Yeah I loaded a fresh 13, 64-bit. I love it, don't get me wrong. I actually think KDE4 is pretty solid under slackware. I am not a basher, just making a philsophical statement about what I am seeing in others responses. In general KDE4 does seem moderately less stable in some areas but improved in others. But it does have the feeling of the topic of this thread.

One instability I experienced was changing a window appearance option and the X windows crashed. It would not restart. I removed .kde/config and restarted and had to reconfigure. Completely minor and barely worth discussing but just thought I add the comment.

I am thrilled about slackware 13, 64-bit, and KDE4, just commenting on what I am seeing. In fact I am defending KDE4 on the other threads

I wish that people who feel this way would be more specific. Even at the link that you posted, you do not cite any real specific examples of the reasons for your feelings about KDE 4.

In reality, it seems that the replacement for KDE 3 in Slackware 13 is the much-matured xfce, whcih does just about everything KDE 3 used to and more (AND supports KDE and GNOME apps as if they were running native for fast load . . . xfce has gotten really nice . . . but I digress). KDE 4 is a window manager like no other before it, including KDE 3. It is, for the first time in the Linux world since the old enlightenment (the old one that I used back on Slackware 3.x), a window manager for high-end workstations using nice graphics cards. If you don't have a gig of RAM or more and a pretty nice PCIe video card, KDE 4 is pretty pointless. (It will run nicely configured to run low-end like that . . . but why do that when there is xfce?)

I disagree. Slackware waited longer than any other distribution to include a KDE 4 in its stable release . . . over one year. And, the KDE 4 in Slackware 13 is far and away the best implemented and most stable that I've seen. Plus, with xfce having matured enough to take up users who just "can't handle" KDE 4 and would cling to 3 forever if they could, the time was right.

I would think that if we were talking about the choice of kernel or init . . . or perhaps even default shell, but come on . . . window manager as engine? I think that allegory is "up on blocks" before it even "leaves the factory."

On a Linux system, the window manager is more like the hub caps than the engine.

Really? You know, there is a LOT more to Slackware 13 than KDE 4 . . . a LOT. Heck, just talking about the X implementation not including KDE, things are way, way, improved over 12.2.

And, with all of the improvements, rebuilds, and reworkings, the same streamlined, effective, elegant Slackware Linux system look and feel is completely intact.

How about KDE3 not being developed or any more ?

As far as the analogy goes, the memory footprints are similar. Memory footprint KDE 4 (everything but desktop indexing enabled): 600M+/-. Memory footprint KDE 3.5: 250M+/-. Vista (everything I can turn off, including sidebar): 550M+/-. XP: 250M+/-.

I've been using KDE 4 for a couple weeks now and I like it. I like how they do devices in Dolphin. The only bugs I've come across are custom wallpapers not stretching to fill the screen (with stretching enabled) and the bouncy ball gadget doesn't work even though I installed the ATI proprietary drivers and other openGL apps work. I got an error about Akonadi the first time I logged in, but starting mysql seems to have fixed that. I tried burning a CD with K3B and it worked fine: haven't tried burning DVDs yet.

Everyone acts like it's so much different than KDE 3.5, but from a user perspective it's not. It seems like KDE with more eye candy and more RAM usage as a result. The control center is similar to KDE 3.5 and the configure window behavior menu works the same. From what's been said previously, you can turn off a lot of the eye candy and your RAM usage will be more within the KDE 3.5 specs.

Thanks to all contributors for this new version of Slackware. I've been waiting for a 64-bit version.

I have been using 13.0/KDE 4 with my eventual HTPC. I'm using 12.2 with my office machine.

I decided to use 13.0 as a base because with 12.2 I could not get audio over HDMI to function. I cannot use the 2.6.29 kernel series with either motherboard because of known problems with the forcedeth driver. I updated to 2.6.30.5 before 13.0 was released officially, but Pat has since added to the testing branch.

I am not a "window manager only" type of person. Using 13.0 led me to choose between Xfce or KDE4. I have used KDE since 2002 and although KDE 4 is experiencing serious growing pains, I have seen enough that I am certain KDE 4 will be better than KDE 3.

My primary complaint about the transition is how system maintainers have moved KDE 4 into their operating systems without allowing end-users a choice. KDE 4 is not yet complete and remains buggy. That is a statement of fact. Nothing more. Version 3.5.10 should remain a choice.

My own reaction to that type of system decision-making is to continue using 12.2 on my office production box. I don't have the time or patience to fiddle with that box. Fortunately for me, I'm not a person who desperately needs shiny and new all the time.

