Considering trying KDE again on Gentoo, dependencies

[I.M.O.G.]

How do I resolve the following:

Calculating dependencies... done!

emerge: there are no ebuilds built with USE flags to satisfy "~x11-libs/qt-core-4.5.2[-debug,-qt3support]".
!!! One of the following packages is required to complete your request:
- x11-libs/qt-core-4.5.2 (Change USE: -qt3support)
(dependency required by "x11-libs/qt-opengl-4.5.2" [ebuild])
(dependency required by "kde-base/krunner-4.3.0" [ebuild])
(dependency required by "kde-base/kdebase-startkde-4.3.0" [ebuild])
(dependency required by "kdebase-startkde" [argument])

mrb78s@l3adf3h ~ $ sudo emerge -av kdebase-startkde

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!

emerge: there are no ebuilds built with USE flags to satisfy ">=x11-libs/qt-core-4.5.1:4[qt3support,ssl]".
!!! One of the following packages is required to complete your request:
- x11-libs/qt-core-4.5.2 (Change USE: +qt3support)
(dependency required by "kde-base/kdebase-startkde-4.3.0" [ebuild])
(dependency required by "kdebase-startkde" [argument])

I followed the instructions after the first time I ran emerge, and added the USE flag it requests for, then when I ran emerge again, it wants the use flag removed. This doesn't make sense to me.

 

[Voidn]

http://bugs.gentoo.org/276153

 

[I.M.O.G.]

That fixed. Thanks, I searched but didn't find that bug report.

I usually try to avoid adding global use flags, but if you need 'em you need 'em.

 

[Voidn]

NP, I have a masters in google-fu.

 

[SuperMiguel]

u liked kde?

 

[I.M.O.G.]

No, I hated it so much I couldn't give it what I would consider a fair trial.

I want to blame that on my own shortcomings in setting it up, rather than KDE being a stinking pile in general. There has to be some redeeming qualities and I'd like to become more familiar with them.

 

[UnseenMenace]

No, I hated it so much I couldn't give it what I would consider a fair trial.

I want to blame that on my own shortcomings in setting it up, rather than KDE being a stinking pile in general. There has to be some redeeming qualities and I'd like to become more familiar with them.

I would be interested in knowing your experience and views on it, expecially in terms of performance.
Ive not used KDE4 as for some reason I dislike extreme eye candy.

Be nice to know how it is in reality and if its worth a look

 

[SuperMiguel]

i.M.O.G try Sabayon the kde version and see if u like it?

 

[Shelnutt2]

I'm running KDE 4 on gentoo, 4.2, and it's a pain in the arse with dependencies. In fact I've not update in quite sometimes because as soon as I installed and was comfortable, the dependencies broke.

I'd love to hear your review and to see what you do with KDE 4. It's got a lot of potential in my opinion. I love removing the panel and having everything floating. However performance wise and config wise I believe I've got a lot to do. However I've not found any good guides on integrating everything. So I'd like to see how you work with it.

 

[Zerix01]

I'm running 4.3 on Kubuntu. It's nice when everything is already setup for you . The only time I have dependency issues is when dealing with the pre-release repos.

I just had a battle with Kubuntu on my EeePC, horrible performance. I'm pretty sure it was due to the intel drivers being in a state of flux. I ended up trashing my whole setup and installed the Kubuntu 9.10 Netbook release and it runs like a dream.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

I've been doing a bit of experimenting and research with portage in regards to tmpfs, /dev/shm (also tmpfs), and ccache. My results thus far have ranged from poor to busted. I've made a lot of progress finding what doesn't work well, but haven't found anything which actually just works. (other than running firefox from tmpfs, which works beautifully, and FAST)

I had been running ccache since I noticed mbentley had it enabled in his make.conf. It turns out that in all but rare instances enabling ccache is only going to slow down your compilations:
http://blog.flameeyes.eu/2008/06/21/debuking-ccache-myths

So I disabled ccache.

So then I had also looked into keeping my compilations in RAM, by mounting /var/tmp/portage in tmpfs thru fstab. However with 1GB of space dedicated, it kept running out of space and the compilations would break entirely, rather than just plug along hitting swap. It's my understanding that a tmpfs mount point should automatically roll over to swap when it consumes all the RAM available to it - that was not my experience. So I tried something similar by changing my make.conf to use /dev/shm which uses tmpfs:

PORTAGE_TMPFS="/dev/shm"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/dev/shm"
BUILD_PREFIX="/dev/shm"

I got the same results - compilations failing due to being out of space.

So I've removed all these tweaks from my config and I'm currently doing things the old fashioned way.

Long story short, I haven't even gotten to compiling KDE yet. I'll probably roll up the basics tonight while I'm relaxing on the couch, and get to trying it out sometime in the next week or so.

 

[mbentley]

yeah, ccache only really helps out when you are recompiling the exact same packages over and over again. it is particularly useful when you are messing with USE flags on a new build but beside that, it doesn't help much. i've found it to be helpful when setting up a new system from scratch but i typically just leave it enabled after getting a system set up.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

KDE Proxy Configuration

Running on KDE 4.3 since Monday evening. Hating it.

