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LinuxPlanet Reviews KDE 3.0

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the can't-wait-for-debs dept.

fabiolrs writes "LinuxPlanet has a cool review on KDE 3.0. You can also view a changelog of version 3.0 here." Still no debs, but I'm looking forward to checking this thing out. I'm hoping that some of the rough edges on Kmail have been smoothed out. Update: 04/09 16:58 GMT by M : EWeek also has their own review.

8 of 310 comments (clear)

  1. Re:KDE's appearance by Crypt0rchid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, I don't think that _appearance_ is an important point. Things that change below the surface are more important since they change performance and usability more than a fancy GUI ;)

    Just my 2 -Cents ;-)

  2. The point is: stick to your distro by InodoroPereyra · · Score: 3, Insightful
    It seems that the review focuses more than anything on a side issue: if you are a newbie, or if you want an easy upgrade, stick to your distro . This is the best approach in general, and I wish geeks would give this advice to people who need help and are not willing to spend time tweaking. It is funny to see people trying to upgrade everything by themselves and then complain it is not easy. HELLO: this is exactly what a distro is supposed to be intended for.

    By the way, the review itself seems to me rather weak. It is mostly a "hey folks, don't do this at home" warning for newbies. And no, this does not fit my definition of a good review ;-)

  3. Re:All I was able to see by Linux+Freak · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This will undoubtedly get modded down as a troll (KDE vs. GNOME, blah blah blah) but I wish the KDE developers would take a look at what Ximian has done with Red Carpet as far as installation and upgrading packages go. There really is nothing easier than getting GNOME installed and keeping it up to date than with Red Carpet (which also has a nice feature of including non-GNOME "channels" such as Red Hat, Evolution, etc., to keep a variety of software up to date).

    I know that installation code is the least sexy piece of code to be working on, but the end result is definitely worth the pain involved.

  4. Re:What I'd really like to see in a review by reaper20 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Agree 100% - I have no idea why people insist on KDE installation for varios *nix's to be KDE's responsibility.

    The project publishes the source code - the distributions are responsible for packaging it. I've been reading on forums all over the place (and articles like this) with people having installation problems with KDE, GNOME, or some other large project.

    Don't blame KDE people, blame your distro. Debian might be a little slow, but sometime soon "apt-get install kde3" will work - I mean Geez, some people are having to install the individual RPMs in a specific order, what madness is this?

  5. Re:KDE's appearance by lamont116 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    You get the stability and polish from a .3 release, but the marketing hype and media attention from a .0 release.

    This is definitely a .0 release, then. KDE 2.2.2 was more stable (albeit slower) on my system. In particular, the panel (kicker) has a habit of going belly-up periodically, and Konqui crashes much more often than it did in 2.2.2. Still, this release adds polish, a few features and some speed. I look forward to 3.1.

  6. My two penn'orth... by deepstephen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I've been using KDE 3.0 since the day after it came out, and here's my review of it.

    Konqueror - much improved. It really is nice to have a web browser tightly integrated into the OS (unless you're an illegal monopolist, that is) and this version of Konq is way better than the last one. JavaScript support is much better, it certainly seems to work on all the sites I frequent now, and the weird layout problems with form elements have been cured. Oh, and its rendering engine is a lot faster. Sweet. Now all I'd like is tabbed browsing and it's damn near perfect.

    KMail - not hugely different, just tightened up here and there. Seems to be a bit faster if anything, especially on big folders and messages with huge attachments, and the look and feel's been tweaked a bit.

    Cervisia - this is the killer function for me. We make extensive use of CVS and now Cervisia, which was an awesome CVS client anyway, is integrated into Konqueror. You can choose to switch into CVS view in any directory containing CVS information, as smoothly as switching between icon view and list view. Unimaginably useful.

    Kicker/Panel - one of my biggest bugbears is gone, namely that quickbrowsers can update themselves without requiring a restart. There's a bug in them, though, that causes them to freeze the whole Panel if they get stuck viewing a folder (e.g. if an smbmount-ed folder has been disconnected). Looks like a fix exists and will be in a forthcoming release, so I'll survive.

    Desktop switching - Fantastic to have this back, I had missed it so much. You can now set it to switch desktops when you move the mouse to the edge of the screen.

    Incompatibility with KDE 2 apps is really the only serious issue I can think of. Not all third-party KDE apps have been ported yet and they won't work. I mostly use Java apps and KDE's own apps (like Konq and KMail) so it doesn't really affect me, but it's something to watch out for.

    --

    --
    Karma: Chameleon (you come and go)
  7. Re:KDE's appearance by spitzak · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Flashy appearance is not what users want. KDE realizes this, and so did MicroSoft and Apple at one time. "Themes" like a lot of X11 users seem to think are cool do NOT impress basic users. All the badly designed and candy coloring only impresses geeks who like to program these things because they are too lazy to program useful stuff.

    MicroSoft has obviously fallen into this trap, which is probably good for Linux, as long as KDE with it's simple basic appearance remains clean. Take a look at how many WinXP users have gone through the trouble of changing the "appearance" back to the old standard. It looks to me like more than "customized" older Windows by changing the colors.

    Flashy graphics only distracts from the job and I am glad that KDE defaults to none.

  8. Installing KDE3 on RH 7.2 (a correct way) by Nailer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    rpm -Uvh http://enigma.freshrpms.net/pub/apt/apt-0.3.19cnc5 5-fr7.i386.rpm

    Put the RPMs in an apt repository, make it avaliable by http, and run `apt-get install kdebase' on all your machines. Dependencies are automatically resolved as necessary to install the package. I do this for about 25 Linux workstations, all off one repository.

    There is never any reason, ever, to use --nodeps. Luckily apt-get has `apt-get install -f' which performs a `fix' install to correct this kind of bad administration.