i should be working (but i'm fixing my computer).

Yesterday kde4.2 wasn't working so well for me. But as the day went on there were some code corrections I downloaded (and/or something) and the biggest annoyance -- non-working touchpad -- went away. There also seemed to be a serious memory leak for awhile that was slowing down everything to a snail's pace.

...

But, by the end of the day, things were more or less back to normal.

So, I can return to my regularly-scheduled whining.

But, first a comment on an interesting post from OpenSUSE. They are making a change in the build service that will hopefully reduce the number of packages to be downloaded upon update. This is seriously important, because after a few days, the number of packages in an "update" can be 200 or more, with between 1 and 2 gigs to download.

The truth is, I always wondered whether all of these packages were changing quite this often. As it turns out == no. What is happening is that the automatic system "rebuilds" every package in the dependency chain when something is modified. Well, that is a good idea, in the sense that it insures there won't be broken packages.

But, on the other hand, there is a reasonable possibility that several of the rebuilt packages haven't actually changed. If we don't download them, the system will still work fine. Unfortunately, the build service hasn't differentiated.

Apparently, a new script being implemented in the build service will now compare the packages in some manner and not require the download of packages in the dependency chain that haven't actually changed any.

Assuming the script works accurately, this should seriously reduce the volume of downloads, without interjecting any breakage into the software.

Yay!

Now, for my wishlist of semi-broken stuff that makes a difference to my daily use:

1. Network manager needs to be able to manage manual connections. It used to (kde3) and then it didn't (kde4) and then it did (kde4.2) and now it doesn't. Rather inconvenient, because I need to use static IPs and specific DNS servers.

2. Plasma desktop geometry -- I have no idea what is going on here, but it is time-wasteful to have to move around all my widgets every time I restart kde 4.2. It would be nice if they stayed where I put them, like they presumably are supposed to do.

I don't know if my problem is the result of my choice of widgets, conflicts between the widgets, too many widgets, or whatever. But, in any event, inconvenient.

It would be less convenient if I could just put my computer to sleep (suspend to ram) when I want to move it around. Well, as far as I can tell "suspend to ram" is working fine. But:

3. RandR isn't working. Back in 3.5 for awhile, RandR would nicely set the external screen and internal screens for my laptops to different geometries/resolutions with no problem. So, if I undocked the laptop, no problem. (Well, there was a problem, but it was with the networking, not the screen.)

But, RandR has not worked right yet in 4.2. I know from blogging by the developer(s) that this may be fixed in 4.3.

For awhile, RandR crashed my system, so I had to remove it from the automatic startup programs. But, that problem is now gone, RandR will run.

Unfortunately, it sets both screens to the same geometry. So, while my external monitor is connected, the laptop shows part of a 1280x1024 display. Among other things, that means that I can't access the RandR tray icon, because it is below the screen.

It seems that RandR will actually allow me to switch screens. But, as mentioned, I can't access it once I disconnect the external monitor.

But, I did discover that if I "unify" the outputs, the display is set to match the internal display and "stretched" on the external monitor. So, this way I can reset the display BEFORE I undock.

I think this looks like a satisfactory work around, though I haven't fully tested it.

4. I'll just throw this one in, but it's definitely lower down the list. For some reason, Firefox scrolling is really not acceptable. It's slow and quirky. Often, once it starts scrolling, it continues going rather uncontrollably (but slowly).

PS: This is weird -- the "blue" in my panels disappeared again. Well, I had two blue ones and one black one yesterday and now three black ones ...