more glitz

By basd on Apr 1, 2010 | In kde4, linux, opensuse

My bootable flash drive project went so well, I decided to try again with the Plasma reference netbook version.

Not so much.

...

The interface is attractive and utilizes the forward-looking features of the Plasma design. But ....

It ran like molasses. I mean, unusably slow. After all, this is an N450 netbook and for frame of reference I can compare the original Windows 7 crappy version, Jolicloud [It just works] linux, my OpenSUSE 11.2 USB install and now the Plasma Reference netbook version.

You would think that if someone were intending to build an install explicitly for low-powered netbooks, speed of execution might take a front seat.

But no. It does not even come close to running programs at the speed of the OpenSUSE KDE 4.3 install. What's up with that?

Do I sound disappointed?

Yes. (Even if I don't.) I have really been hoping the Plasma desktop activities, etc. would come together and create a very functional desktop.

Some other downsides -- I could not find any way to get the software installer to run. Given that this USB install has a dual partition and can theoretically "remember" software changes, I was hoping for the ability to customize. Apparently not. Also, it seemingly found my wireless card, but would not activate it. Wouldn't access the computer's hard drive windows partitions, either.

Well, I hope the next version, or the next one or the next one after that (or sometime) works really well. But at the moment, I'm falling back to the OpenSUSE 11.2 KDE 4.3 USB flash drive install. Which is running pretty well -- and as I may have mentioned, I was happier with 4.3 than with 4.4.

So, I'm making a second version. Then I will have one that is totally "volatile" and a second one that will remember my customization. I hope.