Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 15:00:19 +0100 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: Wojciech Puchar <wojtek@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> Cc: Eduardo Cerejo <ejcerejo@optonline.net>, FreeBSD-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: KDE: What a monster! Message-ID: <20090126150019.387d538b.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <20090125144428.B44198@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> References: <20090123191547.fd43d651.ejcerejo@optonline.net> <20090125022647.6b379fed.freebsd@edvax.de> <20090125144428.B44198@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl>
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Dear list, I'm starting to make myself unpopular today. :-) On Sun, 25 Jan 2009 14:53:51 +0100 (CET), Wojciech Puchar <wojtek@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> wrote: > fortunately it's only tendency to "trendy" software like KDE. not for all > unix software. But sadly for the most software that is used for real productivity, such as media players, programming environments, or even web browsers and mail clients. > and definitely NOT for FreeBSD OS inself, that gets > same or faster every release on THE SAME machine! Exactly, that's why I'm such a happy FreeBSD user, or, to be honest, HAVE BEEN, because I think... well, sometimes I could crash the stupid box against the wall because things that worked well years ago when I setup the system with "old" software aren't possible with "modern" software anymore, and that's a thing I cannot believe. Evolution is good, but what if it's not only about adding, fixing and optimizing things, but making things impossible, due to handling or dropping of functionalities? In this regards, FreeBSD always was / is good: A solid OS base where certain things can be EXPECTED to work. Up to today, I haven't found an operating environment that serves me as good as FreeBSD did in the past. FreeBSD in the "equation of speed": Hardware --------- = speed++ FreeBSD-- And yes, I think I could notice the speed improvement in the past. Improvements in performance and startup speed are always welcome, allthough they're not a major issue to me. As long as it works flawlessly in general, I'm happy. :-) > it's not unix problem. it's problem of people that like to have their unix > be "like windows" so it is :) I cannot imagine one (!) reason why I would like to have my UNIX to be like "Windows", I'm happy it NOT like "Windows". :-) (These words from a man who has never used "Windows", so I'm not spoiled with its strange concepts or assumptions about how things should be done.) > what exactly software you rebuild and found slower (except KDE/Gnome > bloatware) ? You're inviting me to complain. :-) Before I will start, I may say that I often heared that "KDE is an excellent development platform", so I tried it out, especially because of KDEvelop which I found quite interesting (running it without KDE). KDE and Gnome are simply too much for my machine - end for me. So much stuff I don't need and don't want (such as automounting devices, this is - in terms of security - not wanted on my system). And all that stuff that comes bundled with it that I even don't know about... And I think Gnome isn't much better due to Gtk 2 and its huge pile of dependencies. People keep saying that XFCE 4 would be good for a lightweight desktop, but it uses Gtk 2, too, so same problem here. Okay, when your weight is 200kg, then 150kg may be "lightweight", but not compared to mankind's average. :-) KDE wouldn't let me utilize the keys on my Sun USB Type 6 keyboard anymore. I've always been a fan of lightweight software (and I MEAN lightweight), such as WindowMaker, an excellent window manager, and all the programs that do not have a K or a G in the name. :-) Now, let's start complaining. It will be a looong list, and I have to admit that I've not found the motivation yet to fix the problems that can be fixed, allthough I'm sure not all of them can be fixed. Introduction: I've used FreeBSD 5.4-p something since I set it up some years ago, and up to July 2008 when an inode crashed my life, the universe, and everything, the system ran fine so I had no reason to update anything. Machine is an Intel P4 with 2 GHz and 768 MB SDR-SDRAM (yes, I know, I'm too mean to buy DDR1-SDRAM for this). GPU is an ATI Radeon 9200 / RV250 AGP. Sound is CMI. First I found that compiling lasts much longer. I know that the new C compiler does much more optimization, but compile times have almost doubled - remember, we're talking about the same hardware configuration, no change. Some numbers: FreeBSD 7 --------- buildkernel KERNCONF 1:05:25.90 97.2% 1:11:05.53 94.4% buildworld 3:54:15.31 96.8% installkernel KERNCONF 0:46.89 63.9% ... make update ... buildkernel KERNCONF -D USBDEBUG 1:58:29.08 64.7% buildworld buildkernel KERNCONF -D USBDEBUG 6:06:03.90 86.9% 7:19:49.24 78.2% installkernel KERNCONF 1:11.85 43.1% buildworld buildkernel KERNCONF 6:01:33.44 90.1% 6:19:33.55 92.8% 7:39:11.57 82.0% 9:12:00.28 65.1% FreeBSD 5 --------- buildworld buildkernel KERNCONF 5:46:42.25 96.4% buildworld buildkernel KERNCONF 5:46:30.40 