After all the problems with 11.4 and 11.3 on my ThinkPad, I've decided to blow it all away and revert to 11.0. At least that worked well.
Problems:
11.4 - unable to use KDE, as system locked up and display faded 11.3, unreliable USB detection. Why no "Safely remove" option? Display often shifted about 1/2" to right, but mouse didn't. Poorer performance. General frustration with KDE 4.
As I've often pointed out, since I first saw KDE 4, a few years ago, it needs a lot of work to be anywhere near as useful as 3.5 It would be *VERY* nice if support were resumed for 11.0, which would appear to be the last decent openSUSE distro. My experiences with KDE 4 are almost enough to send me back to Windows! What a piece of crap!!!
On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 3:14 PM, James Knott james.knott@rogers.com wrote:
After all the problems with 11.4 and 11.3 on my ThinkPad, I've decided to blow it all away and revert to 11.0. At least that worked well.
Problems:
11.4 - unable to use KDE, as system locked up and display faded 11.3, unreliable USB detection. Why no "Safely remove" option? Display often shifted about 1/2" to right, but mouse didn't. Poorer performance. General frustration with KDE 4.
As I've often pointed out, since I first saw KDE 4, a few years ago, it needs a lot of work to be anywhere near as useful as 3.5 It would be *VERY* nice if support were resumed for 11.0, which would appear to be the last decent openSUSE distro. My experiences with KDE 4 are almost enough to send me back to Windows! What a piece of crap!!!
James,
There is a KDE 3.5 repo for 11.1/11.2/11.3 in OBS. 11.1 shipped with full KDE3.5 support, but I think OBS has a more recent version for it.
11.1 is under "Evergreen" support. 11.2 is scheduled to lose support in a couple months.
So based on just what you say above, 11.1 or 11.3 seem like they would be reasonable choices to consider in addition to 11.0 (which lost support in Sept. I think.)
Greg
Greg Freemyer wrote:
There is a KDE 3.5 repo for 11.1/11.2/11.3 in OBS. 11.1 shipped with full KDE3.5 support, but I think OBS has a more recent version for it.
I suppose I can give that a try, provided it clears the issues with USB recognition and display shift. Currently, in 11.3, when this happens, the entire display shifts about 1/2" to the right and wraps around to the left side. However, the mouse doesn't know that and I have to click about 1/2" to the left of where I want to. Regardless, judging from my experience and what I've been reading from others, 11.4 has a lot of serious issues. KDE 4 is a whole other matter that should have been given a lot more thought before hand.
On 03/17/2011 03:14 PM, James Knott wrote:
After all the problems with 11.4 and 11.3 on my ThinkPad, I've decided to blow it all away and revert to 11.0. At least that worked well.
Problems:
11.4 - unable to use KDE, as system locked up and display faded 11.3, unreliable USB detection. Why no "Safely remove" option? Display often shifted about 1/2" to right, but mouse didn't. Poorer performance. General frustration with KDE 4.
As I've often pointed out, since I first saw KDE 4, a few years ago, it needs a lot of work to be anywhere near as useful as 3.5
There is a "minor" problem, KDE 3 depends on Qt 3 and neither is supported upstream anymore.
It would be *VERY* nice if support were resumed for 11.0, which would appear to be the last decent openSUSE distro. My experiences with KDE 4 are almost enough to send me back to Windows! What a piece of crap!!!
Well, there are other desktop environments supported by openSUSE.
GNOME LXDE Enlightenment Windowmaker Xfce
To name just a few.
Robert
Robert Schweikert wrote:
There is a "minor" problem, KDE 3 depends on Qt 3 and neither is supported upstream anymore.
But there are real problems with KDE on 11.4 that make it unusable here. On 11.3, it's better, but still has problems on my ThinkPad that make it unsuitable. If KDE 3 gives me a stable, usable system, then that's the way I have to go.
