Kubuntu dapper-flight-6+ feedback

Sat Apr 15 16:07:13 BST 2006

Hello,

here's a collection of most things that came to my attention, when installing 
and using kubuntu dapper-drake (dist-upgrade from 04.14.2006, fresh user 
after the upgrade - no old settings).

I try to be somewhat descriptive but reasonably short. Skip the parts you 
already know or feel are too time consuming (if the headlines are descriptive 
enough).

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system:/ and media:/ kio slaves always change view mode
--------------------------------------
The kio slaves system:/ media:/ and probably some others use "Icon View" 
with "very large" icons. Unfortunately it will *always* switch to that view 
when you browse those kio slaves, no matter if you use something else 
(treeview for example) by default.
KDE bug: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=108542

That's a huge annoyance as soon as you switch from kubuntus pretty large 
default icon view to something smaller. Using system:/home instead 
of /home/user by default (through system-menu) makes it worse because it 
happens a lot more often now.
Please use /home/user in sytem-menu again if this can't be fixed in time.

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guidance fstab editor can't set "exec" option and others
--------------------------------------
This has already been sent to  simon at simonzone.com and fboudra at free.fr

Basically, the "exec" setting didn't work for me. In the end I had to edit 
fstab manually.

After I selected "Allow Executables" in the advanced options of my non-root 
ext3 partition Guidance put this in fstab:
   /dev/hda5 /media/temp-data ext3 ,atime,auto,rw,nodev,exec,suid,users 0 0
Unfortunately that's not quite correct - to make it work I have to change it 
to this:
   /dev/hda5 /media/temp-data ext3 ,atime,auto,rw,nodev,users,exec,suid 0 0

The cause is this: "users" and "user" imply "noexec" (as well as "nosuid" 
and "nodev", so suid and dev are affected as well.). That means if you 
put "users" in the end it will imply the option "noexec" as well, so 
any "exec" thats placed *before* "users" has no effect.
What exactl options "users" implies is in the manpage of mount as well.
Solution: "users" should be put before the other mentioned options.

--------------------------------
CDs aren't ejected when eject button is pressed
--------------------------------
Kubuntu won't eject a CD that has been used before, when the user pushes the 
eject button on the CD/DVD drive. There's no indication why this is. 
Though I know that this is 'normal' for unmodified linux (you have to unmount 
manually first), we can't expect others to know this. When eject is pressed 
on the hardware the cd should just pop out. Other distros solved this with 
specific patches afaik.
Additionally newly inserted CDs have to be opened inside KDE through media:/ 
before they can be used anywhere else - that'd be nice to have solved but the 
eject issue is more serious in my oppinion

------------------------------
Konqueror file-view search bar
------------------------------
A. When saving the view-profile "Kubuntu File Manager" the search bar get's 
lost.
I have no idea why this is
When I start konqueror for the first time I change the view mode to "tree 
view" and go to settings -> save view profile "Kubuntu File Manager". After 
that any newly opened Konqueror has lost the search bar. No idea why.

B. The search bar does scale down too late.
When you shrink the width of a konqueror window, the adress bar is shrinked as 
well - that's ok, as it's the biggest element. But the address bar should 
have a somewhat fixed minimum size. If it is shrinked to this minumum size 
other elements should start to shring first - this applies to the search bar. 
Once the search bar shrunk so much that it's gone the address bar should 
start to shrinking again. This is mostly noteable on smaller screens now.
It's more important to have a usable address bar than a fully visible search 
bar on size constrained systems/screens.
Does apply to both search bars (file and web) but this issue is imo more 
important in file mode since a file browsing window usually tends to be 
smaller than a web browsing window.

-------------------------------
Adpet doesn't show remaining download time
-------------------------------
apt has the ability to display the remaining time a download will take at the 
given download speed. Adept is lacking this feature and it really should be 
there imo. Progress bars are nice, but they don't give a good idea about how 
long it will take overall.

