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KDE 4 Screenshots
carlmenezes writes "Screenshots of the upcoming and much talked about KDE 4 have appeared at Planet Diaz. They include screenshots of the control panel, system tray, tabbed views, music and mail views, plus a mockup or two. I don't know what the Gnome guys are up to, but KDE is starting to look seriously cool."
Can anyone tell if there are any actual screenshots in that bunch? I'm having a bit of trouble finding them.
I think that trying to judge a book by its cover is probably the worst way to determine the utility of a window manager. One ought not be swayed by high resolution backgrounds and pretty fractal images. Then, of course, we live in an age where Mr. Britney Spears has a hit album, so I don't really have much confidence in the general public's ability to discern quality products from glitter-encrusted dog shit.
Oh...Shiny!
BTW, the link is Schiavo.
Coral Cache for the curious:
have
appeared
(that first one was working for me, but I haven't been able to get the second to load yet)
--Nycto
KDE makes me want to log out of Linux, but that's just my opinion. Here's some of the better pictures from the forum post that seems unresponsive atm. Gogo google-cache.s 31jm.png
1 3ke.png
i .jpg
s etup7wv8km.jpg
n 1co.jpg
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/2962/component
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/707/possibleui
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/5343/fake5bo6p
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/2605/fakepanel
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/8478/desktop1v
I don't need this, I've got a Master's Degree in folklore and mythology!
Since the Slashdot effect is working it's magic, here are (unfortunately only three) other screenshots: http://garret.wordpress.com/2006/01/30/kde4-screen shots/
Can you please be more specific? I have been using KDE for what is now more than 8 years and I don't have any (major) usability issues with it. Also, are you really talking about KDE (the desktop suite) or about KWin. The latter seems more likely as you are comparing it to a window manager. Well, surprise there, you can use KDE with any window manager you chose, you are not limited to KWin.
Lately times have been changing.
I still think GNOME is ahead in terms of "look and feel." KDE is usually touted as being eye candy, but you just can't convince me that GNOME doesn't look better. GNOME still feels comfortable to me, so what about it drove me to use KDE, my preferred desktop at the moment?
Functionality. Sometimes I get sick of looking at KDE, but I keep on using it because it does everything I like. I get to have windows that snap together as I resize them, a set of graphical tools that can actually be configured, a file manager that isn't almost useless, etc.
My largest complaint against GNOME right now is their philosophy that more features means less usability. Even if that were true, I don't see how that justifies dropping features to improve usability. Give me something slightly more challenging to use but does everything that I want.
I don't want a flamewar. I've used KDE within the past two months (Kubuntu live CD). To me, it is a nightmare of redundant options, unpredictable behaviour, and completely hideous defaults. Fuck, the text doesn't even fit in some of the configuration windows unless I resize them! (Why they can be resized so small that they're useless in the first place I don't know.)
I want to know what, if anything, is being done to correct these issues and many more without scouring mailing lists. That's all.
Ok, those -DO- look sweet, but the actual graphics are really the least of my concerns for a window manager. I would rather see it be very fast an responsive, clean, easy to understand, and setup up intellegently so that even my mother or grandparents can use it.
Oh ya, let's hope they ditch the two part windowsish looking start menu thing. First thing I did in XP was disable that... Instead lets see smart toolbars / menu's / buttons / etc.
Scott Swezey
hmph.
I don't need this, I've got a Master's Degree in folklore and mythology!
As for things like "focus follows mouse" and the like, I used to be an avid user of features like that. Not in KDE, but in GNOME and every other window manager. They can be quite useful, but I kind of got over that and settled into "click to focus." But whatever other people prefer is cool with me.
I think nautilus is pretty good, but for some reason I'm not very fond of using it. It seems to get in my way, and I don't like that feeling, but I do believe you when you say that I can change settings to fix it for my tastes. Of course, I still maintain that konqueror is a fine file manager in its own right.
