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List:       opensuse
Subject:    Re: [opensuse] Why do I feel that KDE is slow
From:       Xen <list () xenhideout ! nl>
Date:       2015-09-08 18:40:35
Message-ID: alpine.LNX.0.999.1509081928200.12542 () swan ! dds ! nl
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I really want to send this only to Felix Miata but I guess I'm obliged to 
send it to the list as well.

On Sun, 6 Sep 2015, Felix Miata wrote:

>> 3. Never used that; I consider most of the "Gecko" menu (KDE menu) to be
>> quite unusable. I only use the favourites and the search feature.
>
> There are two different Gecko menus. Which are you referring to? I use the
> one that more resembles the cascading Win9X menu, and the original KDE3 menu,
> rather than the XP and newer type (the one that slides sideways within a tiny
> screen area, instead of a tree and expanding branches).

I'm using the new menu. The old menu seems to go back to before Windows 98 
or 95 and even then. I have been away from Linux for so long that I don't 
remember what is KDE3. I remember using OpenSUSE some while ago, I was in 
KDE then. My impression was actually that KDE was better than it is now.

Even when lots of things frustrated me, so much that I had to stop using 
it because my mind couldn't cope.

Or at least my brain couldn't. Not sure about the mind part.

>> I'm just saying menus were better shortcuts in the past. We have seen a
>> deterioriation.... what did that book call it? Regression. We have seen
>> a regression in recent years as to how the GUI functions, not a progression.
>
>> "It is the mark of a primitive mind to view regression as progress".
>
> A big KDE problem as I see it is this twice observed discard of what went
> before in order to rewrite from scratch, the first time KDE4, then
> Kwhateverit'scalled now. Rewrites cause loss of functionality that time won't
> always cure. The people making decisions and doing the coding are not the
> same, and different minds reach different conclusions.

I never really witnessed that change from KDE 3 to KDE 4. I know I ended 
up in KDE4 when I installed a linux distribution last Januari. I 
considered it quite attractive but with a lot of usability problems, if I 
see it now. I'm not sure about going to KDE 3. There's a reason I'm not 
still using Windows XP... you know.

The big shame seems to be that any effort directed at KDE 4 seems to be a 
wasted effort, or would be a wasted effort, even if all of regular 
OpenSUSE is still using it (in that sense) because all the development 
effort is now at KDE5/Plasma 5.

Who are the people making the decisions, if they are not coders?

I looked at the Plasma 5 announcement from last year (july) and I couldn't 
quite understand what they were getting at. They mentioned a framework 
rewrite for certain reasons, but the reasons really never became clear to 
me. It wasn't clear to me at all how an average user would benefit from 
it.

At first I was a bit enthusiast about it and I have one Plasma 5 thing 
installed (in Kubuntu) but I don't really use it. I spend all my time in 
OpenSUSE 13.2 / KDE4 at this point.

I sometimes observe the mailing lists of the Plasma and Kwin etc., those 
kind of development mailing lists. I do not really participate. It 
astounds me how complex and complicated their coding is and what 
difficulties they need to solve every day. I get scared away by it, for 
real, that much is true.

However from the viewpoint of someone who would like, perhaps, to improve 
upon KDE4, it seems wholly pointless. I'm not even sure if any code would 
make it to anyone.

> On the bright side, if you do prefer the ways of old, KDE3 lives on in the
> openSUSE repositories. It remains my everday DE workhorse.

Right. Maybe it's interesting, but it would mean a whole change once more 
(for me).

>> Actually my position these days is that there is no good software anymore.
>
> What's good doesn't necessarily have to be discarded. I still use orphaned
> DOS software 24/7, and use OS/2 to run it. Linux DOS emulation won't allow
> SVGA text video to work right.

Like what? That makes me curious but also incomprehensible. I have no DOS 
software left, except for Borland Pascal, that I can really still use. 
Maybe games yes.

>> It's just the popup window switcher that takes time to fade in in a very
>> nasty way. I guess you can call that configuration. Seriously...
>
> Standard Kwhatever has bling enabled. With some video configurations, bling
> causes mind-numbing sloth. Good chance you have a hardware/driver obstacle to
> decent response. Bling surely needs to be turned off.

