Re: Am I Alone?

[dovidhalevi]

KDE4 works fine for me, BUT ...

If one is using several plasmoids, desktops, etc., startup is
sssslllloooooowwww. Startup status is not stable--desktops can be reordered
and that trashcan is always mis-sized and mis-placed until I unlock widgets
and mouse the curser near it, then voile. Sometimes kmix and kxkb appear on
the panel, sometimes not (must be restarted).

My wife does none of this fancy stuff, comes up lickitysplit, OK every time.
Tells you something.

Konqueror? I haven't touched in in ages. Simply was too messed up to bother
with. Opera, Google-chrome, and firefox are much much better. Liking google
more and more.

Kmail? After a shakey start in early KDE4, works quite nicely. Crashes are
very rare now. No complaints as long as network is duely connected.

Plasma is getting better and better and only the surface of it potential has
been touched. One can revert to the older schema if one desires and keep
applets on the panel or on dashboards. Very flexible, or will be.

KDE3 is a dead end. Since I compiled that starting when one could not update
it from Debian Sid, I have both 3.5.6 and 4.3. Can use 3 if 4 gets really
mussed but this has not happened in ages. My daughter still runs 3.5.6 because
the kaboom did not work on her login. I'll get to fixing it up but no rush.

My only real complaint now is the 3.5.6--most everything in it--is much
quicker (on my PIII 600mhz clunker with an old matrox card so maybe don't
blame KDE4 and progress!).
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[Anne Wilson-5]

On Tuesday 29 September 2009 18:13:05 David Baron wrote:
> KDE4 works fine for me, BUT ...
>
David, you don't tell us which distro and which KDE version.  There's a lot of
difference between 4.2 and 4.3, so we need to know.

> If one is using several plasmoids, desktops, etc., startup is
> sssslllloooooowwww.

The only part I've found to be slow is network startup.  Could that be your
problem?  Also, when I had an fstab entry to a remote drive that wasn't always
available that was a huge problem.  Now I have it commented out and only
enable it when needed.

> Startup status is not stable--desktops can be reordered

That is not normal.  However, if I tie activities to desktops, then I do see
it.  I've disabled that, for that very reason.

> and that trashcan is always mis-sized and mis-placed until I unlock widgets
> and mouse the curser near it, then voile.

Never seen that.

> Sometimes kmix and kxkb appear on
> the panel, sometimes not (must be restarted).
>
Never seen that either, but networkmanager did occasionally jump out of the
system tray onto the desktop.  The new knetworkmanage seems more stable, but
time will tell.

> My wife does none of this fancy stuff, comes up lickitysplit, OK every
>  time. Tells you something.
>
Yes, very often problems are caused by either desktop effects or dodgy
plasmoids.  It's a matter of trial and error to tie them down - particularly
since what causes a problem on one system doesn't on another.  As an example,
when yawp came out I saw lots and lots of complaints that it was unstable and
caused many problems.  I installed it on this laptop at the time, and I've
never had any problems with it whatsoever.  Obviously, whatever upset it
wasn't relevant on this laptop.  FWIW, the complaints seem to have stopped - I
assume an update has fixed the problem.

> Konqueror? I haven't touched in in ages. Simply was too messed up to bother
> with. Opera, Google-chrome, and firefox are much much better. Liking google
> more and more.
>
> Kmail? After a shakey start in early KDE4, works quite nicely. Crashes are
> very rare now. No complaints as long as network is duely connected.
>
> Plasma is gett
> ing better and better and only the surface of it potential
>  has been touched. One can revert to the older schema if one desires and
>  keep applets on the panel or on dashboards. Very flexible, or will be.
>
> KDE3 is a dead end. Since I compiled that starting when one could not
>  update it from Debian Sid, I have both 3.5.6 and 4.3. Can use 3 if 4 gets
>  really mussed but this has not happened in ages. My daughter still runs
>  3.5.6 because the kaboom did not work on her login. I'll get to fixing it
>  up but no rush.
>
> My only real complaint now is the 3.5.6--most everything in it--is much
> quicker (on my PIII 600mhz clunker with an old matrox card so maybe don't
> blame KDE4 and progress!).
>

Yup - the new Xorg doesn't like these older cards.  What's more, we still have

quite a lot of problems with other display cards.  It's a driver issue, and
all the main players in the field are working on it.  This is yet another case
where we just have to be patient, but should end up with something far better
than the old stuff, and I don't suppose there is any possibility of saying how
long it will take.

Anne
--
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[Duncan-2]

David Baron posted on Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:13:05 +0200 as excerpted:

> KDE4 works fine for me, BUT ...
>
> If one is using several plasmoids, desktops, etc., startup is
> sssslllloooooowwww. Startup status is not stable--desktops can be
> reordered and that trashcan is always mis-sized and mis-placed until I
> unlock widgets and mouse the curser near it, then voile. Sometimes kmix
> and kxkb appear on the panel, sometimes not (must be restarted).