It would be *VERY* nice if support were resumed for 11.0, which would appear to be the last decent openSUSE distro. My experiences with KDE 4 are almost enough to send me back to Windows! What a piece of crap!!!
Well, there are other desktop environments supported by openSUSE.
I started with KDE many years ago, because it was better than the alternatives. I've never cared for Gnome and the others tend to be too basic or limited. The only desktop I've used that has features that KDE 3 is missing is the OS/2 Workplace Shell. It had a lot of very nice features, that I've never seen anywhere else. However, many of those features depend on the OS/2 extended attributes, which are not used anywhere else.
On Thursday 17 Mar 2011 20:14:08 James Knott wrote:
After all the problems with 11.4 and 11.3 on my ThinkPad, I've decided to blow it all away and revert to 11.0. At least that worked well.
Problems:
11.4 - unable to use KDE, as system locked up and display faded 11.3, unreliable USB detection. Why no "Safely remove" option? Display often shifted about 1/2" to right, but mouse didn't. Poorer performance. General frustration with KDE 4.
As I've often pointed out, since I first saw KDE 4, a few years ago, it needs a lot of work to be anywhere near as useful as 3.5 It would be *VERY* nice if support were resumed for 11.0, which would appear to be the last decent openSUSE distro. My experiences with KDE 4 are almost enough to send me back to Windows! What a piece of crap!!!
Before you give up on progress, I would try to localise the problem with 11.4. Use a Live CD if you don't have an install atm.
Google says the graphics hardware on the R31 is an intel i830, which probably doesn't support any advanced graphics.
Check:
* Is the lockup/display fade issue specific to KDE? Try choosing IceWM from the login screen instead * If so, perhaps the video driver is advertising capabilities it doesn't have. Try disabling desktop effects manually: ** Boot to runlevel 3 (add '3' to the kernel params in the bootloader) ** Login as user ** Run "kwriteconfig --file kwinrc --group Compositing --key Enabled false" ** (this edits kwinrc for you) ** Switch to runlevel 5 (init 5) and login * If not specific to KDE, perhaps your hardware does not support modesetting - boot with kernel param 'nomodeset'
HTH
Will
NB I blacklisted a bunch of intel chipsets from using KDE's desktop effects before 11.4 was released, but only the ones I know have problems.
On Friday 18 Mar 2011 09:25:22 Will Stephenson wrote:
Before you give up on progress, I would try to localise the problem with 11.4. Use a Live CD if you don't have an install atm.
Google says the graphics hardware on the R31 is an intel i830, which probably doesn't support any advanced graphics.
Check:
- Is the lockup/display fade issue specific to KDE? Try choosing IceWM from
the login screen instead
I see this works from an earlier mail from you, which is a good start. Try disabling compositing as below and also nomodeset.
- If so, perhaps the video driver is advertising capabilities it doesn't
have. Try disabling desktop effects manually: ** Boot to runlevel 3 (add '3' to the kernel params in the bootloader) ** Login as user ** Run "kwriteconfig --file kwinrc --group Compositing --key Enabled false" ** (this edits kwinrc for you) ** Switch to runlevel 5 (init 5) and login
- If not specific to KDE, perhaps your hardware does not support
modesetting - boot with kernel param 'nomodeset'
On 2011/03/18 09:25 (GMT+0100) Will Stephenson composed:
NB I blacklisted a bunch of intel chipsets from using KDE's desktop effects before 11.4 was released, but only the ones I know have problems.
I just installed 11.4 to Intel 820 P3/933MHz with 512M RAM & onboard nVidia NV5M64 [RIVA TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro] (rev 15), Dell GX200, and enabled FX are insanely slow with Xorg's default choice to use nouveau.
On Saturday 19 March 2011 at 11:56:34 (GMT+2) Will Stephenson wstephenson@suse.de wrote:
NB I blacklisted a bunch of intel chipsets from using KDE's desktop effects before 11.4 was released, but only the ones I know have problems.