95.9% buildkernel KERNCONF 43:42.15 97.6% I will need to have a look at my kernel configuration file. In some regards, my knowledge is still on the standpoint of FreeBSD 5 and I've got to learn some new things. With FreeBSD 7, my Sun hardware (Type 6 keyboard and mouse) aren't recognized anymore, allthough they work. I have been told that this is a hardware issue (due to poor engineering on Sun's site), but I can't find any reason why it worked on FreeBSD 4, 5 and 6 before and stopped with FreeBSD 7. Usually, I get this: % dmesg | grep "^u[mk]" ums0: <vendor 0x0430 product 0x0100, class 0/0, rev 1.00/1.02, addr 2> on uhub1 ums0: 3 buttons. ukbd0: <vendor 0x0430 product 0x0005, class 0/0, rev 1.00/1.02, addr 3> on uhub1 But it should be this: % dmesg | grep "^u[mk]" ums0: Sun Microsystems Type 6 USB mouse, rev 1.00/1.02, addr 2, iclass 3/1 ums0: 3 buttons ukbd0: Sun Microsystems Type 6 USB keyboard, rev 1.00/1.02, addr 3, iclass 3/1 The corresponding strings haven't disappeared from the usbdevs file in the kernel source... And burncd doesn't work on my CD/DVD recorder anymore, but I have already made the switch to ATAPICAM oriented programs such as cdrecord and cdrdao. Now for X. The startup of X has been "improved" over the startup of XFree86. It now lasts almost 10s from "startx" to X. Launching WindowMaker needs no more than 1s of this time. But sadly, X cannot run 1400x1050 anymore. Autodetect does lead to stupid values such as 1024x800 or the like. So I created the xorg.conf myself and cannot, under NO circumstances, get 1400x1050 "hardcoded" in any way. My workaround: Start at 1152x864 (seems to be the maximum that's possible) and then have "xrandr --size 1400x1050" and "xrandr --fb 1400x1050" in ~/.xinitrc. Generally, everything on X is slower. Further fun with X that has already been discovered by others on that list: Whenever I switch to textmode and then back to X, the content of the edit buffer (that what you select with the left button and output with the middle button) gets output at the window where the mouse is! So if it is an X Terminal, the content of this buffer is in the terminal window. And oh joy oh fun, if it contains carriage returns, it even gets executed! Or when Opera has focus, the right click context menu is displayed. It can easily be checked with a text editor and something inside the edit buffer. Opera has long time been my favourite browser, but today, I tend to use Firefox more and more (FF2), but today, it it's terrible to open some tabs, because load goes up to 90% and more and Opera doesn't react anymore. The configuration dialogs are worse, if I compare them to older versions. And if I try to print pages, they look terrible (exceed page borders). Furthermore, it crashes more often than Opera 5 or 7. When Opera loads a page, the mouse pointer becomes ugly. Why does it have to override the system standard? Instead of the normal (black) mouse pointer, I get an ugly white one with an hourglass attached. Does it want to tell me something, time for tea? :-) Ah yes, and Firefox doesn't have a key combination to quit the program (such as every other program has, usually something like Ctrl-Q). Firefox has always been criticised for being slower than every other browser. I'm still sticking to Opera because I like the look and feel, the good keyboard support and the mouse gestures. Yes, I know some of them can be installed to FF as an addition, but... it's not the same! :-) Oh and printing, apsfilter, allthough equipped with the same settings as before, doesn't utilize the duplexer of my HP Laserjet 4000 duplex office class printer. It reqires me to pull paper cartridges (because it uses them, even if paper is in tray 1) and then put paper manually (!) into tray 1. What the hell? If I wanted this, I would have bought an ink-pee printer (electric paper feeder)! :-) I didn't change anything on the printer, I even have a second one that does misbehave the same way, but works correctly on my 300 MHz P2 FreeBSD 5 spare box. I know that most of these "improvements" come along when the developers decide to move to a new version of the toolkit, for example Gtk to Gtk 2, such as it has been in X-Chat. Try to follow this example (or try it by yourself): Normally, you have X-Chat with a startup dialog of the available IRC servers. In Gtk 1, you could double-click on an entry and it would connect to that server. If you click today with Gtk 2, once or twice, you can edit (!) the displayed name (that's what the server configuration dialog has been for in Gtk 1 where you could change display name, server settings and port etc.). Well, fine, let's not way you have a web browser open with some server and channel name you want to pste into this "hybrid list - input box". So you select it with the mouse, move focus to the list, click left and then, in order to output the buffer, press the middle button. What happens? Nothing! Yeah, super, wow! You need to enter the information MANUALLY! The same applies for the server settings dialog box that the Edit... button opens; here, instead of a regular input box, this "hybrid" is there again. Allthough I welcome the new layout (list on the left instead of tabs) of the new