FWIW, first startup here, when it's loading from disk, can be pretty
slow.  However, after everything's in cache, it's not so slow to quit X/
KDE and restart it.  Of course, I'm running dual dual-core Opterons with
6 gig memory (was 8 gig but I had a stick of memory die and haven't
replaced it yet) too, so don't swap in the normal case and have gigs of
cache to work with as well.  Also, as I run Gentoo, I can turn off a lot
of the bloat dependencies a lot of distributions compile in, as well as
install only the kde apps and their kde dependencies I need instead of
all of kde or by monolithic tarballs/packages.  That means there's
actually less stuff to load, and less stuff to keep in cache, than there
would be on most binary distributions.

Of course, if you're running a gig or less of memory, your application
and cache working size is likely to be larger than your physical RAM, and
you'll not only swap regularly, but will be pushing stuff out of cache so
it has to reload from slow disk, too.  If you've already maxed out your
memory to what your mobo can handle, there's not a lot that can be done
about that, but if not, with memory the price it is now days, a memory
upgrade to 2 gigs or so will speed things up for you dramatically.

As for the trashcans, etc, not staying in place, and stuff like kmix and
kxkb[1] not starting sometimes, that can happen due to unsaved settings
or session management.  What I find often works for unsaved settings, is
starting the app just long enough to configure it how I want, then
quitting, immediately, before it has a chance to crash or something
without saving settings.  In this case, that'd be quitting plasma (plasma-
desktop in 4.3).  You can run a konsole or use krunner to terminate it
using killall, then restart it.

For session management, in kcontrol (aka systemsettings) under advanced
user settings, session manager, "On Login" (this is the 4.3 location) try
setting it to restor manually save session.  Then setup the session as
you want, and save it. (I believe that option would then be in the
shutdown options, tho I always use restore previous session instead, so
have never had to look.)  That way if an app isn't running when kde
exits, it won't forget to start it when kde starts.

> My wife does none of this fancy stuff, comes up lickitysplit, OK every
> time. Tells you something.

Something I noticed on kde4 before 4.3.1 (when the bug triggering it was
fixed) was that on my older Radeon (9200), which can do composite but not
OpenGL because that's limited to a size of 2048x2048, and I'm running
dual 1920x1200 LCDs stacked for 1920x2400, is that any desktop plasmoids,
particularly dynamically updating ones like system monitors, REALLY
slowed the system down.  The worst bug should be fixed from 4.3.1, as I
said, and the issue does seem much better, but I still keep my desktop
plasmoids to a minimum and run a panel with the real dynamic stuff on
it.  You may wish to see if that helps, as thru 4.3.0, it made a BIG
difference, here.

Another thing, in the desktop effects kcontrol applet, make sure
animation speed is set to instant, and/or under All Effects, Translucency
(if you have it enabled), ensure fading duration is set as short as
possible.  Between this and the desktop plasmoid thing, kde4 was pretty
well unusable for me until I figured both of these out and set them
accordingly.

> Konqueror? I haven't touched in in ages. Simply was too messed up to
> bother with. Opera, Google-chrome, and firefox are much much better.
> Liking google more and more.

I don't do non-freedomware (I can't agree to the EULA in most cases,
thus, don't have legal authorization to run the proprietaryware even if I
wanted to) so won't do Opera or Chrome... and haven't bothered trying
Chromium yet.

But I use iceweasel/firefox -- as my /second/ browser.  konqueror is my
primary browser.  But firefox's vastly better javascript permissions
handling once noscript and jsview are installed (and once they've picked
ones they like, other people will no doubt have similar extensions they
have trouble doing without if they don't care about scripting), among
other things, are growing on me, and I may well make firefox primary at
some point.

The trouble with konqueror is that the userbase is simply too small to
have an effective extensions community.  If they'd switch to webkit, as
seems likely at some point, that'll get some decent numbers on their side
in terms of rendering support, but the extensions will still be an
issue.  But if they joined forces with chrome and safari and anyone based
on qt-webkit, to support a common webkit extensions standard, they'd
likely have a userbase of a reasonable size, and the number of useful
extensions should rise quite fast.

But that's what I miss, good extensions...

> Kmail? After a shakey start in early KDE4, works quite nicely. Crashes
> are very rare now. No complaints as long as network is duely connected.

Of course, you know that, probably 4.5, will possibly destabilize a bit
again, as kmail switches to akonadi and becomes little more than a
wrapper around it, right?

> Plasma is getting better and better and only the surface of it potential
> has been touched. One can revert to the older schema if one desires and
> keep applets on the panel or on dashboards. Very flexible, or will be.

Definitely so.

> KDE3 is a dead end. Since I compiled that starting when one could not
> update it from Debian Sid, I have both 3.5.6 and 4.3. Can use 3 if 4
> gets really mussed but this has not happened in ages. My daughter still
> runs 3.5.6 because the kaboom did not work on her login. I'll get to
> fixing it up but no rush.
>
> My only real complaint now is the 3.5.6--most everything in it--is much
> quicker (on my PIII 600mhz clunker with an old matrox card so maybe
> don't blame KDE4 and progress!).

You know that 3.5.6 is way outdated even for the 3.5 series, right?  
3.5.10 is the latest and apparently last kde3 version.