Also, I find that you complaint about the configuration menus and whatnot valid. KDE takes a bit of customization, but I usually just sit down with a new install and go through the control panel until I'm satisfied. Most users shouldn't have to do this. So far the way the options are grouped together and how they present themselves in the UI is a bit of a mess. The latest incarnation of control panel suits my tastes less than the original idea, but hopefully they sort that out.
mirror mirror on net!
;)
I can't access this site yet!
let's be honest. You've probably heard the quote, "BSD is for people that love Unix; Linux is for people that hate Windows." The sad truth is, it's true. Many Linux users have no particular loyalty to Linux and would just as soon use something else. While we may protest that KDE or GNOME are better than OS X, the collective orgasm when Apple announced an OSx86 show that free (beer) beats free (speech).
More than a few people from my local LUG have installed a bootlegged copy of the OSx86 beta. One of our members showed off his toshiba laptop running OS X, which was quite popular, even among the old school unix types.
It doesn't really matter what features or eye candy KDE or GNOME add, because OS X does it better. Flame me if you will, but I've been using Linux and BSD for over a decade now. An OS is a tool, I want one that works, and I think most people feel the same way.
Wow, it's startling to me how many words you can use and say nothing.
First off, both KDE and GNOME will run in *BSD, making your distinction between users mostly irrelevent. Second, the links in this story are mockups of KDE. KDE. Not OS X. So let's break down the actual content of your moderated "insightful" post, shall we? It says (1) BSD and Linux have different users (2) your friends have installed OS X on x86. (3) OS X is better. (4) You want an OS that works...whatever that's supposed to mean. I guess we can distill your comments to something like "Hey, I like OS X better than KDE or GNOME!" Okay...
"Offtopic" isn't exactly right for your post. Neither is "troll". If only there were a "insipid", "bland", or "uninsightful".
Let's be honest. If there is any value to your post, it's that hopfully some of the mods can learn something about what not to mod up.
What's that idiotic quote about Linux vs BSD users got to do with KDE? KDE is *not* a Linux desktop, it's a Unix deskopt (i.e. Linux, *BSD, AIX, Solaris etc.) I don't understand why *BSD users continuously whine about how Linux is 'trying to emulate Windows' when GNOME and KDE are *their* desktops, too.
By the way, I started with Linux in 1992. I started with Linux in 1992 because I loved Unix and wanted it on my PC.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
You know Slashdot is american based when you read all the negative comments about KDE.
Over here in Germany it's enormously popular.
Must be some kind of clash of civilizations...
I'm using it, too, as I like the integration of apps and window manager. On the negative side, the high level of integration can be security problem as Windows shows.
-DBS
Sigs suck!
Anyone know of an estimated (stable) release date?
i hope they get rid of aRTS so i can have full duplex sound w/ non kde apps and kde won't continue to take /dev/dsp hostage.
How about the stupid kwallet and multiple email accounts? Add some account settings and kwallet doesn't know about it because you've closed it? Oops, can't get email for that account. Quit kwallet - can't get email for all the accounts. AND the passwords are all permanently gone. Nice "feature."
Or in kontact - try to change the folders so that it saves mail to another folder with the same name but somewhere else in the folder hierarchy - for example, instead if /accountname/inbox/sucker to /inbox/accountname, and the changes take effect .... sort of ... (if you don't delete the previous folder, you now end up with multiple copies of your mail ... and what's worse, those copies both end up in the same folder ... which is either the old one or the new one, at random.
Not as bad as the showstopper in ThunderTurd - manually select part of a message to quote, and if the quote goes all the way to the last character, and you do a Ctl+C for copy, it quits. Cute.
Or the KDE su dialog - checking the "keep password" box doesn't.
Or how, when you select one multi-screen method (stretch across screens) and try to change it to something else (dual screens) it craps out, over and over, for weeks at a time. Finally, give up, use gnome, check KDE every few weeks ... nope, still crapped ut, nope, nope ... hey it "fixed itself". Guess another bug got scotched.
