KDE4 very good but still has some glitches

I really like KDE4 and I look forward to when it is "complete." By that I mean, when all of the features I previously enjoyed in KDE3 are available. I am seriously considering seeing if I can help with a few features I want right now, such as all my Desktop Wallpaper options... and a few extra features I have thought up along the way.

In an attempt to eschew being a Linux Fanboy and merely be a bigtime fan, I will list the glitches I have encountered so far. To be fair, not all of these may be relating to KDE but instead with the current Linux kernel version I am using.

I will list my problems and any solutions or workarounds that I have seen.

Konsole transparency

• Description: There is an odd white glow to any konsole color profile transparency settings initially when the konsole is loaded. This glow remains regardless of what appears to be half of all possible colors and is present at zero percent opacity. Even when using my work around, the problem returns if the konsole is resized at all.
  
• Number of times encountered so far: This is a reproducible bug.
  
• Successful Solution: The glow disappears and proper opacity returns when you cause a full desktop redraw. (I believe actually a full Plasma Desktop redraw, but I'm not sure.) This can be done by going to System Settings -> Desktop -> Desktop Effects -> All Effects and changing or literally toggling an option. As long as you can and do hit the "Apply" button to force a redraw, the konsole will display the proper opacity.
• Note: There may be other color errors, and I suspect there are, but I have not had time to properly check for them.
  

Keyboard failure

• Description: My keyboard stopped working completely, and this was not related to my wireless bluetooth keyboard. I always have an axillary PS2 keyboard plugged in and this too would not function.
• Number of times encountered so far: 2
  
• Attempted (but failed) solutions: X-Windows restart.
• Successful Solution: Rebooted.
  

Mouse failure

• Description: My mouse stopped working completely. I did not attempt to use a USB mouse to check if that still worked.
• Number of times encountered so far: 1
• Successful Solution: Rebooted.

Application Menu Shortcut Keys

• Description: Tried to set Meta+O to start OpenOffice writer, but this did not seem to work. No error message or related conflicts were encountered and everything looked like it should work, except that it never did.
  
• Number of times encountered so far: 1
  
• Attempted (but failed) solutions: X-Windows restart.
• Successful Solution: Rebooted.
  

Gwenview

• Description: Randomly seems to crash and no noticeable pattern of problems. Unfortunately Kubuntu is not compiled with backtrace abilities or I would provide bug reports.
  
• Number of times encountered so far: 3 (which is pretty good since I have used this program probably over 200 times)
  

Ark

• Description: When selecting "Compress to..." and choosing a specific archive type, Ark seems to crash when you use more than a single '.' (period) character in the file name, especially with .tar.gz.
  
• Number of times encountered so far: This is a reproducible bug.
  
• Successful Solution: Don't use an extra dot.

Konqueror crashes

• Description: Konqueror has crashed several times on me randomly and I am not sure what to say about that, since sometimes it just crashes when I'm not even actively using it.
  
• Note: Konqueror is usably stable and I expect it to only improve. At the moment, Konqueror is seriously a work in progress, based on the updating of features, protocols, refactoring of features and its unholy union with the file manager Dolphin.
  
• Number of times encountered so far: Around 6 times so far.
  

Monitor Timed Power-off

• Description: My monitor will not shut itself off after extended use, despite configuring it to do so. Not sure if it is a configuration bug on my part or not.
  
• Number of times encountered so far: 1.

Lock Screen fails to engage

• Description: Could not engage a session lock.
  
• Number of times encountered so far: 1.
• Successful Solution: X-Windows restart.

GTK / QT4 Button Mis-arrangement

• Description: The Yes/No, Replace/Cancel, Overwrite/Replace, etc. buttons in some applications are in the incorrect order, as dictated by the HID standard (which I believe GTK at least adheres to, and probably QT as well). I have confirmed this in Kate and Firefox at least.
  

More updates to come as I see them.

Make Kubuntu 9.04 use a single Kate session

I don't know if this was a KDE4 team or Ubuntu change, but somewhere along the way Kate stopped using a single session and started to open an instances of itself for each file. I suspect this is an Ubuntu change.

Anyway, if you want to have only a single instance of Kate running, here is how to fix this. You can edit the Kate menu entry by right-clicking on the K-menu and editing it. Edit the "Command: " line and insert '--use' between 'kate' and the '%U'. It should end up looking like this:

Command: kate --use %U

The other option is to manually open the file in a text editor: /home/user_name/.local/share/applications/kde4-kate.desktop (Where 'user_name' is the target user name).

