Hi,
I've just upgraded a couple of my Debian Squeeze systems to Trinity V3.5.13
and I've hit a couple of problems straight away, one very serious and the
other less so. I haven't checked the full Trinity/KDE suite yet for any
other problems but the two I've had so far mean I'm going to have to
regress - which will take a lot of time and will not be fun.
The lesser of the two problems is that ksysguard can no longer see the
lm-sensors readings. Xsensors still worked, confirming that lm-sensors was
still ok, so I tried regressing ksysguardd & ksysguard back to V3.5.12, which
was only partly successfull; whilst ksysguard V3.5.12 would now pick up the
lm-sensors data when run as a desktop app, the panel applet failed
completely, telling me I should check my installation.
The more serious problem concerns the changes to kdm and the kdm greeter. One
of the systems I upgraded is used primarily as a render node and has no
keyboard, mouse or monitor attached to it - I maintain and configure it
entirely via vnc. I noticed that, after logging into it via ssh and
running 'top', kdm_greet was 'thrashing', using ~99% cpu.
When I actually started a Trinity session kdm_greet cpu dropped to ~85% but
artsd was now using ~10% cpu and kicker was using ~2% cpu. After
artsd 'timed-out' its cpu usage dropped and kdm_greet picked up the slack,
rising back up to ~97% cpu. Kicker cpu remained at ~2%.
I found the earlier thread in the mailing list archives concerning disabling
the Ctrl/Alt/Delete 'feature' and while this does indeed stop the
Ctrl/Alt/Del feature on the other system I upgraded, which does have a kb,
mouse & screen, it did nothing to stop kdm-greet from thrashing the cpu on
the 'headless' system.
This is a _big_ show stopper, for me at least, hence the _need_ to regress.
I'm also a bit perturbed as to why this change to kdm was made in the first
place. I moved to KDE3 because Gnome had been dumbed down too much and
because the Gnome devs seemed intent on on forcing people to work in the way
that _they_ thought people should work. I subsequently moved to Trinity
because of similar issues with KDE4 but now Trinity seems to be showing signs
of following along the same path.
Whilst this new Ctrl/Alt/Del 'feature' may have seemed like a 'Good Idea'
at
the time it was not one of the original features of KDE3 and significantly
changes its behaviour. However, it was precisely because I wanted retain the
original KDE behaviour that I switched to Trinity in the first place.
Another change I noticed after the upgrade that showed similar signs of this
trend was that the Reveal Desktop applet had been added to my Quick Launcher
tray. Now personally, I don't have _any_ desktop icons, precisely because I
don't want to have to waste time revealing the desktop to get at a hidden
icon and then have to re-show all the windows I had open, which is why I use
the quick launcher in the first place (and in any case I wouldn't/don't have
desktop icons for specific data items either because there isn't enough
desktop real estate, even at 1920x1200 for all the different data items I
use).
Sure, this one was easily fixed, first by making it removable (it was pegged
as unremovable) and then removing it, but why was it force-added when, if I
had wanted it, it would have already been there in the first place?
I'm now a bit confused about the purpose of Trinity. I was under the
impression that the project was started to so that people who knew what they
were doing and knew how they wanted to work could continue to do so without
having changes to their systems and workflows forced upon them. In this
context, it seemed that Trinity was never intended to challenge the other
mainstream desktop environments, which have been dumbed down by their
developers to force their [the developer's] ideas of best practice upon a
perceived lowest common denominator user. If this is/was the case then that
old maxim applies - it if isn't broke, don't try to fix it.
Now whilst I have to admit that my first post to this list has been rather
critical I'd like to emphasise that I'm not trying to flame anyone here; far
from it in fact. So far, Trinity has been a godsend to me, enabling me to
carry on working how _I_ want to work, for which I am very greatfull indeed.
However, I do need to decide though, whether I'm going to be able to continue
using it for the foreseeable future.
Regards,
LeeE