These aren't big problems in the scheme of things, since we have options (unlike certain other people), and KDE has its uses. But you did ask for specifics ... so here are a few.
The real problem is it's slow ... even in comparison to Gnome.
It does? I have Mac Mini with OS X, and I have been using it for about a year now. I also have a tower-PC running KDE and Linux. And while OS X does have all kinds of nifty eye-candy, and I used it exclusively for few months (to find out what the noise was all about). But after that time I noticed that I simply enjoy using KDE more. It does what I want it to do, and it does it in a way I want it to be done. In OS X, I have to adjusts my workflow and expectations to meet the OS, in Linux and KDE it's the opposite. I can change the GUI and the system to meet my expectations.
OS X is a nice OS, no question about it. But it's not the Holy Grail of OS'es or GUI's (despite the fact that some people try to claim that it is just that). For me, OS X does NOT do it better. I do love the hardware, and I'm planning to install Linux on that Mini.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
I hate to rain on your parade guys, but these are NOT "screenshots" of KDE4, and I have no idea why the admin of those forums (who posted the pictures) claims that they are. These pictures are mockups. Not screenshots but mockups. Many people have ideas what KDE could look like, and many of them have created mockups to demosntrate their ideas. There are many KDE-related forums/websites that are full of such mockups.
There are no interesting KDE4-screenshots to show because there's nothing to show really. The work on KDE4 is going on at the library-level at the moment. The actual GUI (if you could get it work that is) would propably be almost identical to KDE3.5.
Move along, nothing to see here.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
I believe it's actually an old unix standard, rather a KDE specific thing. As I understand it, the implementation is as follows:
focus follows mouse - window focus is whichever window the mouse touched last, but can be 'stolen' by explicit actions such as opening new windows, popups etc (if you launch a shortcut etc)
focus under mouse - window focus is whichever window the mouse touched last, and cannot be stolen.
focus strictly under mouse - window focus is whichever window the mouse is hovering over, and if the mouse is not touching a window, no window has focus.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
The one with broken kde packages?
To me, it is a nightmare of redundant options,
They're only redundant if you don't use them, otherwise they're vital
unpredictable behaviour, and completely hideous defaults.
What're these? The defaults seem fine to me.
(Why they can be resized so small that they're useless in the first place I don't know.)
Because there are people who want to resize it that small. It's the Ritchie thing about "Do not try and prevent users doing stupid things, for you will also prevent users doing clever things".
I am trolling
Correct, many of them are probably mockups. Consider them concepts for look and feel and features which don't yet exist.
KDE is bloated with options, compared to what? I assume you are referring to Gnome which has virtually no options, and little possibility to make it work the way I want it to? A long time ago I was a Gnome user, but one day I started toying around with KDE... and I couldn't bear to go back into Gnome after a while. I could make this desktop work just the way I wanted
KDE might not suit you, but for me it is perfect. I don't find it bloated at all. I only run linux at home. When I have to use a Windows desktop at work, I always wonder how does someone cope with such a Gnome-like desktop? It's so... unconfigurable.
Each to their own, mate.
It's been said before, but Gnome would do well to at least make available easy access to more advanced tweakability via an "expert" mode toggle (which is always-on in KDE).
e.g. To make best use of screen realestate in KDE, I set my kicker panel to "allow other windows to cover it", and to "raise when the pointer hits the bottom of the screen" -- something which isn't even possible in Gnome, afaik.
Power to the Peaceful
http://img399.imageshack.us/img399/8529/1079108511 1010841086108213du.png. png
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/1358/screen8qt
Not that exiting yet.
Don't get me wrong I don't hate KDE, and I don't personally care what is more open or that one has a more restrictive license or whatnot, all I care is to get my job done. One of the biggest problems that prevented me to get the job done, was believe or not, too many options. I tried once to change some window behavior and it took me such a long time to find the right submenu in the Kontrol and try to sift through help files that I eventually gave up. That happened other times with KDE itself and/or other KDE application. According to UI best practices, the configuration options should be kept at minimum. There is a trade-off between configuration power and usability.