Meanwhile, yes, 3.5 seems like a deadend.  Gentoo/kde is already planning
to phase it out, as qt3 is unsupported now and kde3 effectively is as
well, and they're worried about security updates and etc.  Reading that
on the gentoo/desktop list was what convinced me I had to finally make
kde4 work.  I'd had it installed since before 4.0, but it was and remains
broken in enough areas that it's not a fully functional replacement for
3.5 yet, and probably won't be until 10-ish months from now, when 4.5 is
released.  Every release is a dramatic improvement, so the trend is
right, but kde is a big project and the 4.x version simply hasn't made it
to 3.5 quality yet.  Which makes the abandoning of 3.5 all the more
frustrating, since 4.x isn't fully functional compared to the 3.x
version, yet.

.....

[1]  I don't use any of the three.  I don't use a trashcan, as if I want
it deleted, I don't want it still taking space on the drive, I want it
deleted.  So that's not on the desktop.  I don't use kmix as my system
sound output is digital, to my 5.1 surround-sound amp, and the digital
output is line level and therefore not volume controlled, so I don't need
kmix.  I configure the keyboard (hal config file) before kde starts and
only do English anyway, so no use for kxkb, either.  I also don't use any
of the semantic desktop stuff, having it turned off via USE flag where
possible, so don't have akonadi, mysql or nepomuk installed at all, and
akonadi-server installed as a dependency of kdepimlibs which in turn is a
dependency of a bunch of stuff, but it's not actually used, either.  So
as I said, less kde bloat I don't use anyway to load, and the system runs
better for it.

--
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[Anne Wilson-5]

On Tuesday 29 September 2009 19:43:34 Duncan wrote:
> For session management, in kcontrol (aka systemsettings) under advanced
> user settings, session manager, "On Login" (this is the 4.3 location) try
> setting it to restor manually save session.  Then setup the session as
> you want, and save it.
>
There's no obvious way to save it.  The answer is deceptively simple.  If you
set your desktop as you like it, without any applications running, then log
out, your desktop will be saved.  If you've chosen to restore previously saved
desktop you should find that everything's fine.

Anne
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[Duncan-2]

Anne Wilson posted on Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:08:31 +0100 as excerpted:

> On Tuesday 29 September 2009 19:43:34 Duncan wrote:
>> For session management, in kcontrol (aka systemsettings) under advanced
>> user settings, session manager, "On Login" (this is the 4.3 location)
>> try setting it to restor manually save session.  Then setup the session
>> as you want, and save it.
>>
> There's no obvious way to save it.  The answer is deceptively simple.
> If you set your desktop as you like it, without any applications
> running, then log out, your desktop will be saved.  If you've chosen to
> restore previously saved desktop you should find that everything's fine.

Thanks, Anne.

--
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and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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[James Tyrer]

David Baron wrote:
> KDE4 works fine for me, BUT ...
>
> If one is using several plasmoids, desktops, etc., startup is
> sssslllloooooowwww. Startup status is not stable--desktops can be reordered
> and that trashcan is always mis-sized and mis-placed until I unlock widgets
> and mouse the curser near it, then voile. Sometimes kmix and kxkb appear on
> the panel, sometimes not (must be restarted).
>
Yes, I have to agree with you that Plasma startup is slow.  Part of this
seems to be caused by redundant redraws and reconfigurations.  Stuff
comes up in what appears to be a default configuration and is then
changed to match your configuration settings.  Apparently, this second
action doesn't always happen so your desktop then wrong.

I have seen this syndrome before in KDE-3 where stuff worked OK as long
as you don't change from the default configuration.  I sometimes wonder
if developers ever configure anything. :-)

Don't know what to tell you as it looks to me that this is going to take
major redesign and recoding to fix.

I like to have my DeskTop FolderView in the lower right rather than the
upper left of the screen.  Don't see why it should have to open in the
upper left first and then move to the lower right.  I see no redesign
occurring but the 4.3 branch after the 4.3.1 release does appear to be
becoming more stable.  My DeskTop FolderView hasn't disappeared lately
nor has it changed from DeskTop to $HOME recently.  It does seem to add
an unneeded vertical scroll bar when I startup the KDE session but that
is just an annoyance as long as I leave room for it (there is no
horizontal scroll bar and it simply rearranges the icons despite the
fact that I have "Lock in Place" on.

I was hoping that KDE-4.3 would finally be there (stable and usable).
But, now that I have switched to it for everyday use; I find that it is
still somewhat broken.  I have compiled a long list of issues.  I
suppose I should write bug reports for them.

--
James Tyrer

Linux (mostly) From Scratch
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[Duncan-2]

James Tyrer posted on Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:05:14 -0700 as excerpted:

> I have seen this syndrome before in KDE-3 where stuff worked OK as long
> as you don't change from the default configuration.  I sometimes wonder
> if developers ever configure anything. :-)

Well, at least they make it configurable, unlike /some/ popular DEs we
might name. =:^/  But yeah, that's the only real conclusion one has left,
that despite the options, the devs don't actually use them much, when
they keep saying how well kde4 works now, when one knows from experience
how broken it is in so many places, when one actually tries to use the
customization options that are available, and that are the reason many of
us prefer kde in the first place.

Oh, well... it's getting there.  It's just taking a lot longer than we'd
like, especially with kde3's support dropping as it seems to be, the
whole reason I even bothered with kde4 when it's so obviously immature
and partially broken when one actually tries to use it in anything but
the default config, compared to kde3, still.

