Crash and Burn

I like the new KDE4. Unfortunately the only available version on Hardy is 4.1. Apparently 4.3 has fixed many of the bugs I'm currently experiencing like crashing plasmoids, refresh problems, settings being lost etc. So I looked around the net for a way to run 4.3 on Hardy, but nobody seems to have a way except to compile from source. After hours of searching, I decided I would have a go at compiling KDE4.3.

This was probably the biggest mistake I made. To compile KDE4.3 I needed to download this and that development package and this and that library. By the time I got everything downloaded, something was still missing and this I couldn't install the missing library because of dependency issues. I tried to resolve it by uninstalling and reinstalling a different version and as the more I kept fiddling, the worse the situation got till I broke my current so badly things were beginning to fall apart. First I lost synaptic, then I lost my kde apps one by one, then I lost the network and that was when I knew this was the end. Loosing the network meant I lost access to the repositories and without the repositories, there was no way to install packages. Without access to the packages, I had no way of repairing my current installation.

Luckily I had a copy of Kubuntu 9.10 CD lying around. As I've lost my complete system, I thought I might as well rebuild from scratch with 9.10 despite all the problems with ATI. The rebuild process went very smoothly and I was back up and running within the hour, plus I had KDE4.3 now. Not the ideal way to move forward, but what is done is done.

In the process, I finally removed my Windows XP partition permanently. I don't think I've booted into XP for over a year now. Never needed to. I am far happier now with Linux than I have ever been with Windows.

Anyway, KDE4.3 is a lot better than 4.1.  Everything seems a lot more usable and things tend to work out of the box. Naturally there is always something that doesn't work quite right.

1. The microphone doesn't seem to record anything
2. Refresh seems slow compared to 3.5
3. I hate dragon player.
4. No more fglrx (no more support for my card)

Strange how some of these seemed to have worked in KDE3 and is broken in KDE4. Here goes tackling the problems!