Linux Tech Talk 5
February 9th, 2010 by ComputerBob
Two days ago, I installed Debian Squeeze onto my new 64-bit PC, using ext4 partitions, KDE4 and grub2.
Two nights ago, I was up until 3:00 AM, thanks to Debian Squeeze’s version of KDE4.
My experience may surprise you. It certainly surprised me.
For more details, please see My Debian Adventure 3: Squeeze & KDE4.
Permalink:
http://www.computerbob.com/wp/linux-tech-talk-5.php
Tags:
Debian, DIY, Linux, Personal, Tech Support
February 10th, 2010 at 7:27 pm
you could have just alt+f2 then kdesu dolphin.
February 10th, 2010 at 8:21 pm
That may work just fine in whatever distro you’re running, with whatever version of KDE4 that you’re running, but I know that your suggestion was one of the many, many workarounds that didn’t work for me in Debian Squeeze with KDE 4.3.4.
February 10th, 2010 at 11:16 pm
In openSUSE 11.2 (KDE 4.3.1), I use this to start Konqueror in Super User mode:
dbus-launch /usr/bin/kfmclient openProfile filemanagement
This is from a Menu item. Interestingly, kdesu doesn’t work any more.
The Dolphin equivalent is:
dbus-launch dolphin %i -caption “%c” “%u”
February 10th, 2010 at 11:30 pm
I’ve found that Midnight Commander is better for a root file manager than graphical applications. In Ubuntu the package is mc and can probably be installed on Debian the same way, “apt-get install mc” or “aptitude install mc”.
The advantage of MC is that it works through ssh and serial console connections. It uses function keys to access the menu but they can be substituted with an Esc # sequence where 1 through 0 is the equivalent of F1-F10 (useful on serial consoles which only support F1-F4 and systems with broken function keys).
It has a good built-in editor but Ubuntu defaults to something else (the internal editor is easily selected in the Options > Configuration menu). It can also open and browse compressed archives (including deb) if the various archive tools are installed.
If your Debian install has root disabled and uses sudo instead (like Ubuntu) then to switch to root in a terminal use “sudo su”.
If your install is completely broken due to failed package installation, try logging in to a text terminal or switch to a VT with Ctrl-Alt-F1 then using Aptitude to finish the job. Basically “aptitude” then “u” to update from the repository lists, “U” to select upgradable packages, “g” to go and apply the changes, and “q” to quit. To search use “/”. It uses regex-style searching so “^” means to look at the beginning of a name and “$” means at the end. To search for “mc” exactly you would enter “^mc$”. “n” finds the next match forwards and “N” finds the next one backwards.
If you start up in a terminal mode and your network is not functioning , see if your network device has an IP address with “ifconfig -a”. If you are relying DHCP to set the address automatically, you may need to run “dhclient” to get the network going.
February 10th, 2010 at 11:33 pm
@geoff_f - Thanks, but unfortunately, that’s another one of the many, many workarounds that reportedly work in some versions of some distros and some versions of KDE4 (especially for openSUSE and Ubuntu users), but didn’t work for me in Debian Squeeze with KDE 4.3.4.
IIRC, I tried several different variations of your suggestion, but they always resulted in a string of error messages related to dbus-launch.
February 10th, 2010 at 11:42 pm
@jhansonxi - Thank you! I really appreciate you taking the time to document all of that here, and I remember from my Windows days — as well as from trying it a couple of times in Linux — that MC is a very useful tool.
I hope that your documentation effort here will help other people who run into similar problems in the future. But, after all of the things that had already gone wrong for me, when my attempt to install kde-full made Synaptic crash and then repeatedly hard-lock my system, it was no longer worth it to me to keep trying to fix all of the problems that I found in Debian Squeeze’s KDE 4.3.4.
February 11th, 2010 at 12:12 am
from my 2 days experience with debian squeeze n kde4 that i downloaded from debian.org, i use kdesu konqueror, so when i click on any config file, kwrite will automatically launch with root permission same like kde3…
February 11th, 2010 at 12:27 am
While I’ve recently worked on a Ubuntu system that had damaged package database that would cause Synaptic to crash, it’s the only one I’ve ever seen. I was able to fix it by using apt-get and dpkg. Usually when I encounter a large number of problems on an install it’s due to failing hardware, often bad RAM. Try running memtest on it.
February 11th, 2010 at 12:50 am
@gerabah - I’m happy that that worked for you, and I sure wish it had worked for me too, but it didn’t in Debian Squeeze with KDE 4.3.4.
