What a royal PITA this has been.

I had been holding off on upgrading from 2008.1 because of the move to KDE4.

Finally, I pretty much had to do it for a number of reasons, so following instructions on the Mandriva site I started a network upgrade that was supposed to preserve my kde3 settings and leave me still using kde3.

Well the automated installer failed due to a trivial dependency collision, so I undertook to install 3581 packages using urpmi with the --allow-force option to deal with the inevitable dependency issues.

It worked, but it took urpmi several hours just to work out the ordering of the packages, and not everything went in right the first time, forcing me to reinstall a number of the packages.

Also, I now find myself running KDE4 in spite of my preferences. And I did lose most of my settings, though I was generally able to import them from my KDE3 configuration.

I have to say that KDE4 seems faster than KDE3 for most things, and that is good. But there are some things missing from KDE4 that I really want. For instance, in KDE3, I could run a command from the task bar by clicking on a widget, then typing into the resulting combo box that appeared. The combo box kept a history, which meant that after awhile all I had to do was select the drop-down button, then scroll to the command I want. This feature is gone in KDE4 - or at least I can't find it - and that run feature is now only available (I think) from the menus.

Also, the utility for adding a widget to the task bar doesn't let me add an arbitrary command...at least, if it does I have not figured it out.

I always keep a bash shell widget on the taskbar, and in KDE4 it appears there is no icon for this; I get a line of text labeled "shell" followed by a blank space that apparently is a default space for an icon - but no icon. Similarly with the widget to invoke Konqueror - lines of text with choices, but no icon.

The volume control in KDE4 sucks. It doesn't work at all unless I invoke the full mixer.

KDE4 isn't particularly stable; I have crashed it a couple of times and once had to reboot.

My network connection drops intermittently, forcing me to manually restart it.

I can't get VMware workstation to compile; lots of issues. I don't know if that has anything to do with KDE4, but it might.

All in all, I am tempted to roll back. I can do this by just installing a backup.

*sigh*

I can't say I've experienced a lot of the issues you've had. My internet upgrades via the notification widget went a lot better than I expected on all my machines (although I had to use a previous kernel for one laptop due to no keyboard function on the desktop).

Strangely the desktop is a lot more flakey than it was when I was running 4.1. Maybe using yakuake would be a suitable solution for the instant access to the terminal issue.

So far most things I used under 3.5 works. You're right though, there's still a lot of functionality missing compare to 3.5. I don't use the run feature in the menu, it always seem to send me to the web. Instead I just do Atl & F2 at least they've retained that.

Overall I'd say KDE4 is looking the business but still has a long way to go in replacing 3.5 for configuration and functionality.

Well the truth is that my system has been upgraded and never reloaded since Mandrake 7.2 back in 2001. So there is some digital detritus in the system, though I do try to keep that cleaned up, and this is the source of my intermittent problems with urpmi and dependencies. I don't reload because I have a lot of work scattered in my system - some of the things I do take me well into the kernel - and if I reload I then would find myself manually putting a lot of this stuff back in. Easier to upgrade.

I think the intermittent network was due to a bad cable that chose to manifest itself just at this time - thereby causing me to immediately blame it on all the changes I was making.

I got VMWare Workstation to install by reinstalling python, perl, gcc, and all kernel headers and source (urpmi --replacepkgs).

I also have reinstalled KDE (both 3.5.10 and 4.2).

The system seems a lot better now, though it still isn't fully stable.

I do note that Kivio doesn't work and that seems to be because it doesn't work with KDE4 and a version that DOES work isn't available yet. This is a serious problem for me if it goes on too long. Oh well, I have another computer that I can use to run Kivio if I must.

So, it is shaking out OK but it has been a royal PITA.

Well you two seem get it to werk, my distro upgrade from 2009 to 2009.1 failed, Now Kde4 wont load and Im now backing up all my configurations via webmin and totally installing from scratch,,, sign

I'm now allocating much more space to my /boot partition. That was the first thing which went wrong. I'm real leary on trying it on my other boxes

Well, this was a pretty big upgrade.

That's the thing about Linux, as compared to Windows. Upgrades are just as likely to go wrong in Linux as in Windows, but at least with Linux you can fix the bloody thing. Windows is sooooo hard to fix.

Sheesh.

Amarok-2 has no ipod support. That sucks.

Also, the plasma taskbar crashed and seems to have lost all the settings that I had painstakingly constructed for it. That sucks too. However, it turns out that the KDE-3 Kicker loads just fine. So I have Kicker running in KDE4. That works for now

Does any know how to get imap (Server daenons for IMAP and POP) installed on my new fresh install of Mandriva 2009.1 The rpm is not listed in the Mandriva Linux Control Center when attempting install software. I looked on my other 2009.0 boxes and that rpm is available

you probably don't have the right repository enabled. Sort that out and you should be fine. Alternatively, download the rpm directly from someplace and install it with urpmi.

And, while I am complaining, I don't like the way removable drives are handled. I have to run a plasmoid to tell me that the drive is plugged in, and it isn't actually mounted until I click on the icon in the plasmoid. And then, there appears to be no good way to unmount it before removal, other than to use the command line and just umount it. This is hugely inconvenient. I used to get a desktop icon when I plugged a drive in, and one option was "safely remove" on the menu when I wanted to unplug it.

Thanks for the suggestion; I'll look into the respository, but I believed that was setup when I installed the new distro and installed other software packages (ie sendmail, proftp, and apache) Should I get on easyurpmi?

BTW: I do have a pop3 daemon installed but I would like to get pop3s. And when I setup my other server I just installed imap and that had the daemon

To unmount it via the plasmoid you move your mouse pointer to the far right of the device and an eject icon will appear.

Also make sure you're not in that stupid default 'Show only apps with a gui' mode.

More comments. Kscd looks really really funky now. I presume there is a skin someplace that makes it look less cartoon-ish, but I don't have one. Also, since it has been turned into a plasmoid (I think) all of its configuration capability seems to have vanished. Wonderful.

The only positive thing I have to say about KDE4 at this time is that it is faster, it uses a lot less processor and memory, and it and compiz play pretty now. Beyond that, it is missing waaaay to many things, particularly with regard to configuration.