Introduction

• Add your feedback like this w/o the bold, and then use the @SIG@ at the end of your line, look at the first post for reference

• All serious issues should be still submitted as bug!

Feedback

• Add feedback here -- claydoh 2009-09-17 13:17:06

* I have alpha5 installed which has just updated (alpha6?) - I have an Asus eeePC701SD,and everything works very well and quite fast i am impressed! The installer screens are too large for the Asus 701 and i had to use an external monitor (asus pc701 has ext output) - this would certainly be a problem for even smaller devices The only other problem being sound, which worked for a bit and now i get a pop up message - phonon - cannot use installed snd card? I can find no way to correct the problem, pulse audio is selected in the control center, and the snd card is grayed out, so have no sound.Am hoping this will be sorted eventualy.Great, most excellent work, many thanks!Tim

• I'm running the live cd now and just wanted to tell you all how totally awesome this is! Finally I have KDE 4 running without lagging and heavy performance loss on my a little bit old machine (Thinkpad T40p). I can't wait for October to install it You so totally rock! -- malvin 2009-09-18 04:32:01

• I posted this a day earlier on the alpha5 page, but just in case it got missed: How about using Oxygen-Molecule for GTK apps instead of QtCurve? It seems to integrate much better and is very very highly rated on KDE-Look: http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/Oxygen-Molecule+KDE+%26+GTK%2B+unified+theme?content=103741

I tested Karmic Alpha 5 on my computer and so this feedback is from that experience. Though I am one alpha behind this information is, most likely, still applicable.

• On setting up a new KDE installation I open Session Manager in System Settings and select "Start an empty session" from there. With this setting turned on Kmix does not start when KDE starts. This is not too much a problem for me for I said I could set Kmix to autostart. However when I set Kmix to autostart in KDE it still does not start up. If I want to use Kmix I would need to manually start it after KDE starts. Also, I set krandrtray to autostart in System Settings and it auto-starts as it should but not Kmix. Very annoying behavior. Could you look into this please? Maybe you should make the starting of kmix mandatory; just like klipper.
• I once installed a KDM theme but it did not install properly. After a restart an error message came up in place of the log in screen saying it could not find a certain XML file. Then after clicking OK it left you at a command prompt. Maybe you could modify KDM so that you can easily fall back to another KDM theme should you have problem with one that is installed.
• One thing has always bothered me about KDE Help Center. Every time you open it and want to search for something you would need to build the search index. However therein lies another problem with KDE Help Center's search. It seems that you can only search the Unix manual pages with it. If you typed in "photos" hoping to find information on managing your photos nothing would come up because it does not search KDE's application documentation or Kubuntu's installed documentation. This search is largely useless especially compared to the one in Ubuntu which returns reasonable results on ALL installed documentation. That search feature in KDE Help Center should be modified so as to search for information in Kubuntu's installed documentation as well as KDE's application documentation. It also should be modified so that it would not be necessary to build a search index every time you open KDE Help Center.
• Kpackagekit is OK, however I miss the option of an open mode where you can see all the packages that are installed/not installed in a list.
• Picture this situation. I add the Analog Clock widget to the desktop but it gets covered by the folderview widget. Is there any way I can select or move the analog clock widget underneath without having to move the folderview widget out of the way? I cannot recall seeing any documentation that contained the situation and I am curious as to whether it can be done.
• I usually add the "System Monitor" applet to my desktop and enable hard disk and hardware info. That works well. However when I restart the computer or log out and log back in there are two additional widgets on my desktop. The "System Monitor - Hard Disk" and "System Monitor - Hardware Info" are added to the desktop in the upper left corner, behind the Folder View widget. In other words it seems that a copy of my System Monitor is added to the desktop at the upper left. There only needs to be one System Monitor on the desktop. Any copies just clutters the desktop up. Like I said above, I switch my session to "Start an empty session" but it should not be connected to this because no other widget I've used does it. If it is a bug I would report it but I just don't have the time. Could you check to see what is causing it?
• When you add the "Picture Frame" widget to the desktop it has this ugly stretched mess of colours shown. It just doesn't look pretty. Also, if you add a slideshow and the time to change image is set to one minute it will take one minute before the first picture appears. But the first picture that appears seems to be the second picture in the slideshow. It may mean that the first picture in the slideshow is just not shown (properly). Regardless, it shows the widget may not be working properly. Please look into this also.
• One thing I noticed about KDE 4.3 is that it is much faster than Jaunty's KDE 4.2. I'm not quite sure what changed but the improvement in speed is much appreciated. I now feel better in using it casually. In Jaunty I could not tolerate KDE's slowness and so kept with GNOME for my day to day activities; with only an occasional peek into KDE. Of course, any further improvements in speed will be continually appreciated.
  • Karmic with KDE 4.3 looks very good already. It has become apparent that I will not be satisfied with just a CD version of Karmic Koala but will have to go for the DVD version. The fullness of KDE cannot be included on just the CD. So developers, make sure the DVD version of Karmic contains the wallpapers, screen savers and programs of the WHOLE KDE 4.3. Yes, make sure you fill the DVD with everything you can so as to make it easy for us to find and install any additional programs we want. -- Blue
• Latest update of Karmic broke KDE 4.3.x. No longer comes up in graphics mode, No sound, and other issues. This is a very bad update. (090926)
• I just did an upgrade and the problems I encountered and posted on (090926) are gone except the No Sound issue. On reboot, Kubuntu Karmic comes up KDE desktop as normal. It seems that the previous upgrade changed to the wrong sound driver and activated Pulse Audio, which I haven't been able to manually change it yet. (090927)
• I tried Karmic and it seemed very user friendly for me. KDE 4 seems to be improved in a very good way. Changing lot of details in KDE4 are allowed. (Since I still use Interpid as master system there was not that much customization on KDE). After Interpid I tried Jaunty but didn't liked it so stayed on Interpid. Now I tested Karmic and liked It. Graphic quality animations and system speed seems great for me. There may be a lot of problems on a software under development and I think that we shouldn't mention these problems here. I believe that Karmic will be a great as soon as it reaches to the final release. Thanks a lot to the developer Team.

