Fedora buggy?

[liraz]

I wasn't sure which forum to post this in, in its not really asking help for problems... obviously unless someone knows.

I have been experiencing lots of problems with Fedora. Mainly with gnome(although I haven't used kde in fedora yet ), having asked on channels no one else on another distribution has had similar problems. So I am wondering how can you tell if the problem is with fedora or not? I have always heard that fedora is buggy but have dismissed it.

For starters all these bugs/problems make me go nuts because I cant manage to reproduce them. It happens at random times. Some go away but most dont. Here is a few:

gnome-background-properties - at one point it failed to switch backgrounds. I tried to add a .desktop file by mistake as a background using 'add' and from then on I was unable to switch backgrounds at all. After restarting I tried reproducing this, doing exactly what I did before and but the backgrounds could still be changed.

gnome-theme-manager: theme details --> control tabs. When changing the stuff in the 'controls-tab' and 'themes' alot somtimes my whole gnome will crash. metacity cpu usage jumps to %98 and gnome-theme-manager does the same. The only way to fix this is to alt-ctrl-F* into another terminal and kill these two processes then restart gnome or everything continues to be ultra buggy.

Icons in the application menu - Sometimes some programs are missing icons, no idea why. For instance when I installed kdevelop most of it's icons were shown in the menu except a few weren't.

Installing application menu or no menu - Also some application will install and a link to them will not appear in the application menu only until after a log out log in. However most applications show up straight away.

nautilus - moving around folders, sometimes it will decide which is the best view for me

gnome-keybinding-properties - This one I can reproduce which I'm happy about. -(I will post a bug soon)
Setting any shortcut to space will not let you use space. Ok abit obvious, but then unsetting it will still not let you use space. So you will have to restart gnome. eg: catalog, audio, list, icons. It usuall happen when I go 'back' or 'forward'.


Sure, it isnt killing me that these things are happen but they make me so annoyed somtimes I would love to contribute by fixing bugs if I could but I cant. The best I can do is post bugs but the thing is I dont know how to reproduce these things. Any tips/advice or ideas what is going on?

[AndyGreen]

Mostly sounds like problems with Gnome, not Fedora. The issue with menu items sounds like it is probably a packaging issue rather than a Gnome problem per se. Haha Nautilus deciding which is the best view for you. It only does this *sometimes*? Whoa, you're lucky.

I would give KDE a go for "comparison purposes". Your Gnome apps like Evolution and so on continue to work fine under KDE.

(Full disclosure: I chose KDE over Gnome some years ago)

[liraz]

Andygreen:I tried KDE a few years ago and I still dont really like it, gnome is all smooth and more appealing though it does have some inconsistencies and things to improve on.

Hmm.. interesting a packaging issue, well I will try to test this. If there is a package whos icon does not show up in my menu I will ask on the forums if the same problem occurs to others. Can it still really be a packaging issue if it's not all all of the icons which dont show up? e.g my example with kde where most of the icons did appear but a few didn't.

Nautilus only does it *sometimes* for me. Why am I lucky? Have you had bad experiences with nautilus? I think I would rather have it occur all the time over *sometimes*. Atleast then it could be fixed.

By the way ANdyGreen thanks for always helping when you can. Very much appreciated.

[c0drm0nk33]

What version of Fedora it isn't a Testing version is it like Fedora 4 test 2. As testing version as exactly that, designed to iron out the bugs.

[AndyGreen]

Nautilus only does it *sometimes* for me. Why am I lucky? Have you had bad experiences with nautilus?

A little while back Nautilus suddenly changed to this "spatial mode", despite wails of protest from the unfortunate users getting it shoved down their throats. The "programmer knows best" people responsible basically told them all they'd see, the new system was better because they had "academic research" to show their favoured theory was better. Hell, you can even press Ctrl-L and get some neutered commandline type monstrosity... what is all the fuss about? Well the fuss was about throwing all that user experience and expectation about the operation of a critical program on their system on the bonfire of someone's "spatial system vanity". If they hadn't made it the new default... fair enough. But it literally "decided what was the best view for [you]".

Additionally a few years back I threw Gnome away because of Nautilus' behaviour with many windows open: the system slowed to a crawl. But Konqueror in the same situation presented no load (maybe that is fixed now, I hope so with all this window-spawning nonsense).

KDE OTOH is extremely consistent in its UI actions, anyone can exploit their Windows experience to interoperate with KDE with almost complete comfort in terms of having their expectations about what will do what fulfilled (and where it will appear and if it will spawn a window!). If I am selling Linux to people coming from Windows, KDE is the thing I want to show them. When Gnome pulls a stunt like Spatial Mode it makes me glad nobody I am responsible for is using Gnome and asking me why "the computer" is suddenly acting so strange.

Anyway, it doesn't matter unless things with one DE or the other are causing pain, because Gnome apps work fine under KDE and vice versa, so you can always move between the desktops easily if you have a reason.

[liraz]

c0drm0nk33: Perhaps I should of given details about my system. No it's not a testing version. FC3
uname -r:
2.6.11-1.14_FC3smp
(Yes, HT p4)
All the latest official updates.

AndyGreen: Ha! one thing I hated was that "spatial mode" but I turned it off quite easily, so now I dont mind. Yes, I noticed loading some folders with many icons can take a while -> I'll have a shot at it with konqueror.

Does Fedora use a modified version of gnome? If so then what could it possibly change to cause bugs?

I'm learning c++ soon which should help me debug some stuff, hopefully. I used to know abit a few years back but dont have much ability anymore.

Ps. If theres any other details you guys might want please ask, I am unsure what else I could give info about.

[AndyGreen]

IIRC, Gnome is C, but I know that QT/KDE is C++. This is another architectural reason to like it. I have written in C++ for many years, but God help me, PHP is now the language I would try to use first.

I think Fedora Gnome is close to the mainstream one, except for the Bluecurve stuff.

I understand in Gnome there is some kind of faux Registry type daemon which is accessible to the other Gnome components over a Unix socket (or somesuch similar setup). If that dropped dead then it can explain why you could not get user settings to take.

[liraz]

AndyGreen:I was always wondering which one to learn, since it would be used on linux mainly but I'm sure if I learn c++ I could still learn to patch bugs in C code right?(Anyway, this is for another topic)

THis faux registry type daemon will have to be looked into by me. I dont even know what a Unix socket, was always wondering what it was(google time now). Anyway, I will ask more people who use other distributions with the same version of gnome perhaps and try find other people with somthing similar? bugzillas are quite hard for me to figure out. I did make a response to one but it doesn't seem very active. There was another person who posted about it here - http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=26943(the bug I responded to in redhat bugzilla). It is not very hard to get around so I guess it's priority would be very low.

If anyone has similar bugs please post!

[AndyGreen]

You might find it easier to learn some C and then move into C++, that way you have a clear idea about which features belong to C++ and which do not. Actually really "getting" the Object Orientated stuff in C++ is a huge eyeopener if you never used an OO language before, I was raving about it for weeks when I finally broke through and understood the deal.

As I understand it a "Unix socket" is a cheapo local fake "network" socket (actually a file) that other local processes can get ahold of to communicate with the owner. It's like a degenerate form of a proper network socket.