Hey plasma folks, Last evening I followed #plasma on irc while the super cool opensuse build service for plasma-netbook was tested. Here my experiences:
1) Getting the image on a stick I'm sure there will be plenty of blogging around on how to get the image. The one we worked with was on http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Netbook/images/ There was a raw.tar.bz2 and a tar.bz2. The second one was the good one (around 500 Mb). I downloaded and eventually after extracting the image to my home folder used the usual dd method to get it on my stick (2Giga). The dd command took around 15 minutes. Reboot and.. voilà. Plasma-netbook is served. Summary: The whole process is super easy and I would say resistance is futile, you HAVE to test it. 2) none KDE comments: * My internal wireless was not detected. I usually connect using wifi on my Samsung NC10. As installed OS I have kubuntu karmic with wifi working out of the box. I'm sure it works OOTB in opensuse too so there was probably some module missing in this specific build. I'm sure this will be worked out eventually, since wifi is kind of necessary for a good netbook experience (if your next ethernet socket is in the basement) :-) * I sort of expected a type of livecd experience. Boy was I surprised when the whole thing flew on my samsung (512 Mb ram). Composite enabled. It was at least as fast as my installed OS. * I “only” had 137 Mb free on my 2 Gb usb stick, but why would I need space on the stick anyway. * Dolphin refused to mount my internal hard-disk. I have to admit I am no longer used to having a root user. I'm pampered or spoiled by sudo. So probably there is an easy solution to this. I just don't know it. Summary: Expect a super nice experience that probably is the same as the real deal. 3) Obvious plasma-netbook errors * The window list widget normally found in the right corner was not present (I was told that it is a known bug) * The new system notifier applet (known as the “i”) was not there. notmart immediately knew what the problem was. * When I am focused on a window and then click on the “hidden system tray icon list” arrow, my windows become hidden when I close the list again. * Opening the runner with alt+f2 immediately unhides all my hidden windows. Closing runner hides my windows again. I am not sure if this is a normal behavior. Summary: the plasma-netbook used in this build has a few rough edges but all in all a good starting point for the weekly plasma-netbook testing saga. 4) What I would like to see for plasma-netbook (suggestions for discussion) * The activity bar could have a “no activity selected” state. For example, when I am focused on a dolphin window and want to switch to SAL I unhide the top panel and it looks as if SAL was already selected. I know I have to click again on its activity entry but it somehow fels strange. * In SAL you can put favorites in the upper bar by clicking on the star icon. Since I hava a crappy touchpad, almost everytime I want to hit the “favourite” I accidentally remove it because I hit the red minus. Maybe dragging the icon in some sort of bin or off the favourite bar should be a preferred way of deleting icons? If I have a long vertical newspaper, the mouse should continue at the top when it hits the bottom so that I can continue pulling the page down. Cheers and looking forward to what comes next Christophe (nick: binarylooks) _______________________________________________ Plasma-devel mailing list Plasma-devel@kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/plasma-devel