My eventual HTPC is another story. I can afford to experiment there. Thus my decision to acclimate to KDE 4 with a fresh install of 13.0.

As reported by many people, I too have struggled with KDE 4. Part of my struggle is adapting to the new way things are done. I won't deny that.

As many people have noticed, KDE 4 is stunning in appearance. Hence, a good choice for a basic HTPC desktop. For whatever reasons, KDE 4 looks sharp and professional on my 37 inch HDTV whereas KDE 3.5.10 and Xfce 4.6.1 look grainy --- awful. I have found that the combination of 13.0, 2.6.30.5, and KDE 4 produces a much faster desktop.

Growing pains hurt. Unlike many people, I am fortunate to have a second box where I can afford to scream and shout at KDE 4. Yet people who have only one box and updated to KDE 4 have standing to complain.

KDE 4 is incomplete. The most common complaints seem to focus around K3B and Amarok. There are missing apps too. For me, I get irritated by the mouseover effects and tool tips, of which I cannot figure out how to totally disable. I can disable most of the tool tips but not the mouseover effects.

KDE 4 is buggy. I have had simple things crash on me such as KRunner. Often when I play a video in xine the KDE desktop gets so slow in responding that the effect is much like freezing. My conky display indicates the dual core CPU is idling. Several times I pressed Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill KDE and start fresh.

Browsing LQ reveals many places where people are discouraged. As I am using KDE 4 only as a basic desktop for HTPC purposes, I haven't run into as many problems as reported. I also am not one for eye-candy and I have disabled all of the desktop effects, which more than likely has provided me with a less buggy desktop. Yet I empathize with those who voice displeasure and bitterness. Slackware has a reputation for placing function before form. I think many people feel betrayed by forcing KDE 4.

Yet why such a keen (desperate?) craving to update? I am puzzled why many people do not remain with 12.2 and 3.5.10. That is what I am doing with my office production box. I won't update that box for a long time because everything is rock stable and works. I will not consider updating my office box well into KDE 4.4.x and certain tools such as K3B are complete.

If any user needs stability then I recommend remaining with 12.2. Unlike the illusion of some system maintainers with respect to "long term service," Slackware releases are maintained for many years, at least with respect to security patches. Slackware 12.2 is functional, stable, and uses KDE 3.5.10, where just about everything in that desktop works. Good grief, 12.2 is less than a year old and can hardly be labeled stale.

With my HTPC I have been experimenting with other systems. Some systems that might be better suited for such focused purposes. I found certain features exhilarating, but overall I got frustrated. In the end I returned to Slackware because I got tired of the way other systems kept tying my hands. That is, I like the way Slackware is designed.

I think people who use Slackware want to remain loyal. One of the common reasons people offer for using Slackware is how the system stays out of the user's way. That requires a lot of elbow grease and candle light, but overall Slackers prefer the system stay out of the way. The transition to KDE 4 has befuddled many who adhere to that philosophy. I understand the mixed emotions.

For the first time in a long time, probably not since the days of dropping GNOME support, the Slackware community is momentarily frazzled and divided. The hard lesson of life is that the past cannot be undone. Time to move forward.

Therefore I offer a simple solution.

Several problems with KDE 4.2.4 can be remedied by updating to 4.3.1. Traditionally the Slackware development team does not start publicly posting changes to Current for a couple of months after an official release. Please consider an exception to that general practice. Publicly update Current to KDE 4.3.1. Or at least to the Current testing branch. I think such a gesture will do much to quiet many arguments.

Because those reasons are too numerous about which to go into excruciating detail every time it's brought up. I've gone into more detail in the comments on this post; suffice it to say I don't find KDE 4.2.4 to be anywhere near as flexible, fast, stable, or user-friendly and simple to use as KDE 3.5.10. Hence my assertion that it simply isn't yet an adequate replacement for it, and is therefore premature in being included in Slackware 13 to the exclusion of 3.5.10.

And, to be perfectly 100% honest, I've never used KDE 4 -- any release of it -- for long enough to have created a complete, itemized list of everything I dislike or just outright HATE about KDE 4.

Frankly, after a couple of hours of fighting with it, I get so frustrated and angry with it that I stop. Every time. So I haven't used it more than 2 hours at a time, any of the half a dozen or so times I've forced myself to try it. And to be clear, I mean KDE 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3, because I've tried them all, packaged by different distros at varying levels of quality and expertise.

I think that probably says more than an itemized list ever would. I find so many things wrong with the entire KDE 4 experience that I find it difficult to even itemize piece-by-piece.

I've never much liked XFCE. Aesthetically it's ugly to me, and it's a lot less tweakable/flexible than KDE 3.5, so that isn't really an adequate replacement either. I've tried, and can kind of force it to almost emulate KDE 3, but not quite, and it really isn't worth the work involved.

