Slashdot Mirror
Review: KDE 3.2
Anonymous writes "Today I installed KDE 3.2, third major release of the award winning KDE3 desktop platform, on my Fedora box. I have been using KDE 3.2 RC for the past few days and the final version from today. My first impression is 'wow.'"
I'm using a release candidate of 3.2, so naturally I kept 3.1.whatever handy in case 3.2 didn't work out. Hah! I *tried* to go back to 3.1, and just hated it (I had loved it before trying 3.2).
So far, tabbed browsing in konq and kwallet are my favorite features, but I haven't had much time to dig around looking for KDE easter eggs. I'll bet there's more neat stuff in there!
Yes, I could turn off anti-aliasing. But I've used it in Konsole since pretty much always and have never seen this problem.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Whenver something breaks in Gnome. Since I live on the Debian unstable branch, that's about once every 6 months or so. It's gotten a lot better from the last time I used it. It's a lot faster and doesn't feel nearly as awkward as it used to. Their default window manager also seems pretty smart about focus handling and stuff. It's also very pretty. All in all I'd say I could just as easily go either way on the desktop these days.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Most people are confused about desktop enviornments and Window managers, thats why you often get people saying KDE is big and bloated, when its not. KDE, does by the way have its own window manager, its just that it is transparent to the user, and in KDE 3.2 it has a really good one.
You will find oozes of new features and fun in the new Window manager, such as kool keys, fat borders, Window below others, and much much more. My favourite one is the abillity to have borderless Windows. But don't worry, you can get them back by pressing alt+f3.
So give it a whirl if you like managing your windows by right clicking any window title bar in KDE 3.2.
Of course, the elegance of the result is still debatable, but fortunately, there are lots of language bindings available.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
It's only fair since Nat and Miguel started their rumors here to post this. This is big news folks. Apparently SUSE has a much stronger say on the Novell Desktop than what we were led to believe by Miguel and Nat.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
A couple of days ago, I emerged KDE 3.2 on my Gentoo system. Aside from a wierd ALSA bug that I had to fix, the upgrade from 3.1.5 was pretty painless.
Anyway, my thoughts on the latest iteration of my chosen desktop. Let's just say that KDE 3.2 should raise eyebrows in Cupertino and soil pants in Redmond. There are numerous small eyecandy improvements, plus tons of little usability-enhancing features in common areas of the system (for example, Konqueror has a vastly improved file-manager sidebar that gives idiot-proof access to local partitions, printers, and even network shares). Some of the new applications debuting in this release are truly excellent, as well (like the slick iTunes-clone JuK or the lovely multiproticol IM client Kopete). Finally, some rather extensive optimizations seem to have taken place throughout the system, as KDE now seems more responsive than in the past (true, some of these optimizations are "cheating", like the option to keep an instance of Konqueror preloaded, but it's still a nice option to have).
Anyway, congrats to the KDE team on an excellent release, and thank you for proving once again that UNIX on the desktop isn't just a wild fantasy, it's a real-life joy.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
Wow. I'm impressed that the entire page actually loaded, instead of just timing out. So the server was able to at least send me a couple bytes every second to keep timing out, that's impressive.
... those "thumbnails" on the review page? They're not; they're just the pics they link to, resized a bit using img width= height= ... I didn't know people were still that stupid, especially given that at least one was full desktop sized.
... they were kind of boring. Everything was of empty windows; a little data to make things look, um, real would have been nice :3 It also hit me that KDE seems to have more K-programs than GNOME has G-programs now, which is just ugly.
I was kind of shocked to see what they were doing with the screenshots though
That having been said, I didn't find the screencaps even particularly flattering; not that I dislike KDE (though I don't use it), but
The Microsoft accusation is also, nonsensical, BTW.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I was taken aback by the significant speed improvements. 1st time I've ever done a KDE upgrade and really noticed the changes. The Plastik Style is finally a pleasant, harmless change of pace, the bouncing activity icons are actually cool this time. I still find the file manager far more versatile than the one found in gnome. Overall well worth the install. I just did a wget on a mirror for SuSE 9 RPM's ,removed some of the development RPM's I didn;t need and did an RPM -Uvh *.rpm. Worked great. I'll admit, it's the superficial thinbgs I like and notice, ie better looking penguin icons for the kdm login manager and a cool choice os splash screens, etc.
I'd been running Slack 9.1 for a long while with Dropline Gnome, still the most beeyootiful Desktop environment, but it doesn't have the functionality of KDE. I like both projects thhough, hopefully Novell can give each the room to do their own thing, even if KDE gets the nod as the preferred Novell/SuSE desktop.
A review should add new information or insights which are not obvious or stated in the programm's own announcement.
Take a look at the reviews at ArsTechnica, for instance at this one about Mac OS. The multipage review contains background information about the inner workings, some words about usability, differences with previous versions, information about performance, balanced and substantiated views about what should be improved and an informative conclusion. That is what I think should be considered a review.
I think Gnome is easy too, but I find that it's very simple. Now, simple isn't always a bad, but I've found Gnome to be a little *too* simple for me.
Frameworks and blah blah programming stuff aside, I find myself more at home at a KDE desktop then a Gnome one. It seems to just have more ways to customize your desktop then a Gnome setup. And, it's got a lot more applicaitons included, many of which I use and like a lot.
It's 100% user preference, and if you're really into Gnome, then by all means use it. KDE just seems to tie things together better, it's got more features, and it's got a much more agressive release schedule.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I'm not usually a licence zealot, and I've never actually bothered to comment about these sorts of comments before, but there is something I just don't understand. I'm sorry if you think this is a troll or flamebait - it's not, I just get frustrated when I see uninformed opinions of this nature.
The above complaint also applies to the Linux kernel and we are all perfectly happy to call that free (as in speech and beer). The same applies to QT - free speech and beer if you abide by the terms of the GPL. In fact, a large amount of open source software is exactly the same, but apparently some people have redefined "free" to mean something different.
So you can't use the free version of QT to make proprietary software. Big deal. Get over it.
Rant over.