--
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and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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[Anne Wilson-5]

On Wednesday 30 September 2009 07:52:45 Duncan wrote:

> James Tyrer posted on Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:05:14 -0700 as excerpted:
> > I have seen this syndrome before in KDE-3 where stuff worked OK as long
> > as you don't change from the default configuration.  I sometimes wonder
> > if developers ever configure anything. :-)
>
> Well, at least they make it configurable, unlike /some/ popular DEs we
> might name. =:^/  But yeah, that's the only real conclusion one has left,
> that despite the options, the devs don't actually use them much, when
> they keep saying how well kde4 works now, when one knows from experience
> how broken it is in so many places, when one actually tries to use the
> customization options that are available, and that are the reason many of
> us prefer kde in the first place.
>
> Oh, well... it's getting there.  It's just taking a lot longer than we'd
> like, especially with kde3's support dropping as it seems to be, the
> whole reason I even bothered with kde4 when it's so obviously immature
> and partially broken when one actually tries to use it in anything but
> the default config, compared to kde3, still.
>

I think your comments are are from objective.  Can you imagine just how many

possible combinations of things there are, for a customised desktop?  Of
course not every possibility will have been checked.  The most common ones
work.  If you have a less common need and it doesn't work, then you need to
file a bug report.  If no-one draws attention to the problem there's no way
the devs can know about it.

I'm not in agreement with the statements in your second paragraph either.  I
know it's still far from perfect, but even in KDE 3.5 some things worked
better than others.  The only sensible way is to try out the possibilities and
see which ones work for you.  I've seen features that others rave about, but
when tried I found that I didn't actually like them.  Desktop settings are a
very personal need.  What suits you won't suit me, and vice versa.  File bugs
reports for the things that are important to you, and live with the less
important stuff ;-)

Anne
--
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[Duncan-2]

Anne Wilson posted on Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:23:55 +0100 as excerpted:

> I think your comments are are from objective.  Can you imagine just how
> many possible combinations of things there are, for a customised
> desktop?  Of course not every possibility will have been checked.  The
> most common ones work.  If you have a less common need and it doesn't
> work, then you need to file a bug report.  If no-one draws attention to
> the problem there's no way the devs can know about it.

Excuse me, I know I sound a bit like a Johnny One Note to you, but you
hit a raw nerve, here.  Of course, this is all IMO, and all that, but...

The most common ones work... if others don't, please file a bug report.  
OK, fine.  I've not a problem with that.  I've not a problem with however
long it takes to "get it right", either.  What I've a problem with is
people saying it's ready for normal everyday use, when even such basics
as proper HTTPS support aren't there, the bugs filed, voted WAY up into
the the top-10, etc.  They KNOW.  True, the basic mechanisms work well
enough to sort of get by... if one's lucky enough to have their system
certs setup correctly, etc... and no MitM attack is underway.

The other day, some place I was going to popped up some warning about the
cert, so I clicked the details button to see what was going on.  The
dialog disappeared... and nothing came up!  No details, no explanation,
no crash dialog, no NOTHING!!  Well, except the systray notifier went 0/1
and had its little animation going... and going... and going... and
going...

But the **MOST** worrying thing about it was this.  Thinking something
had crashed or something, I tried the same URL again (it was an https bug
link in a mail or some such, so I could).  *THE* *THING* *WENT* *THRU*
*WITH* *NO* *WARNING*!!!  (Yes, I AM YELLING!  This is seriously screwed
up!)

OK, so maybe it was a temporary issue, and the problem went away.  I
forgot about it... until I had reason to reference the same page again,
and tried again, now probably an hour or two later.  SAME BEHAVIOR.  An
initial warning, click details to see what's up, everything disappears
except the little spinning notifier thing now says 0/2... (That's
actually when I really noticed it... and noticed it hadn't cleared the
first one, even some hours later.)  Click the link again, to see if I can
get the dialog to actually work this time...  IT GOES THRU WITHOUT A
WARNING AGAIN!!!

What bothers ME about this is that while this time that was just a bug
URL, it COULD have been someone's BANK, they MIGHT have been connecting
thru to using WIFI, and if they weren't CAREFUL, they MIGHT have been hit
with a MitM attack!  Checking details simply disappears the dialog, a
second try goes thru as if nothing's wrong...

They KNOW about it.  The BUG IS THERE.  It IS being worked on.  Fine.

What's NOT fine is them saying everything is hunky dory, it's all ready
for "normal" use!

WE'RE TALKING POTENTIALLY SOMEONE'S BANK CONNECTION HERE!!

Come ON!  Ready for normal use!  In what person's pipe dream!?  Maybe
these guys don't do online banking.  Maybe they do, but they don't
consider it normal.  Maybe they have so much money losing the contents of
a single bank account or two is like handing the bum on the street their
pocket change.  Maybe they don't have any money at all and don't care.

All *I* know is that *I* don't consider that acceptable, at least not for
something being marketed as ready for ordinary people to use.  That's
seriously ****ed up, no matter /how/ you try to finesse the PR.

