[kubuntu-users] some misfeatures in the powerpc edition of Breezy

[Jonathan Riddell]

On Mon, Jan 02, 2006 at 03:39:14PM -0800, Albert wrote:
> - kded: when I insert a CD full of images, the whole computer behaves as 
> stalled or very slowly. If I pop up an xterm and run 'top', I can see the 
> kded program eating up all my RAM and consuming part of the processor, 
> continuously. I have tried to disable this in the System Settings -> System 
> Services, but to no avail. After upgrading to Breezy, such area is not even 
> working.
> Also playing with the settings under /usr/share/services/kded/ *.desktop 
> files, such as the mediamanager.desktop, didn't result in anything. I have 
> the hunch that some 'autoload' variable has to be set to false somewhere, but 
> I simply can't see where, nor can I find proper documentation.

Is that the same as http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=10193 ?

It works for me in dapper (I didn't have a powerpc during breezy).

Killing ivman will stop automounting in breezy, remove it from /usr/bin/startkde

> - updatedb: when my laptop is on battery, the last thing I want is for its 
> energy to be spent unwisely. Running the cron job for the updatedb, which 
> runs for several minutes consuming lots of chip resources, is a very poor 
> choice. I have no clue as to whether one can make the updatedb process run if 
> and only if the laptop is not on battery. The pbbuttons daemon should be 
> queried for such information.

Interesting idea, try filing a wishlist bug or proposing it on the ubuntu-devel
mailing list.  

> - airport wireless card: every time the computer wakes up, the airport is 
> powered up, or so does a screen message claim. This is not desirable, at 
> least for battery energy preservation, and further for security issues. If 
> the airport card was not up when I put the computer to sleep, so it should 
> remain when I wake it up. Having to run 'sudo iwconfig eth1 power off' every 
> time is not very practical.

Also interesting, same advice :)

> - opengl and/or X.org issues: I can run glxgears locally on any of the 
> computers I have around here, including this powerbook running kubuntu. But 
> not through ssh -X : the glxgears or blender or any other opengl-dependent 
> application refuse to launch, displaying a permission error problem. I have 
> filed in a bug report on this in the kubuntu bug tracker.

Curious, I've confirmed beastie 21377, although I suspect it'll take
an X guru to work it out.

> - konqueror images: when loading images in full, many times a yellowish tint 
> is set over the image right after the image has been properly loaded and 
> displayed. I have no clue as to why this happens.

That's a problem with gwenview on powerpc, you could ask backports to
backport 1.3 which is fixed.

> - kmail crashes: kmail works very well except for this situation: on imap 
> accounts, when deleting two messages too quickly (pushing the trash icon 
> twice), the second one is being loaded while being deleted as well, and this  
>  results in a crash. The crash reporter has an empty backtrace, since I assume 
> kmail has been compiled without a '-g' debugging option.

This seems to have been fixed in KDE 3.5.

> - java: the installed 'gij' I suspect has been setup so that openoffice can 
> work, and it does work very well for that purpose. But any GUI java 
> applications will not run. I had to manually download and install the 
> IBM-1.4.2-ppc compiled java from non-kubuntu sources. It works very well by 
> the way.

Free software java is far from perfect I'm afraid, but getting better
all the time.

> That is all. Now some praising: I am using kubuntu as a proof of concept. I 
> have been able to do with the minimum effort everything that I do on the 
> macosx side of the same laptop, and in some instances, even better. 
> Applications such as Blender or Gimp run faster than in the macosx side, and 
> so far all web development I've done from this machine has been flowing 
> steady and nicely. So good job and thanks to whoever setup this fantastically 
> user friendly GNU/Linux distribution.

Thanks for your feedback, powerpc gets little enough testing, testers
for flight CD candidates are especially welcome.

Jonathan