X-Chat, it's very uncomfortable to use. Now for mail. Sylpheed has always been a good mail client, easy to use and fast. It isn't anymore. Startup (Gtk 2, formerly 1) needs 5 seconds. After pressing the "Get" button to incorporate new mail (from /var/mail, I fetch separately via fetchmail) disables its whole GUI for several seconds, especially when retrieving 50 -- 100 messages from this list (per day). Another thing is the Gimp. I like the concept of NOT having a main window, but image windows, dialog windows and menus (!) arrangable on one or more desktops as I like it. Gimp startup (without loading a file) now lasts 15s. In order to get the menu, I click the right button inside the image. For the menu to show it needs further 3s. When trying to print with Gimp, it complains that it cannot access lpstat. Hello? Good morning? I don't have CUPS installed. And bringing up the printing dialog lasts 5s. The image viewer xzgv, a fine thing, now has problems displaying the file and directory icons on the left. Let's say the window is 800px in height, then all the images are visible (xzgv -tz). But if I scroll down that list, only the file names are shown, the icons are missing. Some multimedia stuff: mplayer is one of the finest players (and encoders) out there, or, in my opinion, THE finest. But now, when scrolling inside a movie, no matter if from a DVD, from a file, no matter which file format, the indicator bar doesn't update. Let's say I'm at the 1st quarter of a file, then the bar is [|||---------]. While I keep holding down cursor up or cuirsor left, this bar should move [||||||||----] until the end of the file. But now, allthough I can hear the sound "move", the bar AND the screen content doesn't update, so I could reach the file's end without knowing it. And OSD doesn't work anymore, but I don't care for this. Whenever I quit some programs (confirmed for: xmms, xzgv), the Num Lock light on the keyboard switches off, allthough the Num Lock state keeps active. I need to press the NumL key twice in order to get NumL state and indicator to match! This happens on some programs, but not on all of them. For a long time, StarOffice 5.2 was my tool of choice when I thought I needed something except LaTeX. It didn't matter that it brought its own desktop. For some time afterwards, versions 1.x of OpenOffice could be installed via pkg_add, including the german version. Since 2.x and now with 3.x, it seems that compiling it is required. I don't have an office package installed at the moment, I think I should look if AbiWord can be installed as a german version... (I prefer my system to be english-only, with this particular piece of software as the only exception.) Then, the Midnight Commander has been "improved". The command line now includes the full path, and for longer paths, column 70 is easily exceeded, making it useless because you can't write and edit commands correctly anymore (you're just seeing a five letter excerpt from it). Such stupid stuff, you see your path from one of the panels anyway! Ah yes, and sometimes it doesn't handle the terminal (background) output anymore, instead of displaying a program's output, it displays nothing, but the command is running, and this seems to happen if you "run" enough files using the mc.ext facility (e. g. pressing Enter on a mp3 file launched madplay in textmode and xmms in X mode) And if you then quit the MC and want to start it again, it displays "read (subshell_pty...): No such file or directory (2)" Sometimes, "killall mc" helps. And wine doesn't run my old games anymore. I'm talking abouth things like Jedi Knight II and the like. Even Mortyr or Descent 2 won't run. And if I run generic "Windows" applications (which I have to, for testing recovery software), instead of text I only get Boxes, Xes and circles. So wine has gotten nearly useless for me, allthough it had major improvements, at least in its version number. Enough for now, I'm getting angry. :-) I could surely find some more complains (and I may add them if they come to my mind). In the german language, we have an artifical term for this, it's called "verschlimmbessern" which means with the intention to make something better, it's made worse in fact. And that's how I see this "improvements"... It simply CANNOT BE that things run faster on my 5.x 300 MHz P2 with 256 MB RAM. So now a suggestion could be: Why don't I run XFree86 and all the software with the older version numbers that worked perfectly? Answer: Because I think that's impossible or at least much too complicated, so I'm crunching my teeth and accepting this situation, grrr... And most of today's applications are tied to the "modern" versions of many many libraries and other dependencies, so it's nearly impossible to run, say, XFree86 and a recent version of mplayer (requires x.org dependencies). Again, I know that some problems can be fixed (e. g. wine fonts maybe), but isn't it sad that it NEEDS fixing? I didn't encounter these problems with OLDER software, why do I have them with today's software? Don't get me wrong: I'm not toying around with "bleeding edge" software. I do setup a system ONCE and then don't touch it anymore because it simply works - that what I