Now all that's perfectly acceptable for a beta product, but KDE 4 isn't
any longer being marketed as a beta product... unfortunately... because
that's about where it is.  And yes, every release is progressing by leaps
and bounds, and I believe in KDE's devs and the tech and all the hard
work that's behind it.  That's not the problem.  The problem is saying
it's ready for normal use, when such "normal" use could compromise your
bank account, among other things!  For a properly warned about beta, such
things are perfectly understandable.  For a third major release, now
marketed as fully ready for ordinary use, it's not.  That's what we give
MS hassles on all the time, and I'm not going to let KDE slide just
because it's freedomware I'll use, while MS products are slaveryware I
was lucky enough to escape years ago.

As I said, the bug's filed.  As I said, the bug's voted WAY up.  They
KNOW.  Yet they STILL continue to promote kde4 as perfectly acceptable
for ordinary use.  Something's seriously wrong with this picture.  That's
all I'm saying... and yes, I may sound like a Johnny One Note, but
they're still saying it's acceptable for ordinary use, and I'm still
saying it's not, and will continue to say that, until the facts
appropriately match the claims.

BTW, a day later, the systray notifier still said 0/2... and would most
likely STILL say that, if I hadn't rebooted.

> I'm not in agreement with the statements in your second paragraph
> either.  I know it's still far from perfect, but even in KDE 3.5 some
> things worked better than others.  The only sensible way is to try out
> the possibilities and see which ones work for you.  I've seen features
> that others rave about, but when tried I found that I didn't actually
> like them.  Desktop settings are a very personal need.  What suits you
> won't suit me, and vice versa.  File bugs reports for the things that
> are important to you, and live with the less important stuff ;-)

All that's fine.  But when KDE 3.5 appears to be being abandoned, before
4.x works equivalently well... after Aaron Segio, president of KDE-
whatever at the time so in a position to speak for the project if anyone
is, so publicly stated that there'd be KDE 3.5 support as long as there
were users...  And when the PR is making statements about KDE 4 usability
that if anyone actually relies on, could cost them their bank account...

<shrug>  What can one say?

--
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[Anne Wilson-5]

On Wednesday 30 September 2009 13:47:32 Duncan wrote:

> Anne Wilson posted on Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:23:55 +0100 as excerpted:
> > I think your comments are are from objective.  Can you imagine just how
> > many possible combinations of things there are, for a customised
> > desktop?  Of course not every possibility will have been checked.  The
> > most common ones work.  If you have a less common need and it doesn't
> > work, then you need to file a bug report.  If no-one draws attention to
> > the problem there's no way the devs can know about it.
>
> Excuse me, I know I sound a bit like a Johnny One Note to you, but you
> hit a raw nerve, here.  Of course, this is all IMO, and all that, but...
>
> The most common ones work... if others don't, please file a bug report.
> OK, fine.  I've not a problem with that.  I've not a problem with however
> long it takes to "get it right", either.  What I've a problem with is
> people saying it's ready for normal everyday use, when even such basics
> as proper HTTPS support aren't there, the bugs filed, voted WAY up into
> the the top-10, etc.  

I've seen no such problem, so I can't comment.

> They KNOW.  True, the basic mechanisms work well
> enough to sort of get by... if one's lucky enough to have their system
> certs setup correctly, etc... and no MitM attack is underway.
>
> The other day, some place I was going to popped up some warning about the
> cert, so I clicked the details button to see what was going on.  The
> dialog disappeared... and nothing came up!  No details, no explanation,
> no crash dialog, no NOTHING!!  

Which browser, which version, and which kde version?  Whenever I've seen
certificate warnings they have followed through with details and I have been
able to continue or abort, as I choose.

> Well, except the systray notifier went 0/1
> and had its little animation going... and going... and going... and
> going...
>
I assume your default browser is firefox?   It sounds more like a browser
issue to me.  Not that I claim to be expert here, but I have seen other
reports of firefox having problems with certificates.  Since I didn't follow
them through, I can't say whether it is a problem of firefox, the certificate
issuing body, or the web sites in question.  What I don't see is how you can
blame KDE for that.

If indeed you were using konqueror, did you check what happens when you use
firefox?

> But the **MOST** worrying thing about it was this.  Thinking something
> had crashed or something, I tried the same URL again (it was an https bug
> link in a mail or some such, so I could).  *THE* *THING* *WENT* *THRU*
> *WITH* *NO* *WARNING*!!!  (Yes, I AM YELLING!  This is seriously screwed
> up!)
>
> OK, so maybe it was a temporary issue, and the problem went away.  I
> forgot about it... until I had reason to reference the same page again,
> and tried again, now probably an hour or two later.  SAME BEHAVIOR.  An
> initial warning, click details to see what's up, everything disappears
> except the little spinning notifier thing now says 0/2... (That's
> actually when I really noticed it... and noticed it hadn't cleared the
> first one, even some hours later.)  Click the link again, to see if I can
> get the dialog to actually work this time...  IT GOES THRU WITHOUT A
> WARNING AGAIN!!!
>
> What bothers ME about this is that while this time that was just a bug
> URL, it COULD have been someone's BANK, they MIGHT have been connecting
> thru to using WIFI, and if they weren't CAREFUL, they MIGHT have been hit
> with a MitM attack!  Checking details simply disappears the dialog, a
> second try goes thru as if nothing's wrong...
>

What would bother me is that you appear to be thrashing around, doing the same

things over and over again without attempting to find out what the problem is.

