KDE 4.1.3 -a few concerns

[Gabe Yoder]

> 1. Running vim in konsole leads to some strange text issues. It's kind
> of hard to describe, but basically text is truncated and as I move the
> cursor the missing text will shift/appear. If I turn syntax off things
> look fine.

That's a font configuration issue.  You should also see truncated text with 
"ls --color".  Your monospace font is mapped to something that isn't really 
monospace (I had issues with mine being mapped to Luxi Mono which has a 
different character width for bold/colored text).  Reinstall fontconfig and 
then select a different monospace font (there should be a simpler method than 
reinstalling fontconfig, but I've never bother to figure it out).

> 2. startkde often leaves me with a crippled desktop. I need to issue
> kwin --replace. This occurs nearly every time.

I've never seen this one before, but I usually use run level 5 and use kdm to 
login.

> 3. Phonon Xine backend. Can anyone confirm that this works for them?

Yes, it works for me, although it can be problematic on some machines.  On one 
of my computers, I had to go into "Sound System Configuration", check the 
"Show Advanced Devices", and play around with the device preference order 
until I found an option that worked.