Actually if you ask me, I think that the best/more functional/easier to learn interface is that of Mac OS X. Apple has invested more into the usability research than any other company and it payed off. I think it is mainly because of it, that it managed to sell underpowered and overpriced machines (when compared MFlop for MFlop and $ for $) for quite a long time now. On the Linux desktop side, I think GNOME is closer conceptually (not visually perhaps) to OS X than KDE is, and that I why I choose GNOME.
Well not if you're looking for actual screenshots.
These mock ups and their kind have been appearing on kde-artists.org for months now and are the work of artists trying to concenptualise ideas the devs could be working on.
AFAIK the developers haven't gotten up to doing anything remotely visual for KDE4 yet and are still working on the underpinning libraries.
L.
Um, no. You miss the point. What is horrible about Windows, aside from the GUI, is what is under the GUI... So basically the whole thing. When you use Windows you have no *choice* about what Window manager to use. When you use Linux (or whatever) you have *choice*. If KDE ever emulated Windows too much, I'd switch too something else. I seriously dislike the Windows desktop.
Choice is something I hate to be without, and it is for exactly this reason that I left MS a long time ago. Its their way or the highway.
I think the fact that KDE even exists means that Gnome shouldn't try to be more "advanced" (bloated).
So people like the advanced options, the glimmer and the numerous widgets. Those people pick KDE. Some people just a basic, day-to-day desktop environment. Those people pick Gnome.
The availability of both seems ideal to me.
Can you stop this childish and unprofessional bollocks people always come up with? No one says that about prefixing a 'G' to everything, and no one complains about 'i' being attached to everything Mac. It's called marketing.
Am I? What makes you think that? In that case my wife is an exception as well. She has been using the Mac more than I have, and she's getting fed up with it as well.
So, because your personal experience says something, it must be universally true?
Um, no it doesn't. Sure, you can change the icons, style and the like, but it can go a lot deeper than that.
Really? Can you change the number of virtual desktops in OS X? Can you get rid of the menubar on top? Can you replace the Dock with something better? No, no and no.
Well, I don't really care what you decide to do. I'm not trying to say that everyone will love KDE or Linux. There are personal tastes and needs. Some like KDE, others like GNOME, while some others prefer OS X. What I AM disputing is the claim that "Everything KDE does, OS X does better. Period. End of discussion". For lots of people OS X simply does not cut it. I tried it out, and it simply did not work the way I wanted it to work. If it works for you, great. But just because it works for you, does not meant that it's universally superior to everything else.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
On Windows? Wow.
I only remember that some years ago there was no Gnome on OpenBSD, and KDE didn't run too well; but at least it did. By now I'm sure that things are much better, and even Gnome works to some degree on the BSDs.
Of course the Mac isn't too well supported, because as you say the native GUI is good. But when I'm working with X apps sometimes, I'm annoyed by the Quartz WM, so I prefer to run it as a native full-screen X environment.
but let's be honest. "You've probably heard the quote, "BSD is for people that love Unix; Linux is for people that hate Windows."
Okay, I'm being honest. I actually never have heard that before. I hate Windows and MS because my first computer came with Windows ME and I feel that I was totally screwed. If I'd wanted a Mac I'd have gotten one.
"Many Linux users have no particular loyalty to Linux and would just as soon use something else. "
Funny, but I've been thinking the exact opposite, that too many of them are rather blindly loyal to their distro of choice. Mepis retail will require a serial number to update soon, for example, and the serial number is tied to the MAC address of your computer. This means that you'll have to fill out a form to update if you switch computers and that they can refuse to allow you uto update. It also means that you can only use your copy on one machine; even Linspire lets you use one copy on up to 5 computers in your home IIRC. We *nix users have been telling people for years that you don't have to put with this kind of treatment from MS but the Mepis folks are loyal enough to think this is a good idea for Mepis for some reason, even though Mepis has been known for some time as having problems with bug-squashing. As I posted at Distrowatch, why bother with this when there are other distros that are more stable and free? But the Mepis people are loyal.
