Ok, I'm sure I'm going to get shot down in flames for saying this, but, after nearly 2 months of using Slackware 13 I'm disappointed, quite disappointed. I admit, most of the problems are due to using KDE 4.2.4. Amarok, Dolphin, Gxine, Xine crash a lot of the time. I honestly feel that (for me) as a average desktop user I am much less confident using Slackware 13.0 than Slackware 12.2.

For me I am sick to death of Dolphin crashing. Try holding the shift key to select a large number of multiple files in a directory for example. Instead of selecting all the files, all but the last 4 are selected and then I can't use the hold the Control key to select the last four.

Just ONE example of the problems I'm having.

Oh!, and how come the majority of the Slackware download mirrors never work???

Sorry for small rant... but...

Hi Boler,

I understand your frustration, but Slackware is not just about Kde... :-)

It is way more than that...

You said something like " ..lhe last link between the applications, the OS, ( the DE ) and the end user sucks... " I totally agree with you, but then, why don't you short--circuit the faulty element...?

Do you really need Kde...?

I mean,... LXDE, FluxBox, WindowMaker, XFCE...

You cannot judge the reliability of a system by the reliability of a component that is not critical... :-)


BRGDS

Alex

I'm not having trouble like crashing or experiencing problems with some of those softwares I use at all. I'm not sure about the rest since I don't use it. Maybe you could submit or ask in the forum on the fix? This forum is very active so I'm sure someone will take their time helping you just like how people here helps me all the time.

I think slackware is the greatest.

I'm coming to your way of thinking. I'm trying to learn how to customize for myself to use FVWM for everyday use but most of the apps nowadays are desktop environment orientated. KDE apps just don't run that well on FVWM. And for my personal record, KDE 3.5.10 was much more stable than KDE 4.2.4. I hope that when Slackware 13.1 is released that KDE 4.3 series is much more stable.

Upgrade to -current then you will be happy with Slackware 13. KDE 4.2 is not a rock solid release in my opinion -- HOWEVER 4.3.2 or 4.3.3 is 100% better.

Hi

XFCE is a full featured DE... I do not know how K apps behave... but it is worth a try...

Most of the apps I use behave well inder flux...

Finite elements software for structures,
CAD,
Finite Volumes software for CFD,
Math Prototyping,
Spreadsheets,
Text Processor,
Web browser,
Movie Player,
FE/FV meshers
CFD/FEA postprocessors...

plus my very own CLI apps, like FEniCS/Dolfin compiled apps, Deal 2 compiled apps,

...All these are OSS...

I probably hate nautilus in lenny or freeBSD, with the utmost intensity, it has the tendency to paralize when I am running heavy stuff... no more alt+Fn, no more Cli... nothing... just a lousy hard reboot, and lots of unsaved work lost... but it does not mean Lenny is unusable...

BRGDS

Alex

Before you give up on Slackware 13.0 give XFce 4.6.1 a try. You'll like it. KDE 4.3.3 in -current is rock solid.

I never knew KDE 4.2 was unstable. Although I mainly use fluxbox, I wanted to give that a try and I like staying on "stable" (too inexperienced to try -current) so I'll wait until the stable version which is 4.3 gets implemented on slackware stable. That sounded a bit weird..

Are you not able to access them at all? Or is it that you can't download ISOs from them? Some mirrors host just packages and do not host final ISOs for CDs and DVDS.

rant

Well, Dolphin is a real PITA sometimes, konqueror in KDE3 was a lot better.
Dolphin is slow, *makes* things slow. I have found that if you instruct it to move a lot of files (a few thousand maybe) and you have the destination or origin folder open, it is slow as hell. It is actually faster to close Dolphin, let the task finish (which will probably be done in a few seconds), and open Dolphin again. Painful.
What is wrong with the tree view? why it always moves horizontally to try to acomodate the folder you selected? It's nice the first few times, but it becomes annoying if you are moving between folders. The 'Places' view is not near as useful as the system:/ path in KDE3, and I still have to find out an easy way for it to tell me the used / free space from a removable device.

Still, KDE4 is a nice DE. I do miss stuff from KDE3 (the predefined sessions in Konsole, a system:/ equivalent), but I can live with that...

tnar;

Dolphin in KDE4.2.4 isn't that configurable. The single clicks are annoying. However if you use KDE4.3+ then you can easily tweak dolphin the way you want.

When I was still using Slack64_13 and I had do stuff that I knew would freeze Dolphin, I would just use Konqueror or Thunar.
I switched to Slack64-C and now everything seems to be rolling along quit well now.

I will take your advice and try some of the other Window Mangers / DEs. I probably shouldn't criticize Slackware 13.0 just because of KDE. Don't get me wrong, I still will be using Slackware over the other Distros, I just wanted so see if anyone else as similar experiences of and unstable KDE 4.2.4.

I don't use KDE and I've found that slackware64 13 is the most stable and least buggy of any slackware release. If you choose to use KDE 4 and then blame slackware for your troubles ... then you don't know what you're talking about and you will likely get flamed.

I also say XFCE is the way to go. It is (at least a bit) lighter and faster than KDE, and it is rock solid stable.
I regularly use K3B, Kaffeine, and K-Audio-CD-Creator in Slackware 13 on XFCE. These KDE apps work very well for me on both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Slackware 13 using XFCE.