What are those blacklisted chipsets? Where have you listed them?
On Saturday 19 Mar 2011 10:57:52 Stan Goodman wrote:
On Saturday 19 March 2011 at 11:56:34 (GMT+2) Will Stephenson
wstephenson@suse.de wrote:
NB I blacklisted a bunch of intel chipsets from using KDE's desktop effects before 11.4 was released, but only the ones I know have problems.
What are those blacklisted chipsets? Where have you listed them?
These specifically blacklist 945GM, GM45 Express, 965GM and Ironlake Mobile GEM from using the Blur and Lanczos desktop effects with some versions of Mesa because the drivers advertise shader capabilities that they don't actually have:
[Blacklist][Blur] Advanced Micro Devices=DRI R600:-:7.8.1,DRI R600:-:7.8.2 Ati=Radeon HD 3650:-:3.3.9901 Intel=Mesa DRI Intel(R) 945GM GEM 20100330 DEVELOPMENT x86/MMX/SSE2:-:1.4 Mesa 7.10,10,GM45 Express Chipset GEM 20100328:-:7.8.2,GM45 Express Chipset GEM 20091221:-:7.7.1,965GM GEM 20100328 2010Q1:-:7.8.2,965GM GEM 20091221 2009Q4:-:7.7.1,Ironlake Mobile GEM 20100328:-:7.8.2 NVIDIA=GeForce 6150/PCI/SSE2:-:195
[Blacklist][Lanczos] Advanced Micro Devices=DRI R600:-:7.8.1,DRI R600:-:7.8.2 Intel=GM45 Express Chipset GEM 20100328:-:7.8.2,GM45 Express Chipset GEM 20091221:-:7.7.1,965GM GEM 20100328 2010Q1:-:7.8.2,965GM GEM 20091221 2009Q4:-:7.7.1,Ironlake Mobile GEM 20100328:-:7.8.2
Will Stephenson wrote:
- Is the lockup/display fade issue specific to KDE? Try choosing IceWM from
the login screen instead
I can log in with IceWM and KDE failsafe desktops
- If so, perhaps the video driver is advertising capabilities it doesn't have.
Try disabling desktop effects manually: ** Boot to runlevel 3 (add '3' to the kernel params in the bootloader) ** Login as user ** Run "kwriteconfig --file kwinrc --group Compositing --key Enabled false" ** (this edits kwinrc for you) ** Switch to runlevel 5 (init 5) and login
- If not specific to KDE, perhaps your hardware does not support modesetting -
boot with kernel param 'nomodeset'
The above didn't help.
On 3/18/2011 4:25 AM, Will Stephenson wrote:
Before you give up on progress, I would try to localise the problem with 11.4.
I almost did give up.
Google says the graphics hardware on the R31 is an intel i830, which probably doesn't support any advanced graphics.
My IBM has i845 which might not be all that advanced either.
- Is the lockup/display fade issue specific to KDE? Try choosing IceWM from
the login screen instead
Until finding this thread, the idea that it might be KDE over a more general X11 issue didn't cross my mind. IceWM worked with no trouble.
** Run "kwriteconfig --file kwinrc --group Compositing --key Enabled false" ** (this edits kwinrc for you)
Before doing this, I had tried several things, most of which did not work. I was able to use the xorg.conf.install
- If not specific to KDE, perhaps your hardware does not support modesetting -
boot with kernel param 'nomodeset'
I found this might not be very conclusive. According to 11.3 release notes http://www.suse.com/relnotes/i386/openSUSE/11.3/RELEASE-NOTES.en.html "On Intel without KMS the Xserver falls back to the fbdev driver" which seemed to work for me anyway.
NB I blacklisted a bunch of intel chipsets from using KDE's desktop effects before 11.4 was released, but only the ones I know have problems.
I guess I have another one for you. After doing the kwinrc thing you described, I was able to run X11 with KDE4. my chipset is 845G
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