8.10 impressions

[Larry Hartman]

On Sunday 12 October 2008 06:28:09 Lindsay Mathieson wrote:
> Well, since I managed hose my package dependencies and nuke my KDE setup
> (hint: don't use the Citadel hardy repo to install Citadel) I thought I'd
> give the Intrepid Beta a try. My home directory resides on a separate hard
> disk so its relatively easy.
>
> The CD install is easier than ever, no difficulties with hardware etc. The
> manual partition setup made it very easy to select my second hard disk for
> the home directory without formating it, while erasing my old hardy primary
> install. From CDROM boot to up and running with a new install was 15
> minutes, amazingly fast and straightforward. My sound, network, usb
> printer, keyboard and mouse were all correctly detected – particularly
> impressed with the printer detection, even got the exact model (Samsung
> ML2010). I was browsing the web right away, no doubt this was far faster
> than I could have with XP or Vista.
>
> My LCD was being driven in native 1280x104 (VESA mode?) Of course my
> onboard nvidia 6100 was not configured but I managed to enable it via the
> restricted hardware applet. Had to hunt for that through the menus and it
> failed the first time. Second time was fine.
>
> Nice new feature in the restricted dialog, like envy it gives you a choice
> of driver versions, for now 173, 177 (recommended) and 96.
>
> Install Scores out of 10:
> ----------------------------------
> Ease of Use : 10
> Hardware Detection : 9 (Would be 10 if Canonical could auto setup
> restricted drivers).
> Newbie friendliness : 9.5

I agree with the addition below.

Stability: 7

Now that I did a fresh install, I can understand completely the quandary that 
Canonical had in deciding between 8.10 with KDE 3.5 or with KDE 4.1, or a 
stable release that couldn't be supported for 3 years versus a new release 
that isn't ready for LTS.

In the three days I have had it installed, I have witnessed a number of minor 
crashes in KDEPIM, KMenuEdit, and several times where setting changes did not 
take hold when "apply" is pressed.  Vast majority strictly in the KDE arena, a 
couple of things in other programs, one driver issue.  No show stoppers yet.

Features: 8

Lots of little tools and settings that were incorporated in KDE 3.5 that have 
not yet been ported into KDE 4.  Menu system, IMHO, is horrible.  I ended up 
remembering discussion on this, and consequently loading Lancelot.  This 
answered 90% of my concerns with menus.  I looked all over the place to find a 
way to change the background on each desktop, couldn't find it.  Kuser is not 
yet incorporated in system settings.

Over coming days/weeks I will be making concerted effort to report the little 
bugs I am seeing on launchpad.  KDE4 is a really good start, but only a start. 
I am very much looking forward to the upcoming revisions.

> Its really that good – I am way impressed. Anyone casually familiar with
> computers could be up and running with minimal to no hand holding – so long
> as they had non funky hardware :) But that applies to every system.
>
> Desktop
> -----------
> I erased my Hardy .kde & .kde4 entries, I wanted a fresh setup – don't know
> how well they would have migrated.
> It is KDE 4.1.2 of course, plasma through and through. I've got quite used
> to it, definitely way more usable than 4.0. I actually quite like the new
> menu now. Still sucks finding programs on it but once you get your
> favourites setup that's not such an issue. I'm a command line junkie
> anyway.
>
> There's a decent set of plasmoid's in the repos now, but you have to know
> how to search for them (apt-cache search plasmoid) and how to configure
> them. I think there's a need for a plasmoid wizard here.
>
> Kontact – still has all the same old bugs as ever, or more accurately Kmail
> does. IMAP works so long as you don't stress it. Forget about using the
> groupware features for anything except contacts. However it does look great
> and integrates well. And Aggregator is brilliant.
>
> Hardware
> -------------
> Well all my hardware worked fine :) but nothing fancy there. However one
> big improvement which I presume is down to the new kernel – for the first
> time ever with my board sound still works after a hibernate or suspend. In
> fact Amarok resumes playing perfectly after a restore. This means I may
> never reboot again
>
> :)
>
> Over all I'm really pleased with this release, normally I don't run beta's
> on my desktop but this has been well worth it.
>
> --
> Lindsay
> http://members.optusnet.com.au/~blackpaw1/album