If you already use kde 4.2, in Debian (and I believe ubuntu), you already know that your lovely dual monitor setup is totally broken now, because windows do not maximize to full single screen, only to full virtual desktop.

This bug is not trivial, and makes kde 4.2 totally unusable at this point in Debian.

bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=525794

The issue is known, in many more bug reports than I posted above, but oddly I haven't seen it mentioned even though it makes any complex desktop workflow totally unusable.

Personally, i was lucky when I recently tried installing kde 4.2 update from 3.5.9 (I'd held off updating to 3.5.10, which I learned has the same bug, and it will never be fixed, since 2.5.10 is a dead end and will be out of Testing quite soon). Unfortunately what those bug reports failed to mention is that kde 4 has the same exact problem.

When I say I was lucky, I mean, luckily I had just done a root/home backup, so after learning of the kde 4.2 dual monitor bug, which also hits I believe Ubuntu, and finding it unfixable, I quickly decided to wipe root and .kde, and restore from pre kde 4.2 backup, and now I'll just update the system around kde 3.x until kde 4.4 is out, or until xfce fixes their session bugs. xfce 4.6 is pretty nice, it's sort of like a simplified kde 3.5.x in my opinion, not bad at all, good controls, very usable, just some actually functional bugs that should get fixed over time.

Since Sid xfce has another serious bug saving kde apps in session save, that makes both desktops largely unusable for me, though xfce 4 looks like a much more promising direction if you use desktops primarily to hold open windows, and control windows, and view 3d eye candy affects as being about as useless as they really are.

By the way, i was happy to note that by turning off desktop effects, all of them, I was able to drop the standing state cpu usage on a dual core machine from a stunningly bad, unacceptably bad, 60-45% average, to a sane 2-5% average. Same from ram, down from 1 gigabyte used to a still bloated but somewhat more practical 450 mB.

This desktop in my opinion is still in beta, the 4.0 release was alpha, and judging from the many bugs and weaknesses I see in 4.2.2, I'd call this a beta release. Here's hoping they get it all working by 4.4.

More:
kde maximize bug



I agree, I cannot recommend to non linux users linux desktops at this stage, I can't recommend xfce because of the bugs, kde because it's not done yet, and gnome because it's just not using modern usability concepts.

Hopefully this will change within the next 6 months, but this is not a high point for Linux desktops I'm sad to say.
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