February 11th, 2010 at 1:00 am
@jhansonxi - Bad RAM is a good suggestion, but before I installed Linux on it, I watched this PC run several apps at the same time in Windows XP Home Edition — which uses much more memory — without any problems at all. And since then, this PC has been running something else all day, every day, without any problems at all. I hope to have enough time to write more about that in the near future.
February 11th, 2010 at 4:23 am
oh yeah…. i found this too when i tried to upgrade using synaptic, go to origin tab (lower left of synaptic), there are 2 packages that are installed in “Local” section, i get rid of those n installed python-gtk2 and python-glade2.
doing a full upgrade and installed kde-full without any errors…..
February 11th, 2010 at 4:55 am
I use mc for all root file management and text editing. If you like GUI more, than Krusader with its root mode could be an option.
February 11th, 2010 at 5:01 am
http://sidux.com/module-mirrors.html
February 11th, 2010 at 6:49 am
I admire your patience. I would have dumped the OS much sooner. I run Linux (Ubuntu) exclusively at home for more than a year now after windows had become so slow again after a few installs/uninstalls of programmes, but I just want to use a computer, not google around for even the most trivial things like changing an IP address. Ubuntu does most of that for me, although I have had problems as well there. I’m even thinking if Debian stable or testing would not even be better for me, as for most programs I don’t need to have the latest cutting edge.
February 11th, 2010 at 6:54 am
This is the most insightful post into KDE4s configuration problems that I have seen in the last two years (it got bookmarked) - but:
* Synaptic crashing is a unlikely to be a KDE bug - although you could be weirdly unlucky
* sudo dolphin && sudo konqueror in Konsole do work for me (I don’t think this from konsole would fit into your workflow, but in case someone who just needs GUI file management reads this article). Plain su does not. sudo dolphin and opening /etc/fstab opened a GUI editor that could edit.
I’m running a similar setup, full unstable not squeeze, Synaptic is the best frontend to aptitude, KDE 4.3. The current trend in KDE4 development is adding new configuration interfaces at every release and although they have left many embarrassing holes (systemsettings as root being the most glaring) they look like they will be eventually ironed out. New Coke is here to stay - although I couldn’t bring myself to use 4.0 to 4.2, the potential for GUI cleverness in the framework they have built has promise once they have had a few years to get the config options and documentation put in place.
Good luck. I have known some of your pain.
February 11th, 2010 at 9:28 am
I just finished reading your article about Debian Squeeze and the new Coke, Ahem!, I mean KDE. It seems to me that you’re a glutton for punishment, Bob. You wanted to tryout KDE 4, a constantly evolving, bloated piece of developer dogma on a currently beta (testing means, golly, that it’s TESTING - not ready!) GNU/Linux distribution. I have an 8 year old son that I have to remind to keep his hands to himself and quit goofing off. What you wrote about is the same thing, dontcha think? You demanded KDE and a beta distribution to work as you wanted instead of realizing what these things currently are. Couldn’t keep your hands to yourself….;)
Please Bob, stop feeding the idiot trolls.
If the KDE devs purposefully introduced speed-bumps into the admin of a KDE desktop, then I applaud them. Whereas it’s nice to have pretty GUIs for setting system settings, some peripheral functionality, etc., it’s paramount that the masses understand what’s going on. By enabling any ignorant “OOoh, Linux is shiny” user to mess about on the box they welcome the same kind of BS that Windows did by doing the same. If a stripped-down KDE forces a root terminal - that’s wonderful. GNU/Linux is already, and has been for ages, terribly simple. It’s just not simple to folks otherwise corrupted by Windows.
Some final thoughts. I gave up on Gnome and KDE a long time ago and found righteousness in OpenBox. Sure, any “idiot” can use it but it makes them earn it. Like school and society used to do. Remember? I switched to GNU/Linux a long time ago because it didn’t insult my intelligence or get in my way. Sounds like KDE is doing just that. And it may be a blessing in disguise. I understand you want to use KDE - but it is what it is and sometimes we have to move on.
February 11th, 2010 at 9:51 am
Have you tried to do it in a new session as root?
February 11th, 2010 at 9:54 am
@gerabah - Thanks for your upgrade tip, but apparently, you misunderstood something in my article. I did a full install, not an upgrade. Synaptic crashed after I added one metapackage (kde-full) to that full install.
February 11th, 2010 at 10:55 am
I heard a lot of times that KDE4 version 4.0 to 4.1 were not usable, as opposed to 4.2. I also heard that versions 4.0 to 4.2 were not usable as opposed to 4.3…
it seems that at least some KDE people wanted version 4.1 into Debian Stable (Lenny).
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-kde-talk/2008-June/000919.html
It didn’t happen (thanks God!).