Or if you want to do simple things, like create desktop shortcuts, customize the panel, create app launchers on it, et cetera, it's also pretty pointless.

I don't like XFCE.

And that still wasn't anywhere near long enough. KDE 4.2.4 is simply missing way too much basic functionality that KDE 3.5.10 already has. The only way to get that back is to upgrade it to 3.5.10, hence my writeup I linked above.

I have no problems with how it was implemented. Patrick did the best with KDE 4 that he could. The problem is, he didn't fix the huge number of problems with KDE 4 itself, but I wouldn't expect that. He's not a KDE developer, he's the guy who makes Slackware.

But that leaves those of us who think that KDE 3.5.10 is superior to both of those stuck trying to figure out an upgrade path from Slackware 12.1 and 12.2. I'm not the only one, you know. I'm just saying this stuff because I figure somebody should, and so far it really hasn't been brought up enough.

Hub caps are cosmetic. A window manager is functional, being the main interface for the device.

If you want to pick nits with my analogy, fine. KDE 4 on Slackware would be like if Toyota decided to replace the entire driver's console in the new Camry with a steering wheel that can only turn 20 degrees in each direction, no way to adjust the seat, a fan whose blower causes the car to stop running every 3rd or 4th time you turn it on, and a convertible top that never opens past 50%, but when closed it always has one side unlatched, so the wind is whistling through with an annoying "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" sound any time you get above 40 mph.

And, to complete the analogy, any time you bring up these very valid functionality issues to Toyota, they'd get mad and say stupid things like "YOU JUST DON'T LIKE IT BECAUSE IT'S DIFFERENT!" and "WHY DO YOU HATE CHANGE?" and "THIS IS WHAT PEOPLE WANT, AND WE'VE DISCONTINUED THE OLD DASHBOARD/DRIVER CONSOLE, SO YOU'D BETTER GET USED TO IT!" and point out how pretty the new interface is, never mind the fact that if you aren't exactly the right height, you can't even reach the pedals (because that seat doesn't move), and you're tired of rain coming in because the top doesn't latch right, and you can't take turns sharper than 20 degrees...

Unfortunately, it's going to take me some time to figure that out, because I'm rather fond of KDE 3.5.10, and I'm not satisfied that installing the 3.5.10 packages and qt libs from Slackware 12.2 will be a workable solution.

Except for the several dozen KDE applications that got hosed up by the KDE 4 dev team, I'm sure that Slackware 13 is just fine. But as I had mentioned, the premature inclusion of KDE 4 in Slackware is making me wonder what else got thrown in without being fully developed and tested. Considering how much use I get out of KDE in Slackware, you may minimize its impact, but that has nothing to do with the impact it has on Slack 13's usability for me.

In terms of bad, ugly design KDE3 was far beyond KDE4. A simple example is the aRtsd, good riddance we got rid of that bastard!

For those of us who cannot like this desktop environment, there is gnome (which is one I could not live with), xfce (which really matured far enough to let me not recognize it from a long-gone past apart from the logo), enlightenment or -in case you want to go back to the stone age- kde 3.5

The memory footprint and responsiveness of KDE4 has much improved in comparison with 3.5: a bare bootup of KDE 3.5 (with enough bells and whistles, naturally) was along the lines of 500MB, KDE4 with more bells and whistles starts with 400MB and everything responds much faster and aRtsd is gone (I can't repeat that often enough)

Thanks heavens Slack is so configurable, or there would not be keeping everybody happy ;-) I for one am very happy with the choices made... aRtsd was too much in the way of working with instruments by fully locking the soundcard for itself.

My point exactly!

Right there with ya. I just haven't the patience to fight with the myriad problems with KDE4, particularly when 3.5.10 works just fine.

I actually find KDE 4 to be ugly in appearance. Either the KDE devs were copying Microsoft or Microsoft was copying KDE, or maybe both were copying each other and got into some sort of ugly interface feedback loop.

At any rate, KDE 4 looks like Windows Vista and Windows 7 to me, and vise versa. Yuck.

Slackware 13 with KDE 4.2.4 on VirtualBox was so slow as to be nigh unusable. KDE 3.5.10 on Slackware 13 on VirtualBox was actually surprisingly fast for me.

*nods*

Unfortunately, at the moment, I don't have the hardware to devote to just testing Slackware 13, and given the inclusion of KDE 4.2.4 on it, I am certainly not going to blow away what I have on my primary desktop machine -- which works just great at the moment -- in favor of what I know will just piss me off.