I'm not sure if I'm just not more demanding than the average Linux person. 
Perhaps some animation that everyone (or at least the designers) consider 
okay, is not okay for me. I'm not sure if it has to do with hardware.

> In Kwhatever, from configure desktop -> display and monitor -> compositor,
> "Enable compositor on startup" needs to be deselected. Or, prior to starting
> the K*5 session, edit ~/.config/kwinrc section [Compositing] to include a
> line "Enabled=false".

I don't really think I want to turn the compositor off?......

>> I might alt-tab to a window instantly and it is the right window, right?
>> So I am already done, right? But no, after my window is already visible,
>> the dialog is still fading in. So, that dialog grabs my attention...
>
> On the hardware/driver side, provide us output from 'lspci | grep VGA', and
> put /var/log/Xorg.0.log somewhere we can see it, web space,
> http://susepaste.org/, whatever. You may need to enable a normally unneeded
> manual X, cmdline or driver configuration that one of us seeing these will
> highlight.

Erm, okay. lspci | grep VGA is:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series 
Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)

I don't really like uploading my personal logs to everywhere. This "your 
logs are belong to us" attitude is not really my thing. But here is some 
output from Xorg.0.log:

[   141.494] (II) intel: Driver for Intel(R) Integrated Graphics Chipsets:
     i810, i810-dc100, i810e, i815, i830M, 845G, 854, 852GM/855GM, 865G,
     915G, E7221 (i915), 915GM, 945G, 945GM, 945GME, Pineview GM,
     Pineview G, 965G, G35, 965Q, 946GZ, 965GM, 965GME/GLE, G33, Q35, Q33,
     GM45, 4 Series, G45/G43, Q45/Q43, G41, B43
[   141.495] (II) intel: Driver for Intel(R) HD Graphics: 2000-6000
[   141.495] (II) intel: Driver for Intel(R) Iris(TM) Graphics: 5100, 6100
[   141.495] (II) intel: Driver for Intel(R) Iris(TM) Pro Graphics: 5200, 
6200, P6300

Ah, you know, I can't care. There is no hardware issue.


>> ... Blur. Translucency. I
>> don't know. Make a new user lol, it will all be there.
>
> Only briefly if you turn off compositing first thing on session start, then
> restart; or if you first perform the above mentioned configfile edit.

But I have no issue with these things and I want them around. I wouldn't 
want to use KDE without Blur or Translucency.

>> Everything that tries to use Akonadi I basically try to stay away from...
>
> You sound like a candidate for a switch to KDE3 or TDE, a simpler life.

:). I also want to be where the development is. That makes it so hard to 
be with Linux these days. I don't like systemd, so where do I go? I 
haven't even learned how to work with sysv or whatever it is / was called 
really. Learning systemd seems to mean not learning anything.

Perhaps I've said it before:

And people may call this trolling, but it's true.

If I were to show a girl a computer, I wouldn't want her to see 
OpenSUSE/KDE 4. From the Linux world, only Unity/Ubuntu, perhaps. But my 
order of appearance would be:

- Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Mac OS something, Mac OS some other 
thing, Ubuntu/Unity, Windows XP (theme royale) -- after that it loses 
importance. I guess KDE 4 comes after, and I don't know about MATE or 
Cinnamon, nor do I really care. While KDE 4 looks nice, there are many 
things that are not right and a girl will just shy away from that. I want 
to present her something cool, but an OS where all the details are off, is 
not that. I now have a pleasant taskbar (panel), but some icons are way 
too small, others have bad colour/are unreadable, the calendar is 
dysfunctional, I'm still using Firefox which I don't like, the window 
decoration theme I've selected has icons which are either too small or too 
big, I can't adjust the location of the title text with sufficient detail, 
there is a missing property in KWin/Aurorae that I need for that. I 
wouldn't ever want her to see GIMP as it is, Krita is okay I guess, 
Calligra looks nice but it crashes all the time and has all these bugs, 
OpenOffice might be okay. Konsole has tabs that you can't see apart of 
each other; to notice which one is the active tab, not enough contrast no 
matter what widget theme I choose. I've never used Activities, I don't 
like it don't need it and it is just sitting there. KDE is still full of 
shortcuts that are hard to recover from. The krunner thing is not right at 
all, and it goes on and on. It does not live up to my standards at all. 
Perhaps I should be grateful that I can use it in any case, or at all. 
But.

