funny, that's pretty much why I run Debian Lenny on my main workstation. It's a lot less fiddling. I'm still on KDE 3.5 because 4.x is annoying and inflexible, and still missing some key apps like KMyMoney, and a whole lot of the nice little shortcuts and conveniences in 3.5.

I never wanted to pour fuel on the KDE4 vitriol, but dangit 3.5 is super-nice. If the underpinnings needed fixing, OK, but why screw up a wonderful interface? Why make it like the worst of GNOME and KDE3 combined?
ComputerBob

Dec 31, 2009
12:30 AM EDT
For the past several months, I've been very happily running Debian Squeeze (Testing), fully upgraded except that I'm still running grub-legacy and KDE 3.5.10.

Of course that means that I've been holding back the (now 158) upgrades that want to change my system to KDE4. ;)
rijelkentaurus

Dec 31, 2009
1:06 AM EDT
Running Scientific Linux 5.4 here on my Dell laptop, very, very, very happy. It's stable, everything works, and it has KDE 3. I like KDE 4, don't get me wrong....but liked KDE 3 better.
tracyanne

Dec 31, 2009
1:17 AM EDT
Just had a look at Mandriva 2010, KDE4 really has improved, but it's still not up to any version of 3 that I've run in the past. It still feels slow and clunky. It doens't feel quite as restrictive as earlier versions did though. I would probably recommend it to someone who wantssomething that has a Windows look as part of their transition to Linux
dinotrac

Dec 31, 2009
5:45 AM EDT
TA --

Glad to see that KDE4 (aka Linux Vista) is getting better. Maybe KDE5 (aka Linux Windows 7) will right the ship as an improved, advanced, and polished KDE3 (aka Goodness, Light, and all that is right with the world).
DiBosco

Dec 31, 2009
8:09 AM EDT
Sorry to swim against the tide, but I'm finding KDE4 a real pleasure to use now. It really was terrible when Mandriva first started using it as the main KDE desktop, but it works well for me now and makes KDE3.5 look *so* old fashioned. I'm quite surprised at myself being vaguely bothered about how my desktop looks, but there's just something about how modern KDE4 looks that really appeals. I may be wrong, but I do wonder whether it might be a good thing for attracting new non-Linux users.

I don't see much if any difference in speed any more either. (KDE4 was slower, but that seems to be getting better too.) There are a couple of things that were better on KDE3.5, such as being able to name the different tabs in konsole, but they're minor.

Tuxchick, I'm pretty sure I saw that there's a beta for kmymoney just released, so things are getting better in that respect too.
TxtEdMacs

Dec 31, 2009
10:37 AM EDT
dino,

To be consistent your argument should end with KDE 5 looking like a polished version of KDE 4, as is the case with Windows 7 vis a vis Vista.

YBT
bigg

Dec 31, 2009
11:00 AM EDT
> still missing some key apps like KMyMoney

You should be able to run almost any KDE 3 app in KDE 4 if you are running the right distro. I use BasKet Note Pads a lot, and was disappointed when I found out that BasKet was not available for KDE 4.

After making a few changes in the SlackBuild, I was easily able to build a package and it runs just fine. I've noticed there's a SlackBuild for KMyMoney. Thus, if you're missing any apps, it's due to the fact that your distro is inferior to mine.
dinotrac

Dec 31, 2009
11:02 AM EDT
bigg --

Ya doesn't have to call it Johnson.
tuxchick

Dec 31, 2009
3:13 PM EDT
yarg. Deity save us from ubuntu-- 9.10 somehow lost asoundconf from the alsa-utils package. Is there any good reason on god's green earth to not round up all Ubuntu devs and decision-makers, and ship them all to Pluto? They're like fussy little middle managers who can never leave well enough alone, but have to fidddle and interfere, and break things and walk away with smug smirks. These are the kinds of problems with ubuntu that make it a big fat pain. Not real problems that are byproducts of trying new and better things, but this insane obsessive-compulsive breaking of innocent apps that aren't hurting anyone, just trying to do their jobs. I have only one Ubuntu PC remaining in my little herd, and its days are numbered.
tuxchick

Dec 31, 2009
4:22 PM EDT
[url=https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/ source/alsa-utils/ bug/376024]https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/ source/alsa-utils/ bug/37...[/url]

"Asoundconf has been removed in karmic, in anticipation of the new GNOME volume control + pulse being more useful, allowing users to more easily control which sound card is used."

Pluto is not far enough.
Steven_Rosenber

Dec 31, 2009
5:20 PM EDT
I've struggled with this a long time, and while a six-month cycle might be great for marketing and publicity reasons, it just doesn't work for me.

I said I would stick with the Ubuntu Hardy LTS for a year, and I stayed with it longer than that by a little bit. My error was not sticking with Jaunty, which actually worked pretty well. I have a feeling the Xorg issues that sunk me in Karmic would have affected Jaunty as well, so I'll still say that for those in my position (with older machines running Intel video), I'd stick with Hardy.

Though I have a lot of respect and admiration for what the OpenBSD developers do, if you're using the default install as a firewall or other network appliance and not adding lots of packages or ports, the six-month cycle might work, but if you're taking a desktop installation with dozens of added packages and all that manual configuration to make those packages work, having no updates for six months and then being faced with a full reinstall (the upgrade process is too cumbersome and blew up when I tried it) might work for some but at this point just doesn't do it for me.

While I'm using Debian, I can certainly see the wisdom of going with RHEL/CentOS/Scientific Linux along with the Dag Wieers and/or EPEL repositories. If there was a Fedora LTS, I'd be all over it.
azerthoth

Dec 31, 2009
7:43 PM EDT
Well, running KDE4.4beta2 currently. Lots of the annoyances have disappeared, several new actually useful features, oh and TC looks like kmymoney will be coming back soon as I see a developmental version in source.

big annoyance though, it's reading ~/.config/autostart currently, sadly thats where xfce stores it's autostart info.

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