I’m *mostly* a gnome/xfce user, but when I first saw KDE4, I wanted to try it out. Now I feel like I burned my hands (it was KDE 4.0). I tried a few times again “just to see”, with versions 4.1 and 4.2, but to no avail.
Funny thing is, I saw my dad using KDE3, and I tried it myself. Nice DE. I now have it as an option on my system (I often switch DE, just because I like to change — though I see that I spend more and more time with XFCE, because it starts quicker).
Maybe one day KDE4 will be usable. I’d even go as far as to say ‘Probably’.
I guess I’ll try again with 4.4. Then 4.5…
February 11th, 2010 at 12:08 pm
Thanks for the post Bob, I’m planning to install Lenny as soon as I have the time and was wondering about going through the necessary upgrades for KDE 4.x, but this has convinced me it’s not worth it. Actually it reminded me a lot of my first adventures with Mandrake 8.x - and with the same fix, namely a good, light WM.
I’m a Fluxbox man through and through, but use KDE from time to time because my wife uses it, so I like to keep up to date. Speaking of which - among that mountain of extra functionality, has KDE gained anything like the auto-hiding Slit? :o)
Finally, I’d like to add another vote for Midnight Commander as the best thing since sliced bread - no, scratch that, I slice my own bread, but it’s the best sysadmin tool since XTree Gold, and certainly the most useful of De Icaza’s fruits that I’ve come across.
February 11th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Yea i’m sorry, but that is what you get for using a testing release (squeeze) and expecting it to be stable. I’v been using KDE4 via Kubuntu since 4.0 came out. i’ll admit that 4.0 and 4.1 were not the greatest, but 4.3 and now 4.4 are amazing, and assuming you know your way around, just as good as gnome or any other DE. The computer lab in my school uses kde 3.5, I hadn’t used it in years, and it felt like I was back in the 90’s. I’m sorry but what is the point of having a shiny new 64 bit computer and not actually use all that ram and processing power? My laptop has 1gig of ram, and an old AMD 1.8ghz. single core and it runs KDE 4.3 with 3d effects just fine.
As for dolphin as root? Open a terminal and type “sudo Dolphin”. Or in the manue editor add an entry “kdesu Dolphin”. If neither of those work then it’s debians fault, not KDE. Both those methods have always worked for me.
February 11th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
Yes, KDE4 is simply a disaster. It was not broke, people liked it and knew how to use it. Fork it!
February 11th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
DOS wasn’t broke, windows 3.1 wasn’t broke….it’s called moving forward. What else could they have done with KDE3 without adding in hacks or workarounds (like gnome)? You can still use KDE3 if you want, but the KDE project had to go somewhere, they arn’t one day gonna decide that all goals have been met and it’s time to shut down development.
And quite honestly I don’t remember KDE 3 being that perfect, I had lots of bugs and crashes, to the point where I switched to Gnome for a while.
I honestly hate when people form an opinion by using something they are not familiar with for a couple of days, it’s even worse when they are using a testing release and expect everything to work. It has taken me years to learn KDE as well as I have, whenever I try other DE’s i’m lost, I get frustrated cause stuff is different, but I don’t blame the DE.
February 11th, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Hi Bob,
Thanks for sharing your experiences with others!
We have even had similar experiences with stable versions so we just let the alphas and betas do their own thing.
Don’t remember which distro or kde version we had bad experiences with, but as a result we’ve tried to stay away from kde altogether.
Keep up the great work!
February 11th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
First off, I have been a devoted kde user since 2001. This is coming to you from kde 4.3 (squeeze)
Do I think kde4 is a good replacement for kde3.x - no. The best way I can describe kde4 is to say it appears the kde development team was inflitrated by MS vista programers. kde4 has some good points but what they have done to the menu is not one of them. I looked at lancelot but haven’t installed it yet. The programs that made kde special (konqueror in particular) no longer perform as expected. In my experience, dolphin works well if you disable the search engines (nepomuk and strigi). Stiil, it’s not konqueror.
I have experienced your black screen twice in recent upgrades using squeeze. Both instances required packages from sid to fix the problem. Not difficult but . . . (in the first instance it was a dependency issue with debian not related to kde ie: the required package was not available in squeeze)
I will use kde4 as long as I can (I’ve already had to upgrade my video card to use kde4 - having to upgrade hardware sounds a lot like another software maker we all know and love) but just in case I have downloaded the full set of lenny dvd’s so I can rebuild my system with software that does what I want.
