[kubuntu-devel] Kubuntu dapper-flight-6+ feedback

[Jonathan Riddell]

On Sat, Apr 15, 2006 at 05:07:13PM +0200, Christoph Wiesen wrote:
> here's a collection of most things that came to my attention, when installing 
> and using kubuntu dapper-drake (dist-upgrade from 04.14.2006, fresh user 
> after the upgrade - no old settings).

Thanks for taking the time.

> --------------------------------------
> system:/ and media:/ kio slaves always change view mode
> --------------------------------------
> The kio slaves system:/ media:/ and probably some others use "Icon View" 
> with "very large" icons. Unfortunately it will *always* switch to that view 
> when you browse those kio slaves, no matter if you use something else 
> (treeview for example) by default.
> KDE bug: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=108542

That's best fixed upstream.

> --------------------------------------
> guidance fstab editor can't set "exec" option and others
> --------------------------------------
> This has already been sent to  simon at simonzone.com and fboudra at free.fr
> 
> Basically, the "exec" setting didn't work for me. In the end I had to edit 
> fstab manually.
> 
> After I selected "Allow Executables" in the advanced options of my non-root 
> ext3 partition Guidance put this in fstab:
> ? ?/dev/hda5 /media/temp-data ext3 ,atime,auto,rw,nodev,exec,suid,users 0 0
> Unfortunately that's not quite correct - to make it work I have to change it 
> to this:
> ? ?/dev/hda5 /media/temp-data ext3 ,atime,auto,rw,nodev,users,exec,suid 0 0
> 
> The cause is this: "users" and "user" imply "noexec" (as well as "nosuid" 
> and "nodev", so suid and dev are affected as well.). That means if you 
> put "users" in the end it will imply the option "noexec" as well, so 
> any "exec" thats placed *before* "users" has no effect.
> What exactl options "users" implies is in the manpage of mount as well.
> Solution: "users" should be put before the other mentioned options.

A new guidance will be uploaded shortly after beta release, let me know
if that doesn't fix it.

> --------------------------------
> CDs aren't ejected when eject button is pressed
> --------------------------------
> Kubuntu won't eject a CD that has been used before, when the user pushes the 
> eject button on the CD/DVD drive. There's no indication why this is. 
> Though I know that this is 'normal' for unmodified linux (you have to unmount 
> manually first), we can't expect others to know this. When eject is pressed 
> on the hardware the cd should just pop out. Other distros solved this with 
> specific patches afaik.

I'll try and talk to our HAL person and see why this is.

> Additionally newly inserted CDs have to be opened inside KDE through media:/ 
> before they can be used anywhere else - that'd be nice to have solved but the 
> eject issue is more serious in my oppinion

It does pop up a friendly window pointing you this way.

> ------------------------------
> Konqueror file-view search bar
> ------------------------------
> A. When saving the view-profile "Kubuntu File Manager" the search bar get's 
> lost.
> I have no idea why this is
> When I start konqueror for the first time I change the view mode to "tree 
> view" and go to settings -> save view profile "Kubuntu File Manager". After 
> that any newly opened Konqueror has lost the search bar. No idea why.

And the search bar is hard to get back.  Such is the usability of Konqueror.

> B. The search bar does scale down too late.

I presume the search bar uses a fixed width, I think anything else
would cause more problems

> -------------------------------
> Adpet doesn't show remaining download time
> -------------------------------
> apt has the ability to display the remaining time a download will take at the 
> given download speed. Adept is lacking this feature and it really should be 
> there imo. Progress bars are nice, but they don't give a good idea about how 
> long it will take overall.

I'll talk to mornfall about that.

> ------------------------------
> graphical deb installer
> ------------------------------
> .deb files are linked to ark at the moment. Ark gives an error message when 
> launched with a deb file for me and isn't all that useful anyway.
> Maybe a kdialog could pop up instead that has three buttons:
> "Install Package" "Uninstall Package" "Show Packakge info".
> Those could then call the Kubuntu Package Menu scripts.

You can right click on .deb files in Konqueror but otherwise you'll
need to wait for a KDE port of gdebi which could well happer for dapper+1.

