You can't be serious?
I used for Ubuntu, mostly Kubuntu, for well over a year and that included, for 4 or 5 months, Kubuntu 8.10, probably the worst version of Kubuntu ever released, and "sudo hell" is, in my opinion, a very apt description.

BTW, Kubuntu 8.10, in which they forced KDE 4.x on the users, was so bad that 4 months into their release cycle and just two months before the release of 9.04, they released a "updated and improved" version of 8.04, which used KDE 3.5.10. I think there was even another "maintenance release" of 8.04 a few months later.

While I like KDE 4.2.4 pretty much, I understand that 4.3 is a greatly improved incarnation of KDE, once again, but that it has not included with Slackware 13.0 as it was released too late for the Slackware 13.0 release and because it requires some major changes in Slackware, including the introduction of PolicyKit to Slackware.

On the other hand, some people seem to be using these packages:KDE 4.3 for Slackware64 13.0

I don't see a package for PolicyKit there. Is PolicyKit included with one of the packages, there?

And what's the experience of those of you who have tried these packages? Would recommend them?

(No, I have no plans to hijack this thread, but it just wouldn't make sense to create a new one with a similar title...)

gargamel

I installed those packages today on a test partition of Slackware64. I have had no problems as of yet - however, the install is only 45 minutes old as of right now. (9:24 am cst)

I'm going to upgrade my production box tonight if there are no problems. There are quite a few changes, and I have seen nothing of PolicyKit yet.

It would be great, if you could report back here (or in a new thread) your experience with these unofficial packages.

Thanks and good luck!

gargamel

I have to go to work in a few minutes, and won't return until 8:00pm. It may be tomorrow before I give an opinion.

Well - I went on ahead and did it anyway. First impression is that KDE-4.3 is much improved. Dolphin, for example, is much, much better. I opened /usr/bin in Dolphin, and scrolling through is much smoother than before. When it loads the folder, its all there - no hesitation when scrolling or in dragging the scrollbar. It has a new and improved left side split view. The folder selected at the top is opened in the bottom and shows all folders inside. Makes gui navigation a lot simpler.

The menu is changed a bit. System Settings is under K > Settings, instead of System. There has to be much more, but a quick glance like this, and I'm sure that I will like this KDE much better.

More tomorrow - gotta go to work!

Just got home from work, had a shower, fixed a drink, now I'm looking to see what's up in the world. The computer stays on, and she roared to life with a flick of the mouse. Daggone this looks good so far.

I have not had to mess with the personal settings at all. It accepted ~/.kde with no hassles or loss of configuration. Its plenty stable after sitting idle for 11 hours. Dolphin is much better and responsive. Desktop effects that I have enabled are working just fine. The system tray is slightly different but looks better than before. Transparency is fine. Amarok works without a rebuild.

Konqueror, however, seems to be an unusable mess. It complains about not being able to load Dolphin view:

There was an error loading the module Dolphin View.
The diagnostics is:
Cannot load library /usr/lib64/kde4/dolphinpart.so: (/usr/lib64/libnepomuk.so.4: undefined symbol: _ZN7Soprano4NodeC1ERKNS_12LiteralValueE)

Navigating to /home after clicking through the dialog box gives me a clustered view of I don't know what.

That seems to be the only problem I've encountered so far. This is not a showstopper, since I don't use Konqueror. Dolphin is just fine. Although I probably will try to figure out what's causing this problem just because its there. I'll head off to google in a bit.

All-in-all, I'm ok with 4.3.

Just got home from work, had a shower, fixed a drink, now I'm looking to see what's up in the world. The computer stays on, and she roared to life with a flick of the mouse. Daggone this looks good so far.

I have not had to mess with the personal settings at all. It accepted ~/.kde with no hassles or loss of configuration. Its plenty stable after sitting idle for 11 hours. Dolphin is much better and responsive. Desktop effects that I have enabled are working just fine. The system tray is slightly different but looks better than before. Transparency is fine. Amarok works without a rebuild.

Konqueror, however, seems to be an unusable mess. It complains about not being able to load Dolphin view:

There was an error loading the module Dolphin View.
The diagnostics is:
Cannot load library /usr/lib64/kde4/dolphinpart.so: (/usr/lib64/libnepomuk.so.4: undefined symbol: _ZN7Soprano4NodeC1ERKNS_12LiteralValueE)

Navigating to /home after clicking through the dialog box gives me a clustered view of I don't know what.

That seems to be the only problem I've encountered so far. This is not a showstopper, since I don't use Konqueror. Dolphin is just fine. Although I probably will try to figure out what's causing this problem just because its there. I'll head off to google in a bit.

All-in-all, I'm ok with 4.3.

@ mlangdn,

This was what drove me in the arms of GSB, but now I feel a bit more sure that kde4 eventually will make it back to my pc. Good to hear that more people than I have noticed that issue with dolphin. (But I will miss Mahjong in Gnome, I like that version better...)

If GNOME could have been removed, then KDE could be so

Now I'm trying to get to use to Xfce, it works nicely. From inside Xfce I use konsole and krunner, as the replacements of Xfce's "Terminal" and "Run program" - it works fine.

Keep on Slackin'

I have been using KDE 4.3 on an Arch install for about 10 days, I can tell you that 4.3 is head and shoulders above 4.2. so far I have not had a problem of any kind with it. It seems very stable so far, at least you can manipulate your icons etc. like 3.5.

Well, I reverted back to 4.2.4. Dolphin was broken with the packages I downloaded, and Konqueror was unusable. I'm either gonna compile it myself with modified slackbuilds, or just wait a bit longer. With a little luck, maybe rworkman will post 'em up sooner. (hint, hint)

@mlangdn, thanks for sharing your interesting experiences with us.

I just read a review of KDE 4.3 in German magazine "Linux User". Conclusion: Overall good, but instable when certain Plasmoids are running, and with some new features and new bugs. The author sees KDE development on the right track, and is looking forward to future incarnations of it.
To me this looks like a gentle way to say, that it's better to skip 4.3.0 and give KDE 4.3.x some time to mature. Although there seem to be significant improvements compared to 4.2.x, there are apparently new, annoying bugs, too.

As I said: Not my opinion, just that of a reviewer in a magazine. I haven't tried KDE 4.3, yet, and therefore have no strong opinions on it. KDE 4.2.4 runs quite well here, and I hope that the next KDE version available officially for Slackware will be just as stable (actually I have no doubt, that it will be).

gargamel

I still have it on the test partition. Maybe sometime today I'll get in there and disable all effects and see what happens. Then again, I like the eye candy.

Perhaps these packages that Pat made available in the "unsupported" area will be of use to some of you: kde-3.5.10-for-slack13.0

Cheers, Eric