Re: [gentoo-user] KDE? Get me out of here!

[Alex Schuster]

Mick writes:
> Before you read specific answers below, you may want to check:
>
> $ echo $XDG_DATA_DIRS
> /usr/local/share:/usr/share
>
> in your logs is shows:
>
> Environment variable XDG_DATA_DIRS is set to
> '/usr/share:/usr/local/share:/usr/share'
>
> Why is /usr/share in there twice?  Could this mess things up?
>
> On 17 June 2010 00:23, Alex Schuster <wonko@×××××××××.org> wrote:
> [snip ...]
>
> > Mick wrote:
> >> On Tuesday 09 March 2010 20:12:09 Alex Schuster wrote:
> >>> - Kontact. The old address book I had imported fro KDE 3.5 half a
> >>> year ago showed one "address book" and many std.vcf (or similar)
> >>> files, with my data scattered on them. I moved all stuff into the
> >>> "address book", and did not use it for a while
> >>> Now I wanted to do so, but it did not run due to an error with
> >>> akonadi.
> >>
> >> Did you try to create a local resource using your systemsettings and
> >> point it to the local KDE3.5 contacts file?  If you restart the
> >> address book, then akonadi will kick in a carry out the migration -
> >> if it does not succeed it will tell you so.  In that case you may
> >> need to fix things manually (I've posted how in an older thread of
> >> mine, where I managed to make akonadi to succeed in its migration
> >> from a local resource file using sqlite - I don't have mysql in
> >> this box.  Let me know if you can't find it.)
> >
> > I just tried that. I first added a dir-resource, as there are several
> > .vcf files in my .kde3.5/share/appes/kabc directory. BTW, I had to
> > copy that directory, as the file chooser did not show directories
> > starting with a dot.
> > Nothing happened when I restarted kontact. I did the same with a
> > file- resource, when I noticed that all the .vcf files were
> > identical. Again, nothing happened.
> >
> > But: There are errors when akonadi is starting up during login. I
> > think it did not do this when I wrote the last mail, but probably
> > this is the problem now for the migration does not work. I attached
> > the error parts of the log.
>
> Can you run /etc/init.d/dbus restart before you try again?  Your
> akonadi log complains about dbus (amidst other things).
>
> > And I looked for your posting, and searched all of my gentoo-user
> > archive, but somehow I did not find it. If you think it would help
> > in my case, and if you still have it at hand, it would be nice if
> > you could direct me to it (the subject would be enough).
>
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/224044
>
> but this was about me being able to run the akonadi migration without
> having to install mysql.  I used sqlite instead.  Have a look at the
> file I refer to anyway, just in case something is amiss in there.
>
> >>> I tried to figure out what this was, and how to get the error
> >>> message in English, but then I found out that I only have to
> >>> restart kontact. Fine, now I want to add a contact. First, when I
> >>> want to edit the location, the country is set to Afghanistan, I
> >>> always have to change this to Germany.
> >>> Annoying, why is this so, who would want this behaviour, except for
> >>> Afghans perhaps.
> >>
> >> Have you tried to set up your locale in systemsettings to Germany?
> >
> > Yes, it's set like that.
>
> Have you set up your local timezone in /etc/conf.d/clock, in case this
> affects it?
>
> >>> - Dolphin can do FTP, but I have to repeat the login process
> >>> several times until I see the destination files.
> >>
> >> I've also noticed an error when I try to connect with ftp saying
> >> that the connection failed, but then if I click on reload it
> >> connects fine.
> >
> > Works sometimes, and sometimes not. Also, sometimes the content is
> > not updated when I dragged files via FTP.
> > Other current dolphin problems:
> > - Opens maximized horizontally every time, except at session startup.
> > - The sorting is strange sometimes: Foo-1.srt, Foo-2.avi,
> > Foo-1.avi, Foo-2.srt
> > - When the KDE session comes up, all dolphins have the same view. I'd
> > like one of them to have a different view, but when I do this, next
> > time the session comes up all dolphins will have this view, too.
> > There is an option to remember every folder's view, but every time I
> > open a new folder, it opens in symbol view first, not in the current
> > view of the upper folder.
>
> These could all be bugs with dolphin.  I've had different problems
> with it on 3 Gentoo boxen + 1 Ubuntu.
>
> >>> - Of course, Amarok keeps doing weird things. At least I can play
> >>> music from my collection. But playing a stream sometimes crashes
> >>> it. And dragging files into Amarok always leads to a crash. Yeah,
> >>> I know, Amarok is not KDE.
> >>
