Change Fatigue

By Jesse Morgan

It’s not that I fear change, it’s that I’m weary of it.

This is a good example. I was recently notified that a new version of my operating system (Kubuntu) was release.

After upgrading, here is the list of things that needed to be fixed, in the order that I found them:

  • grub timeout needs to be reset to 1 second
  • log in and see all of my settings, widgets, backgrounds, etc are gone.
  • Rage because the text in konsole is almost illegible
  • Go to control panel
    • Go to look and feel
      • change desktop theme back to Oxygen, because I *think* that’s what I had. Still doesn’t look right
      • Switch cursor theme to Oxygen white. Looks better, but not sure if it’s the same one. I notice that this doesn’t affect the cursor when it’s over the desktop, just over the system settings box.
      • Switch splash screen to none because the new one is Ugly and I see no other options.
    • Go to Colors
      • try various schemes, none look right
      • try “get new schemes” to find it doesn’t work
      • go with Oxygen because it might be the one I had
    • Go to Fonts
      • switch all the damn fonts back to ubuntu (I recall this being the previou default)
    • Go to Icons
      • Switch the theme back to Oxygen, which is what I think I had
    • Rage because my cursor keeps getting bumped and moved because of the touchpad sensitivity being changed
    • Skip down to Input Devices
      • click on touchpad
        • go to scrolling
          • disable edge scrolling
          • disable twofinger scrolling
        • go to sensitivity
          • enable palm detection
          • make random decreases to width and pressure settings because you can’t tell if that fixed the problem
        • Go to Taps, set all corners to no action, disable tap and drag gestures because I don’t think that’s there.
    • Go Desktop Behavior
      • go to desktop effects
        • disable zoom, background contrast, blur, fade, login, logout, maximize, screen edge, sliding popups, translucency, minimize animation, slide, desktop grid, and present windows because they’re all annoying.
  • I cannot find “change desktop image” under System Settings despite having clicked on numerous things labeled “desktop” and “workspace”
  • right click on desktop to go to desktop settings
    • notice that all of the preloaded images have generic preview icons.
    • click through and apply each one trying to find my wallpaper I set 26 months ago.
    • Try to open and find the damn thing in my directory
    • find the Open Image dialog doesn’t behave *at all*. sidebar shortcuts do not open to the right places, it’s slow, laggy, misaligned and a general clusterfuck.
  • Find and edit /etc/default/grub and switch timeout to 1 second, then run “update-grub”

Hope that this is a weird fever dream and reboot.

After a second reboot, it’s slightly more responsive.

  • re-add panel on second monitor
  • re-add task manager to second panel
  • re-enable “only show tasks from current screen”
  • try changing wallpaper again, previews still broken, dialog broken.
  • Open Konsole and set the shell profile font back to droid sans mono 10
  • Attempt to start virtualbox, get error that drivers need to be rebuilt

I’ve to re-add my desktop widgets (memory usage, cpu, weather, etc), but they appear to be gone now.

  • get error that headers are missing
  • switch back to classic application K menu

Overall it was disappointing and frustrating, and I wish I hadn’t. While I understand it’s mainly due to the new version of plasma, it simply wasn’t ready for release. I need to get stuff done, and I can’t wait for this to be fixed.

Update: Since writing this, I’ve decided to re-image my machine using mint with KDE. So far, it’s much better than 15.04.