> They KNOW about it.  The BUG IS THERE.  It IS being worked on.  Fine.
>
> What's NOT fine is them saying everything is hunky dory, it's all ready
> for "normal" use!
>
> WE'RE TALKING POTENTIALLY SOMEONE'S BANK CONNECTION HERE!!
>
> Come ON!  Ready for normal use!  In what person's pipe dream!?  Maybe
> these guys don't do online banking.  Maybe they do, but they don't
> consider it normal.  

I do on-line banking all the time.  I have no problems whatsoever with it.  
Many other people also use it regularly.  How can you say that our experience
is abnormal?

> Maybe they have so much money losing the contents of
> a single bank account or two is like handing the bum on the street their
> pocket change.  Maybe they don't have any money at all and don't care.
>
> All *I* know is that *I* don't consider that acceptable, at least not for
> something being marketed as ready for ordinary people to use.  That's
> seriously ****ed up, no matter /how/ you try to finesse the PR.
>
> As I said, the bug's filed.  As I said, the bug's voted WAY up.  

So you keep saying, but you still haven't told us which bug number to read.

> They
> KNOW.  Yet they STILL continue to promote kde4 as perfectly acceptable
> for ordinary use.  Something's seriously wrong with this picture.  That's
> all I'm saying... and yes, I may sound like a Johnny One Note, but
> they're still saying it's acceptable for ordinary use, and I'm still
> saying it's not, and will continue to say that, until the facts
> appropriately match the claims.
>
> BTW, a day later, the systray notifier still said 0/2... and would most
> likely STILL say that, if I hadn't rebooted.
>
> > I'm not in agreement with the statements in your second paragraph
> > either.  I know it's still far from perfect, but even in KDE 3.5 some
> > things worked better than others.  The only sensible way is to try out
> > the possibilities and see which ones work for you.  I've seen features
> > that others rave about, but when tried I found that I didn't actually
> > like them.  Desktop settings are a very personal need.  What suits you
> > won't suit me, and vice versa.  File bugs reports for the things that
> > are important to you, and live with the less important stuff ;-)
>
> All that's fine.  But when KDE 3.5 appears to be being abandoned, before
> 4.x works equivalently well... after Aaron Segio, president of KDE-
> whatever at the time so in a position to speak for the project if anyone
> is, so publicly stated that there'd be KDE 3.5 support as long as there
> were users...  And when the PR is making statements about KDE 4 usability
> that if anyone actually relies on, could cost them their bank account...
>
> <shrug>  What can one say?
>

You can quote exactly what has been said over and over again.  There will be

support, in terms of security, for as long as necessary.  There will not be
development.  There simply is not the manpower, even if there were the will to
do so.

It would be more helpful to see less rant and more fact.  What exactly did you
discover about what was happening on your system?

Anne
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[Duncan-2]

Anne Wilson posted on Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:42:45 +0100 as excerpted:

> Which browser, which version, and which kde version?  Whenever I've seen
> certificate warnings they have followed through with details and I have
> been able to continue or abort, as I choose.

konqueror (or I'd be complaining elsewhere about it as it'd not be a kde
bug), kde 4.3.1.

> I assume your default browser is firefox?   It sounds more like a
> browser issue to me.  Not that I claim to be expert here, but I have
> seen other reports of firefox having problems with certificates.  Since
> I didn't follow them through, I can't say whether it is a problem of
> firefox, the certificate issuing body, or the web sites in question.
> What I don't see is how you can blame KDE for that.
>
> If indeed you were using konqueror, did you check what happens when you
> use firefox?

firefox works fine, luckily.

> I do on-line banking all the time.  I have no problems whatsoever with
> it.  Many other people also use it regularly.  How can you say that our
> experience is abnormal?

Actually, my banking site works fine as well.  However, that's because
the certificate is covered by system certs and isn't expired, etc.  If
there was a problem with it, given the bug and my own experience, I
expect I'd have issues even seeing what it was.

And in kde3, I could and did have the "low strength" (anything less than
128-bit and or less than full strength x of x bit, IOW, 56-bit, or 128
out of 256-bit, etc) turned off.  There's no control for that, now, and I
haven't the foggiest what kde4's defaults are and don't trust 'em.

> So you keep saying, but you still haven't told us which bug
> number to read.

I did, some time ago, posting an entire thread on it, AFAIK.  I also said
it's in the voted top-10 (aka most-hated, it's #6 as I write this), thus
making it easy enough to find.  However, repeating for reference... (Note
that some aspects from the original filing are now fixed, but there's
still no proper control of certs and encryption overall, and as I
demonstrated the other day, still bugs showing certs that don't validate
properly, expired or self-signed or whatever, tho some may indeed show
fine).

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162485

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[Dr. Edgar Alwers]

Hi Duncan,

I followed nearly a dozen postings on this issue ( _what_issue_really_? ) in
the last days. In my opinion this war is not helpfull, not fair and is
frustating for all the people working on KDE-4.