Exactly. I've been a Slackware user for years, and I've come to depend on its reliability... this flies in the face of that.

Yeah, and that's exactly what I'm doing for now. However, the fact remains, at some point I will need to upgrade. Unfortunately, since KDE 4 is apparently now the norm in Slackware, that means I'll be going to a different distro when that time comes (unless Patrick relents and includes KDE 3.5.10 as the default in some future release, but I'm not holding my breath).

I'm utterly baffled, myself. If I didn't know any better, I'd say Patrick handed Slackware over to someone else to make the decisions and wasn't involved. It's such a deviation from what I've come to expect that I really don't know what to think.

The problem I have with that is that 4.3.0 still sucks in many ways, from my attempts at using it in OpenSUSE 11.1. I doubt that 4.3.1 is much better. And, since that's still pretty cutting edge and new, I don't think it's a good fit for Slackware. Maybe in 6 or 8 months of heavy testing and tweaking it will be.

I'm still of the opinion that the prudent choice is still 3.5.10, until KDE 4 can fully replace it in every way. That means flexibility, stability, customizability, and usability. And that's simply going to take a while.

GNOME sucks. It is frustratingly dumbed-down to the point where there's almost no configurability to speak of.

It still, mind you, has more configurability than KDE 4 does, but that doesn't mean I like using it. I just hate it slightly less. :-/

My experience is the opposite. Out-of-the-box KDE 4 on Slackware 13 was painfully slow. When I did a Slackware 13 setup with KDE 3.5.10, however, it was very fast.

I never have used GNOME to provide such an opinion but if most reports about the dumbing-down design are half true, then I have no interest in such a desktop. My biggest resistance to GTK is the file picker dialog boxes. They are awful compared to KDialog.

My experience is that KDE 4 is faster. Yet, as I shared previously, I have all desktop effects disabled. I have the strigi file indexer disabled as well as akonadi and nepomuk. Akonadi probably is useful for PIM apps, but I am not using any on an HTPC system. I don't see anything that strigi provides that slocate already does. The nepomuk effort is a mystery to me. Perhaps useful where people share data such as in a business, but for a single desktop user like me I see no value. But I can be an old fuddy duddy sometimes too.

That's not an accurate comparison. Vista was rushed out the door, many things were purposely left out of it to save time, and then it was nearly abandoned by Microsoft except for marketing hype. Windows Vista is bloated and resource hungry (I use it daily). The Windows 7 "upgrade" is both expensive and painful. In fact I intend to suffer with Vista rather than send Microsoft another dollar of my hard earned money to fix their mistake.

Slackware 13 on my el-cheapo Acer Aspire laptop runs better than Slackware 12, and even Windows XP. I have had a few application crashes in KDE 4 but not significantly more than I had with KDE 3.5. Slackware 13 is not perfect, and perhaps one could argue that KDE 4 is not quite finished. In my opinion Slackware 13 and KDE 4.2 are still better than Slackware 12.2 and KDE 3.5. Nobody is forced to upgrade to Slackware 13 nor pay a huge price later to fix it if there happen to be some problems.

Even if one thinks that Slackware 13 is not as good as Slackware 12.2, it is by no means a Windows Vista. I would argue that Slackware 12 and 13 are quite close in terms of quality and usability. KDE 4 is where KDE has decided to go and staying with 3.5 would have eventually created compatibility issues. The Slackware move to KDE 4 was not rushed. Instead there was obviously a lot of time and work put into making sure it was up to the Slackware standard. X11 has also evolved and eventually KDE 3.5 will not be compatible. If you don't like some things about KDE 4 don't throw out the proverbial Slackware 13 baby with the KDE 4 bathwater.

You know, KDE4 is fully themable.
You can make KDE4 look almost exactly like KDE3 if the looks are the only thing that repails you. :-)

Geez.
I've used Linux long enough to know to not let other folks opinions sway my own.
After laboring through this thread since it's inception I'm now stuck with the overwhelming curiosity to make up my own mind instead of letting the contributors to this thread make it up for me.
Hence, I've downloaded the dvd and burned it for installing.
I even went and got off my sorry butt and found the spare nvidia card I keep on hand to fix the spare box with.
It's a conspiracy and I blame all of you!!

Issues of what should and what should not be included in slackware aside, KDE is in no way an integral part of slackware.

Try XFCE.

If KDE is your primary desktop, then yes, it IS an integral part of Slackware, particularly since KDE is the default desktop in this distro.

Why does everybody think that XFCE is somehow a viable replacement for the lack of KDE 3.5.10 in Slackware?



XFCE is to KDE 3.5.10 as a dirt bike is to a Harley Davidson.