Allan Sandfeld Jensen

Allan,

Ok, this email interested me enough to earn a reply.

> I would just like to recommend you testing Konqueror 3.5.3 next time you
> update your browser speed comparison.

Well, here's my problem. I use SuSE 9 on the test machine (which is
currently out of service awaiting a new part). And I can only use what is
available. That is not Konqueror 3.5.3. It is not even 3.5.

To do the last test, I had to download and install KDE 3.5 from KDE.org (the
one designed for my specific SuSE install). Despite it normally being my DTE
of choice on Linux, it then screwed up my entire system, so my SuSE install
is completely unusable. All my RPM dependencies are screwed, and I cannot
install or uninstall anything because YaST refuses to recognise the new
packages.

I want to upgrade my SuSE, and I have the disks to do so, but I will have to
wait for the part, and then I will have to wait for SuSE to release the new
version of Konqueror. I am not going to risk downloading anything directly
from KDE.org again, since they clearly do not have a clue how SuSE package
management works.

Honestly it is just ridiculous, all of this system integration garbage. I
cannot upgrade a browser without upgrading my OS (unless I want to risk
system stability by force installing the packages), or having multiple OS
installations just to run two copies of a browser. I absolutely hate that.
Even IE can be installed with zip files. Opera and Firefox can both be
separately upgraded, and run multiple versions on the same OS. Konqueror is
extremely unhelpful to both users and developers in that regard.

Unless you know of some way I can get hold of separate packages (not source
code - that is not a standard way to install apps on SuSE), so I can run
whatever Konqueror versions I want without overwriting my system files. Is
there a way?

(On FreeBSD I always get the latest versions of everything, but that would
not be a fair test as it is custom compiled vs packaged, and it is on a far
better computer.)

> I would actually recommend testing Konqueror without cheats by disabling
> preload in KControl.

I test default configurations only.


Mark 'Tarquin' Wilton-Jones - author of http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/

Allan,

> The standard way to install alternative versions is to download source and
> install in an /opt subdirectory. This way it doesn't interfere in any way
> with anything else and you can run the applications by calling the binaries
> directly. For instance /opt/kde-3.5.3/bin/konqueror.

Installing via packages is the standard way on all almost Linux distros
(Gentoo would be an exception). Not standard for UNIXes, but Linux is not
UNIX.

> Developers are not blind to the problem though, and recently a number of
> KDE developers created the great application Klik, which solves this by
> allowing applications to run from within a virtual CD.

This would, unfortunately, have the problem that I could not measure startup
speed, as it would not be preloaded :(

Not sure, but I think it may also require some extra resource to run the 
service that runs it off the virtual CD, which would have another unfair
impact on Konq's performance.

But what I was really hoping for is what Opera does. Offer a simple .tar.gz
- entirely self contained, precompiled for generic 586+, binary package,
that runs without any (or many) external deps. It can be unpacked, and run
without disrupting the default install. This will not be much help for me
because I need to test a default setup, but it will help Web developers test
different versions, and not force them to test just one, and hope the others
are the same.

Klik will not be much use if it does not remain up to date, but with a
.tar.gz, it could be released at the same time as new Konqueror/KDE versions
are released. The most useful thing is to be able to test new versions of
software before you have been able to update your OS - it's not much good if
the test releases are older than what is already on your desktop.


Cheers

Tarquin