Version: (using KDE 4.1.2) OS: Linux Installed from: Fedora RPMs I upgraded from Fedora 6 to 10. As a result, I got KDE4.1.2 and the displays are poor when using VNC. I cannot read the text of the icons in the bottom tray (I do not know if that is call kicker or panel or systray - could not figure this out from the help). In addition, the overall response to window resizing within the KDE desktop on VNC is sluggish. Neither of these were a problem with the older version of KDE. : -- In addition, the help/user's manual provided seems to be for the version 3 series. Some of the examples provided did not work.
can you provide some screnshots?
What VNC server are you using?
Comments mailed privately by Roy Mac (Roy, please post comments in the bugtracking system, so we all can better keep track of things.) On Windooze box - unchanged: VNC Viewer Free Edition Built on May12 2006 at 14:47:32 Copyright RealVNC Ltd. 2002-2005 On Fedora 10: $ rpm -qa | grep -i vnc vnc-4.1.2-35.fc10.i386 vnc-libs-4.1.2-35.fc10.i386 vnc-server-4.1.2-9.fc6.i386 libvncserver-0.9.1-3.fc10.i386 $ ls -l /usr/bin/vncserver -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 14027 2007-01-08 15:03 /usr/bin/vncserver On Fedora 6: $ rpm -qa | grep -i vnc vnc-4.1.2-9.fc6 vnc-server-4.1.2-9.fc6 $ ls -l /usr/bin/vncserver -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 14027 Jan 8 2007 /usr/bin/vncserver $ diff /usr/bin/vncserver ~roy/fc6-vncserver $ ( no differences ) It appears that vncserver is unchanged between Fedora versions. And obviously the viewer has not changed. I could take some screen shots if you wish.
Created attachment 28917 [details] FC10/kde4 displaying VNC from FC6/kde3 FC10/kde4 displaying VNC from FC6/kde3 -- which clearly demonstrates a good quality VNC kde3 session on a 4.1.2 KDE window.
Created attachment 28918 [details] FC6/kde3 displaying VNC from FC10/kde4 FC6/kde3 displaying VNC from FC10/kde4 -- which clearly demonstrates the poor quality kde4 on VNC within a good quality KDE3 window.
Roy, can you please try with another style (for example Plastique)?
I need some guidance on how to do this as the KDE 3.5 documentation provided with KDE 4.1 only provides the following for style: Plugin or a small programs that instruct the window manager how to display window frames. Searching for "style" or "plastique" in the KDE Help Center provided nothing. I did try changing "Themes" from the "Desktop Settings - Plasma Workspace" and this changed the colors and some options made the icons a bit more visible. But nothing provided readable fonts on the icons in the tray. So if this is not what you wanted me to test, please provide the necessary steps.
You can change the style in System Settings -> Appearance -> Style.
I found this under Widget Style. Selecting Plastique and the others only changed the appearance of the text/font within the windows - menus and things. Still no text on the icons in the bottom bar. When I hover over one the icons, a little window pops up and displays the text: "roy : tcsh On Desktop 1" The edges are a bit fuzzy, which is consistent with the overall display. Perhaps related: The overall responsive is slow - resizing windows for example, causes window to move in jerks. It is kind of like the performance one gets when they have one NIC at 1/2 duplex and the other at full. However, application windows with real-time fast plots work quite well.
Hmm, it could also be that you need a higher color depth. There is a argument when starting vncserver from console which defines the color depth (IIRC --depth).
I tried -depth 15/24 * -cc 3/4. No permutation of these changed the behavior. I have noticed another interesting feature while running in VNC: - I brought up the Konqueror web browser to post this response and I could not type letters in the username/password boxes. Similar response with gmail. However, here I do not even get the boxes. This problem is repeatable on the same FC10 box - that is run a vncviewer on the same box as the vncserver. I only have FC10 & FC6 at the moment. I could experiment with SUSE 10.3 without too much difficultly but I would need some instructions on how to upgrade from its KDE version to KDE4. It would be nice to know if this is repeatable on other flavors. I have also attached the kde log files from each VNC session as they might provide some insight as to how this server is starting up and what is missing. Some notes: 1. I could only run one VNC session on the KDE4 box. The second one would crash. Hence two log files. This was never a problem with KDE3. 2. The KDE3 version seems to continually whine about a "DPMS" extension missing. I edited 28000 of these out of the file. And one last observation: I cannot get nedit to run on the main system display - X11 issue. However, nedit DOES run on the VNC session
Created attachment 28948 [details] kde 3 startup log on VNC
Created attachment 28949 [details] kde 4 startup log on VNC session 1
Created attachment 28950 [details] kde 4 startup log on VNC session 2 - failure
I'm not sure at all, but it could also be a problem with compositing. You could try to deactivate compositing. (Systemsettings -> Desktop -> "Enable desktop effects")
Unable to do this from the VNC session - Enable desktop effects was grayed out. I stopped the VNCserver, changed it on the main system display, restarted ... The Enable desktop effects was still grayed out. The Common Effects were not and I could click them on/off. Still no change in the display.
If it's grayed out, it's off. That's okay. You could try something else: start Krfb, it's also a VNC server. Probably you will get better resutls with it.
I was able to get krdc to display the VNC session on KDE3 with no change. I have started a krfb session: roy 32399 2864 2 15:43 ? 00:00:10 /usr/bin/krfb -caption Krfb -icon krfb and cannot figure out how to connect to it on remote or local displays.
Create a new personal invitation on Krfb. You get the required data for connecting to it in that dialog.
I have created two instances. Cannot connect - VNC on Windooze says "Connection refused". Never displays as an option on KDE3/FC6 box.
When you connect to the Krfb box, you need to accept the connection on that remote box first. Otherwise the client connect gets refused. That's how Krfb works :) Thanks anyway for the massive testing :)
Ok, I was able to get the krfb up and displayed on VNC under Windooze and krdc on kde3/FC6. It displayed nicely. Two comments: 1. This was incredibly slow. 2. The remote desktop is not what we need. We need individual X-sessions. So this strikes me some sort of an incompatibility between KDE4 & VNCserver. One other thing I would appreciate guidance: Under kde3, as I hover over a menu with a submenu, the contents of the submenu display automatically. I do not get the same response on kde4 - here I have to click on each line to bring up a submenu. This makes it much more difficult to scan for buried items. I would also appreciate guidance on how to install kde3.5 in place of or along with 4.1.2. For the "along with" case, I would need to know how to switch between these as well. Thanks for your support.
It depends on your distribution how to install both of them. I do not really know Fedora. You could ask on the mailing list or forums. But sure, we have to sort out this VNC issue. I think I will try to look into it ASAP, but my time is very limited. Do not expect any further comments within the next days from me...
*** Bug 175693 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Not sure there's anything we can do here to fix this. It generally depends on your network and the apps involved.