Good luck
Rod
February 12th, 2010 at 2:45 am
I am a veteran KDE-3.5 lover who is currently trying out KDE-4.3.2 via a backport to Debian Lenny you get from this line
deb http://www.debian-desktop.org/pub/linux/debian/kde43 lenny-backports main contrib non-free
in /etc/apt/sources.list
I had a lot of troubles with this backport until I installed (using apt-get) the kde4-full metapackage. After that, kde4 was still fairly buggy (crash messages from various apps once a day or so), but I am sticking with it because that crash rate is (barely) acceptable, and I want to gain experience with the future of KDE.
I believe I know the reason for that rather high crash rate. The important point is Debian squeeze (and therefore also the backport I am using) are currently stuck at the KDE-4.3.2 point release. That is three (!) point releases and therefore zillions of bug fixes behind the KDE-4.3.5 version that was just released.
Debian unstable does have 4.3.4, but according to http://bjorn.haxx.se/debian/testing.pl?package=konqueror, for example, the promotion of 4.3.4 from unstable to testing is being held up by some build issue on the mips platform. It’s just a fact of life that promotions to testing are often held up this way, and I am not complaining about that, but it does mean Debian testing users (and also backport users) are stuck with a really crummy version of KDE-4.3, and basically we just have to wait until the promotion logjam is broken or explore the perils of using Debian unstable instead, or go back to KDE-3.5 with Debian stable for a while longer.
February 12th, 2010 at 5:48 am
Bob, while it is true most root actions service menu’s are distro specific and do not work out of the box in debian, this one does
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Simple+Root+Actions+Menu?content=72762
February 12th, 2010 at 10:57 am
@Alan W. Irwin - I don’t follow the Backports repositories, but because I had been looking for “the right time” to try installing Squeeze with KDE4, I’ve been watching the Testing/Squeeze repositories for the past several months. The KDE4 that I installed the other day had packages that were nearly all 4.3.4, and kdebase has been 5:55 in the Testing repositories for at least the past several weeks. I understand your explanation of how things get “stuck” waiting to be approved in Debian — let’s see how long it takes before we see the newly released KDE SC 4.4 — but it looks to me like what I installed was actually KDE 4.3.4 as I stated, not 4.3.2.
@Danum - Thank you for that suggestion, but if that service menu works for you, then I suspect that you are using a different distro and/or version of KDE4. A service menu is basically just a few lines of code that add a command-line command to one of your context menus. So a service menu can’t work unless the command-line commands that it issues are also capable of working if you were to issue them on a command line. As I described in my article, my installation had a few tasks that I was not allowed to do, no matter which of the many, many command-line commands I tried.
February 12th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Bob,Distro’s having provided Mepis with KDE 4xx for the last 18 months Canteras-c being the last DVD, and built KDE4 on squeeze and sid, I am fully aware of what a service menu should and should not do, I am also aware of debian being tied down, as suse is with regards to doing things as root, eg: running kwrite (or whatever) as root from the command line in KDE 4, out of the box it will not, where as with KDE3 it will, KDE 4 is a different animal as people are finding out.
The quick way is when you open Konsole as user “DISPLAY=:0.0 xhost +” then log in as root and you can edit to your hearts content as you would in KDE 3xx
You made a post today on Mepis , look at the following post by richb, also look at Brooko’s signature while you are there
you can contact me at Mepis, always happy to help.
Danum
February 12th, 2010 at 2:36 pm
@Danum - “The quick way is when you open Konsole as user “DISPLAY=:0.0 xhost +” then log in as root and you can edit to your hearts content as you would in KDE 3xx”
Of course — why didn’t I think of that? LOL!
(But thanks for that tip. It apparently works for you in Mepis Linux — I just hope it will work for me the next time I try Debian KDE4).
February 12th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
@Bob it works for all Debian,I run squeeze and sid with KDE 4 as does the service menu, the crunch is do not try to use KDE4xx as you would KDE3xx if you do you will end up wanting to through it out of the window, as you have found out.
The next time you try a Debian KDE 4, well a new release of 4.4 should be available shortly and being as Warren has released a KDE 4 version, it will be pure Debian so there is no conflict, hope you will try it.
Danum
February 17th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
ComputerBob, I haven’t tried KDE 4.3 or higher. I did use kde 4.2 and it was OK, if a bit slow. I did like the Lancelot menu as a replacement for the KDE default menu.
The problems you had using sudo were because it was never set it up. Debian does not create a sudo account like *buntu and many others. You must configure it yourself. The configuration is trivial, utilizing visudo. You do this via a command prompt, for good reason.
Open up a konsole
Type su
Type your root password
type visudo
Here is what I have in mine (my username is alex):
%alex ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /sbin/halt, /sbin/ifconfig
%kvm ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /sbin/ifconfig, /usr/sbin/brctl, /usr/sbin/tunctl, /sbin/ifenslave
What you are looking for is probably (assuming your username is computerbob ):
%computerbob ALL=(ALL) ALL
Running a file manager as root is not what I recommend, but it is your computer and to each his own.