The proxy configuration doesn't work like gnomes... Actually, it doesn't work at all for me. I tried from Konsole:

export HTTP_PROXY=http://username:[email protected]:80

Then using KDE's network settings to use the environment variable HTTP_PROXY, and it wouldn't accept it.

I then tried manual configuration, specifying this in KDE's manual proxy configuration:

http://myproxyname.com:80

And KDE has the authorization field greyed out, so I can't save my proxy creds there. I have to turn my proxy on and off throughout the day when I change networks, and this is a pain not having an easy, quick way to switch.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

KDE Plasmoids

I don't like the name of them - plasmoids, really? That's not a big deal tho, but why not just call them what they are - applets (ie small applications).

The network plasmoid doesn't recognize my network interfaces, which are working fine and recognized from the CLI and gnome. They even work within KDE, but the plasmoid which displays my network interfaces doesn't see them.

The plasmoids that display CPU and memory usage use a font color which is nearly impossible to read. I'm not sure where it's getting the font color from, but it's not a font color used anywhere else in KDE and its not configureable within the plasmoid settings themself. This is not implemented well.

I also tested out installing the Daisy plasmoid I've seen other KDE users running - it puts a nice little dock on your desktop, or a more plasma-ish round applet launcher. The dock has a background, which only occasionally/rarely matched up with the number of icons on the dock - if there were 8 icons, the background would be behind 3 of them with the other 5 looking off centered, hanging off the side. In both the dock and the launcher layout, there were 2 launchers which were broken by default and I couldn't right click and remove them, or drag and drop them off the launcher to get rid of them. This plasmoid sucks, and I'm still using gnome-do - gnome-do is still kicking butt even on KDE. In fairness, I installed the Daisy plasmoid from overlay - it wasn't available otherwise, so this is regarded as testing. I'd give it an alpha rating.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

KDE Desktop settings and effects

The desktop settings also don't make a whole lot of sense to me. I went to system settings, then clicked on desktop and expected to be able to change my wallpaper - not the case. When I right click on the desktop and select desktop settings, I get a completely different desktop settings dialog which allows me to do the same thing I was looking for thru the system settings dialog. This is stupid.

I have just started looking into Desktop Effects which KDE has built in - some of the same things available thru compiz-fusion but done better and integrated nicely. That said, I tried turning some effects on and off and some worked while others failed. KDE would also try to report when one of the effects failed, however it was sometimes accurate and sometimes not. For example, the explosion effect where windows explode when closed - it said it failed to turn on... On the contrary, the bugger turned and now I'm unable to turn it off. REALLY annoying. Maybe a reboot will correct this. The useful effects, like alt-tab customization gives nice options for switching between window - I use this a lot, and appreciate the Expose-like option which I also used under compiz-fusion previously.

KDE has handy integration with KDE-look.org - this is something I actually like. You can browse new themes and wallpapers directly thru KDE's configuration settings, and install them seamlessly thru the "Get Hot New Stuff" dialog window. The implementation of it actually is pretty "Hot".

Also, I'm still using nautilus as the default file browser - because that was still the default after installing and launching the KDE session. I had the expectation that KDE would default to using konqueror but apparently my gnome setting for nautilus as the default file browser carried over. I need to look into how to change this, but I haven't approached it yet. That's partly because the rest of the issues I've noticed, and partly because I expect it will be a pain to find the setting.

 

[SuperMiguel]

lol, seems like u are having fun

 

[I.M.O.G.]

KDE Sound Configuration

Coming from Gnome, my sound stopped working when I switched to KDE. I'm using alsa and I did not build in aRts support which is KDE's usual sound server. This is probably just a matter of me telling KDE to use Alsa, but this is something I haven't yet approached. KDE was self aware enough to report that my sound device wasn't working.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

KDE miscellaneous failures

When I logout it doesn't drop me back to KDM properly - I have to reboot to get back to a useable session. I can switch to the CLI and do things, but I can't get back into a working KDE xsession without rebooting.

Suspend is not functional within KDE either - it worked without issue in Gnome. Expectations are that closing the lid, pressing FN+F6 (thinkpad's sleep button), or selecting the sleep option within KDE would suspend to ram - all of these do nothing, but let KDE sit there staring back at me.

I'm root damnit, I shouldn't have to take this crap!

 

[SuperMiguel]

I'm root damnit, I shouldn't have to take this crap!

 

[I.M.O.G.]

KDE Konqueror

Add konqueror as another failure - I set it to be default for file management, and when launching my home folder from Kickoff nothing appeared. So I launched konqueror directly then typed "/" into the address bar, to which I received a notice that konqueror is associated to inode/directory but it cannot handle this filetype. It is able to browse the web, but local file management is a no-go. Looking at the use flags file management should be built-in, it's not something which requires a use flag to enable, so I'm not sure if I'm missing a separate package to enable file management thru Konqueror?

UPDATE: I reinstalled konqueror and saw the message after the emerge was finished:

If you want to use konqueror as a filemanager, install the dolphin kpart:
* emerge -1 kde-base/dolphin:4.3

Once Dolphin was installed, Konqueror then had file management ability.