I've tried the XFCE and KDE beta2 isos. I liked the KDE one so much, that I've been using it as my primary system for the past week or so. I will list here all of the improvements and bugs I have encountered in KDE beta2. I don't know which bugs are caused by KDE devs, which by Debian, and which by MX, so I'll just lay out everything I've observed and let you all figure it out.
Improvements:
1. Better external monitor detection. In MX-19.4, when I booted from Live USB, the first thing I had to do was open System Settings and turn off my laptop panel to make my external monitor the main display. In MX-21, my external monitor is already detected as being primary on first boot.
2. Picture of the Day actually works (sort of) in MX-21. In MX-19.4 PIcture of the Day was present but nonfunctional. In MX-21, half of the picture providers work. The ones that don't are Flickr, National Geographic, NOAA, and Wikimedia Commons.
Bugs:
1. Plasma randomly freezes - it's an easy fix; just enable the compositor, but still, it seemed like something you should be made aware of.
2. Changing default directories under System Settings > Locations doesn't do anything and I have to manually edit the sidebar shortcuts in Dolphin by right-clicking them and selecting "Edit". And yes, I did try logging out and logging back in, with no effect.
3. Network always disconnects after suspending from Plasma power buttons and doesn't automatically reconnect - have to reconnect manually. This glitch does not happen when I suspend using rtcwake or pm-suspend. Sometimes it also fails to automatically connect directly after boot, with no apparent rationale behind it.
4. I don't like sudo, I prefer doas, but plasma-desktop depends on kde-cli-tools, which depends on libkf5su5, which depends on sudo, therefore I have both doas and sudo installed - but it shouldn't have to be that way - doas should just be a drop-in replacement for the sudo dependency.
5. When I click the close button, Kaffeine asks multiple times whether I want to quit, because there are pending recordings, and I have to click yes 2 or sometimes 3 times - isn't 1 confirmation enough?
6. When creating system snapshot, MX Snapshot creates "minstall.desktop" shortcut on Desktop of currently running system.
7. When using autologin, it logs in once, then after a few seconds logs out and logs in again. I found another post on this thread where an MX dev explained that X restarts because of a special MX fix for making the SDDM power buttons work in SysVinit, and that most people should barely see a flash. And when I login manually, I don't notice X restarting at all. I only see it when I use autologin.
8. Autologin doesn't work when laptop is not plugged in - computer goes to sleep before having a chance to login, I have to plug it in and wake it in order for autologin to work. I'm not sure whether or not this has anything to do with the fact that my laptop's lid is always closed because I use an external monitor. It might work differently if the lid were open/if there were no external monitor, but I haven't had the motivation to test that hypothesis, and anyway I think it needs to just work regardless of what monitor setup the end user has . . .
9. Removable devices will mount with Device Notifier only under first user account created. Subsequently created accounts do not have permission to mount with Device Notifier. I also tried mounting the USB drive from the Dolphin interface, and got a more verbose error message:
"An error occurred while accessing 'USB_DRIVE', the system responded: An unspecified error has occurred: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken."
10. This is not specifically a KDE bug, but it is an MX beta2 bug; I tried the new Job Scheduler app, and I got these strange errors when I attempted to save my crontab edits, and for the record, I double checked my crontab syntax, and there was nothing wrong with it, so I don't know why the errors are raised:
Code: Select all
CronTime::CronTime Invalid Minute Format: "*/"
File Saved : "/tmp/job-scheduler-root/root.HOGeqD"
File Saved : "/tmp/job-scheduler-root/root.QBOcfa"
CronTime::CronTime Invalid Item count: 1
CronTime::CronTime Invalid Item count: 2
CronTime::CronTime Invalid Item count: 2
CronTime::CronTime Invalid Item count: 3
CronTime::CronTime Invalid Item count: 3
CronTime::CronTime Invalid Item count: 4
CronTime::CronTime Invalid Item count: 4
CronTime::CronTime Invalid Week Format: ""
File Saved : "/tmp/job-scheduler-root/root.oWJviK"So those are all the foibles of note that I've found so far. If I find anymore, I will update this post. The bugs are more numerous as opposed to XFCE, and when I used MX-19 I was a diehard XFCE fan. But in MX-21 the single factor that throws the game in Plasma's favor for me is XFCE 4.16's horrendous implementation of CSD, and MX's suboptimal implementation of turning off CSD, but I'll write more about all that in the XFCE beta2 thread.
I will close out my laundry list of complaints by saying that although it's a long list, it is that way not because I disdain MX Linux and am looking to nitpick. Rather it's because I love MX Linux very much, and although I don't know how to code, I want to help make the distro better in any way I can. I have a lot of respect for the MX devs and the work they do, without payment, just because they love FOSS software and want to help people make better use of their computers. I send all my love to dolphin_oracle, Adrian, SwampRabbit, and all the rest of the MX developers.