As you become more comfortable in *nix, you will come to appreciate the console. You’ll also learn to limit what is done as root, a file manager can easily become a file mangler if you are root.
The crash can be fixed at the command line. Fire up the PC in failsafe, and as root type:
aptitude update && aptitude safe-upgrade
This should tell you what to do (probably dpkg –configure -a)
This should help you diagnose what package went wrong (dependency issue most likely).
Cheers,
Alex C.
February 25th, 2010 at 11:04 pm
Bob I feel your pain. I’ve been running Squeeze KDE 4 for a couple of months now. After going thru all of the nonsense that you described I got it running smoothly. I kept notes on what I did and how I did it. At first everything was going well. The weekly build that I downloaded included the .30 kernel installed the ext3 file system. I installed it first on an AMD 32 bit machine ran great no problems. I then installed it on an AMD 64 bit machine ran great no problems UNTIL I upgraded to the .32 trunk kernel. Went very smooth and ran great on then 32 bit machine, but upgrading the 64 bit kernel gave me a message that I needed to enable the non free repository so it could find the non free firmware, well it was enabled, and the non free firmware was already installed. Then at boot I got the “pci 0000:02:05.0: BAR 6: address space collision on of device [0xfeaa0000-0xfeabffff]” error believe it got something to do with ECC ram. I’ve got non ECC ram (same with the 32 bit machine but no error on that box) on this machine so I’ll ignore that.
After messing with the .32trunk kernel for a while I went back to the .30 kernel. Things went back to running smooth until yes until! There was an Open Office update yep I updated it and it left me with some corrupt files on my system. So hey it’s testing right so I downloaded and installed the new weekly build on Feb. 8th. Now this build came with the .32 trunk kernel and I decided to try ext4 with this install.
Ok install went smooth no complaints about needing non free firmware, boot yep there’s the space collusion error very first line, I’ll continue ignoring that. Seemed to run well until an update of synaptic, I like to browse thru the packages using it, I use aptitude for the work. Well this updated synaptic runs until I try to run a search with it. As soon as I click on the search box it crashes the KDE 4.3.4 desktop.
So after this long drawn out post here’s my problems with KDE 4: Synaptic crashes it when I try to search packages with it, and just for good measure I can’t create any new files in a desktop folder widget, if I try to create any new file or directory in a desktop folder widget my entire system freezes requiring a reboot!
All in all I like KDE 4 so I hope these little quirks get straightened out. I don’t have these problems with the 32 bit machine only with the 64 bit box.
March 4th, 2010 at 5:35 pm
I’m using KDE 4.3.4 on a Debian Testing amd64 install and had similar problems with gaining root access to graphical applications, this was cured by installing kdesudo. I now run everything ‘kdesudo kate’ etc. I haven’t experienced your other problems although I don’t use synaptic or ext4. I run Testing as a ‘rolling release’ and ‘aptitiude full-upgrade’ regularly with no problems.
March 16th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
I run Debian Squeeze amd64 and am able to open Konqueror in superuser mode. Right-click on your app launcher (either kickoff or classic; I use classic) and select “menu editor”. You’ll find “File Manager- Super user Mode” under “system” -> “more applications”. Uncheck “Hidden Entry” and it will then show up in your system menu under “more applications”. If you don’t want it there click and drag it in the menu editor to wherever you want to access it from. I’m doing a tutorial on the Konqueror file manager for my website, which will be posted Monday. The URL is http://www.linuxadventures.net.
March 16th, 2010 at 4:50 pm
So Konqueror’s Super User mode is in the KMenu — but users have to “un-hide it” or they’ll never know that it’s there! That’s very good information for my readers to know. I’ve been using Xfce instead of KDE ever since I wrote this article, and so far, I’m not missing KDE very much at all.
March 16th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
I didn’t like Xfce much, but what ever works for you is great. I stayed with Debian Lenny and KDE 3.5 until Squeeze got 4.3. I really like KDE 4 now that it’s starting to come of age. I have an experimental build of KDE 4.4 on a spare machine and am confident that this is the point at which KDE 4 becomes a full-featured replacement for KDE 3.
I don’t mind that they’ve got the SU file manager hidden… most users really don’t need to be screwing around in SU mode. By the way, I think that particular option works for whatever you’re using as the default file manager. I’ve got mine set to Konqueror so it works for Konqueror, but if you leave it on Dolphin I think it’ll apply to that app.
