I'll continue my previous usability report with additional details. I can submit several bug reports to bugzilla, but I'll first post my observations here.
My apologies for not sending this post before you started troubleshooting. I'll update svn and rebuild, but I think most of these details still hold.
I ran these tests in a sandboxed virtual machine as root and as non-root.
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1. As non-root Trinity seems to completely honor $KDEHOME. There is no ~/.kde3 directory created and Trinity uses my existing ~/.kde directory.
As root Trinity does not fully honor $KDEHOME.
2. Because $KDEHOME is not honored, Trinity creates a new ~/.kde3 directory and ignores all previous settings in ~/.kde. Running kde-config --localprefix shows that I built the packages using ~/.kde3. That's fine as a default, but should be ignored if $KDEHOME is already set in the environment.
3. Some echo commands reveal $KDEHOME is set before startkde runs, but the variable is ignored. I suspect Trinity is partially honoring the variable but sometime in the loading process shifts to ignoring. I have a conky display in my original ~/.kde/Autostart diretory and the conky display loads after Trinity starts. The conky.desktop file is not in the newer ~/.kde3/Autostart directory. Exiting X and restarting Trinity again starts the conky display. Thus my suspicion of first honoring $KDEHOME and then later ignoring.
The $KDEHOME problem seems isolated to root. Anal fanatics can argue all they want that people should not run as root or run X as root. Those are security arguments and not usability arguments. If people want to run X as root then they will --- and the system should be bug-free. :)
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4. The existing startkde is Debianized and causes breakage on Slackware systems. I am submitting a proposed new startkde script. The proposed script avoids certain presumptions and adds some tests before running various commands. The proposed script also adds additional echo messages to help debugging efforts.
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5. As root, the .xsession-error log shows the following errors:
...
startkde: Starting KDE. (message is from my proposed startkde script)
KDE_FULL_SESSION: true (message is from my proposed startkde script)
KDE_SESSION_UID: 0 (message is from my proposed startkde script)
kbuildsycoca running...
Reusing existing ksycoca
Invalid entry (missing '=') at /tmp/kde-root/kconf_updatea8Qi7b.tmp:1
Invalid entry (missing '=') at /tmp/kde-root/kconf_updateBSSSOa.tmp:1
startkde: Looks like kdeinit started. (message is from my proposed startkde script)
Warning: connect() failed: : No such file or directory
QObject::connect: No such signal Kicker::settingsChanged(SettingsCategory)
QObject::connect: (sender name: 'kicker')
QObject::connect: (receiver name: 'animtt')
kbuildsycoca running...
Reusing existing ksycoca
...
As non-root: the .xsession-error log shows the following errors:
QObject::connect: No such signal Kicker::settingsChanged(SettingsCategory)
QObject::connect: (sender name: 'kicker')
QObject::connect: (receiver name: 'animtt')
/usr/bin/xmodmap: unable to open file '/usr/share/apps/kxkb/ubuntu.xmodmap' for reading
/usr/bin/xmodmap: 1 error encountered, aborting.
/usr/bin/xmodmap: unable to open file '/home/users/tester/.Xmodmap' for reading
/usr/bin/xmodmap: 1 error encountered, aborting.
Ubuntu.xmodmap? This is Slackware. :) I can stop those error messages when I disable the related keyboard options in kcontrol. Regardless, I don't use an xmodmap file here. Users should not be bothered with such related messages. The messages might be caused by xmodmap,but I never have seen any such errors before until running Trinity. I have the same X packages installed on my virtual system as my actual system.
I saw these additional error messages as non-root:
WARNING: DCOPReply<QString>: cast to 'TQString' error
QObject::connect: No such signal ConnectionManager::statusChanged(NetworkStatus::EnumStatus)
QObject::connect: (sender name: 'connection_manager')
QObject::connect: (receiver name: 'networkstatusindicator')
QObject::connect: No such signal ConnectionManager::statusChanged(NetworkStatus::EnumStatus)
QObject::connect: (sender name: 'connection_manager')
QObject::connect: (receiver name: 'networkstatusindicator')
So again, seems there is some kind of Debianization here looking for some kind of network manager that does not exist on Slackware.
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6. Something is trying access samba config files. I have seen such messages before when testing Debian Lenny. Therefore I suspect some kind of Trinity/Debian hook into a network manager of some sort.
params.c:OpenConfFile() - Unable to open configuration file "/root/.smb/smb.conf.append":
No such file or directory
Using netbios name {HOSTNAME}.
Using workgroup {WORKGROUP}.
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7. Trinity seems to be ignoring ~/.config/autostart. In that directory I have a hplip-systray.desktop with the following [Desktop Entry] directive: Hidden=true. That directive should prevent hplip-systray from starting. An hplip-systray.desktop file is found in /etc/xdg/autostart, but the Hidden directive should override starting that app. I don't have this problem on 3.5.10.
[35;01mwarning: hp-systray should not be run as root/superuser.[0m
[31;01merror: hp-systray cannot be run as root. Exiting.[0m
[01mHP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 2.8.10)[0m
[01mSystem Tray Status Service ver. 2.0[0m
Copyright (c) 2001-8 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP
This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
This is free software, and you are welcome to distribute it
under certain conditions. See COPYING file for more details.
In addition to the hplip-systray errors, running as non-root produces two additional lines:
[31;01merror: PyQt not installed. GUI not available. Exiting.[0m
[35;01mwarning: Qt/PyQt 3 initialization failed.[0m
True, I do not have PyQT compiled or installed.
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8. In the shutdown sequence there are messages about creating a link:
Creating link /root/.kde/socket-{hostname}.
Created link from "/root/.kde/socket-{hostname}" to "/tmp/ksocket-root"
The messages seem to be generated from kdelibs/kinit/lnusertemp.c. I don't know why those links are created at shutdown. Some people maintain those links in tmpfs and by intent, are lost on power down.
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9. Something is creating a .directory file at the top root level of my file system. Yes, this is possible only because I am running the tests as root, but running as root tends to reveal these kinds of quirks. :)
As non-root I saw the following related error message:
cp: cannot create regular file `//.directory': Permission denied
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10. Trinity displays desktop folder icons for every directory in the top root level of my files system. I don't know where these icons are from or how to stop them. This probably is something trivial, which epxlains why I don't see the solution. :) However, my original desktop icons no longer are available.
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11. Something is overriding my konsole settings. I run konsole with a black background. This changes to white when running Trinity. I have seen this behavior before when testing Debian Lenny. Hence I suspect some kind of Debian remnant in Trinity. This happens with both root and non-root.
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12. Please consider changing the default mouse pointer to "No busy cursor." The bouncing cursor is annoying and always has been.
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I hope this information helps. I realize I have posted much here and we need to tackle one thing at a time. Please let me know how to help troubleshoot.