KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 Released

Crobain writes "The first alpha release for KDE 4.1 is out, and bugs aside, it looks promising. The KDE Plasma desktop shell now has preliminary support for Mac OS X dashboard widgets and SuperKaramba, and panels can be added and removed via contextual menu items. 'This alpha release marks the start of the 4.1 feature freeze, so virtually all of the remaining developer effort between now and the official 4.1 release in July will focus on bug-fixing, polish, and stability. Despite the current breakage, the actual feature set that has been stubbed out for this release is pretty darn good. If the developers can deliver on all of this functionality and make it stable and robust, version 4.1 will offer a much better overall user experience than 4.0, and Plasma will come close to achieving functional parity with the KDE 3.5.x panel system.' The KDE Techbase wiki has a full list of the features planned for the 4.1 release."

Comments

In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

The 4.1 alpha of my asshole has been released too. It features much better polishing than the last time (Sorry Bruce).

Propz to GNAA

Also first post you douchebags.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Polished by your bum-chum's pubic hair

Second post

[CptChipJew]

You cum-guzzling queens

Propz to GNAA

Plasma again...

[javilon]

I am a very long time KDE user, and I expected 4.0 to be a great desktop, but it turned out to be a alpha so I kept using the old 3.x series.

The scope of 4.0 was quite big, so understood the problems and I hoped for 4.1 to be a stable release.

Reading the dot news on kde.org I found that the have gone back and rewritten a lot of plasma again. This means that it will need a new period of stabilization again.

I just hope that this time they don't release before it is ready. It would be a huge blow to the project's reputation. 3.5 is excellent, so we can keep using it until they are really ready with the new version. No hurry.

Re:Plasma again...

[lbbros]

If you read also Aaron Seigo's blog, you'll see that this API change had been expected *way* before KDE 4.0 release. Libplasma is scheduled to go into kdelibs at some point (~ 4.2) so the API must be OK because then it'll be frozen. Besides, Plasma was reaborn from ashes (breakage wise) in just a week. This should tell something.

Re:Plasma again...

[Psychotria]

I am not sure even 4.1 will be a stable release. However, they have made massive improvements. Most of the KDE 4.1 ported applications look really nice (and, yeah, it's not all just eye-candy). Running KDE trunk (aka 4.1) today resulted (for me) in quite a few crashes (more than a week or so ago). Do these crashes worry me? Not really, because I send the core-dumps etc to the developers so they can reproduce them and write fixes.

I didn't know that 4.1 went alpha today, and (IMO) that seems a bit hasty... BUT it will get more people testing it and (hopefully) submitting patches... so, in that light, it's a good thing.

Re:Plasma again...

[cheater512]

I've been using KDE 4 for months.

While it still has quirks around the place and isnt production ready, I cannot go back to 3.5.
It looks and feels so old fashioned in comparison. :)

The quirks generally dont impede productivity at all.
They are just there.

Re:Plasma again...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not sure even 4.1 will be a stable release.

Perhaps the KDE 4 developers can clarify: is KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 and alpha like KDE 4.0 Release, or is it a Release like KDE 4.0 "alpha" was not?

In other words, is this KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 Alpha or KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 Release as an upgrade to KDE 4.0 Release Alpha?

Re:Plasma again...

[Psychotria]

In other words, is this KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 Alpha or KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 Release as an upgrade to KDE 4.0 Release Alpha? That clears things up...

Re:Plasma again...

[makomk]

Yeah, and the system tray has been broken for well over a week now (possibly even two weeks) as a result, with no signs it'll be fixed any time soon. Apparently, the version of Plasma in the alpha is a snapshot from when it was even more broken; the trunk version is now finally more-or-less working again (though there have been several interesting additional breakages in it over the last week or two).

Re:Plasma again...

