KDE - xfce - a few small problems

Birdman · 2006-01-11 13:11:21

I installed arch over the weekend (Noodle). This is my first experience and I am mighty impressed. Having been a Slackware addict for the past two or more years I could not believe the speed increase - I would estimate 30% faster at loading apps.

However, I decided to give KDE 3.5 a go as my initial desktop. It loaded very quickly and I was impressed with how light it felt (I normally use xfce for speed and efficiency). On exiting I always have the kicker panel crash. I have been to kde.org and added my comments to an existing bug report (though that did apply to KDE 3.4). Anyone else experiencing this?

I then had a play with pacman and ran #pacman Ss xfce to see what was needed to install xfce. I believe I have picked up all of the vital packages I needed and I had to export the $PATH for /opt/xfce/bin. That got xfce running. However, for xfce to be useable I needed to make some adustments to the display but the toolbox on the panel throws an error message that says it cannot open a thread because a file is missing (sorry, not in front of my box at the moment). Any xfce users out there that have experienced any post install problems?

Thanks.

tomk · 2006-01-11 14:09:06

Two things to mention first. xfce4 is big enough to constitute an application group under pacman, so

pacman -S xfce4

will install everything you need to get it up and running. Also, the addition of /opt/xfce4/bin to your $PATH is done automatically in /etc/profile.d, but you have to log out and back in again for it to take effect.

I've never had post-install issues with xfce4 on Arch, to answer your question, but I'm sure we can track it down for you. You'll need to post the error message, though.

IceRAM · 2006-01-11 14:13:39

Birdman wrote:

On exiting I always have the kicker panel crash. I have been to kde.org and added my comments to an existing bug report (though that did apply to KDE 3.4). Anyone else experiencing this?

Same here. I have grown to live with it. I have been seeing it for a very long time. I've been telling myself that I will build kdelibs & kdebase with debug symbols to properly track that down.. but never had the time.

As far as I understand, kicker is quite a complex application and this can happen. It might get solved by removing kicker's config file, but, at the same time, the problem might come back.

Birdman · 2006-01-11 15:23:16

Thank you both for your responses.

tomk:

I have a feeling I tried #pacman -S xfce ie. not xfce4. Obviously I had no luck as pacman did not know what I was talking about. That is why I resorted to using -Ss. I will give your method a go and see whether that sorts thing out

IceRAM:

I no longer feel alone with the KDE / kicker issue now I know that there is at least one other person suffering

Alan.

Lone_Wolf · 2006-01-11 20:49:35

You're indeed not alone, i experience that also when i exit KDE. (about once every 4 or 5 times kicker crashes)

Neuro · 2006-01-12 06:46:10

I've had the kicker crash issue before, but not anymore.

Don't really know what I've done, but it went away after I've done the following:
1. Removed my .kde profile (kept it somewhere else not to lose on things I need)
2. Removed /opt/kde entirely (after removing KDE packages)
3. Installed kde once again (3.5 version from testing)

It all works great from that time. But as usual with such complex apps: YMMV.

Snowman · 2006-01-12 21:53:59

There's also another group (mostly plugins) for xfce4:

pacman -S xfce4-goodies

To get a list of all available groups:

pacman -Sg

And welcome to Arch!

Birdman · 2006-01-13 12:38:58

Snowman wrote:

There's also another group (mostly plugins) for xfce4:
pacman -S xfce4-goodies
To get a list of all available groups:
pacman -Sg
And welcome to Arch!

Thanks Snowman. I followed tomk's advice and now have a fully working xfce Like all new ventures it takes a while to get used to the slightly different way of doing things and finding out which tools do what and how to use them.

On Slackware I use swaret for my package management. Pacman is a more comprehensive tool, but one that I am not yet very familiar with. It seems to be quite sensitive about what you throw at it. For example, using swaret:

swaret --install xfce

would give a result. Whereas:

pacman -S xfce

does not. I am finding it a bit of a guessing game trying to find which arguments to pass :?

However, I am very impressed with arch and get the feeling I will be staying Until I a gain a little more knowledge and confidence Slackware will remain my main distro, but give me a few more weeks .......

Alan

tomk · 2006-01-13 14:34:08

Your original entry

pacman -Ss xfce

searches for all packages with 'xfce' in the name. As I'm sure you know, not every xfce4 component has 'xfce' in the name e.g. xfwm4, xfdesktop. I've no idea how swaret handles this, but pacman uses groups.

Here's an obvious suggestion - instead of guessing, read man pacman.

Birdman · 2006-01-13 17:38:52

tomk wrote:

Here's an obvious suggestion - instead of guessing, read man pacman.

Point taken. As I say, it is the good ol' learning curve, change of mindset and all that. I have to move out of my comfort zone and allow myself to be a fumbling newbie all over again

Arch Linux

#1 2006-01-11 13:11:21

KDE - xfce - a few small problems

#2 2006-01-11 14:09:06

Re: KDE - xfce - a few small problems

#3 2006-01-11 14:13:39

Re: KDE - xfce - a few small problems

#4 2006-01-11 15:23:16

Re: KDE - xfce - a few small problems

#5 2006-01-11 20:49:35

Re: KDE - xfce - a few small problems

#6 2006-01-12 06:46:10

Re: KDE - xfce - a few small problems

#7 2006-01-12 21:53:59

Re: KDE - xfce - a few small problems

#8 2006-01-13 12:38:58

Re: KDE - xfce - a few small problems

#9 2006-01-13 14:34:08

Re: KDE - xfce - a few small problems

#10 2006-01-13 17:38:52

Re: KDE - xfce - a few small problems

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