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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."
It should also be pointed out that the port to QT is expected to very noticeably improve performance.
When was the last time a new version of Microsoft Windows came out with a faster user interface?
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
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.
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.
Funny how everyone says 'SUSE' these days to rhyme with 'traitorous scumbags' :-)
I'm a new convert to KDE, after years of predominantly fluxbox usage, with the odd dabble into Gnome. This is mainly because I principally used Linux over VNC or ssh, so KDE was out of the question, too slow over the network.
Now I have the novelty of a fast local Linux box, and decided to try out these fancy Graphical Desktops a bit more. The new Gnome is good, but I must say I am becoming more and more impressed with KDE as the days go on. I still like my fluxbox though, simplicity does have it's appeal sometimes. Can KDE ever be that fast though, I doubt it. Not that I care much about load times on KDE, 99% of my computer usage is text editors and the console. Those are two things that run fast on any system.
KDE on windows? Sounds interesting. Windows is just a games environment or dumb terminal into my linux cluster for me normally, I'd love to have KDE on XP. A fast KDE frontend for Vista might actually make me consider buying that heap.
It's funny that that's the reason why I detest Gnome - for some reason they got the idea that removing all the options that only 5% of users use is a good idea. Of course all the other options are used by a different 5% each time so in the end you've got the majority of users upset because the option they want has been removed. Note: Put to the side with an unknown and unguessable key combination counts as removed.
But that's OK because Gnome isn't for me.
Please, Gnome is a slim pick up and go desktop for new users, KDE is a customisable and flexible desktop for power, business or techie users. I like it this way, it gives everyone a desktop that they are comfortable with. As a techie, I want KDE to stay the way it is, please don't try to change it to something it is not.
At the risk of being labelled a troll, I have a few obversations to make. I yearn to return to Gnome (I made the switch from Gnome--which I'd been using for 3 years--to KDE about a year ago. I'm not sure if it's a "feature" of Gnome, but when Gnome apps (at least on my systems) fail, they don't even give a reasonable error message. This may be a design feature, to make it "easier", but, in fact, makes things stupidly difficult. If something fails, then I want to know WHY (at least give me the option of more detailed error messages). KDE is consistent. Gnome isn't (yet). 3 years ago, I would laugh at KDE users, because I knew that "Gnome was best". These days I take a more pragmatic view. Ideoligally, Gnome may be better. In practice, KDE takes the cake.
Only when it means Amarok on Windows and Macs. That's a good feature of KDE 4.
I like things as they are with separate applications. If Kicker hiccups and falls over I can relaunch Kicker, if Super Karamba falls over, then I can simply restart Super Karamba, if the desktop falls over then I can restart the desktop... if the "all in one app" Plasma falls over, than what??? do I have to restart KDE? I don't want flaky Super Karamba widgets threatening the entire desktop... and I only want to run Super Karamba if I want to, not by default...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Here's an update written by a GNOME person:
e vsgnome.html
http://spooky-possum.org/cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi/kd
tldr: they have (essentially) the same memory requirements.
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.
"Please, Gnome is a slim pick up and go desktop for new users, KDE is a customisable and flexible desktop for power, business or techie users."
Disagree.
I use Gnome because I have a million and one things to do and so long as the interface isn't annoying, looks ok and doesn't get in the way, then it's good for me.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a power, business and techie user. When KDE 1 came out I spent loads of happy minutes changing every setting just to how i liked it on my home PC. Partly because I could and partly because I found the default kde setup annoying.
I now use Ubuntu (at work) and have never felt the urge to change a single option. Now, the techie in me wants to do cool things at a PC, not change how the taskbar looks.
You will forget this sig before you next see it
KNow,if Konly Kthey Kwould Kstop Kalling Keverything KSomething or Kother!
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
Hear hear!
You're so right! I wish the KDE team would realise that a pleasant desktop experience involves editing
Lemon curry???
Actually its a CDE ripoff.
CDE predates win95, and was based on the many desktop WIMP environments around in the late 1980s, such as HPs VUE.
A lot of the things you imagine are Windows interface paradigms are actually basic HCI stuff (Fitts law, Roman language left-right convention, and whatnot) that pretty much dictate colour schemes, icon size, icon behaviour, left to right conventions, etc.
The only thing I can think of that is a Windows thing is the position of a main menu button in the bottom left, its easier to mouse to the top of the screen than to the bottom because of the way the muscles in the hand/arm work. In truth the KDE button can be located anywhere, its just the default themes that just happen to position it there, cos that's where most computer users look to find a central control.
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
It shows some graphical pics of games that have been converted to SVG (nice to say the least). Then in the article, it talks about the various projects that are working on core libs. Once those are fleshed out, then more apps will come into focus. I would say that this is actually a pretty good preview of very unsettled work. As to the desktop, well, there will be more.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Agreed. Hard to understand what people are even talking about when it comes to "bloat". Gnome, KDE, Windows -- with today's hardware it's not like one has to wait for minutes for an application to load any more.
/rant
I use KDE for the sheer convenience and ease of use. Windows seems like it's virtually stood still in time for the last four or five years. KDE has far surpassed it, ease-of-use-wise. Gnome is still such a joke. I don't get it. How is it that Firefox, Thunderbird (at least on Linux) and other packages have to emulate Gnome when it comes to: finding files (GIMP and Firefox try to be so Gnome-like -- sucks!), the whole "Would you like to do this? No? Yes?" anti-natural-language (but oh-so geek-orthodox) OK / Cancel thing. Why do so many distros (Red Hat, Ubuntu) have Gnome as the default? Makes no sense.
I'll trade a little "bloat" for "getting things done" any time.
Not only are they rewriting stuff to reduce footprint they're using more and more system components that everyone has (DBUS) rather than KDE-specific things (DCOP for example). Qt4 definitely uses a lot less memory as a whole than Qt3 but it's not backwards compatible.
:D
What you will see is KDE4 by default using a huge glob less of memory, but if you run an old KDE3 or Qt3 app, suddenly memory usage will kind of go up when the compatibility libraries load.. disk usage will go up too because of them. But in most systems, 90% of the time the CPU is fairly idle and memory usage is the most important performance factor; not just memory-limited systems, on huge multi-GB desktops too.
What I really want to see is KDE4 running on Qt4 directly on the Linux framebuffer; get rid of X. Then something like MythTV running on top of it; bringing requirements down by removing some of the extraneous cruft (X no longer has magic mouse and keyboard drivers since the USB HID system does most of the work, would be one example) is a good goal too and KDE4 is also doing some of that.
I'm not sure what direction GNOME is taking, but at least there is a lot less ability to do so with GTK; they pride compatibility without compatibility libraries, and new functionality comes with new applications and rewrites of applications which never made the grade (Ubuntu Edgy had a bunch of them) - it seems to be a more pronounced, feature-rich development cycle with less chances to sit down and optimize something old. Both environments seem to be focussing on simply PROVIDING user experience than optimizing it. However KDE has a lot more baggage; components like the browser, office suite are all part of the KDE offering, which GNOME doesn't have an encumberance on. Optimizing KDE gives more results for less work. Optimizing GNOME seems harder to justify considering very few things will benefit but the toolkit and desktop itself. Maybe I'm wrong though...