Where is KDE 4.5 stable?

couchbotato · n00b Joined: 07 Oct 2010 Posts: 45 Location: Finland

http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.5/

Well it's been over 3 months now and still we are stuck with KDE 4.4.5
How about that? Yeah and now I'll get buch of complaints "read the faq" and "use overlay" or "unmask that and that" ...
No. I will not unmask anything.

When will KDE 4.5.X be stable in portage? Never? This is it, 4.4.5 is the final KDE 4.x what Gentoo will offer? Well, nice !!

genstorm · Advocate Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 2241 Location: Austria

As was announced, kde-4.5.x will not be stabilized until kdepim is ready (which won't happen until kde-4.6 as we know now). What keeps you from unkeywording it? You don't need no overlay.
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backend.cpp:92:2: warning: #warning TODO - this error message is about as useful as a cooling unit in the arctic

couchbotato · n00b Joined: 07 Oct 2010 Posts: 45 Location: Finland

genstorm · Advocate Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 2241 Location: Austria

Please, stay calm, I'm no Gentoo official and to me it is not a big deal to cherry pick the 'unstable' packages I want.

Naturally, announcements get lost under a pile of others over time, and KDE-4.5 probably isn't the most important thing to keep permanently on top of gentoo.org. But for a quick answer to your question, you could have easily done this: http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en-GB&q=gentoo+kde-4.5&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

And in case you have read the guide, but missed it, there is even a link for further explanation: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/kde/kde4-guide.xml

Btw it's the other way round, kdepim suite needs to stay arch (4.4.7 currently) while you need to unkeyword kde-base/* packages because 4.5.3 is ~arch. In addition to that, there are various upstream bugs that haven't been solved yet, only the KDE guys can change that.

Why your friend formatted his partition after emerging 4.5.whatever is beyond my understanding, this is certainly not needed under any circumstances.
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backend.cpp:92:2: warning: #warning TODO - this error message is about as useful as a cooling unit in the arctic

hedmo · l33t Joined: 29 Aug 2009 Posts: 829 Location: halmstad

couchbotato

my advice.do not update.i have bin using kde from the first time i got in to gentoo.from feb 2010 it has bin
unstable or not super stable (i have bin using 9999 "4.5" ).two weeks ago when i updated compiz and stared kde after i only
got one black and one white screen,downgade to 4.5.3=the same,downgaded to 4.4.5= :lol:

.
but i am not the one who is downgrading so i wiped it all and now i cant even install it again.

couchbotato · n00b Joined: 07 Oct 2010 Posts: 45 Location: Finland

very confusing and didn't explain anything.

other distributions are using KDE 4.5.x so there cant be any monsterous bugs with it anymore.
so, conclusion: Gentoo is so (insert adjective of choice here) that it cannot support even the most advanced and popular desktop propeply and makes up excuses why its impossible.

Excuses, wich makes no sense to no-one.

kdepim... kdepim, kmail, akonadi... there is just a bunch of lazy excuses. They work fine in other distros but not in Gentoo? So its Gentoo wich is broken, not the KDE ?

genstorm · Advocate Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 2241 Location: Austria

Yeah... maybe you should just switch to the brown one. Or, wait, install kde-4.5.3 anyway and help stabilization efforts? Now that would be nice instead of bitching around.

Other distros already shipping kde-4.5.x simply don't care that much about those bugs, KDE not being anywhere near the mostest importantest DE for them anyway. KDE is my favourite DE too, but no, it is far from the most popular one around.
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backend.cpp:92:2: warning: #warning TODO - this error message is about as useful as a cooling unit in the arctic

couchbotato · n00b Joined: 07 Oct 2010 Posts: 45 Location: Finland

genstorm · Advocate Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 2241 Location: Austria

I recently got to try out Kubuntu with 'stable' 4.5.3 and it was a mess.

You're wrong in your assumptions. But if unmasking 4.5.3 when there's even a howto provided for you is too much, no one can really help you.
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backend.cpp:92:2: warning: #warning TODO - this error message is about as useful as a cooling unit in the arctic

couchbotato · n00b Joined: 07 Oct 2010 Posts: 45 Location: Finland

aCOSwt · Posted: Sun Nov 14, 2010 10:43 pm Post subject:

Hmmmm... I fear a bit of semiotic will be necessary :

What is the difference between a package labled arch and another one labeled ~arch ?
Note that on some sites presenting gentoo portage, you will notice differences in colours. What is the difference between a yellow one and a green one ?

Stability !... Hmmmm... Stability ?

Strictly speaking : NO !

Strictly speaking ~arch or yellow do NOT mean unstable ! While arch or green do not mean stable as well !

So what is the difference ? A QA decision !

No more, no less !

So, where is the link people commonly establish with stability ?

Belief !

People who (rightly or wrongly as this is of no importance in this discussion) believe in a relationship between QA's rationales and stability will indirectly call stable a package QA's rationale qualifies green !

The stability in itself (or, I would say per se if this was still meaningful) of the package is definitely not affected by the decision of the QA.

ERGO : It is up to you, up to each on his own, to either declare the package stable indeed OR trust in QA's rationale and in its link with stability.
If distro X ' QA says KDE5 is green and distro Y 'QA says KDE5 is yellow, then either check yourself for its colour or trust who you believe is the more trustable !

