KDE 4.4 on the way

[Go2doug]

KDE 4.4 is going to be released tomorrow (9 Feb).

Anyone know approximately how long it will be before it makes its way over to the Ubuntu/Mint repositories?

When it is available, how would one go about upgrading KDE 4.3.5 to 4.4?

Thank you.

[martosurf]

You can expect having it very soon available in Ubuntu/Kubuntu repositories if not today in backports or alike repositories in Kubuntu. On the other side, I think KMint will lag a little but that's the price you have to pay to have a quality release - usable and solid as rock on top priority. By the way, I tested the RC2 in Kubuntu back some days ago and while there still were some bugs -¡yuck!- it looks nice then

[speedyx]

I wait kde4.4 too.
I think the kde stable release are enough stable for me.
When it will be available for kubuntu it can be available here on mint-kde, I think, if I have enabled the repositories.

[olligod]

KDE 4.4 is going to be released tomorrow (9 Feb).

Anyone know approximately how long it will be before it makes its way over to the Ubuntu/Mint repositories?

When it is available, how would one go about upgrading KDE 4.3.5 to 4.4?

Thank you.

To get a proper "Mintified" KDE4.4, it will very likely ...
- need to be included in the next Kubuntu first (10.4) UPDATE: It WILL be included in 10.4: The regular upgrade should load it there.
- will then be included only in the next Mint (9), that would be some 6 months from now (if Mint-KDE again will be finished after Mint-Gnome, as in the past).

To get a Kubuntu-KDE 4.4 starting today/tomorrow, (that may well contain some regressions), you will need to enable the repositories for KDE 4.4.
At Release Time, the exact path should appear on the Kubuntu Web Site, along with explanations for installations either through package management, or for commandline junkies.

[tonyric]

4.4 is already in the ppa and available and has been for some time.

[dolf05]

Just noticed kde 4.4 has appeared on update manager tried to install and keep getting an error that reads "fix broken packages" looked for broken packages but i dont have any. Anybody else having the same problem.

[kage]

Just noticed kde 4.4 has appeared on update manager tried to install and keep getting an error that reads "fix broken packages" looked for broken packages but i dont have any. Anybody else having the same problem.

I have encountered the very same "fix broken packages" on my testing machine

kage

[Dines]

Install kpackagekit and run the update trough it, it worked for me with the KDE 4.4 RC2.

If you try this would you then be kind to report back if it worked ?

[JCrichton]

Install kpackagekit and run the update trough it, it worked for me with the KDE 4.4 RC2.

If you try this would you then be kind to report back if it worked ?

Don't work, 86 or so broken packages, if you carry on with the installation then mint wont boot after!

Anyone know what's going on?

[Dines]

Damn !

Don't work, 86 or so broken packages, if you carry on with the installation then mint wont boot after!

Did you actually tried it yourself?

[JCrichton]

Damn !

Don't work, 86 or so broken packages, if you carry on with the installation then mint wont boot after!

Did you actually tried it yourself?

On 3 different setups, broke packages on all.

[rootkowski]

I upgraded to kde 4.4 from the kubuntu backports today and now I get graphics corruption every time I start the system. There's basically no desktop, just a patchwork of different colours. After searching different forums seems like it's pretty common and one of the fixes is to press the combination of keys CTRL+ALT+F1 and then back to graphical desktop by CTRL+ALT+F7. Some say to edit grub, which I'm quite reluctant to.

Anyway, I've searched the system log files and found a warning within the console-kit-daemon[916] process. The warning states: "Couldn't read /proc/908/environ: Failed to open file '/proc/908/environ': No such file or directory". And that's very true, there's not such folder like 908. The problem is, I have no idea what to do with this warning or if it has anything to do with this desktop corruption. In my case even the console viewed at F1 is corrupted.

As for now, I'm not sure if it's such a great idea to upgrade to 4.4. It has some nice new features, but if you don't like issues you should perhaps wait with upgrading.

Cheers!

[turin13]

I've got the same issue as rootkowski. After getting this colorful screen i just type my password (behind that colors my login screen), and after startup melody open terminal using keyboard shortcuts. In terminal i restart kdm and - get my login screen as it have to be.
I cannot fix it, so after restart i have to do all this tricks again.

[turin13]

I got the 'colorful' screen the first reboot after installing kde 4.4, but it was only confined to the upper left corner of the display, and it only happened once.

So, when you reboot you see normal login screen?

[turin13]

Yep.

Me not

[speedyx]

I'm downloading now 4.4. Have anyone some good experience?

[dolf05]

Tried the earlier suggestion for instaling all worked fine until i restarted, corupted sign in screen. Got it running after a bit of fiddling.Both cpus maxed out,menus slow,single click on icons did not work every time. Reinstalled Mint 8 KDE everything running sweet again.

[Dines]

I upgraded the way Kstorm suggested, everything works just fine !

[piratesmack]

Also using KDE SC 4.4, very nice.

I've noticed it's got snap

[kmb42vt]

My adventures in being stupid.

************************************************

Of course I had to try this myself. Had Helena KDE CE final running on a 6 year old (upgraded) HP a645c: AMD 3200+/1.0Gb memory/Nvidia XFX 6200/256Mb dedicated/200Gb HDD (65Gb linux partition). Ran just fine on the original install. Stable and fast.

Used the terminal and Kstorm's way of upgrading. Upgrade process went okay.

First reboot initially came up with the new login screen which stayed there for about 2 seconds then 3 evenly spaced, multi-colored squares appeared across the screen near the top and the whole screen went blank. My display warned me it had lost the signal.

On a hunch I typed my password and hit enter. The hard rive crunched away and eventually the login music started playing so I had apparently made it to the desktop although I couldn't see it.

I held the power button in which turned off the computer, powered it back on and let it boot back into Mint. This time when the login screen came up I immediately began typing in my password. The login screen didn't disappear this time. Apparently the act of typing prevented the graphic corruption of the login screen from taking place.

>Logging out and back in doesn't exhibit the login screen blackout, only restarting or a fresh boot from power up.
>I eventually found that hitting CTRL+ALT+F1 and then CTRL+ALT+F7 brings back the login screen if it disappears on boot.

Initially there was a lot of GUI breakup in the desktop including deterioration in the panel (part of it blacked out) and rather large black squares adorning the bottom left of any notification box or app thumbnail generated by the panel (mouse hover, etc). I went to System Settings/Desktop (left sidebar in "Desktop" took several seconds to appear, BTW) and disabled Desktop Effects. That got rid of the panel anomalies. I then re-enabled Desktop effects and the panel has been fine since. The panel really has problems if I leave desktop effects disabled. Don't know why.

After all the above I did a few logouts and logins with no problems but reboots still came up with the disappearing login screen. I would think that just hitting CTRL+ALT+F7 would bring it back but I haven't tried that yet (getting late in my part of the world).

Overall, KDE 4.4 is still usable and actually appears to be a bit snappier than 4.3.5. But there are definitely glitches in the GUI rendering where 4.3.5 was rock stable with no problems whatsoever.

Of course the question is now, do we leave the Kubuntu backports enabled in Software Sources in hopes of eventual fixes to 4.4 down the line or should we just say; 'Well, wasn't that fun?" and start from scratch with a reload of Mint 8 KDE CE?