First, Slackware64 in and of itself is just fine.
HOWEVER, KDE 4.2.4, well... I'm tired and might say something I will later regret. Other than a few minors improvements it isn't any better than 4.2.1 and that version was so bad, especially when running on Kubuntu amd_64, it is what drove me back "home" to Slackware, where I was happy until the last couple of days.
Why is it the "Geek Squad" feels they have to cram unstable, incomplete, buggy software down our throats? You would think they might have learned something from that disaster known as vista. Who knows, maybe their attitude has become, "if microsoft can do it, so can we"?
KDE 4.2.4 has crashed more in the last week than any other previous version I've used, except, maybe, 4.2.1 on Kubuntu.. Nah... they are about the same.... It has locked up so hard that, ctrl, alt, backspace won't work and the reset button is the only alternative. Can't say I can ever remember having to do that with 3.5.x.
I'm going to get some sleep and tomorrow make a decision on whether to try and install 3.5.10 or just switch to Xfce.
Sheeezzzz. The arrogance of these pointy heads to push this crap on the users is nearly beyond belief...
Rant over.
Good night.
Ah, I see everything but this screen has locked up solid. Time to hit the old reset button.... again.....

What are your problems with KDE4.2.4 ? You haven't mentioned any particular issue. It hasn't crashed for me since I have been using it and it shouldn't. I guess if you could tell us what applications you run then it would help to identify your "real problem." I doubt KDE4.2.4 is buggy and the cause of your problem.
I'm not sure what could have caused this, but you could check your X config and maybe that could lead somewhere.

Same here, no problems. I agree with above poster, it sounds like something is messed up. My suggestion is change /etc/inittab to go to run level 3. When it crashes next time, don't go into X as it will overwrite your log files. Take a look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log and your ~/.xsession-errors (for the user you logged in as when the lockup occurred) and see if something strange is going on. Do you have any widgets on your desktop that could be acting up?

I'm a big KDE supporter, but I agree that it is not quite there yet, it feels about 90-95% ready and there are parts of it that do not work with Slackware (kpackage). I have, in fact, removed all traces of KDE from my system and have configured XFCE4 which I feel is about 95-97% ready. Whilst it is not quite as good as KDE 3.5.10 it is faster and more to my liking than KDE 4.2, I think what most people on this forum look for in a desktop environment is something that does the job without being in your face, and as long as they can easily modify it and all the parts work then they are happy.

my tuppence worth.

samac

Though KDE 4.3 is a vast improvement over KDE 4.2, KDE 4.2 has been perfectly stable for me on Slackware. Perhaps you should post what problems you're actually experiencing as there could be a really easy fix.

IANAS, but KDE 4.3.1 is the first version that is generally useful for me.

Even 4.3.0 would sometimes crash on, or back from, suspend to ram, say 10% of the time and I use that a lot on my laptop. That has the potential to loose work, and that is something I will not put up with.

4.3.1 is not complete, has some really obvious rough edges, but as some kind of pre-release software (say an early beta) it is fine for the purposes that that kind of software is useful for; getting an early look at stuff, writing pre-releases of manuals and somewhat more generally for users who are happy being on the bleeding edge.

For general adoption, something that you could give an ordinary end-user without having to make apologies and without it becoming a support problem and based on the current rate of progress, I'm expecting that something like 4.3.3 will be the earliest version that might do the job (ie, a couple of versions from where I am now).

I'm still expecting to like 4.4 or 4.5, but am very frustrated how long it is taking to get there (I don't underestimate the amount of bug-squashing progress that has been made - that has been immense, but, in part, that is the point) and am quite annoyed that that 4.0.x came out with implication that, once the developer-only 4.0.0 build was out of the way, it might be suitable for end users. Not even alpha quality and even 4.2.0 should have been a late alpha release.

I'm not sure who is doing the pushing. The kde guys are releasing and the distros are doing the packaging. But you can still use kde 3.5 (or enlightenment, or gnome...). That's obviously harder if your distro doesn't give you an easy way of using something more to your taste, but that's hardly the kde guys fault, or is it?

Why blame KDE for issues with your X server or video driver?

Clearly you have hit some bug in the server or driver as an application, no matter how poorly written, should be able to lock up your X server.

Now if you'd like help resolving the issue, rather than just complaining about the lack of stability in the wrong application, you could tell us what video card you have, what drivers you are using, and if the lockups persist if you use the vesa driver. You could check to see if the entire machine has locked up, rather than the X server, by trying to remotely access the computer from another machine.