Much the same can be said for the Libranet people; Libranet was more stable but it was also expensive, and the only original code the developers came up with they've refused to share with the Linux community even though their product was over 90% based on Debian's GPL code. Now that Libranet has been discontinued the adminmenu has remained closed-source. Why the lead developer's son refused to share with the community their product was based on, I don't know. But the Libranet users have remained quite loyal to them. And don't get me started about Mandriva.
"More than a few people from my local LUG have installed a bootlegged copy of the OSx86 beta. One of our members showed off his toshiba laptop running OS X, which was quite popular, even among the old school unix types."
Why they bother is beyond me. Oh wait, I do know - bragging rights. That's what a MAC is apparently all about as Apple fanboys spend so much time bragging on how great it is. One would think if it was so perfectly functioal they'd spend more time using it. "Plus I have a system that everyone envies!" was one post I read at Digg. C'mon, admit it- we all know that's really why people want a Mac.
"While we may protest that KDE or GNOME are better than OS X, the collective orgasm when Apple announced an OSx86 show that free (beer) beats free (speech)"
Really? I don't remember having an orgasm over OSX. I have had plenty of orgasms since it was released, but my thoughts at the time had nothing to with OSX (or even computers, for that matter). The media and people at Digg have been fawning over it and they seem to think that everyone in the world wants a Mac. They're wrong; give me a Mac and I'll sell it and use the money to upgrade my AMD running Linux, thank you very much.
"It doesn't really matter what features or eye candy KDE or GNOME add, because OS X does it better. "
I disagree. I don't like OSX's cluttered UI and I don't like vendor lock-in. With KDE I can remove the icons and have everything on auto-hide if I want to. And sometimes I do; if I wanted all this junk on my dekstop why would I bother using a wallpaer? Plus it's convenient to get everything out of my way when I'm multi-tasking. Apple has a lot of great eye-candy if you don't mind it being in your way, but I do mind. And when I want eye candy KDE has plenty enough of it to satisfy me. Plus I want freedom of choice, not what Apple chooses for me. Kde lets me choose when I wan the eye candy, how I want it to look, but only when I want it.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
okay kde developers log this:
A great deal of kde users are heavy shell users (xterm,konsole,whatever)
I wish some kind of terminal apps could be held as a widget on the desktop showing
the actual text being displayed in the terminal (shrunk but visible and legible) and upon clicking or roll-over restores itself.
And here's the kick-ass feature.
a F-key expose that gives you all your terminals with the actual text displayed in real time and a history scroll bar that scrolls the history a typed commands not the displayed text. You roll over the terminals on expose and the take over the whole screen for 1 second and if you keep moving the mouse, returns to expose, if you stop moving the mouse the terminal remains in full-screen mode, if you right-click the terminal stays in full-screen mode. You press F-key and return to expose.
wait wait wait, when you select expose, the terminals are displayed and take over the whole screen from left to right top bottom in chronological last-selected time (like alt-tab) and you press anoter F-key and all terminals show the last 10 commands executed with the return text ALL IN SLOW MOTION!!
Now you picture this: You arrive at 9 AM with your coffee and your bagel all grogy, sit in front of your screen, log-in, press terminal expose, press history and voila! you get to see a little movie of all the crap you were doing the night before..kewl eh?
You got all that!! Now go tiger! go!
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
How dare you imply that I'm not a lord of the universe? Elitist scum!
(deem enclsing sarcasm tags implied)
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...but the main images are served from a MySQL database, which, big surprise, has been smashed flat by the unexpected and overwhelming load. I'm impressed that it even manages to produce a good error message. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The real problem is it's slow ... even in comparison to Gnome.
