Today i updated my Tower from 17.03 to 17.06, via Update Manager. Sadly, i now feel disappointed after a couple of months of anticipation & hope. There's several problems i've experienced ever since i converted my Lappy & Tower to Maui last year; these have persisted continually from 1 to 2 to 2.1 to 17.03, & now regrettably to 17.06.
Until nearly a month ago, i had assumed that these were endemic to Plasma5 [ie, ALL Plasma5 DEs, irrespective of distro]. My old Mint 17.3 KDE4 never did these, & my only Plasma5 experience on-SSD has been Maui [until recently]. I have multiple alternative Plasma5 distros installed in VMs, as well as Maui in some VMs too, but none of these can be relied on as indicators of comparative Plasma5 stability because even Maui in VMs behaves itself. It's only when Maui is the actual on-SSD Host OS [ie, real life OS], that all these bad things happen.
As i said, til recently i was blaming Plasma5, not Maui... but now i know that it is not Plasma5's fault. What proved this to me was when i changed from Maui 17.03 to openSUSE Tumbleweed KDE on my Lappy, last month. As i wrote here https://forums.mauilinux.org/showthread....2#pid43182, "with TW i am getting an even better Plasma5 experience". My TW experience has been always with Plasma 5.10.x [currently .3, but was .1 then .2], & i have been desperately hoping that once Maui also came to 5.10.x, its Plasma reliability would become as great for me as it is in TW.
Alas, now my Tower has 17.06/5.10.2, & none of the problems is fixed. I'm disappointed. These are the chronic issues:
1. KWin continues to crash on me whenever i display the Desktop Grid, then drag a window from one VD to another... IF as soon as i've dropped the window into its new VD i end the DG by clicking any individual VD, then KWin behaves, but if i delay even a fraction of a second, it crashes. I wrote about this here https://forums.mauilinux.org/showthread....1#pid39421, & since then there's been a LOT of water under the bridge, eg: Compositor alternatives GL2 vs GL3.1 gives no sustainable fix; back then i was using a NVidia GPU but now i use only the internal Intel GPU & the crashes continue; kernels 4.4.x & 4.8.x make no difference; previous clean reinstallations of Tower's Maui have not helped; before i converted Lappy to TW it exhibited the same crashes as Tower. NOTHING has cured this nasty problem, & it exasperates me.
2. Activities are largely useless to me in Maui. I've learned my lesson from bitter experience; there's simply no point bothering to try using Activities the way KDE intended, eg, dedicating different Activities to different sets of windows/pgms/docs. Each time i have tried, ever since using Maui, clean boots [with Startup & Shutdown Options set to use last session] randomly mix my carefully arranged windows across my various Activities, AND after every KWin crash, all windows appear in all Activities. Grrrr.
3. KWin Desktop Effects Screen Edges frequently "forget" to work, especially after any KWin crash, but occasionally randomly even if KWin has not crashed.
On my Lappy, using TW, NONE of these problems exist - Plasma5 behaves there like it is bullet-proof, It is so refreshing to use, in comparison.
Please, can anyone suggest what else i can try, to once & for all end this chronic Maui Plasma5 fragility on my Tower? As stated, after my nice TW exposure on Lappy, i'd hoped that 5.10.x itself was going to be the solution for Maui, but now i know that's untrue. Unless i can solve this, now that i know there's a robust Plasma5 KWin experience available for me elsewhere, i fear that i will have to sadly replace Tower's Maui with TW as well.
Fingers crossed someone can pinpoint the solution pls.
Until nearly a month ago, i had assumed that these were endemic to Plasma5 [ie, ALL Plasma5 DEs, irrespective of distro]. My old Mint 17.3 KDE4 never did these, & my only Plasma5 experience on-SSD has been Maui [until recently]. I have multiple alternative Plasma5 distros installed in VMs, as well as Maui in some VMs too, but none of these can be relied on as indicators of comparative Plasma5 stability because even Maui in VMs behaves itself. It's only when Maui is the actual on-SSD Host OS [ie, real life OS], that all these bad things happen.
As i said, til recently i was blaming Plasma5, not Maui... but now i know that it is not Plasma5's fault. What proved this to me was when i changed from Maui 17.03 to openSUSE Tumbleweed KDE on my Lappy, last month. As i wrote here https://forums.mauilinux.org/showthread....2#pid43182, "with TW i am getting an even better Plasma5 experience". My TW experience has been always with Plasma 5.10.x [currently .3, but was .1 then .2], & i have been desperately hoping that once Maui also came to 5.10.x, its Plasma reliability would become as great for me as it is in TW.
Alas, now my Tower has 17.06/5.10.2, & none of the problems is fixed. I'm disappointed. These are the chronic issues:
1. KWin continues to crash on me whenever i display the Desktop Grid, then drag a window from one VD to another... IF as soon as i've dropped the window into its new VD i end the DG by clicking any individual VD, then KWin behaves, but if i delay even a fraction of a second, it crashes. I wrote about this here https://forums.mauilinux.org/showthread....1#pid39421, & since then there's been a LOT of water under the bridge, eg: Compositor alternatives GL2 vs GL3.1 gives no sustainable fix; back then i was using a NVidia GPU but now i use only the internal Intel GPU & the crashes continue; kernels 4.4.x & 4.8.x make no difference; previous clean reinstallations of Tower's Maui have not helped; before i converted Lappy to TW it exhibited the same crashes as Tower. NOTHING has cured this nasty problem, & it exasperates me.
2. Activities are largely useless to me in Maui. I've learned my lesson from bitter experience; there's simply no point bothering to try using Activities the way KDE intended, eg, dedicating different Activities to different sets of windows/pgms/docs. Each time i have tried, ever since using Maui, clean boots [with Startup & Shutdown Options set to use last session] randomly mix my carefully arranged windows across my various Activities, AND after every KWin crash, all windows appear in all Activities. Grrrr.
3. KWin Desktop Effects Screen Edges frequently "forget" to work, especially after any KWin crash, but occasionally randomly even if KWin has not crashed.
On my Lappy, using TW, NONE of these problems exist - Plasma5 behaves there like it is bullet-proof, It is so refreshing to use, in comparison.
Please, can anyone suggest what else i can try, to once & for all end this chronic Maui Plasma5 fragility on my Tower? As stated, after my nice TW exposure on Lappy, i'd hoped that 5.10.x itself was going to be the solution for Maui, but now i know that's untrue. Unless i can solve this, now that i know there's a robust Plasma5 KWin experience available for me elsewhere, i fear that i will have to sadly replace Tower's Maui with TW as well.
Fingers crossed someone can pinpoint the solution pls.