April 3rd, 2010 at 10:08 am
Bob, I could have written this blog for you. Been there, done that. I have exactly the same experience. I am on Debian testing since 2002 or so, and using Linux exclusively since 2004. Debian Testing has always been more stable than production releases of other distros.
After I tried and saw KDE4 first in Kubuntu (that was KDE 4.0, and Kubuntu was production, go figure!) I posted some comments about the user interface was Gnomanized (lacking a lot of settings and options, oversimplified like Gnome) and worst of all, Vistalized. (Guess why!) Not many comments on my statements.
Half a year ago my main machine on KDE 3.5.9 crashed and I decided to install KDE 4.3 as it should have been better by that time. Anyway, describing my experiences here would just duplicate your report. I was so upset I posted in the Linuxquestions.org and KDE forums, that KDE3 was absolutely fine, and now it was impoved to a wrecked state. You know what reactions you get. It is because of Debian, it is Debian Testing, not stable, KDE4 is fine, it is you who is the problem, it is the VGA driver, etc. etc.
To make a long story short, I am on XFCE now, but I am lacking some nice features I had in KDE3, like middle clicking on programs in the task bar to cycle thru multiple applications below that button.
Refraining from upgrading to Testing becomes more and more difficult every day as Lenny is starting to get outdated quickly. Recently I saw some posts that Squeeze is being frozen now. I hope not, it means that the next Stable will carry KDE4. Debian is gonna loose its credebility for being rock stable if KDE4 is included.
jlinkels
April 29th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Have had a similarly frustrating experience trying to do a clean install of Debian testing.
Have you tried using gksu kate to launch the Kate editor with root privileges.
There area also the Debian Live releases if you just want to try it out first:
http://live.debian.net/project/releases/
May 19th, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Good morning Bob
Looking forward to the next episode on your blog, now that kde in testing is at 4.4.3
Just quickly, I have been running testing since a couple of months before Lenny froze while in testing. Give or take. Since then, have had to re-install on some of my machines (I tend to break things by playing around in areas that I really should stay out of, and often break things so badly a wipe and restart is the quickest and easiest way out of it). So, among those reinstalls has been with the same version of kde that you describe in your article, and only once in 32 bit - all the others have been 64 bit. And have not had any problems like you describe except once, and that was only just this week - crashed from first boot, crashes during every boot, but once could get to a desktop, all fine (and a wipe and redo has since fixed all those problems completely). However, the difference is that I chose no desktop environment during the first stage of the install, and then at first boot did the ‘apt-get xorg kde-full synaptic’ thing. When that finished reboot to a smoothly running system. And yes, lots of stuff installed that will probably just sit and take up space (shrugs - I can live with that as an “average” user). But I agree - for those who have a need or a desire to know, having more information on what will install with each meta-package would be helpful.
Perhaps doing a minimal install left out those needed things. Dunno. Which is why I would be very interested in seeing the result if you tried exactly the same thing now, see if it falls apart as much. And maybe using a business card install - get everything totally fresh.
Same as you, first time with kde4 when it came into testing to replace kde3, tried to find that open-the-filemanager-as-root in the menus, couldn’t find it, so edited my menu’s to create my own; really simple to do. Other things, like running the System Control as root - -, type in ‘kdesu systemsettings’, , enter password and dingo norm, all beaut. Yes, 4.3 had issues, but fewer than 4.2, while 4.4 seems to have taken many good steps forward.
I’m getting used to the new menu, but yes, it does take more clicks, is more “difficult” to get to things. Fixed that by only needing to go to the menus for things I do not often run. Got quite a number of icons living on the left and right sections of the task bar, and for my wife, have added her most-used icons on her computer to the new desktop-that-is-not-a-desktop (in the kde3 sense of the world).
Squeeze is still a little way from going into freeze, though there is a “transitioning freeze” (whatever that is) being discussed at the moment (I think, from memory, to be implement early next month); still major work in python to be done, as well as a number of release-critical bugs. Looking at what is coming through the pipeline now in the string of updates we have had over the last few weeks, I feel very confident that when Squeeze goes stable, it will be as rock solid and reliable as Lenny is now. KDE4 and all.
With greetings
Romane
July 24th, 2010 at 10:21 pm
Sorry to hear you had problems with KDE 4. I just installed a fresh install of Debian testing with KDE 4.4.4.
No dolphin file manager as su though. But I have a simple solution to it. On the K menu button right click on it to edit menu. A box will pop up to edit your menu entries. Simply add a new item, such as in the system menu where dolphin is located. Add dolphin again, but rename it to dolphin as su or something else. Use the path /usr/bin/dolphin. In the advanced tab check box the one that says use as a different user, type in root. Change the icon if you wish, add description etc. and click save. System will update the menus. Click on the new entry and a dialog box should pop up asking for the root password. If you get an error message from KDE, ignore it and try again. If it persists, log out or reboot. Once back in it works perfectly every time. I got the idea from Mepis 8.5 in which they do have dolphin file manager as su.
