First, Plasma 5.
After another couple of months ironing out the wrinkles, I've finally decided it is time to give up on Plasma 5 again for now. And at the same time I've wiped XFCE, Cinnamon, MATE and Kubuntu off my main computer.
I'm back to using plain old Mint 17.3 KDE with Kernel 4.4.0-112-generic, and KDESC Version 4.13.2 and that is about as good as it gets.
On my spare root drive I experimented with various newer kernels including 4.8, but there are some security issues with 4.8 and 4.15 is slow and buggy on my system. Updating KDE 4 to 4.13 however has the system nice and snappy. Something like XFCE on steroids. By that, I mean it seems almost as fast as XFCE, but looks so much better, especially in font rendering - as well as being infinitely more customisable. IN fact, the desktop and fonts are far superior on my system that anything else I tried, including Cinnamon, MATE, LXDE and others.
Performance is fantastic with the exception of switching Activities using the pager. But switching them using the mouse wheel on the desktop is snappy. And of course, the limits of Plasma 5 are not in Plasma 4. I can have whatever I want on each of my activities and each of my virtual desktops. At the moment I have 6 Activities, each with 4 Virtual Desktops, and each activity and desktop has its own wallpaper. On top of that, Activities can be set to remember their open programs and layouts.
Of course, video wallpaper, with or without sound is a click away. So if I want to I have a relaxation video running in the background while I am working.
And on to MyRepublic.
On the 28th of January, there was a major outage on the NBN that affected MyRepublic and some other providers. My download speeds dropped from about 95 Megabits a second to about 10 Megabits a second. Uploads were about 1Mbps.
I noticed it was a bit slow, but didn't realise just how bad until I saw the message from MyRepublic advising about the outage. As usual, people started posting about how bad MyRepublic's service is - without taking into account that MyRepublic only 'sells' the product. They don't 'make it'. Companies like MyRepublic are retailers. They have to rely on the equivalent of a 'distributor' (In their case, Optus) or the 'manufacturer' (in this case NBNco) to actually rectify the problem.
Anyway, as usual I kept them updated, and when they posted that the nationwide problem was resolved (according to Optus and NBNco), I showed them that it was still not fixed here in Queensland. And as usual, they kept me up to date with what they were doing to try to find the issue. Including a series of tests to ascertain that there was in fact a network problem and not some glitch in my equipment.
Gradually bits improved and after a few days I had downloads around 80Mbps. But uploads were still only 1 to 3Mbps until around the 14th of Feb when they started improving. By the 17th of February all was well again and now speeds are back to around 95Mbps download and 35Mbps upload - which means a 1.5GB file takes a little under a minute and a half to download. And I can stream YouTube High Res again :-)
It probably doesn't help to abuse your RSP when there is an NBN problem. When they tried to follow up on my issue, it seems they were told they could not raise a service complaint because I was getting 'better than the minimum service level'. It seems that as long as I am receiving either 12Mbps or better download, and 1Mbps or better upload, there is no provision for MyRepublic to raise a service complaint. Even though MyRepublic is 'buying' 100/40Mbps to on sell to me. Go figure!!
How is my reseller supposed to help me with a problem, when the wholesaler won't even consider there is a problem?