[dredwerker]

It impeded everything for me. I dont want to slam the devs, it looks nice and I think it will be the way forward. BUT - Where is the show desktop - I have to work on windows machines so i want some things to be in similar places so I dont have to think about it. Saving files to the desktop didnt seem to be the same as windows or 3.5. Apps crashed on 4.0 and I just needed to do something so I went back to 3.5. I want it to be good but I fear that it will take time.

Re:Plasma again...

[cheater512]

I believe that was a deliberate design decision.

They altered the way the desktop works so its no longer a file dump.
Instead its a place to put plasmoids and nothing more.
Their reasoning is on kde.org somewhere.

I quite like it. The desktop is pointless for me.

Re:Plasma again...

[Enleth]

If you have a few minutes, could you please take a look at my 3.5 desktop and check if it's possible to configure 4.x this way now? I'm using my desktop configuration for a few years now and I'm quite used to it, but last I checked it was impossible to get it on 4.0, especially the top panel.

Re:Plasma again...

[cheater512]

Might be possible.
You can create a second panel, make it thin and then put plasmoids on it to get a similar effect.

Re:Plasma again...

[domatic]

Not to be snarky but I never quite understood what you appear to be doing.

Why not get a Mac if that is what you want? I mean it LOOKs sorta like OS X but it won't ACT like OS X (and that is GOOD thing IMO.....). Since it won't act like OS X then why so much trouble to mimic the appearance?

Re:Plasma again...

[dredwerker]

I believe that was a deliberate design decision. They altered the way the desktop works so its no longer a file dump. Instead its a place to put plasmoids and nothing more. Their reasoning is on kde.org somewhere. I quite like it. The desktop is pointless for me. Yeah I took the time to read up about it. From the FAQ:

Why on earth did you decide to change the way the desktop operates? The idea of a Desktop folder is fundamentally a broken concept. It assumes that everything you will access there resides on a single physical directory on your disk. It may be convenient, but at the same time it greatly limits what you can do. For example, you can't use custom layouts for different desktops, as everything would be read from the directory. Also, quite often a desktop structured like that becomes a dumping ground for files and folders, without any other function. That said, you can have icons on the desktop in Plasma. The trouble is I am always dumping files on my desktop and then finding somewhere useful for it to go. If they could just emulate a plasma object which acts this way then that might work. Still no show desktop button though :)

Re:Plasma again...

[Anonymous Coward]

I quite like it, as well. Thing is, most people don't quite like it, and there is no option for a more conventional desktop. One of the main things I've always liked about KDE was how customizable it is. It seems with KDE4, they're throwing that out the window in favor of GNOME/Mac-like crippled "simplicity" and eye candy.

Re:Plasma again...

[Enleth]

Because I don't want a Mac? I don't like the way OS X acts. I like the way it is laid out. Mind you, not the way it looks, the way it is laid out - that's a different thing. Ignore the icons, I've set them to OS X theme years ago and just didn't bother to change them, they're good enough. The widget theme is standard KDE, the window decorations are standard too. What is important to me is the placement of window buttons - they're much better on the left side of the window, as that's the side I'm generally focused on, you know, left-to-right writing and all; and the menu bar, K menu button and tray on the upper panel - that's because of the "infinite button" effect, it works and is especially noticeable when using a trackpoint (TP X60). Oh, and the upper panel is quite thin, so it can be there all the time, with the tray and clock visible (actually, the effective workspace inside an application is the same, the menu bar would be there anyway, just less useful), while the lower one has autohiding turned on, so it doesn't waste space when not needed. Effectively, I've copied the parts of OS X I like but I'm still using an enviroment and applications I like much better. And I'm damn tired of explaining it every time someone starts a "get a Mac" talk without trying to think about it for a minute first.

Re:Plasma again...

[Anonymous Coward]

I rebuilt from svn last night and the sys tray now works fine....

Re:Plasma again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh, this sounds terrible. The reasoning in that paragraph basically runs like this:

"We noticed that a lot of you users out there are using the Desktop in a way we don't approve of. So we took away your ability to do that."

