KDE, part 2
Posted on October 26th, 2007 by matt
Been using KDE as per kubuntu-desktop as my primary desktop for about a week now. Mostly happy, but there are some unresolved issues. In no particular order:
- Amarok still doesn’t cope with the tags in my music collection. Even a small subset of the collection has stuff in it Amarok’s tag-scanner doesn’t like. This is irritating, but it works Just Fine as a DAAP client or browsing the filesystem. This means I don’t get the fancy-pants “Context” pane. I’ll live;
- More seriously, sound-mixing isn’t working. With my previous Gnome setup on Gutsy (and Feisty, for that matter) everything worked properly via ALSA. RIght now, if a Flash player has grabbed the sound then Amarok can’t play, and of course Warcrack doesn’t do sound if Amarok or Flash have grabbed the device. I have to wonder how much of this is due to the way I got here: Gutsy beta, updated to release, installed kubuntu-desktop
- No Compiz. I’m sure it’s doable, I just haven’t had time/inclination to fight with it. If I wanted to fight my computer I’d install Red Hat.
Otherwise, pretty happy. Still using a few Gtk+ apps beyond the obvious Firefox/OOo — Drivel and Logjam in particular — but unlike Qt running on Gnome, Gtk+ integrates tolerably with KDE. Suspect this is down to Qt/KDE work rather than the other way around.
Looking forward to KDE4 but not going to install an early pre-release, thanks.
Popularity: 50% [?]
ALSA is an object lesson in how not to do documentation, I’ve found.
It may also be a lesson in how not to design an audio API, but I don’t know it that well.
I’m vaguely hoping that Pulse Audio will help matters. Eventually. But I’ve turned into one of those people who don’t really want to try bleeding-edge stuff.
[...] the source of my sound problem: some changes I’d made to /etc/asound.conf trying to make mpd play nice. Removed the file, [...]