A Sneak Preview of KDE 4

An anonymous reader writes "In recent times, a lot of discussion has been generated about the state of KDE version 4.0 and as Linux users we are ever inquisitive about what the final user experience is going to be. This article throws light on some of the features that we can look forward to when KDE 4.0 is finally released some time this year. The article indicates that the most exciting fact about KDE 4.0 is going to be that it is developed using the Qt 4.0 library. This is significant because Qt 4.0 is released under a GPL license even for non-Unix platforms. So this clears the ideological path for KDE 4.0 to be ported to Windows and other non-Unix/X11 platforms."

Comments

From dot.kde.org

[strider44]

I monitor dot.kde.org pretty closely and there's a few things notable here. Firstly if you look at KDE at the moment it doesn't look much different to KDE 3.x. This is because the frameworks are currently being finished and polished - the interface will be the *last* thing to be finalised - remember guys tip of the iceberg - there's a whole lot more code that you don't see than you do see.

Also, with this article specifically, a few of the graphics are temporary, most notably the background that's pretty obvious in ksysguard. Yes it's horrible for that app, no it won't be there in the finished version. It's a temporary background being used in several apps at the moment for a placeholder.

Also, the start menu isn't finalised yet from anything I've heard, that's the start menu designed specifically for Suse - it's been on Slashdot before.

KDE looks like it will be coming together quite quickly and quite soon. Several major components are pretty much complete and are being polished now. Looks like pretty fun stuff - don't believe anyone who says it's vapourware.

Re:From dot.kde.org

[strider44]

Also, a similar KDE article is at http://dot.kde.org/1167723426/

Read the comments there as well for some interesting info.

Re:Memory

[Frekko]

This http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/desktop_benchmar k.html article from 2006 shows you how much memory Gnome/KDE use. Even though it is written by a KDE member I can't see why he should have messed with the numbers. As you can see KDE actually uses a bit less (not much though) memory than Gnome.

Re:Memory

[jcupitt65]

Here's an update written by a GNOME person:

http://spooky-possum.org/cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi/kde vsgnome.html

tldr: they have (essentially) the same memory requirements.

Some criticism of gnome mostly past

[dbIII]

I hate gnome due to the cretinous idea of implementing an obfiscated MS Windows style registry on what was at the time a non-portable linux environment - and having one of these registries per user spread over multiple files named after the three stooges and others (not kidding) in a form where you cannot export the settings to another user let alone another computer. This has been fixed to a degree, not everything needs gconf anymore and with Sabayon many of the settings can be exported. However it remains an environment where a user can render their laptop unusable via a screen resolution applet which sets stuff in the weird registry instead of in the X windows configuration files where it belongs. Try fixing that over a bad mobile phone link to a remote area some time. Cretinous behaviour like making things executable without permission also occured at one time, but I believe was fixed rapidly.

Fortunately the people that wanted a version of MS Windows that they wrote themselves running on linux (only) but not understanding the features of the platform have moved on - leaving us with two fairly decent environments with just a few remaining flaws.