Precise Pangolin alpha 1

[SteveRiley]

Re: Precise Pangolin alpha 1

Two days ago, PowerDevil barfed on itself, spewing something about out-of-date modules. Yesterday it started working again. Ah, the life of Alpha

[GreyGeek]

Re: Precise Pangolin alpha 1

KMail still has some serious issues. The big one for me, besides crashing every time you close it, is the failure of newly arrived email to display message list headers, or if they do display, to reliably display the message body when the header is clicked. While navigating the message list headers things will often go awry. Delete a message header and the body goes away, the counter decrements, but the header grays out and remains in the message list. Or, it goes away too, but the counter isn't decremented.

Current solution which allows me to read all the mail: close KMail and "Quit" it from the system tray. Run it again and all the missing headers show in the message list. Navigate through several of them before things mess up again. Rinse and repeat.

[SteveRiley]

Re: Precise Pangolin alpha 1

In a thread elsewhere here on KFN, šumski said that many of these problems are gone in KDE 4.8 RC2 (a.k.a. 4.7.97) on OpenSUSE. I think we'll see that land in our repos soon.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Precise Pangolin alpha 1

It's currently at 4.7.95.

As a beta Precise is coming along nicely. That's why I am not concerned about KMail or any of the other problems currently afflicting Precise. I began using Lucid when it was ALPHA (IIRC) and by the time it reached Gold it was Gold. That's why I stayed with it. I was going to wait till Precise went Gold and install it then, but with the new laptop here I got antsy and decided to install it and roll through to the release. Precise will be on this laptop for the next five years.

[notabug]

Re: Precise Pangolin alpha 1

I have Alpha2 installed. I just downloaded the iso last night. My problem now is that Firefox will not start from the Kicker. I get an error each time....
[img width=400 height=101]http://i1107.photobucket.com/albums/h381/absolutepb/fixit/snapshot1.png[/img]

I reinstalled Precise again tonight in case something had gone haywire. Still the same thing even though I did restart as suggested.
I can start Firefox from the terminal using root.

Besides Firefox, I've installed the NVidia drivers and tonight updates. The same thing happened with Thunderbird last night, but I don't have it
installed right now.

Also, when I open Dolphin, I get an error saying that dolphinrc is not writable and I can't make any changes to the UI or settings in Dolphin.

I have Precise Alpha installed in a spare partition, so this isn't life changing. Oneiric is still doing good.

Thanks

[SteveRiley]

Re: Precise Pangolin alpha 1

As a beta Precise is coming along nicely. That's why I am not concerned about KMail or any of the other problems currently afflicting Precise.

282 upgraded packages tonight... 4.7.97 (4.8 RC2) is in the repos! And I can report much better cooperation with Gmail. To ensure pristine testing, I purged all existing email resource files, accounts, and identities, then set up KMail from the beginning. Email deletes as it should, KMail doesn't lose its place as I switch from folder to folder, and it no longer unceremoniously kills itself. Looking good!

Right now, I'm using the default MySQL backend for Akonadi. mysqld consumes 31 MB RAM, 0.0% CPU. virtuoso-t consumes 46 MB RAM, 0.0% CPU. I'll try out PostgreSQL, as a comparison. And check this:

steve@steve-aspire:~$ apt-cache search akonadi-backend
akonadi-backend-mysql - MySQL storage backend for Akonadi
akonadi-backend-odbc - ODBC storage backend for Akonadi
akonadi-backend-postgresql - PostgreSQL storage backend for Akonadi
akonadi-backend-sqlite - SQLite storage backend for Akonadi

steve@steve-aspire:~$ apt-cache depends akonadi-backend-odbc
akonadi-backend-odbc
Depends: libqt4-sql-odbc
Suggests: akonadi-server
Suggests: libvirtodbc0
Suggests: virtuoso-minimal

The existence of akonadi-backend-odbc implies that Akonadi can use Virtuoso as its backend...? If it really works, that could be cool. Since Nepomuk is hardwired to use that database, why not wire Akonadi into it as well?

[GreyGeek]

Re: Precise Pangolin alpha 1

I installed those updates at 1:30AM last night. This morning I can report that ALL the problems I noticed with KMail are now GONE. It is working perfectly for the way I am using it.

The update has raised my average CPU temperture to around 104-108F.

Every update unmarks my Active Desktop, but acceleration returns when I check it again, even though it gives me dire warnings about all the problems I could have, none of which I experience. Maybe they were just using the CYA.

[Snowhog]

Re: Precise Pangolin alpha 1

Maybe they were just using the CYA.

Cyan
Yellow
Aqua

[SteveRiley]

Re: Precise Pangolin alpha 1

The update has raised my average CPU temperture to around 104-108F.

Jerry, when you check with top, what is your computer's CPU utilization for Xorg and kwin?

[GreyGeek]

Re: Precise Pangolin alpha 1

With FireFox and a Konsole open, but NO mouse activity, KNotify4 using 2%, and kwin, xorg and plasma-desktop pop in and out with 1% every few seconds.

With mouse activity, FirFox is around 15%, xorg is 3% and kwin is 2%, but those numbers jump wildly, even the their ranking doesn't.

All in all, not too bad. Even as I type this the CPU temp is around 107F but there is little air blowing out of the port and the whole area around it and the bottom of the laptop is cool to the touch... room temp. I'm pleased with its performance and I believe that the temps being reported are fairly accurate on Precise.

The update last night has killed a LOT of bugs. KMail no longer crashes on logout and it processes email the way I expected it to. Still can't install GoogleEarth or Skype yet because the ia32lib problem is not sorted out. But, it will be soon enough. I get 40 fps with Stellarium and the video has never crashed once. Still can't do a decent recording with the enteral mic using Audacity, though.

[SteveRiley]

Re: Precise Pangolin alpha 1

In general, 12.04 seems to be a pretty high-quality alpha. I'm tempted to switch my main laptop over to it now...

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Precise Pangolin alpha 1

FYI, not if you need wine. ia32-libs-multiarch is still not installable, so no wine, or anything that needs it. Just a heads up.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Precise Pangolin alpha 1

In general, 12.04 seems to be a pretty high-quality alpha. I'm tempted to switch my main laptop over to it now...

That's what I thought, despite the ia32 lib problem and the absence of GoogleEarth, Blink and Skype, which are all 32bit apps that require the ia32 libs. But, if you are running the 32bit OS ... No Problem! 8)

So, I installed Kubuntu 12.04 LTS and will ride it on this laptop for the next 3 to 5 years, or it dies. Which ever comes first. I'm glad Canonical is taking the LST to 5 years.

[SteveRiley]

Re: Precise Pangolin alpha 1

Hm... I use Wine only for Adobe Digital Editions on that box. I suppose I could move it into my VM and then remove Wine.

[dibl]

Re: Precise Pangolin alpha 1

In general, 12.04 seems to be a pretty high-quality alpha. I'm tempted to switch my main laptop over to it now...

Do as you wish, but let me interject a word to the wise, based on following about 10 releases of Kubuntu, since 6.10:

The Alpha OS typically holds up pretty well, until the major "architectural" plus cosmetic revisions are inserted, just before (or after) the Beta announcement. Then it breaks. I haven't seen one yet that failed to break, prior to the late-Beta timeframe. And by "break" it can be anything from an X server that simply won't go, to wireless fubar'd, to a key package that you need (dolphin, konqueror, etc.) busted. I agree that 12.04 with the RC2 of KDE 4.8 is looking fine today, on my installation, but I would not bet my daily productivity on it in the next 60 days.

Just sayin' ....