so much for live blogging

By basd on Feb 23, 2010 | In kde4, linux

Ok, so I was busy! I spent Saturday and Sunday demonstrating KDE 4. Which was good and I generally use it, although right at the moment I am on and LXDE desktop because, well ...

...

Off and on I have been having a problem with screen brightness. I first noticed it on my Gateway netbook, but it didn't develop into a serious issue, because the hot keys for screen brightness work. Then I noticed similar problems on my Vaio laptop. Well, on the menu that comes up when the power widget is clicked, there was a slider and I was able to turn up the brightness on the display.

Except (and how often is there an except ... and don't get me started, yes I really like KDE and many of the programs I regularly use are KDE programs, etc., etc.) -- how often since KDE 4.0 beta have we had to deal with issues? Yes, that many. And granted, I'm using KDE from the openSUSE Factory repositories, so it is technically subject to issues anyway.

So ... let's move on. In any event, this issue plagued me a bit at SCALE in LA because my primary demonstration computer was my Vaio. But, I did manage to get the brightness ramped back up by switching from "powersaving" to "performance".

Hoping to fix the problem, I upgraded all my packages. Well, a few times. And, so dudes and dudesses, here is the current update: KDE desktop on the Sony is largely unusable at the moment because not only is the brightness permanently cranked down, a lot of the thematic plasma elements end up looking like black on black, so I can't read stuff. Such as, the power/battery widget still has a line that says "brightness", but whether or not there is an actual slider next to it is questionnable. At least I can't find any.

How many Linux users came by the KDE booth at SCALE to tell me they considered KDE 4 unstable and buggy. AND KDE WORLD ... YES, I DEFENDED YOU. But ... um, well I did admit it is always useful to have a second desktop available just in case.

In fact, whenever KDE gets particularly annoying I work on my other desktops (eg., GNOME and ICEwm to try and get them to have the identical layout and the same useability as my KDE plasma desktop.

So, as it happens, I have been experimenting with LXDE. I am always searching for whatever will go "faster." (Unfortunately, the trade-off is usually reduced utility.) I've been pretty happy with Plasma, because at idle it has been running 2% or so of my CPU, which is definitely not bad and I can't do much better with anything else.

Which brings us back to LXDE. There is no appreciable difference at idle, but programs do seem to execute a bit faster. No compositing (at least on my Sony), but there is some transparency. The windows themes are pretty basic.

But there is another feature that is pretty cool. That is to say, right at the moment it is useable, so I was really glad to have it installed since I can barely see my Plasma desktop at the moment.

We might wonder if the screen brightness problem is KDE or something about openSUSE. Don't know -- what I can say is that the computer comes up "bright" and then dims partway through the KDE desktop startup process (while the splash screen is still up).

Are we having fun yet???