These are just a few more things I noticed when testing Alpha 5

• When using kpackagekit it may ask you to insert a CD-ROM if you need to install additional software. However it does not specify what disc to insert. If you had two or more CD repositories enabled and had to insert a disc to install software you would not know what disc to insert because kpackagekit does not say. It just gives you this message: "A Media Change Is Required; Please insert the disc labeled '/cdrom/', and press continue.". Also, if you are installing an external deb package and the installer needs to install additional software from CD, a message comes up saying only "Disc Change". You should make sure kpackagekit tells you which disc to insert when installing packages from CD. (e.g (Jaunty Jackalope 9.04 ...)
• When you right click the desktop and select desktop settings; there you can change and add wallpapers. If you want to add a wallpaper you can select the little button to browse for one. I realized however that if you have more than one picture in a folder you cannot select more than one of them at the same time. In the open window you cannot hold "Control" (Ctrl) to select more than one picture at the same time, you cannot click and drag to select multiple files and you cannot press "Ctrl + A" to select a whole folder of pictures. So if you had 20 pictures in a folder to add to the wallpaper list, you would need to add them one at a time. In Jaunty with KDE 4.2 this did not occur as you could, at the very least, select multiple files to add by pressing "Ctrl + A". Please look into this situation as this missing functionality makes it more difficult to add multiple pictures to the desktop wallpaper list.
• In Jaunty I had both the KDE and Gnome desktops installed. While using KDE I changed the associations of a file. (Dragon Player to open ogg files). However, when I logged into Gnome the file association was changed there too. So when I opened an ogg file in Gnome, it opened in Dragon Player. This was not right as each desktop's file associations should be separate, independent. (Ogg files should not have opened in Dragon Player in Gnome unless I had specifically changed the association " while in Gnome". I do not know if this is still a problem in Karmic but you should check it out so file associations from both desktops do not interfere with each other. --Blue