Post your Squeeze-KDE4 upgrade experiences here
 

Looks like Squeeze is making the move to KDE4.

It may be worth users posting their upgrade experiences here so people can have a look before leaping in...

I will be holding off for a few days though I think.


Regards.

I already started a thread on this topic. It may be worth combining these two.
Cheers
jdk

i did a fresh install in vbox. i removed some useless packages and the whole gui was removed.
ok i did re-install kde and xorg, null problemo. ONe could say: have a closer look at the messages, and i would agree ( i had a look, but not that close). But it seem to have happened to others too:

So: Have a closer look at the messages than usual.

ah;yes: i still don`t like it, but thats just me.

greetings

Saw your post, that is what prompted me to start the thread.

Suppose they are related though yours seemed to refer to a specificc problem.


Hope it all got sorted.

Thanks Monkey,
I got impatient so this morning I installed kdegames (4.2) which prompted and upgrade of about 40 packages and a new install of 40 more packages. Then I changed (in the KDE Control Centre) the default icon set to Oxygen (of of the new packages) and I got back all the menu icons/desktop icons (the Trash icon had gone walkies) and all the others. I am not thrilled with how they look but everything works as it's supposed to now.

I now have a hybride system: part 4.2 and part 3.5. The games are 4.2 but KDM is still 3.5 and I can't upgrade it without removing all of KDE and reinstalling the complete 4.2 setup. As everything is working at the moment (and I have no reason to be impatient ;)) I'll wait until that's sorted out.

I was a bit worried by the scare stories about KDE 4 but it seems to be ok (if a bit ugly) now.
Cheers,
jdk

kweather applet: the first casualty
 

I just had another 80 updates, most involving the 3.5->4.2 KDE change. All went well except for kweather (one of my favourite panel applets) that was installed but doesn't show up in any menu and is not listed when I try to add it as an applet to the panel. I see there are 2 binaries
/usr/bin/kweatherservice and /usr/bin/kweatherreport but neither of them seem to provide an applet for the kde panel.

Has anyone succeeded in getting kweather to work as an applet in 4.2. It worked fine in 3.5. :(
Cheers,
jdk

I have got it working - sort of - like most things in KDE4. It was listed on the applet adder. It only accepts one input and so far it needs to be reconfigured at each boot. It can show a five-day forecast but I don't know what I did to get that. It just appeared a couple of times never to be seen again - like a lot in KDE4 :rolleyes:

Thanks Jan. I guess you have more 4.2 packages installed than I do. I don't have it listed in the "add applet to panel..." menu yet. I think there are other non-kde-native weather applets around so if the 4.2 one doesn't live up to the 3.5 standards then there are alternatives.
cheers,
jdk

The plasma-widget-weather package contains the more impressive (IMHO) weather widget, unless I'm mixing them up. There's another widget (LCD Weather or somesuch) which I believe is contained in the plasma-widgets-addons package. They both require a Plasma workspace and won't work with KDE3's kdesktop. With KDE4, the kweather package now only contains the low level weather-data-retrieval tools and no userspace interface AFAIK. If you're still running KDE3 you can probably download the kweather package from Lenny and manually install it with dpkg, though I expect over time that's going to become less and less a viable solution if you're running Squeeze.

I was running 4.2 with sid a few weeks ago until one update or another (libc6 methinks) totally borked my ability to login with kdm. I went back to testing at that point but I've been putting off any further updates since KDE4 moved into Squeeze. I can't decide if KDE4 is worth using yet since I only have one complaint about KDE3 and still have a littany (albeit a shrinking littany) of them about KDE4. I will just suggest that anyone who does go through with the upgrade makes sure they install the kaboom package too, before their first KDE4 login. Either that or just move ~/.kde to ~/.kde_old or something and start with a totally stock KDE4 ~/.kde directory. Kaboom is great stuff though, it doesn't quite catch every setting but it'll save you a ton of re-configuration if you use it.

Uh oh! I haven't rebooted for over a week and just yesterday a big upgrade of libc6. Thanks for the tip about kaboom. I'll see if it's possible to install at this stage of my hybrid kde installation.
...
Ok I checked and kaboom was installed automatically at some point so I guess I'm covered.

Here is the result of running which would have the effect of installing kdm 4.2

so I'll wait a while yet.
cheers,
jdk

Most things are working OK and I installed other front ends as well. But video sound has stopped working. It never was reliable and mostly I had to copy address in KDE to VLC or Mplayer. I've chased what are supposed to be Windows codecs and put them with most of the rest of the .so usually in /usr/lib Any ideas about anything missing or unexpected libraries to put them in or unexpected codecs?

Made a Gnome user out of me.

Don't like Gnome. It's a bit too plain and I prefer controls on the bottom. So I've loaded some of the others. Xfce looks pretty good but I don't want to chase something so new that it turns out to be full of bugs. Anyway, I don't think the sound problem is specific to KDE but KDE has probably overwritten a link. I think I had that soert of problem ages ago and I think it was to do with Debian having an unsual library organistion but I don't remember what the fix was. I can't be that arsed to do much about it at the moment to tell the truth.

I use gnome, but also some kde apps. I've been doing regular squeeze updates and I've noticed that kdebase-bin, kdebase-data, kfind, and konqueror are on my system but never get updated by a "aptitude safe-upgrade". They are always held back to versions from kde 3.5. New versions of the files are available but aptitude passes them over every time. I finally tried "aptitude full-upgrade" and got the same results -- aptitude just won't update them. What is it I'm doing wrong? Actually I'm not sure if getting these files installed changes the appearance of anything on my system. Still, I'd like my system to be up to date.

I thought I'd ask in this thread because I thought you hardcore kde users would know if kdebase-bin and kdebase-data are being held back on everybody's system just now, not just mine. Also I thought that if they're not being held back on everybody's system then what if anything do I have to install to make kdebase-bin and kdebase-data palatable to my system?

Anyone have any suggestions? (Have I posted in the wrong place?!!)

"everybody's"? I don't know. But mine? yes. So not just you.

if you type the following command (not as root nor with sudo) you will find out what you have to do. In my case it was this:
cheers,
jdk