Other than that one snafu with KDE, I am very pleased with it. Debian gives you total freedom to do with what you want with your desktop, not so with other distros that pre-populate your home folder with folders and other stuff and desktop setting that lock you down and can’t change. And the latest version of testing is pretty stable now. I think they’re getting closer to a release version sometime soon.
Sometimes New Coke hits the spot just right.
Have fun with Debian!
Ken registered linux user 500490
July 24th, 2010 at 10:43 pm
Ken,
I wish you well with your Debian Squeeze KDE4 system, but your reply comes more than 5 1/2 months after I wrote this post, so it doesn’t surprise me that Debian Squeeze KDE4 has gotten somewhat better since then.
But after using it full-time ever since July of 2006, I’m no longer a KDE fan. I’ve been happily using Debian Squeeze Xfce for the past 5 1/2 months. For my uses, it’s faster and nearly as complete as KDE 3.5 was, but it doesn’t have any of KDE4’s bugs, bloat, unwanted/unnecessary paradigm shifts and superfluous glitz.
November 2nd, 2010 at 7:46 pm
Thank you for taking the time to cover something that doesn’t get much press these days: A KDE4 desktop running on Debian.
Just three days ago I went the same route as you did. I grabbed the Squeeze weekly build and had a trouble free install. Even wireless worked!
I have to agree that the KDE4 given out of the box is pretty minimal. Even more so than the default Slackware 13 desktop if I remember correctly.
Even so I spent a few days with it. Changing, tweaking, adding on, compiling a few things from source etc etc. In the end I had a kick-butt KDE4 desktop but I would suggest looking elsewhere for a more integrated full-featured KDE4 experience out of the box. openSUSE maybe? I dunno, find what fits best I guess.
Great write up! Thanks for covering Debian GNU/Linux!
March 10th, 2011 at 2:18 am
I started fulltime with KDE 3.0, mostly because of K3b. KDE 3.5.10 is/was very solid and stable. There are just a couple things it doesn’t have, like Konqueror thumbnail view, which works good in KDE4 dolphin. Mounting extra drives is easier in dolphin than Kwikdisk.
While dolphin has some conveniences like automount, if some files buried in a folder have the wrong permissions, dolphin puts a ?-mark on the drive mount. And “file associations” sometimes opens 52 or more “I can’t open this” messages when entering a folder that has html files with remote links.
I miss Kedit, Showphoto, and Showimg. One thing very frustrating to me is forcing me to use mousepad or nedit for a simple gui text editor. Sometimes the default text editor is WINE notepad! When I’m on Windows I replace Notepad with Metapad. Why would I EVER use windows Notepad on Linux??
Several times already, I tried to edit the top panel in KDE 4.5 and accidentally lost all my settings.
Finally PClinuxOS upgraded to KDE4.6 and all my settings were lost. That’s the last straw for me. I’ll go back to IceWm, fluxbox, or another Distro.
March 17th, 2011 at 8:23 pm
Sorry. I love KDE 3, I hate KDE 4. I’m very sad.
Debian Stable should never ever include such an unstable and featureless software ! Damn, the KDE crew killed every single interesting feature of KDE 3 and replaced them with annoying, CPU consuming, buggy plasmoids. Windows 7 is more usable, and even MacOS is more root friendly !
I had all the problems described in the original post, plus I don’t understand why they also removed the right click features off the shortcuts. I tried the now “stable” Squeeze (64 bits), and I reached hell when I saw that KDE 4 is eating 50% of my 2 cores after a few idle minutes, without anything showing in the monitoring tools.
So I’ll definitely not use it, which makes me sad because : it was my only hope for a well integrated Linux Desktop, it’s really beautiful, Dolphin is great. But Plasma won’t make it, that’s for sure.
March 19th, 2011 at 9:10 pm
Well, it went better after all ! Thanks to some previous posts here and a lot of my nightly time. Please let me sum up what it takes to solve the biggest problems. It might save some one’s time.
So, Dolphin is probably not meant to be run as root, but Konqueror still is, exactly as before (make a shortcut and choose “run as another user” in the properties), and lets you open any editor (as root), as well as Konsole, just as in KDE3. This is not a workaround, just the way it’s meant to be used, I guess. And the beauty of this is that you still have the cascading columns feature like in Dolphin.
