[CS-FSLUG] Karmic Koala

[David McGlone]

On Friday 30 October 2009 23:29:17 Ed Hurst wrote:
> I suppose my hardware is precisely the wrong thing for some distros. Or
> maybe I'm asking too much.
>
> On openSUSE 11.2 (64-bit) -- After a week of KDE 4.3, I found it not quite
> so useful as the 3.x versions. Too many config items were removed, but it
> was fun watching the Compiz effects. Stability was good. However, there
> were plenty of little niggling things I just didn't like. The bundled
> Opera browser kept freezing. When I replaced it with the more generic
> (Qt3) version from Opera itself, it worked much better. Another problem
> was sound related. When I plugged in my headphones, I still got sound
> through the speakers. Google indicated a half-dozen completely different
> "fixes" and none helped me. Best I could tell, it was something in how
> SUSE (Alsa) detected the hardware, but I figured it might be something in
> KDE.
>
> So I tried the GNOME desktop. No help on the sound issue. Worse, the
> 64-bit Adobe Flashplayer quit working in all but Seamonkey. I had been
> testing it in Opera and Firefox, but it refused to run under GNOME; worked
> okay in KDE. I dunno, but it seems to me Novell invests an awful lot in
> repackaging stuff with lots of SUSE-specific enhancements, and it breaks
> stuff. Lots of little stuff on the edge of notice just didn't work right,
> didn't feel right. Totally subjective, so I can't really judge. Yes, I
> know it's not yet a full release, but 11.1 felt exactly the same. I'm
> inclined to think SUSE is moving somewhere I just don't want to go.
>
> With all the hoopla over Ubuntu Karmic, I gave it a test run. Nice.
> Everything worked cleanly. And for once, something Debian-based got the
> fonts right! I've long noticed no matter how I configured it, Debian-based
> systems always did something to the font rendering which made it fuzzy
> compared to RPM-based systems and BSD. Maybe I'm the only one, but I could
> always tell the difference. Not any more. This one was sharp and smooth at
> the same time.

I Noticed the font issue also, but only in KDE. 
>
> So I installed it. I'm hoping I don't get the X server lockups I had with
> the previous release. I'd like for something to just work and let me keep
> it.

I feel your pain. So far I'm quite happy with Gnome, but I did find 2 problems 
yesterday. The problem was my keyboard would quit working in Kontact every 
once in a while and I'd have to restart Kontact to get it to work again.

The second problem is my filters aren't working very well, and Kontact is not 
filtering my mail into the specified folders. This is only sporadic though, but 
still somewhat annoying at times.

-- 
Blessings
David M.