Dear all, It seems a lot of people have been having problems after upgrading their SuSE 8.0 to KDE 3.0.2. I would like to comment on these briefly, since I am thinking of wrting a serious compliant letter to SuSE and I would like to hear your opinion. But first, since some of these problems have been reported here more than once, it is perhaps useful to list them again, together with the solutions that worked for me: 1. Yast2 cannot be accessed through a GUI, only through its clumsy text interface. If you try to start the GUI interface Yast2 does fire up (but some people even experienced some segfaults), but the interface does not show up. Solution: I downloaded and installed qt3-non-mt-3.0.4-87 2. KPPP does no longer work. Solution: create the file /etc/ppp/peers/kppp and add "plugin passwordfd.so" to it. 3. Kinternet does not work. Solution: to the file with the name of your provider in /etc/sysconfig/network/providers add the line "STUPIDMODE="yes"" (mind the quotation marks around "yes") 4. Apps handbook no longer work. Solution: none that i know of (correct me if I am wrong) Now, in my opinion these are very serious defects for a relatively minor upgrade version. You would expect such problems when upgrading to a X.0 version, not from 3.0.1 to 3.0.2.. And since KDE 3.0.2 is mainly a maintance release i cannot but conclude that SuSE did a poor job of packaging the upgrade files. Now, this can happen, nobody is perfect, but where SuSE really disappointed me is in its reaction to these problems, namely there was no reaction, just silence, and this is simply not acceptable. Speaking for myself, I cannot allow any serious fault in my box: I work on it and I very much want it to be stable (for instance, right now i have on it the 60 abstracts of a conference I am organizing). That's why i keep it always updated with YOU and I never launch myself into upgrading from source or install any development package. Finding myself unable to launch Yast2 and connect to the internet (another thing I need for my job) was really upsetting. Furthermore, none of these problems were solved by support at SuSE, but only by experimenting and by all the helpful people here on this list (thanks again, folks!). These hassles certainly cost me lot of time and effort. All this is surprising, since SuSE was not obliged to put those KDE 3.0.2 upgrade packages in YOU to start with. SuSE is very clear about not providing update patches, but only bugfixes, so there was no reason to include KDE 3.0.2 in YOU. It was already available on their LINUKS page so those who wanted it could get it there, but those of us who prefer a stable system could keep on updating with YOU. Since then, SuSE's behavior only got worse: the KDE 3.0.2 packages were silently removed from YOU and then (silently) put back again, with no word from SuSE warning people of the problems found in the original upgrade packages. We don't even know whether the "handbook" bug has been solved at all. This not the way any serious firm, be it big or small, behaves. So, to conclude, i was going to send SuSe a feedback letter asking for: 1. the removing of all the unstable or broken pacakges from YOU, including KDE 3.0.2 and any other eventual broken package, and an open disclosure of all the problems those pacakges had. 2. new, patched packages of KDE 3.0.2 that those of use that already installed the original ones should upgarde to - again. Only these patches should appear in YOU, not the general KDE 3.0.2 packages. 3. A major cleanup of the "linuks" update packages. From what i can see, the old KDE 3.0 packages are still there, end even some KDE 2.x packages all of them mixed up in the same place. In my opinion, exactly as the "Linuks" page is divided into SuSE version it should also be divided into KDE version so that, for instance, a 7.3 user that did not upgrade to KDE 3.0 before can do it now. All these corrections are very simple to implement, and it is surprising that SuSE did not already do them. SuSE is certainly a great distribution and the problems with KDE 3.0.2 or the deficiencies of the Yast2 text interface do not change this simple fact. But SuSE's reaction to the KDE 3.0.2 problems is managing to do this. It is in SuSE own interest to provide KDE updates, and that's the reason they do it, but we have the right to expect those updates not to break anything in our systems and to be replaced by pached one if they do. It' as simple as that. Let me know wht you think. fred