> ---------------------------------
> No way to choose primary audio device
> ---------------------------------
> To my knowledge it's not possible to change the default audio device.
> Nowadays every mainboard has onboard audio. Still many users have better add 
> in cards. Without a way to choose the default/primary device onboard audio 
> will be used first. There is a command line alsa tool (alsaconf) that can do 
> this but it was removed from the ubuntu package because there is a GUI tool 
> for that on GNOME.
> To solve this I had to disable the onboard audio in my BIOS.
> 
> Can't find the initial bug report now, but here's another:
> https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/kcontrol/+bug/31893
> Seems like there's now a weird utility called asoundconf, that's "not meant 
> for end users". Looks like KDE needs a way to set up the default device.

Interesting.  Sounds like a job for a future Guidance module.

> ----------------------------
> Konsole crashes at logout
> ----------------------------
> When I logout with one ore more opened Konsole sessions, they crash.
> After l log in again they mostly don't come up again. I assume this is because 
> they were closed (crashing) before the actual logout so are not saved to the 
> session information.

I've never seen this problem.  Do you have a backtrace?

> ---------------------------
> Default calculator
> ---------------------------
> Kcalc's missing. Speedcrunch is nice if you actually use it for more often, 
> but I still thing for the casual user Kcalc is a better choice for it's 
> obvious similarity to a pocket calculator. SpeedCrunch doesn't exactly help 
> the user visually - reminds me a lot of a powerful but undescriptive command 
> line application.

The new version of speedcrunch fixes most of these problems.
Unfortunately it didn't get into dapper because it uses qt4 but
dapper+1 will have it.

> ------------------------
> Skim can't be closed
> ------------------------
> When you start Skim you can not close it anymore.
> User's may not know what Skim is about (I didn't...) and just open it to have 
> a look. When they want to close it again they may fail, because there's no 
> obvious way to do this.
> The system tray icon should have a "quit" entry at the bottom. This is missing 
> at the moment.

I'll add that in.

> --------------------------
> Samba file sharing not configurable through system-settings
> --------------------------
> Samba file sharing seems to be installed by default now, which is great. 
> Unfortunately the nice kcontrol module "Samba" is not available in System 
> Settings and thus is not useable unless you start "kcontrol" manually.
> It should be added as an additional module under "Internet & 
> Networking" -> "Sharing".

Does this even work anyway?

> ----------------------------
> "kdesu konqueror" in K-Menu 
> ----------------------------
> There's no (graphical) way to start a file manager with root access for system 
> administration. Just like there is "kdesu adpet" in "K-Menu -> System" there 
> could e "kdesu konqueror" to get a graphical administration interface. With 
> the new message in konsole it's obvious how to get root access there - it's 
> not obvious how to get root access graphically at the moment. 
> Adding "Konqueror File Manager (system administration)" under "K-Menu -> 
> System" would solve that.

You can right click and edit as root.  Super user konqueror could be
quite destructive in the wrong hands.

> -------------------------------
> Adpet status bar somewhat too big
> -------------------------------
> The status bar on the bottom of adpet is pretty large. there's a lot of 
> usefull information there, but it should be possible to shrink the widths of 
> adpet windows more, so that it fits smaller screens better

Passed to adept author.

> -----------------------------
> QTparted integration?
> -----------------------------
> Kubuntu is lacking a graphical partitioner. Maybe QTparted can be integrated 
> into system settings or called externally in a future release

QtParted is being used by the new live CD installer so it will be included.

> ------------------------------
> Konqueror tree-view column highlighting
> ------------------------------
> ksysguard in KDE 3.5.x has a slight highlighting of the column that's 
> currently used for sorting. That's available for konqui, too. If it should be 
> enabled I'll look for it again. Not sure if it actually was in konqui's code 
> now or if it was just a small patch, though.
> 

Send me the patch when you work it out.

> ---------------------------
> mousewheel on "desktop preview & pager" should act as ubuntu's does
> ---------------------------
> The desktop preview & pager panel applet allows to use the mouse wheel to 
> switch between desktops. Unfortunately it doesn't stop at the last desktop. 
> Instead it goes to the first again. In Ubuntu it stops at the last. That way 
> it's more controllable without paying 100% attention; scroll down as far as 
> you get -> your're definitely on desktop no 4; scroll up as far as you get -> 
> your definitely on desktop no 1.

Probably best sent upstream to KDE.

Jonathan