Adam

EDIT: Are you using KDE's desktop effects? If so, are you using the opengl or xrender backend and does the problem persist if you disable desktop effects?

I've had one or two weirdnesses with the new Xorg.


If I enter X (runlevel 3 and startx) and then leave X to go back and work on a linux console, my keyboard drops keypresses making it impossible to type commands correctly. If I restart X again and ctrl-alt-fn to the console, it works perfectly, until I exit X again. It also does this on OpenBSD. I suspect the Xserver is doing something bad to the keyboard driver somehow on exit.

I've also had occasion when I've found by using xev that when I hold a modifier like alt down, instead of just generating a single keypress event it repeatedly generates keypress events while I hold it down rather than just the normal single event. I haven't identified what is triggering this behavior yet.


I had to renice the Xserver to increase it's priority to prevent sluggishness (and instability in KDE) when something like glxgears was running.


I've found that the screensaver activates itself even when I'm using the computer. I've not fully identified the trigger for this, but it usually starts to occur after I've been playing with the kde 'dragon' media player and xine. Trying to turn the blanker off with 'xset s' doesn't make any difference at all. (KDE screensaver is disabled).


I've found a lot of the screensaver modules don't work under KDE but do under WindowMaker, and some of the gimmicky plasma widgets don't seem to work (like the BBalL one), but that's no great loss.



So, clearly there are a few issues with the current version of X and I guess a few KDE ones, but for the most part I really like KDE4, and this is coming from a die hard WindowMaker fan. I think what I actually like is 'dolphin' and how well it works for viewing my photos with gwenview. I don't really use much of the fancy stuff KDE does but the basics I've found to be very nice and quite stable. I don't have all the 'effects' turned on as I can't be doing with all that bling.

Though there are still a lot of aspects of KDE that just don't suit my tastes, given another couple of releases to settle down a bit more, I think KDE4 is going to be a very good desktop and I can see myself switching to it. That's assuming Xorg manage to get themselves into a good place of course. I've never had as many problems with X as I seem to be having at the moment.


PS: "As stable as Windows98" ? Wasn't 98 one of the better ones, especially SE.

I had some issues with slackware64 and freezing as well. Actually it seemed to me the problem was graphics related, more then KDE, however i usually experienced freezing when switching from one screen to another. (I often use two or three x-sessions).

The computer itself never froze, so I was able to ssh in to my computer, but at the computer nothing worked. I tried to kill every thing that had to do with X, I tried unloading the nvidia module, and not even telinit 1 worked (From ssh). Well, it actually changed from init 4 to 1, but my screen was still frozen, and since it successfully changed to init 1, my journey ended there as my ssh connection was cut :P

The solution for me seemed to be to disable dri in xorg.conf in section module. My uptime now is 4 days, so it seems allright:

It's a long shot, and I assume you're already aware of this workaround, but I post this anyway, perhaps its useful for someone

Only problem with freezing KDE desktop I found was due to a wrong setting for power management in the KDE system settings. When I selected "Powersave" or "Aggressive Powersave" as the option for a computer connected to a LAN via a network cable, and left my computer for more than, say, 15 minutes, the screen was black, and mouse and keyboard actions had no effect. Actually, the keyboard showed no reaction, at all, anymore. No LED for Num Lock, CAPS lock and so on.

But that was accidental. Such a setting may make a lot of sense on a laptop, but I had the problem with my desktop, where "Performance" is the sensible setting, of course. No big problem, therefore, just a little inconvenience and a little surprising.

gargamel

Slackware 13.0 (32bit) with KDE 4.2.4 is stable for me. There are definitely more niggles than kde 3.5.x and the odd graphical glitch, but I've not had one crash.

The use of resources by akonadi and nepomuk/strigi and lack of easy control over those services are probably my largest annoyances just now, but certainly not showstoppers.

I disabled Strigi and uninstalled Akonadi, solved.

Now as you mention it, I wounder if I experienced the same thing on my laptop. I don't know exactly what fixed it, because it was in the tweaking process, and I did a lot of changes in between each reboot. I'm guessing it's either something with kernel acpi settings or kde power saving settings. Probably the lastone since that fixed it for you

Just install Ratpoison tiling window manager (also Vimperator Firefox Addon) and forget the complains...

It's only me that have a bug in KDE that makes the bar show up on the opposite side? It occurs after I make it smaller and mainly with silicon theme. To make things worse it is persistent to other sessions. I wasn't able to take a shot with the menu open so you could see it better; anyway, here it is...


It was the major problem that turned me off of KDE.

Adding: yeah, and the menu showed in the upper side!

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