That doesn't mean it is suitable for the things I want to use a computer 
for.

Call me a troll then, this is just my opinion. Some people think opinions 
and feelings are so unreal that they must be trolling attempts.

I care about girls and I know what the teenagers are doing. I know I am 
miles behind them in terms of graphical skill and they are all using 
smartphones and tablets and whatnot for that stuff. These tablet apps are 
so advanced in getting cute stuff done that I can hardly begin doing that 
same stuff using general desktop applications such as GIMP with my limited 
skill. I think what they do in 5 seconds will cost me 20 years of GIMP 
study. That's just one part of it.

Maybe I'm just sick in my mind for all who cares.

I'm not a graphical designer and I am pretty much dependent on people who 
know this stuff for how my computer looks.

Ofc my computer is important to me. Other people have cars, watches, 
clothes, whatever. I have computers and what I do involves computers. I 
want to be able to show what I do. The coolness factor has to be factored 
in.

Compiling a Linux kernel in the days of old was cool.

Using the CLI is actually pretty cool, especially scripting. There is not 
much uncool about scripting except for the incomprehensability. Everyone 
loves hacking and hackers, but they usually mean breaking into other 
systems.

People like power and love power. A hacker is someone with power. But a 
computer programmer is also someone with power. If you can really make 
your system the way you want, and build up a toolkit around it that you 
can use to further your goals, that is in itself attractive.

There is not really all that much attractive about the system I am using 
today. Doing stuff in the linux GUI is still so arduous (for me) that I am 
happier off in the CLI. But I do stuff in the Linux CLI that I would use 
the e.g. Windows GUI for. Not because the Linux CLI is more powerful, but 
becaus the Linux GUI is less so. I find that I barely do any file 
management in the Linux GUI; I hardly use Dolphin. People proclaim how 
great Dolphin is; sorry, I don't use it.

But the CLI is very limited for easy file manipulation. I can do in a 
Windows GUI in 10 seconds what takes me 2 minutes in a Linux CLI. And it 
takes me 5 minutes in Dolphin and the like. So to speak.

The CLI is really only great for scripting. So that is reason I spend so 
much time writing scripts: doing it by hand without premade scripts is 
annoying and tiresome. You need the scripts to automate the stuff that 
would otherwise cost too much energy. Once you have the thing automated it 
is nice and then it is more powerful perhaps than a good GUI. But mind you 
if it breaks.

So configuring Linux involves a lot about writing scripts to automate 
mundane tasks. Sure, once you have it set you can do more than you would 
be able to do by yourself in some Windows or Mac environment. It would 
really be cool to have automated, incremental, tarred, rolling backups 
that are automatically propagated to remote systems. Once the entire thing 
is set I can cron it or start it by hand and there is no more worry about 
it.

Cron is not really what I like, it is very primitive. I'd want something 
that could be set and managed and controlled and monitored and observed 
using a real GUI. I don't think it readily exists. That could still be 
cron, but at least it should not be about editing files. Even when there 
is no GUI I still don't like cron.

The power of Linux is scripts, sure. But you also need a heck of a lot of 
it. Without scripts you are nothing, nowhere. I really like the skill I 
have acquired and attained in Bash, but I think it is time for something 
else again.

> "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
> words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

I guess pleasant acts are the key to everything. Whatever is pleasant is 
welcomed. ;-).

In Dutch it is more clear than in English. Pleasant means plezierig. 
Plezier is the equivalent of fun, but it is less about "laughter" than it 
is about enjoyment. You could say, anyone who is enjoying what he does and 
is having fun doing it, can only be welcoming to others. Something that is 
done in a "plezierig" way is something that is done by someone having 
"plezier"; if you have plezier it is plezierig, to others. What is 
pleasurable to you is pleasurable to another.

Oh right, nobody wants to read this stuff. I forgot. At least, some person 
didn't and he thought it was true of everyone. I guess.
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