The meaning of arch ~arch labels is nothing but a belief !

EDIT : Following Genstorm's next post, I amend my last statement : The meaning of arch ~arch labels is nothing but a cascade of beliefs !

genstorm · Advocate Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 2241 Location: Austria

@couchbotato: Installing 4.5.3 will degrade the KDE experience you are currently used to with 4.4.7. Gentoo will not lower its standards for your personal convenience, instead it provides a howto that will make things not break if you carefully follow it.

@aCOSwt: Same thing for the kernel, I personally don't care about arch/~arch status in Gentoo as long as I get the latest and greatest version, in that case upstream has deemed it final which is good enough (and most of the time better in terms of graphics support) for me. But there can still be dependency issues with userspace applications as we have seen with 2.6.35, so we need our stabilization policy.

aCOSwt · Posted: Sun Nov 14, 2010 11:46 pm Post subject:

genstorm · Advocate Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 2241 Location: Austria

Probably most of the time, there are dependencies that also need to go arch. But then, there are also the users that are testing that stuff on their ~arch machines, exposing bugs or build issues on their particular configurations which then need to be resolved. Build issues are one big thing that binary distros don't need to think of for their users. Sometimes there are patches being applied before packages can be thought of going arch. So, the OP is right that the chance of things to break is higher on ~arch - such as an lvm2 update, that made my system not boot anymore because I had my /usr split off to another partition. Dealt with it, and at the same time someone else already reported it with a fix immediately hitting portage. But KDE being a DE and not any dangerous system package, such is not what you need to fear there.
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backend.cpp:92:2: warning: #warning TODO - this error message is about as useful as a cooling unit in the arctic

szczerb · Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2010 12:45 am Post subject:

For a 6-year user you seem to have little knowledge of how this distro functions, so you are probably just ignoring it for the sake of this poorly conducted discussion. I value "Gentoo stable" very high. I also know that generally a package won't get labeled stable unless it's well tested all it's dependencies are in stable. Definitely more then you can hope for in distros released in a timely schedule. A lot of packages don't have stable versions for years because of this. So I guess, you might wanna change the distro if you'd like to get something else. Maybe Fedora or Ubuntu?

iss · Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2010 9:25 am Post subject:

I'm using keyworded 4.5.x on one PC and stable 4.4.x on the other.

I see no benefit in upgrading to 4.5.x.
And more to say:

KWin is messed up in 4.5.3
KDE PIM Suite is not translated, because you cannot install kde-l10n from 4.4 and 4.5 together, 4.5 doesn't contain PIM translations.

desultory · Administrator Joined: 04 Nov 2005 Posts: 7449

aCOSwt · Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2010 10:50 am Post subject:

toralf · Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2010 12:12 pm Post subject:

pingufunkybeat · l33t Joined: 01 Dec 2004 Posts: 610

If you need a reliable and stable kdepim package, you should not upgrade to KDE 4.5. Since many people rely on KMail, upgrading KDE would seriously break things, and this is not good.

If you don't need kdepim apps and have checked KWin's compatibility with your drivers, you can unmask the 4.5 packages and install away. I did it and it's working fine.

genstorm · Advocate Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 2241 Location: Austria

tbh, kdepim is not seriously broken - but it does have some additional and nasty glitches in conjunction with kde-4.5.3. All in all, KDE SC 4.5 is still a release that makes me wanna jump early on 4.6 as soon as it has reached its late 80s snapshots.

@pingufunkybeat: ...and when major bugs are resolved.

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backend.cpp:92:2: warning: #warning TODO - this error message is about as useful as a cooling unit in the arctic

hunky · l33t Joined: 19 Nov 2003 Posts: 702 Location: Alaska

I run ~arch and rarely have trouble - the trouble I do have I have learned to deal with through the wonders of google or bugs.gentoo.org, or this forum. Usually fixed immediately - or maybe I have to wait a day or two for the patch but that is pretty rare and I can usually carry on working despite it.

I use 4.5.3. My understanding is you can still use kdepim - it just stays at 4.4.7 (or whatever) in SC 4.5.3. I don't use kmail so can't really say.

I am having trouble enabling opengl on my shiny new motherboard/system. If I try to enable it - I get Kwin crashes. Effect? - I have to click Ok-it crashed. Then I carry on with my work. No real effect except that I don't have the niceties of desktop effects (unless I go Xrender). But no worries here - I can get as much done without. I cut my teeth on computers before MS Windows existed, so having something as nice as KDE 4.5, despite it's weaknesses, is still pretty cool. Happy to say goodbye to card-punching computers.

Looking forward to 4.6 though... cheers, JD

pingufunkybeat · l33t Joined: 01 Dec 2004 Posts: 610

The crashing of KWin when changing desktop effects is a driver bug in Mesa, which was resolved some time ago. Running the drivers from git should fix it.

In general, though, KWin 4.5 is a lot more problematic with the open source drivers than the previous versions, and many people were bitten by this. Improvements in both KWin and Mesa have fixed some of it, but it's not perfect yet.

EDIT: One workaround is to set LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT before starting KDE. You have to use the environment var, because choosing indirect rendering from the system settings dialog destroys KWin nastily and forced me to delete kwinrc. It's things like this that keep it keyworded.