You want to change the "Exec: " line. Insert '--use' between 'kate' and the '%U'. It should end up looking like this:

Exec: kate --use %U

Test the new configuration in Konqueror. If Konqueror gives you problems about not being able to open /usr/bin/kate, this is to a known bug in the KDE-Libs with DBUS. There is a workaround for this.

Open the file in a text editor (again): /home/user_name/.local/share/applications/kde4-kate.desktop (Where 'user_name' is the target user name).

Find the line "X-DBUS-StartupType=Multi" and change the "Multi" to "None".

That should fix your problem.

Ext4 and Btrfs Benchmark tests

While researching EXT4 performance, I came across this website:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ext4_benchmarks&num=1

They were quite informative. If you are interested in learning how EXT4 compares to EXT3 and other major filesystem competitors of the day (XFS and ReiserFS), have a read. One caution, read their bar graph summaries/legends carefully because the graphs can be misread if you don't pay careful attention.

EXT4 does not win at everything but it seems to hold the best place in more tests than its competitors. Well, at least in these tests.

For those of you interested in next generation filesystem coming our way, Btrfs, they also have benchmarks for the current development snapshot.

Ubuntu brings advanced Screen features to everyday users

If you use terminal to get much done in Linux, you will probably encounter the GNU program called "screen." If you haven't yet, take the time to learn. It is great and extremely useful if you do serious work on the console.

The learning curve is a steep but short. Once you learn about 4 basic commands, you can start working and learn more as needed.

However, the old news is that Ubuntu has once again tried to make another powerful tool of the Linux world more accessible and user-friendly for the masses. Ubuntu by default installs the package 'screen-profiles' which adds a couple of nice text interfaces and predefined settings to help new users learn the tool.

That is all well and good and I applaud this move. However, if you are an old or advanced Linux user, Ubuntu's move might interfere with some of your daily work. The screen-profile's try not to interfere with a ~/.screenrc file, but they still can slightly.

Uninstalling the package will solve most issues, but there is one very VERY important feature that has been changed as a problem prevention step for newbie users. In some shells and within Screen itself the command CTRL-s if used inappropriately with other key combinations can cause your visible text area to halt until CTRL-Q is pressed.

Now, I use CTRL-s for searching my Bash command history and for saving within my Vim session. So I safely use CTRL-s and I want it around and not interfered with their problem prevention. To get around Ubuntu's new default configurations, simply add this line to your ~/.bashrc file, or type it on the command line whenever you open a new screen window.

stty -ixon

A weird tale of SELinux, Firefox and Jaunty Remix woes

Foreward
Here is an unusual story I experienced many months ago. First let me tell the reader what you are about to read is not normal. I have never heard of SELinux behaving like it did with me here, and I have used it for several years before and since this incident with no problems. (Though I have switched to using AppArmor based on recommendations from Ubuntu). I have also never had this problem since it happened.

The Story
Back on April 7th 2009, I installed Kubuntu Jaunty 9.04 KDE3 remix.

I did all the update and upgrades and grabbed all the new kernal goodness. Then I installed SELinux and rebooted. Upon reboot, I found something (SELinux I can only guess) had DESTROYED all the Japanese text in my filenames. It turned them into complete garbage and I don't know why, because this has never happened before. (I assume it did this during its scan of my hard-disks.)

In general I favor running SELinux and I don't believe this behavior is normal (especially since I have run it before and since with no more problems). I am thinking it was perhaps a problem with the package of SELinux itself from Ubuntu.

This type of file corruption would be a major catastrophe except that I am such a good person for backing files up, so I was able to recover from most of it.

Firefox 3.5's new JavaScript engine to use revolutionary new JIT method

Here is small post for you programmer guys that you may find interesting.

Sure, you know what JIT is and why it makes so many modern interpreted languages actually usable in terms of speed/performance. But you probably have not heard of the exact methods through which JIT is achieved, and much less of a new method called "trace trees."

Apparently Mozilla's JavaScript engine has a new feature called TraceMonkey which is based on this new JIT compilation method and "The net result is a massive speed increase both in the browser chrome and Web‐page content."[1]

Programmers may find reading about Trace Trees to be interesting. I did.

For more detailed information about how this works with Firefox 3.5, take a look here.

More Evidence of Linux All Around You

Here is another story for you readers to remember the next time you see some Linux hater or hear people saying Linux is not popular, or common, or is losing popularity.

I have heard more than once that Hollywood uses Linux a lot, which is to say in a more correct sense, the Entertainment Industry uses Linux. Well, here is a little story about one such company: Walt Disney Feature Animation.
http://media.codeweavers.com/pub/crossover/case_studies/WaltDisney.pdf