> >> Given up on that long ago (and sadly have not found a nice
> >> replacement which won't pull in the whole of Gnome or worse)
> >
> > It's getting better. It's more stable, and startup time is now 30
> > seconds instead of 7 minutes.
> > Have you tried clementine? It has the look of Amarok.
>
> I had a go at Clementine, but if I recall correctly it wasn't friendly
> with shoutcast streams.
>
> >>> But at least one bug was fixed, I got a mail from bugzilla about
> >>> this today. It's the bug that makes password dialogs not work if
> >>> the password is to be displayed as three bullets. Wow, nearly two
> >>> months after it had been reported, this serious bug was at least
> >>> confirmed to exist and is fixed now. Maybe this bug happens
> >>> seldomly, but when it happens, much of KDE4 is unusable, as you
> >>> have no kmail, no kwallet, nothing that needs a password works.
> >>
> >> Hmm ... no such problem over here.
> >
> > Had you set the password dialog to show 3 bullets for each key
> > pressed?
> >
> > Another pretty bad thing that happened: Once when I started kontact,
> > it showed me a birthday I had forgotten, two days AFTER the birthday
> > It did not bother to remind me the days before when kontact was
> > runing all the time. Now, what's the purpose of an organizer when
> > you cannot trust it to show appointments? Good thing I don't use it
> > much.
> >
> >>> Dale, you brave, brave man, are you really using KDE4 now?
> >
> > Still thinking about dumping it. The current most annoying bug is
> > that about once a day the mouse stops working. I can move it, xeyes
> > keeps watching it, and sometimes I can still use it inside a part of
> > klast active window. But for nothing else. So I have to log out and
> > back in again.
> > I'm not sure what the problem is, it happened after I updated to
> > kde-4.4.3, xorg-1.7 and ati-drivers 10.4. Downgrading ati-drivers did
> > not help, downgrading xorg did not succeed, I got compilation errors
> > and gave up, as I suspect that it's KDE itself. But a downgrade to
> > 4.4.2 would take a while, and I'd expect that alll hell might breake
> > loose if I let this older version mess with my current .kde4
> > directory.
> > I hoped that a reinstall (because switching to a 64 bit OS) would
> > magically solve this, but it didn't. I tried to kill and restart kwin
> > and plasma-desktop, this did not help.
> >
> > Current list of other, but not so bad problems:
> > - Konquerer used to ask if I really want to close it, or just the
> > current tab. Not since 4.4.4.
> > - Ark cannot save all selected files via drag&drop, only one. And
> > then it opens the home folder with dolphin, not the destination
> > folder. - Automatic spell checking no longer happens in kmail or
> > konqueror. - Session saving sometimes fails. I always back up my
> > .kde4 before I dare this.
> > - Once my activities were on the wrong desktops, it took me a while
> > until I had thinsg back as they should be.
> > - Konqueror crashes a lot.
> > - And every login the dialog comes up telling me that konqueror
> > crashed, unless I quit every running instance before logging out of
> > KDE. - Konsole profiles show up in the menu only after I activated
> > them in the profile dialog. Some of the things I have to repeat
> > after every login into KDE.
> > - Strigi indexes some directory over and over again and again and
> > again and again. And again and again. Then it crashes, and when I
> > re-activate it, it indexes the folder again and again and again. And
> > so on.
>
> You may want to switch off strigi in systemsettings?

That's what I do. But I'd like to use those desktop indexing features.

>
> BTW, have you tried removing ~/.kde4 and then login into KDE afresh?

Boy, do I hate to do this. Getting all the settings back takes so much 
work. But now I did it anyways. It took me several hours, and still not 
everying is back as it was, but at least I have I cleaner setup now.



Impressions:

Some things are indeed fixed.

- Konqueror now respects the setting that it should ask before closing a 
window with multiple tabs.

- Dolphin no longer opens maximized.

- Ark no longer opens the home directory with dolphin when extracting 
files.

- Akonadi starts without errors!

Problems that still happen:

- Strigi scans already indexed files, then crashes. Repeates a cuple of 
times, then exits.

- Dolphin FTP does not work with Umlauts.

- Konsole profiles have to be activated in the profile dialog before they 
show up in the menu.

- Kmail did not save this e-mail, I lost my edits when my whole system 
just crashed. Now I wonder what _this_ was.

- Sessions are often saved incorrectly. Then some konquerors are missing, 
a dolphin is on the wrong desktop.

- Trying to move a plasmoid from the panel onto the desktops crashes 
plasma.