I just don't believe that anymore. Gnome has become a memory and CPU pig: There're reasons why gnome 2.13 has so many performance improvements. KDE used to be a memory pig, but then gnome catched up and their memory usage went trough the roof. By the way, porting applications to QT4 (no functionality) improves the memory usage percentages with double-digit numbers, so there's a chance that KDE 4 eats less memory
The top post also asked "I don't know what the Gnome guys are up to". I wish to know that aswell. KDE is actively developing KDE 4 but Gnome 3 doesn't exist at all today. Some Gnome developers seem to think that gnome 3 shouldn't be developed because gnome 2 is already feature complete and that doing small improvements which don't break compatibility it's a beter option. That sounds good, but I'd say it looks scary: KDE people is actively developing a KDE version which will rock in many ways and Gnome doesn't seem to have nothing to compete against it, except that Fedora now includes mono and more C# apps can be developed. Noveel seem to be the one place where cool things are being done with gnome.
I think you have some good points, in fact, it reminds me of a Slashdot article a while back that basically said that the more complex an interface is, the more intimidating it is to most people. If you have a zillion widgets to click and boxes to look at, people tend to get lost and give up. In the comments of that article, several people made good points. For example, putting common tasks in the front and hiding the advanced stuff in another tab or window with a button to access it.
I think one of the key issues surrounding KDE is choice: you choose to run KDE, or you choose not to. Unix-based systems give the user/admin the choice of which window manager to run. Don't like KDE? Try a different one. Hell, you can even contact the KDE team, report bugs, and give feedback. While most large OSS project teams are busy as hell and aren't always the most receptive to outside communication, they are a lot more receptive than, say, Microsoft. Think it's too damn complex? Give constructive criticism to the KDE team. The other beauty of it is that besides the KDE core, a lot of "KDE" applications are third-party software that is just written for KDE and follows a specific set of guidelines. Odds are for some of the problems people have, they can contact a lone developer who has less to worry about and can dedicate more time to each problem.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
I know I post this every time someone touts lack of options in OS X making it easier to use, but I think it's worth mentioning. In OS X you cannot control mouse speed and accelerqation independantly. This makes using a touch pad on their laptop very difficult, bucause my finger does not move at a steady rate. What this does to me is cause the mouse to move real slow (low acceleration) or jerk between reasonable and fast (high acceleration). Mac users seem to think that eliminatin choices that many computer users have taken for granted for a decade accually makes the computers easier to use, but it is just not true. By completly hiding that functionality away and not even having an advanced option, it makes the computer a nightmare.
This may be a nit, but it is a bigger problem then window behavier (I am sure more non-power users adjust the mouse than the behavier).
The thing I like about KDE is that it forces you to copy, link, or move with every drag and drop. The choosing which to do behind the scenes is semi-random to the average person.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
To provide some alternate perspective:
Screens:
Screen1
Screen2
Screen3
Videos:
Vids taken with a video camera
New window manager video (long)
Conceivably some of these goodies could be merged into KDE. Given the blatant sexiness of this handful of technologies, I'd expect it will be happening reasonably soon.
And I believe that everywhere you see "Search", it is a beagle indexed search. WinFS eat your heart out.
I have never had that problem. Kwallet is happily running in the system-tray, managing my passwords and such. And I have never had any problems with it.
Haven't tried to do something like that, so I can't comment. But you DO know that you can use some other mail-client with KDE? Or do you think that if some app in KDE has some esoteric problem, it means that KDE as a whole sucks?
Have you filed a bug-report?
Huh? each release as been faster than the one before it. On my box, startup takes few seconds, apps appear in fraction of a second, and everything is nice and fast. Memory-consumption is pretty low as well. Now, I have a somewhat fast machine (A64 3200+), but I have used it on slower machines as well (800Mhz Duron, 400-500Mhz K6) and it worked just fine there as well.
I did do a comparison to GNOME last year. And the speed was more or less the same. IIRC, KDE started up 1-2 seconds faster, and that was the only major difference between them. Other things (apps etc.) were more or less the same.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.