Re: Safe to upgrade?
Hey, Tim.
Tim Folger:
> Hi,
>
> I'm running debian testing, with kde version 4.14.2, Given some of the
> problems I've seen posted on this list, I've been hesitating to upgrade to
> Plasma 5. What's the state of plasma 5 now in testing? Is it generally safe to
> upgrade?
>
> Thanks for any input.
I've been occasionally trying Plasma 5 for many weeks in Sid/Unstable, so
I'll mention some of my observations.
Early versions of Plasma 5 were unusable -- far too quirky and unstable for
me to want to use. I repeatedly experienced crashes of Konsole, the plasma
Panel, crashes that would bring me back to the login screen -- etc. Way too
frustrating to use day-to-day.
Downgrading to KDE4 wasn't a good option because it required downgrading a
lot of other packages, and being that I'm on Sid/Unstable this wasn't a good
option -- so I had little choice but to use another Window Manger.
I settled on MATE. I tried to use Konsole within MATE because when it works
I find Konsole more convenient -- for instance Alt-<number> keyrpesses pass
through Konsole for switching channels in Irssi, but get caught by the MATE
terminal because in MATE terminal they're shortcuts for switching terminal
tabs, and re-assigning those shortcuts doesn't seem to let the keypresses
pass through. Unfortunately Konsole under MATE was too unstable to use too.
However just within the last couple of weeks there's been a lot of work on
the KDE5 packages and Plasma 5 is now usable. I still occasionally have
Konsole crash on me, and it as well as SystemSettings reliably Segfault on
closing -- but although it's not 100% it's to a point I can tolerate. I've
loaded a lot of -dbg packages to try to track down the Segfaults, but so far
the results look more confusing than helpful... we'll see how that goes.
So before "making the jump", I'd suggest loading up a VM with Debian Testing
and trying Plasma 5 that way first. You might find you're able to deal with
it (I suspect you might find it okay), but if not it will be a somewhat
painful downgrade.
-- Chris
--
Chris Knadle, DM
Chris.Knadle@coredump.us
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