Is KDE4 usable on FreeBSD?

[Mark Moellering]

Thomas Abthorpe wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
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> On November 2, 2008 08:01:38 pm FBSD1 wrote:
>   
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Chad Perrin
>> Sent: Sunday, November 02, 2008 12:40 PM
>> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>> Subject: Re: Is KDE4 usable on FreeBSD?
>>
>>
>> Ok now that you have all let off steam about the off topic of desktop
>> verses ms/windows lets return the meaning of the  original poster.
>>
>>
>> 	I spent this weekend playing with kde4 as root and had problems with it
>> not working.
>> 	Could not change the displayed time to from 20.00.00 to 8:00PM
>> When I changed the resolution from the default to 800x600 and the refresh
>> rate to 60.0 many of the applications did not auto fit to the new setting
>> and the change would not carry over between logons.
>> Some times the desktop just froze up and had to do alt-ctrl-backspace to
>> force return to command line.
>> When I changed the font type and size to use, the change would not carry
>> over between logons.
>> Could not find a way to remove items from the menu.
>> Some icons would not display at all.
>> Koffice was missing.
>> Not all the application use the new window format which has the option to
>> return to menu that launched it. Only has x out to return to desktop
>> screen.
>>
>> Bottom line is imho kde4 is not stable, is not ready for general use. Needs
>> more development and testing. Should only be contained in the development
>> ports category.
>>
>>
>>     
>
> I submit to the court of pulic opinion that KDE4 *IS* stable on FreeBSD. I 
> would encourage you to check out the following resources
>
> http://freebsd.kde.org
> http://wiki.freebsd.org/KDE4
>
> Certainly, if my word is not good enough, the nice folks over at PC-BSD, 
> http://www.pcbsd.org, sure have bundled up a nice package based on FreeBSD 7 
> and KDE4.
>
>
> Thomas
>
>   
I have used KDE-4   While some of the graphics are much better looking, 
I thought it lacked some functionality.  These are minor issues but 
several of the old (KDE 3.5.X) control panel options were not available 
(or I couldn't find them) and figuring out where to set certain options 
was not that intuitive for me.  I never found a central location for 
settings, it seemed that each control (menu, taskbar, etc) had it's own 
'right click' sort of settings page.
The small thing that truly bugged me is that I normally only display 
programs for the current desktop in the taskbar, but there was a small 
control that you could select that would display all windows on all 
desktops (I forget its official name).  I used it alot to make sure I 
didn't forget something running, etc.  I couldn't find this taskbar 
control in KDE 4.
The other problems I had dealt with thrid-party programs.  There is no 
(at least as of a few months ago) K3B for KDE-4 and no FreeBSD port of 
Ktorrent for KDE-4.  I tried the linux port but had lots of problems.
Also, to start you need to give an explicit path, something like 
/usr/local/kde-4/bin/startkde in the .xinitrc file.  (at least I could 
never get anything else to work)
I ultimately changed back to the 3.5.9(?) version from packages.  I am 
using an intel quad core running amd64 FreeBSD 7.0 Release

Hope this helps.

Mark Moellering