What a stunningly user-hostile approach. If a lot of people are doing something, that usually means that they find value in doing it that way. If you don't like that way of doing this, the right response is to try and figure out what is driving them to act the way they are, and address that root cause -- not smack them and say "bad user!"

If people are using the Desktop as a "dumping ground" for files, I would say that the problem isn't that we let people put files on the desktop, it's that organizing files in the filesystem is too hard (if it isn't for you, remember, you're reading Slashdot and therefore are not an average user) and we should be looking for ways to make it easier.

Re:Plasma again...

[3p1ph4ny]

I have kde4 and kde 3.5.9 installed in parallel. It's doubtful that at this point you'd be able to do what you have there. It might be possible, but it certainly won't be the painless 10 minute process it was in 3.5.

The reason for most of this is that whatever the kde4 name is for 3.5's "panel" has a pretty limited featureset right now. Supposedly the panel is much improved in 4.1 (that's the word on the street anyways), so when it stabilizes and is released you might check back then.

If anyone from the KDE project reads this: I'm not knocking you! 3.5 kicks a whole lot of ass, so I'm happy to wait until 4 matures.

Re:Plasma again...

[Enderandrew]

The Mac-style option to have the application menu always at the top is not yet implemented in KDE 4, but plenty of people keep requesting it. It may be there when 4.1 launches.

Re:Plasma again...

[Enderandrew]

Personally, I love that KDE gives users the freedom to configure their desktop to operate how they want it. People get upset when people create themes to have KDE look or operate like Windows or OS X, but why? Let them! That's what the freedom of choice means.

And personally I see the Windows themes get ripped the most by ass-hats, but if I can make KDE look just like Windows, then I can install it on boxes for people who largely only use a web browser, and they won't know the difference.

Re:Plasma again...

[reaktor]

I've been using KDE4 for a little while now with the latest Kubuntu. I think it is fantastic. There is always a lot of grumbling over any major change. The under-the-hood changes KDE is making in KDE4 are very forward-looking and will help KDE do very well on a long term basis.

KDE4 is the OS X of Linux. :)
(woops there goes my karma...)

Re:Plasma again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite yet, but I think it's not far off. You can still move window buttons on the title bars, you can revert to the old style menu (although I like the new one better), system tray and clock is no problem, and with 4.1 you can put a panel on the top and make it small. The only think that's not ready yet is the menu bar plasmoid, which will let you put the menu on the top bar. I think someone is working on that though.

Re:Plasma again...

[Anonymous Coward]

While it still has quirks around the place and isnt production ready, I cannot go back to 3.5.
It looks and feels so old fashioned in comparison. :) Yeah, I couldn't go back to 3.5 either. So I'm trying Gnome again and I'd say I'm quite happy with the new Ubuntu Hardy. Eventually I'll go back to KDE4 but I wonder how many people is moving to Gnome because KDE4 is not ready and KDE3 is frozen!

The quirks generally dont impede productivity at all. They do for me! For instance:

- I use my main bar on the left side (I think it's a better use of a widescreen space) and I can't use the clock anymore (it doesn't rotate and it doesn't resize);

- The Kickoff menu can only be accessed via mouse. I like to launch my programs via keyboard. I use to use Katapult on KDE3 but that doesn't cut anymore. BTW, the Deskbar-Applet from Gnome is just fine;

- I like to enable the autologin feature (followed by a lock screen) and I just can't get it working on KDE4. Maybe it's not that hard but I don't feel like trying to find out;

- I want my desktop to be minimal. I don't use the taskbar/taskmenu. What I like in Plasma is that I don't have to have a bar anymore. I just want to use plasmoids floating in different areas of the screen: the notification/systray, the K menu, the digital clock and the device notification; the problem is I can't get them to be "always on top".

There are more but these are the ones that bother me the most.

Re:Plasma again...

