KDE 4.6 released

Posted Jan 30, 2011 14:24 UTC (Sun) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164)
In reply to: KDE 4.6 released by dlang
Parent article: KDE 4.6 released

Unfortunately, as has been blogged about a few times by Aaron, none of the KDE developers has a multi-head setup and with the exception of one person (who's issues got fixed) nobody has stepped up to help test and resolve the problems.

Which means Plasma 4.7 will suffer from the same issues. And so will 4.8. Until someone decides he/she is willing to help test bugfixes. The developers are more than willing but there's nothing they can do without either a tester or a crystal ball.

KDE 4.6 released

Posted Jan 31, 2011 12:06 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (1 responses)

Most desktop graphics cards today have more than one output connector. Pretty much any laptop lets you connect an external monitor in addition to the LCD panel.

You're seriously trying to tell us that the apparent multi-head issues are so supremely uninteresting to KDE developers that no one can be bothered to hook up a spare monitor to their graphics card – even for ten minutes – to see whether there is anything to those reports?

KDE 4.6 released

Posted Jan 31, 2011 23:47 UTC (Mon) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

see below in this thread, multi-head is different from multi-screen. Multi-screen works just fine, I use it any time I attach a projector to my laptop :D

Multi-head is not used a lot, there are few use cases for it. It's not a complete obscure use case either but still the demand for it is so low nobody is capable or willing to step up and fix it. You can blame either developers or users for that - I guess you should keep in mind that there are simply more pressing matters. Most developers have about 100 times more things they'd like to do and fix than time on their hands :D

KDE 4.6 released

Posted Jan 31, 2011 17:35 UTC (Mon) by thoffman (guest, #3063) [Link] (8 responses)

None of the KDE developers has multi-head? Seriously?

Anyone with a non-antique laptop and a spare monitor has multi-head if they want it. This is not rocket science.

And it's very important to get right, not just for multi-head day to day use, but plug-and-play. Presentation mode in conferences is crucial. I need to to just plug in to a random projector and display, without having to restart the X Server or mess around with configuration panels.

Fortunately, this is pretty solid now on my Lenovo running Ubuntu & Gnome.

KDE 4.6 released

Posted Jan 31, 2011 18:22 UTC (Mon) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link] (3 responses)

This sort of comment makes me so sad... Behaving like you really don't know how volunteer-based open source projects work. You do know, I hope, that nobody is paid to work on kwin? That nobody is paid to work on plasma? That among the couple of hundred KDE developers only one or two work on kwin? It's not a company where you can redirect resources to please those users who don't pay, don't contribute, who do nothing but whine, every release.

I suppose that this kind of smart-ass comment makes you feel good about yourself, superior to those stupid KDE hackers, whatever. You're smart enough to use Gnome, after all. Good for you!

But you'd better get the sourcecode from git, use your super-duper setup and fix that bug and join the project. That will earn you real respect and will make you feel really good about yourself for real.

As for presentation mode -- that hasn't been a problem with KDE 4 for a long time now. krandrtray makes that work plenty fine. It's just some weird multi-head setups that seem to cause problems. And nobody who complains every release about those problems, nobody ever actually steps up to help.

That is not what open source is about. Scratch your itch, dammit.

KDE 4.6 released

Posted Jan 31, 2011 22:24 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (1 responses)

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the KDE developers need to decide whether they want to produce a dependable desktop environment where users can rely on bugs or regressions being addressed (in which case some developers will eventually have to condescend to working on the unpopular tasks, too) or whether they want to provide a free-for-all for hobbyist developers (in which case every developer gets to do what they please), with users being allowed to tag along for the ride as long as they don't make themselves too obnoxious. In other words, is the KDE project's primary goal providing entertainment for its developers or a service for its users?

Summarily dissing people with legitimate claims about bugs in KDE as »whiners« who do not contribute is a cheap shot. KDE is a large and complicated body of code and it is not as if someone could, just like so, pull down the source and fix a few bugs that even the KDE developers themselves seem to be either afraid or else incapable of addressing. Also, for all you know, those »whiners« may be contributing to the FLOSS community at large in untold other ways.

KDE 4.6 released

Posted Jan 31, 2011 23:52 UTC (Mon) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

problem is that we're talking about a niche issue here. Multihead is something very few people run - multiscreen on the other hand is used plenty (and works just fine). The developers simply can't fix every minority issue - they have to focus on big things. And keep fun in mind too, otherwise, why work on this in the first place?

So aseigo could of course tell ppl he won't accept new features but wants them to work on fixing every darn issue they don't personally care about - KDE would quickly wither and die.

So for the long term, KDE has to make sure it's products are good enough - and at the same time, keep working in and on KDE fun. It is a delicate balance and usually minor features and issues are the victim of it.

That's why it is good to have some corporate funding - they often pay for the boring, finishing touch ;-)

KDE 4.6 released

Posted Jan 31, 2011 22:41 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

so if the problem is the lack of funding for KDE, they should have some way for people to donate to the project.

the amount of money we are talking about to equip some of the developers with a second monitor to be able to replicate a very common user environment (laptop with an external screen) is very small

KDE 4.6 released

Posted Jan 31, 2011 23:31 UTC (Mon) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link] (3 responses)

don't confuse multihead and multiscreen. multihead is running more than one x server, usually one per physical screen. multiscreen is running one xserver but having multiple physical screens.

multiscreen is widely used and cared for and works rather well. multihead is not. you can go back to kde3 or even kde2 and see this was the case even then.

i did fix a number of multihead issues for Plasma Desktop 4.6, however, and it is generally working. kwin needs some fixes, still, though. (patches welcome.) it is generally working now, though there are a couple of remaining known issues (like how user visible strings in plasma-desktop are not translated on screens other than the first one .. though i just fixed that one too :)

KDE 4.6 released

Posted Jan 31, 2011 23:59 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

I think that in all the complaints listed, just replace 'multihead' with 'multiscreen'

so it's not safe to say that multiscreen works just fine.

KDE 4.6 released

Posted Feb 2, 2011 11:20 UTC (Wed) by modernjazz (guest, #4185) [Link]

Gnome is not free of troubles in this department. See this comparison of Ubuntu and Kubuntu:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-vi...

I think the underlying problem, as usual, is X. Getting better, but still a ways to go.

KDE 4.6 released

Posted Feb 1, 2011 0:03 UTC (Tue) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]

Yikes, good point on the possibility for confusion here. You can of course have either a) multiple X servers, b) one X server with multiple X screens, or c) one X server with one X screen with multiple monitors.

Most everyone has long ago switched to the last alternative, since it actually lets you move windows between monitors and fancy things like that. So I thought everyone on this thread was talking about that...

But who knows! I know one person who likes to use multiple-X-screens-on-one-X-server, because fvwm doesn't use XRandR hints to layout windows correctly or something like that, and he's always complaining about how someone has broken that functionality in the X server or driver for the 20th time in a row. And if there's anyone else running a setup like that, I'm sure they'd frequent this website. :)