I build a linux system with KDE-3.5 from the scratch, and, in parallel, a
KDE-4.3.0 for a user "kde4", according to advices given by the KDE-people.
Step by step, I am now using KDE-4 for most applications I used in KDE-3,
grosso modo without problems. I am doing payments with QBanking, controlling
transactions, managing bank accounts etc. with KmyMoney, working with
virtualboxes running windows, using kmail, Staroffice. etc.  So in no way I
can agree with you, that KDE-4 is not usable, compared with KDE-3.  I am
using it already !

I would suggest to stop the turn-around-fight. It does not help, as the only
clear issue seems to be that you dont like KDE-4. Better, in my oppinion at
least, would be to concentrate in singular problems and to try to solve them,
together with, not against the developers.

Edgar
--
---------------------
Dr.-Ing. Edgar Alwers
Weinheim
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[Duncan-2]

Dr. Edgar Alwers posted on Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:33:22 +0200 as excerpted:

> I would suggest to stop the turn-around-fight. It does not help, as the
> only clear issue seems to be that you dont like KDE-4.

As I've said before, I /do/ like kde4, and in fact have switched to it --
no kde3 or qt3 on my box any more.  And it's great... for a beta.  If
they were calling it a beta... and continuing to support the older fully-
stable version until kde4 reached that point (likely around 4.5 at
current rate), everything would be fine.

--
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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[James Tyrer]

Anne Wilson wrote:
<SNIP>
> I've seen no such problem, so I can't comment.
>
Then go to:

http://capitalone.com/

You don't have to try to bank at a site to get the certificate error.

> It sounds more like a browser issue to me.
>
Yes, a Konqueror issue.

> If indeed you were using konqueror, did you check what happens when
> you use firefox?
>
FireFox make no complaint at this site.

<SNIP>

> I do on-line banking all the time.  I have no problems whatsoever
> with it. Many other people also use it regularly.  How can you say
> that our experience is abnormal?
>
I regularly have problems with online banking and bill paying.  The most
common problem is sites that do not work with Konqueror but do work with
FireFox.

> You can quote exactly what has been said over and over again.  There
> will be support, in terms of security, for as long as necessary.
> There will not be development.  There simply is not the manpower,
> even if there were the will to do so.
>
Actually, there seems to be enough to close all of the KDE-4 bugs as
"UNMAINTAINED".  Konqueror will no longer work with current Qt-3 and
X.org libraries; it is broken -- a dead issue without complete support.

> It would be more helpful to see less rant and more fact.  What
> exactly did you discover about what was happening on your system?
>
Are you suggesting that users should have to do their own debugging?

Note: see the "-- " before the signature, please use this.  Mail clients
interpret this as the end of the message.

--
James Tyrer

Linux (mostly) From Scratch
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[James Tyrer]

Anne Wilson wrote:
<SNIP>
> I've seen no such problem, so I can't comment.
>
Then go to:

http://capitalone.com/

You don't have to try to bank at a site to get the certificate error.

> It sounds more like a browser issue to me.
>
Yes, a Konqueror issue.

> If indeed you were using konqueror, did you check what happens when
> you use firefox?
>
FireFox make no complaint at this site.

<SNIP>

> I do on-line banking all the time.  I have no problems whatsoever
> with it. Many other people also use it regularly.  How can you say
> that our experience is abnormal?
>
I regularly have problems with online banking and bill paying.  The most
common problem is sites that do not work with Konqueror but do work with
FireFox.

> You can quote exactly what has been said over and over again.  There
> will be support, in terms of security, for as long as necessary.
> There will not be development.  There simply is not the manpower,
> even if there were the will to do so.
>
Actually, there seems to be enough to close all of the KDE-3 bugs as
"UNMAINTAINED".  Konqueror will no longer work with current Qt-3 and
X.org libraries; it is broken -- a dead issue without complete support.

> It would be more helpful to see less rant and more fact.  What
> exactly did you discover about what was happening on your system?
>
Are you suggesting that users should have to do their own debugging?

Note: see the "-- " before the signature, please use this.  Mail clients
interpret this as the end of the message.

--
James Tyrer

Linux (mostly) From Scratch
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[James Tyrer]

Dr. Edgar Alwers wrote:
> Hi Duncan,
>
> I followed nearly a dozen postings on this issue ( _what_issue_really_? ) in
> the last days. In my opinion this war is not helpfull, not fair and is
> frustating for all the people working on KDE-4.
>
What I think that Duncan (and I) find frustrating is Ms. Wilson's
instance that there are no problems.  The problems are mostly small
ones, but there are real problems that need to be fixed.

> I build a linux system with KDE-3.5 from the scratch, and, in parallel, a
> KDE-4.3.0 for a user "kde4", according to advices given by the KDE-people.

If you used:

http://techbase.kde.org/Getting_Started/Build/KDE4.x

then said 'people' would be me.  I originally wrote it for people that
knew what they were doing and just need some hints.  Now that more
people are using KDE-4, I have been adding to it to make is more usable
to a less knowledgeable audience.  If you have suggestions, please feel
free to contact me: tyrerj@....

I will try to provide suggestions on how to switch to KDE-4 in the near
future.