------------------------------
graphical deb installer
------------------------------
.deb files are linked to ark at the moment. Ark gives an error message when 
launched with a deb file for me and isn't all that useful anyway.
Maybe a kdialog could pop up instead that has three buttons:
"Install Package" "Uninstall Package" "Show Packakge info".
Those could then call the Kubuntu Package Menu scripts.

---------------------------------
No way to choose primary audio device
---------------------------------
To my knowledge it's not possible to change the default audio device.
Nowadays every mainboard has onboard audio. Still many users have better add 
in cards. Without a way to choose the default/primary device onboard audio 
will be used first. There is a command line alsa tool (alsaconf) that can do 
this but it was removed from the ubuntu package because there is a GUI tool 
for that on GNOME.
To solve this I had to disable the onboard audio in my BIOS.

Can't find the initial bug report now, but here's another:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/kcontrol/+bug/31893
Seems like there's now a weird utility called asoundconf, that's "not meant 
for end users". Looks like KDE needs a way to set up the default device.

----------------------------
Konsole crashes at logout
----------------------------
When I logout with one ore more opened Konsole sessions, they crash.
After l log in again they mostly don't come up again. I assume this is because 
they were closed (crashing) before the actual logout so are not saved to the 
session information.

---------------------------
Default calculator
---------------------------
Kcalc's missing. Speedcrunch is nice if you actually use it for more often, 
but I still thing for the casual user Kcalc is a better choice for it's 
obvious similarity to a pocket calculator. SpeedCrunch doesn't exactly help 
the user visually - reminds me a lot of a powerful but undescriptive command 
line application.

------------------------
Skim can't be closed
------------------------
When you start Skim you can not close it anymore.
User's may not know what Skim is about (I didn't...) and just open it to have 
a look. When they want to close it again they may fail, because there's no 
obvious way to do this.
The system tray icon should have a "quit" entry at the bottom. This is missing 
at the moment.

--------------------------
Samba file sharing not configurable through system-settings
--------------------------
Samba file sharing seems to be installed by default now, which is great. 
Unfortunately the nice kcontrol module "Samba" is not available in System 
Settings and thus is not useable unless you start "kcontrol" manually.
It should be added as an additional module under "Internet & 
Networking" -> "Sharing".

----------------------------
"kdesu konqueror" in K-Menu 
----------------------------
There's no (graphical) way to start a file manager with root access for system 
administration. Just like there is "kdesu adpet" in "K-Menu -> System" there 
could e "kdesu konqueror" to get a graphical administration interface. With 
the new message in konsole it's obvious how to get root access there - it's 
not obvious how to get root access graphically at the moment. 
Adding "Konqueror File Manager (system administration)" under "K-Menu -> 
System" would solve that.

Here are a few probably less important suggestions / observations that might 
only be interesting for dapper+1;

-------------------------------
Adpet status bar somewhat too big
-------------------------------
The status bar on the bottom of adpet is pretty large. there's a lot of 
usefull information there, but it should be possible to shrink the widths of 
adpet windows more, so that it fits smaller screens better

-----------------------------
QTparted integration?
-----------------------------
Kubuntu is lacking a graphical partitioner. Maybe QTparted can be integrated 
into system settings or called externally in a future release

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Konqueror tree-view column highlighting
------------------------------
ksysguard in KDE 3.5.x has a slight highlighting of the column that's 
currently used for sorting. That's available for konqui, too. If it should be 
enabled I'll look for it again. Not sure if it actually was in konqui's code 
now or if it was just a small patch, though.

---------------------------
mousewheel on "desktop preview & pager" should act as ubuntu's does
---------------------------
The desktop preview & pager panel applet allows to use the mouse wheel to 
switch between desktops. Unfortunately it doesn't stop at the last desktop. 
Instead it goes to the first again. In Ubuntu it stops at the last. That way 
it's more controllable without paying 100% attention; scroll down as far as 
you get -> your're definitely on desktop no 4; scroll up as far as you get -> 
your definitely on desktop no 1.

Regards,

Chris