The stability problem I had and the wild CPU consumption I experienced and some kind of freezes that occurred while starting or stopping things like applications or KDE itself were all related to a display driver problem (Nvidia). In fact, the 2 instances of kded4 where trying to access some resources that were not provided by the system, as far as I intuitively understand, and they stupidly kept trying in an infinite loop. Here is how it became stable :
The Nvidia installer was not a good idea, maybe because I let it compile using the latest available gcc, which is not the one Debian uses to compile the kernel. I enabled the non free packages in Synaptic and tried installing the precompiled drivers afterwards, which broke down the dependencies tree with apparently no way to fix it and no way to uninstall this… Reinstalling a lot of related packages, more or less randomly, magically solved the problem though. No science here, I just gave a lot of tries.
Not critical but can be annoying for those who have summer/winter time : the Debian installer set UTC=false in /etc/default/rcS probably because it knew I have a Windows XP installed on this system. Never assume anything by trusting any kind of logic, just go and check.
Grub2 seems cryptic, and it is, but changing an option “default=saved” and adding something like (excuse my laziness) “savedefault=true” in the /etc/default/grub config file allowed me not to bother anymore with this.
Not having a “super user mode” in the configuration tool is a nonsense, however it took me 3 minutes to find the line in /etc/kde4/kdm/kdmrc that holds the autologin feature I like to use. I don’t know if it’s usefull but if I find some goodies about this I’ll add them here later.
I still hate plasmoids, but at least I can live with them soon, so I’m happy !
If anyone is interested, I made a sceencast lately that shows how to run Firefox as another user than the one logged in, which, if you cleverly set the files ownerships and permissions, slightly increases your privacy and files integrity in case a malicious script breaks in through Firefox or its plugins.
July 7th, 2011 at 11:13 am
I have absolutely same suffering experience, so I don’t waste my typing and your reading repeat same scenario again. Leading by Google when searching online help articles. I had at least 10 times attempting to have a working Squeeze system on my computer, but it remains an embarrassment till now. I want to love it, but it’s hard to be loved.
I have one 8 year-old laptop and 13 year-old desktop with me since they were all-brand-new. They are working fine and I have no reason to put them away. That’s also the reason I hate WINTEL’s monopolistic architecture like herding dog compelling users to follow their direction — making existing still edible hardware or software become garbage. The game of this industry is playing like this, and one day they become giant, they’ve got too much bureaucratic idiot to be fed.
All right, back to talking Linux. I believe the first day it birth to earth was by genius talented and enthusiastic to bring a new continent to this world. But I have a sad feeling that the fairytale wasn’t continued with pure personal enthusiastic and talent, today.
I’ve read from Debian’s forum about those repeated for years problems that new users easily being trapped when introduced or explored into the world of Linux. I was tuned low tone by reading those asking for help thread and diversified advisories. But few of them was found to be an official solution or decent measure to solve those issues. I appreciate your straight forward honest attitude to bring up criticism, and I read another poster entitled him/herself as CAI ENG with some screen resolution issue, you were both there.
My interesting turned to be the audience of a debate, which happens between criticism new users and defending maintainers or something like this. I believe there’s a lot of kind hearted person around there in those forum providing help to others, BUT, I realized that a number of population there belong to systematic hierarchy to make THINGS run, they are not volunteer, I assume. And self-claimed Linux world doesn’t run as they claimed too, because they all need a big number of money to make things happen. For example, debian is not run by original ones, but just leave us a beautiful virtue of lover story. Talent engineer loves his girl friend, everybody loves that story, it’s a good marketing tool. I believe that every distro has their sophisticated marketing system as fully-armed commercial entity. They are not free actually, and they do earns money, and I believe most of their prospects of generating profit, not donation, it’s different. People should remember that nowadays, product is only a mediate, key is how large of population this mediate can attract. I’m a conspiracitism?
So, user don’t need money to ‘buy’ any distro as an fully responsible product, because on particular scale, it’s not produced by people maintaining and keep the project running, their responsibility is keep a number of volunteer to work for free, and, worse is, nobody is responsible for any of problem solving as warranty. This brand-new business model is really a threat to crash existing WINTEL monopolistic architecture.
I can hardly distinguish by good or evil when the world change. Under WINTEL architecture, I feel be propelled by them to gather more money to keep my gears up-to-date, while, now in world of *nix, I would no doubt to make myself read a lot, try a lot and fail a lot, to learn how to survive. We have 2 option to choice - to make trends or to follow trends. nobody force anybody.
I just want to share some feeling during days suffered with a new thing in my life. To those generous providing assistance on the Internet, those pure volunteer, let me pay my truest respect and best wishes…
Jason Xu