> Step by step, I am now using KDE-4 for most applications I used in KDE-3,
> grosso modo without problems. I am doing payments with QBanking, controlling
> transactions, managing bank accounts etc. with KmyMoney, working with
> virtualboxes running windows, using kmail, Staroffice. etc.  So in no way I
> can agree with you, that KDE-4 is not usable, compared with KDE-3.  I am
> using it already !
>
Good to see your success.  I have also switched to KDE-4.3 BRANCH.  I
find that it works.  However, I do have to say that there a lot of small
issues that need to be resolved.

> I would suggest to stop the turn-around-fight.
<SNIP>
You are correct.  However, there would be no fight if Ms. Wilson was
willing to accept the fact that people are having various problems with
KDE-4 and try to resolve them rather than insisting that everything is
fine.  To fix problems, you have to find them.  Fixing the problems will
result in a better product.  The "fanboy" attitude does not result in a
better product.  I hope that when you find some minor issues that you
will report them to:

http://bugs.kde.org/

Doing so will help the developers improve your KDE experience.

--
James Tyrer

Linux (mostly) From Scratch
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[Anne Wilson-5]

On Thursday 01 October 2009 00:53:09 James Tyrer wrote:

> Anne Wilson wrote:
> <SNIP>
>
> > I've seen no such problem, so I can't comment.
>
> Then go to:
>
> http://capitalone.com/
>
> You don't have to try to bank at a site to get the certificate error.
>
> > It sounds more like a browser issue to me.
>
> Yes, a Konqueror issue.
>
> > If indeed you were using konqueror, did you check what happens when
> > you use firefox?
>
> FireFox make no complaint at this site.
>
> <SNIP>
>
> > I do on-line banking all the time.  I have no problems whatsoever
> > with it. Many other people also use it regularly.  How can you say
> > that our experience is abnormal?
>
> I regularly have problems with online banking and bill paying.  The most
> common problem is sites that do not work with Konqueror but do work with
> FireFox.
>

Then use firefox for banking.  You know well enough the situation with

konqueror.

> > You can quote exactly what has been said over and over again.  There
> > will be support, in terms of security, for as long as necessary.
> > There will not be development.  There simply is not the manpower,
> > even if there were the will to do so.
>
> Actually, there seems to be enough to close all of the KDE-4 bugs as
> "UNMAINTAINED".  Konqueror will no longer work with current Qt-3 and
> X.org libraries; it is broken -- a dead issue without complete support.
>
> > It would be more helpful to see less rant and more fact.  What
> > exactly did you discover about what was happening on your system?
>
> Are you suggesting that users should have to do their own debugging?
>

I'm suggesting that for their own protection, not to say sanity, they should

not go on perpetuating a problem.  Either resolve it, or walk away.  Entirely
your choice.  My decision is made.  I will not respond more unless I can
actually help someone.  I have been giving 'works for me' answers in the hope
that it would prompt people to understand that issues can be local ones.  If
they don't want to listen, OK.

> Note: see the "-- " before the signature, please use this.  Mail clients
> interpret this as the end of the message.
>
I do.

Anne
--
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[Anne Wilson-5]

On Thursday 01 October 2009 00:53:37 James Tyrer wrote:
> Anne Wilson wrote:
> <SNIP>
>
> > I've seen no such problem, so I can't comment.
>
> Then go to:
>
> http://capitalone.com/
>

I did.  In konqueror.  It said that Capital One uses an invalid certificate and
cannot be trusted.  It then asked if I wanted to continue.  I said 'yes' and
it entered the site.

Anne
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On Thursday, 2009-10-01, Anne Wilson wrote:

> On Thursday 01 October 2009 00:53:37 James Tyrer wrote:
> > Anne Wilson wrote:
> > <SNIP>
> >
> > > I've seen no such problem, so I can't comment.
> >
> > Then go to:
> >
> > http://capitalone.com/
>
> I did.  In konqueror.  It said that Capital One uses an invalid certificate
>  and cannot be trusted.  It then asked if I wanted to continue.  I said
>  'yes' and it entered the site.

A user on kde@... also reported such certificate problems and I've seen
that myself as well. Initially I thought it applied to all certificates but I
think it only applies to those issued by VeriSign.

Can somebody confirm this? I.e. post a link to a SSL enabled site using a non-
VeriSign certificate?

Cheers,
Kevin
--
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KDE user support, developer mentoring


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On Thursday, 2009-10-01, James Tyrer wrote:

> Dr. Edgar Alwers wrote:
> > Hi Duncan,
> >
> > I followed nearly a dozen postings on this issue ( _what_issue_really_? )
> > in the last days. In my opinion this war is not helpfull, not fair and is
> > frustating for all the people working on KDE-4.
>
> What I think that Duncan (and I) find frustrating is Ms. Wilson's
> instance that there are no problems.  The problems are mostly small
> ones, but there are real problems that need to be fixed.

This is not getting us anywhere.
Anne does not insist that there are no problems, but that if there are known
working alternatives (such as Firefox) to use them instead of reiterating over
the already known problems.

Reiterating over known issues does not imply they get more attentions instead
new issues are harder to get known because they are drowned in threads like
this one.

Cheers,
Kevin

--
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring


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