Richard Hartmann posted on Sat, 11 Jun 2011 17:24:53 +0200 as excerpted:
>> But we can probably speed the process even further, as from your
>> description, the problem is very likely kwin or plasma related. ÂSo
>> after getting your backup, try deleting just the kwin files under both
>> of the dirs above, and see if that cures the problem. ÂIf not, try the
>> plasma files, but I'm suspecting kwin so try it first.
>
> I was plasma's fault. For now, I am more than happy with deleted plasma
> settings, but if anyone is interested in the config files to they can
> poke them, I will gladly send them on.
Well, I got it right that it was one or the other, but missed on which
one.
I should have guessed plasma's files, as one of them in particular is
horrendously complicated (it's still section and setting=value, but a
section line has multiple ID segments, most of which enumerate the
parents, so it's not as simple as just bisecting by section there, one
must figure out the tree relationship and delete whole subtrees at once,
when bisecting). I've had it go bad on me before and had to trace the
structure because as I said I'm a heavy customizer and didn't want to try
to recustomize all my plasmoids and their positions from scratch. But it
was an experience I don't want to repeat, and towards that goal, I now
keep backups.
And of course as any engineer will tell you[1], complexity breeds bugs
and brittle configurations, so I might have figured plasma was the
problem, as I already know how complex one of its config files (share/
config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc) in particular is. But I went with kwin
instead, guessing it was ether an always-on-top misconfiguration, or kwin
getting mixed up and still placing windows on the now disconnected
monitor's area.
---
[1] This is basic first-year Engineering-101 material. More complexity
means more things that can and ultimately some of them will, break. When
it's a useful or even functionally necessary feature, the cost of the
additional complexity in higher maintenance burdens and/or risk of
failure is however arguably justified, tho exactly where one draws the
line on "useful" remains open to debate. But if it's a mis-feature...
FWIW, It's for this reason that when I saw MS going down the whole
product activation mis-feature route with eXPrivacy, that I decided that
was one platform I wanted off of. They were previously infamous for
their bloat, but all those features were useful to some users somewhere
so one could reasonably argue that they were justified. But the
activation mis-features added complexity and therefore risk of failure
without benefit to ANY users AT ALL, only potentially to MS itself. The
implications of a company now adding mis-features of NO benefit to users
at all, in fact rather the opposite as it's a hassle even when it works
and the users are entirely legal, KNOWING it's going to break things for
some of them... that a company is deliberately breaking legal customers
as they certainly knew it would do, with NO possible benefits to
customers... that was NOT a platform I was interested on being on any
longer!! So I upgraded from MS Windows 98 to, at the time, Mandrake
Linux 8.1, as the best alternative to eXPrivacy. Of course in doing so I
quickly realized the benefits of software freedom and as I did so, I
found there was even less reason or desire to go proprietary than I had
realized before -- in fact, quite the reverse, since any such attempt to
add a similar mis-feature in the land of software freedom will, to borrow
the saying most often applied to attempts to censorship the Internet, be
interpreted as the real damage it *IS* and quickly routed around.
So, rather ironically, in a very real way I have MS to thank for giving
me that last push it took to switch to Linux and freedomware. =:^)
Meanwhile, realizing the implications of where MS was headed and that it
had "jumped the shark" as the saying goes, I correctly predicted that
with the precedent it was setting, within a few years other companies
would be following its lead with their own malware, upto and including
rootkits, etc. And what did we have a few years later? Sony's rootkit
CDs fiasco. I realized the implications and correctly predicted the
result, but wasn't having anything to do with it. I wanted off and I got
off. But in a way I understand how Sony must have felt, since MS got
away with it and CONTINUES to get away with it, while Sony couldn't, even
on the same platform that MS was pulling its tricks on. That certainly
must have seemed (and probably still seems) unfair to them. What I
/don't/ understand is why so much of the rest of the world took it, just
like the proverbial frogs sitting in the beaker on the Bunsen burner. I
suppose it was /just/ that, that the "increase in temperature" was simply
too slow for most folks to notice...
--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
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