Rawhide experience and comments 23 March

[Mike]

I have been running rawhide on an old laptop and am reporting my observations
and experiences - 

I am up to date as of 23rd March, and running kernel 2.6.25-0.139.rc6.git5.fc9
The hardware is
http://www.smolts.org/client/show/pub_c02c95fc-b8de-4916-85fe-cf1c96f33f7e

1) I am running this via wireless using an Edimax EW-7318UG (V3.0B) usb
wireless  adapter, which uses the in-kernel rt73usb driver. Running this
with NetworkManager switched off and setting up the wpa_supplicant daemon
to start at boot, and then pick up an IP address via dhclient called from 
rc.local works consistently and well.

So the wireless connection is solid with wpa_psk encryption. This is very
pleasing to see working nicely.

2) I have tested vnc-server by loading the vnc module via an options section
in xorg.conf with content:
Section "Module"
        Load "vnc"
EndSection

The version is vnc-server-4.1.2-28.fc9.i386

Connecting to this machine from another running f8 with version
vnc-4.1.2-24.fc8 gives a good vnc connection without any problems.
Again this is nice to see working well.

3) The desktop is my preferred KDE and this has allowed me to test KDE4
for the first time.

I have a number of comments on KDE4 as currently in rawhide:
a) The desktop works and the machine will boot and go into X and gives 
a kdm login. Login to the desktop is successful, although there is 
no apparent way of getting into administrator mode to alter the kdm
settings (though I have not tried logging in to kde as root and trying from
there - in general logging in directly to the desktop as root is not
a good way to proceed. 
b) The taskbar at the bottom has less configurability than I am used to 
in KDE 3.5 - for example the icons seem to have no way to move them to 
a new position on the taskbar, the time is less configurable that in KDE 3.5,
and some icons seem to have no working function or information about them
accessible.
c) The "Add widgets" facility at top right of the screen works but there is
a very minimal set of available widgits.
d) The number of themes is limited and some of the settings do not work.
e) The Widgets have a fixed frame decoration and there is no opportunity
to change to a different design/shape - is this going to change before 
F9 is released?

f) There are no screensavers available yet - unless I missed something
g) I set up gkrellm on the desktop and this seemed to cause KDE4 to give
a crash on logout - although the logout proceeds despite the kde crash 
handler popping up. gkrellm works fine.

Some of these comments may of course be the subject of bz reports but I
thought it would be useful to summarise on one page here, and would be
interested in responses. Some fixes may already be in hand of course.

I do not know how beta will compare with the observations here but
it seems there is quite a bit of work ahead before F9 release.