have FreeBSD for. (On servers, in opposite to my home desktop, I do of course follow the security updates for FreeBSD with freebsd-update and the neccessary updates for the installed programs with portupgrade.) > > THIS TO ALL FreeBSD DEVELOPERS: NOT YOUR FAULT! Every release of > > FreeBSD brought a higher bootup speed to my system, faster system > > services and better performance. > > INDEED. contrary to linux that it's mostly faster in artifical tests, > slower on everything else. contrary to NetBSD, (no idea about openbsd), > not mentioning Slowlaris :) Hey hey, Solaris is not that bad, it's my secondary OS (usually for professional use, not for the home desktop). :-) > that's why i use it! I prefer FreeBSD over Linux because of its tidy system layout, the well intended structures, the separation between OS and everything else, the excellent documentation (as a developer the Alpha and Omega!) and the look & feel as a real UNIX that does behave like a UNIX - and not a marketing demonstration. :-) > > But what about these advantages? They've got eaten up by all the > > applications installed, their libraries and especially their GUI > > toolkits. Nearly every Gtk application has been switched from > > Gtk 1 to Gtk 2, including more disk consuming libs and depencencies, > > slower program startup and slower reaction. > > unfortunately you are right. but you can use IMHO firefox with GTK1 This would be an exception, and maybe it would reduce in functionality. > are you sure there are no other problems with your system? No hardware problems (because I never changed something there), but maybe I should start over and build everything new with FreeBSD 7.1. I think I'll get a new HDD next month and then try it. As I described above: What Im encountering CAN'T be normal. > > On the other hand, there are "old" programs that seem to profit > > from the system's speed gain. That's why I love to use them instead > > of their "oversized brothers". > > so use them as long as you can - as i do. I would still run my 5.x system, I would change back ANY DAY. But it's impossible. I can't even get my files back due to "fsck_ffs: bad inode number 306176 to nextinode"! :-) > > Such an "oversized brother" is KDE 4. Don't get me wrong, please. > > so why do you use it? it's mostly useless even if it would be fast. I don't use it anymore. I tried it with PC-BSD, but then found the german language internationalization too bad and I quickly switched to english. I prefer a good english UI over a bad german one. (Gnome's i18n seems to be much better, just as a sidenote, I tried it out with some openSuSE live system CD.) > There is NO USE for it's "GUI", and it's programs are toys, not much > usable. KDE's philosophy seems to resemble the same concepts that have spoiled users who are long time "Windows" users: Put as much functions as possible into one program. Don't mind if it takes up half of your hard disk. Don't mind if it doesn't work completely, it's just important that you can click on something, no matter if the result is what you expect. :-) No, honestly: KDE involves too much work (changing settings) to get it the way I like it - while others may be completely comfortable with the default settings. So I'm much faster doing work "the old fashioned way", say, CLI and specific programs for each purpose. I think that's UNIX great advantage over all these "one program does everything" concepts. Sure, there are many little tools that seem to perform similar tasks, and you have to choose which one you'll use, but I enjoy HAVING that choice instead of being forced to use what someone else thinks I should use. Allthough KDE tries to integrate all the components, it often fails with it, for example, scaring german computer users with an english error message allthough "Deutsch" has already been selected as the "system language". > use separate programs for spreadsheets, word processors and similar > "office" work. I grew up with this spirit. =^_^= > > On an up-to-date hardware basis, it's surely a joy to use, fast > > you are wrong. it's slow on quad core intel with 4GB RAM. > i tested it. It was just an assumption so it wouldn't look like I did not like KDE in the first place. :-) > > and responsive. But if your system isn't from today, you don't > > gonna have fun with it. Around me, other users seem to favour > > Gnome instead of KDE because they are not willing to update their > > gnome is slow too. just a little bit less slow ;) Are we comparing desktop systems noch in magnitudes of "how much they suck"? :-) Okay well, that's how elections work here in Germany: you're voting for the party or the candidate that seems to be the smaller evil, allthough everyone knows that it / he IS evil. :-) > BTW are there somewhere available older version of opera package? :) It seems to be good to store /usr/ports/packages of older versions that habe been confirmed to work well, but if they can ever be installed on a newer system...? Okay, I hope I haven't bothered the list too much, but that's my revenge for 50 -- 100 messages per day. :-) -- Polytropon >From Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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