Because Fedora 9, like any new software, had a number of issues, logging into it and using it didn’t prove usefull at all having been used to my own configuration in KDE 3.X.  So much so I initially wasn’t too happy  upgrading from Fedora 8 to Fedora 9 entirely.  That is until I started to use and get used to some of it’s new features, which, to an extend made up for problems in KDE 4.X.  There is a huge number of changes in KDE 4.X that one needs to contend with and resolve.  One of the issues you may see when using KDE 4.X is that your applications no longer start.  Some other issues you may see with Fedora 9 and KDE 4.X is that all your settings have gone that you had in KDE 3.X.  First however, we will resolve the applications not starting problem:

PROBLEM

$ firefox –sync
The program ‘firefox’ received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was ‘BadName (named color or font does not exist)’.
(Details: serial 1347 error_code 15 request_code 45 minor_code 0)
(Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
To debug your program, run it with the –sync command line
option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

$ firefox
The program ‘firefox’ received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was ‘BadName (named color or font does not exist)’.
(Details: serial 712 error_code 15 request_code 45 minor_code 0)
(Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
To debug your program, run it with the –sync command line
option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

However, Konqueror does not crash when the same error is received just prints a bunch of messages but continues to work:

$ konqueror
konqueror(10145) KonqHistoryManager::loadHistory: The history version doesn’t match, aborting loading
X Error: BadName (named color or font does not exist) 15
Major opcode: 45 (X_OpenFont)
Resource id:  0×2400045

X Error of failed request: BadName (named color or font does not exist) Major opcode of failed request: 45 (X_OpenFont)

SOLUTION

If you see the above, try to use “Add/Remove Programs” on your Fedora 9 lookup x11-fonts and install the missing fonts complained by ‘named color or font does not exist‘.  Another solution is to remove the deprecated package xorg-x11-xfs:

$ rpm -e xorg-x11-xfs-1.0.5-2.fc9.i386
$

And restart your system (CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE).  Alternately, you can disable the service at startup.  To do this run:

$ chkconfig|grep xfs
xfs             0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
$ chkconfig –level 2345 xfs off
$ chkconfig|grep xfs
xfs             0:off   1:off   2:off   3:off   4:off   5:off   6:off
$

In this case, since xorg-x11-xfs is deprecated I removed the package using:

$ rpm -e xorg-x11-xfs-1.0.5-2.fc9.i386 chkfontpath-1.10.1-2.fc8.i386

This resolved the problem for me.