[theshowmecanuck]

This is a big mistake and quite arrogant of the developers. The developers should never impose their belief on how a user should use the software. If people want to use the desktop as a file dump, then let them. A developer should NEVER force the user to do something like saving files to the desktop. So many people do this. All it will do is annoy the crap out of people. And if people don't like how it works, they won't use it. I see many instances of this type of behavior from developers writing business applications. They want to dictate to the business how the business should do business. When in fact they should write programs the way business wants to do business. Similar for KDE. If people want to save files to the desktop, they should write the software to allow people to save files to the desktop.

Re:Plasma again...

[Enleth]

Thanks, that's one of the things I wanted to know. I guess I'll take a look at Bugzilla and request that too.

Re:Plasma again...

[Anonymous Coward]

multiple panels are supported now, and there is a menubar plasmoid in playground. it mostly works at this point and should be moving out of playground within the next month or two i'd imagine.

Re:Plasma again...

[SanityInAnarchy]

There are actually good places to dump files -- like your home directory -- and kde4 makes that reasonably easy to get to.

And the show desktop button is ctrl+F12 by default, I think. It won't give you the actual background image, but it does turn the desktop into a "dashboard" -- which is pretty much exactly why it doesn't make sense to put files there anymore.

Re:Plasma again...

[SanityInAnarchy]

"We noticed that a lot of you users out there are using the Desktop in a way we don't approve of. So we took away your ability to do that." Well, that's what happened with Pidgin...

In this case, I think it's more along the lines of, it's technically easier to turn the desktop into a desktop/dashboard widget thing, which is arguably very, very cool, if we don't also have to worry about putting files/folders there.

Re:Plasma again...

[Haeleth]

Ugh, this sounds terrible. The reasoning in that paragraph basically runs like this:

"We noticed that a lot of you users out there are using the Desktop in a way we don't approve of. So we took away your ability to do that."

What a stunningly user-hostile approach.

Well, yeah, if you deliberately twist their words, apply the worst possible interpretation to everything, and invent a secret evil motive to project onto them, then I guess you could see it that way.

Personally, I read it as "We wanted to let you do all kinds of things with your desktop that you can't currently do because they don't work well if the desktop is set up to be a file dump, so we've removed that feature in order to be able to give you loads more options."

I don't think taking away the ability to write files to the desktop is a big deal, because there are plenty of other places to store files that are just as convenient to access. The only reason I've ever known anyone use the desktop to store files is simply because it was the default location for whatever application they were using.

Note that I'm not a KDE fanboy, by the way. I don't use KDE at all. My favourite desktop environment is actually CDE (yes, seriously!) -- which also doesn't allow you to store files on the desktop. In CDE, the desktop is where you put minimised windows. It works very well; it's very convenient to be able to arrange my programs in a spatial 2D grid, rather than having to use the cramped and inefficient 1D taskbar/dock that every other desktop environment seems inexplicably to have adopted.

Re:Plasma again...

[cheater512]

Oh you can still use it as a file dump.
They've just made it less desirable.

There are better ways to use the desktop.
Your home folder should be the file dump instead (which has convenient to use from all KDE apps).

Re:Plasma again...

[HeroreV]

Oh man, your subpixel antialiasing is going berserk on my monitor.

Re:Plasma again...

[Enleth]

Well, it's configured for a 12.1" laptop TFT (very high DPI, small size - that means very small physical pixels), so I guess it could look bad on a CRT, a low-DPI desktop LCD or one of those panoramic, glossy, high-contrast, low-DPI screens in those huge "laptops" one could use as a doorstop or a blunt weapon... But it sure looks good on a sublaptop, so no problem for me.

Re:Plasma again...

[donscarletti]

The developers should never impose their belief on how a user should use the software.

It's not that simple, the developers shouldn't support functionality that they don't believe adds value to the software. Of course whether users want to keep using the software after its had the features they like taken out is a different matter entirely.

Not all user actions are good, some can make it more difficult for the user in the long term. If is not the software's responsibility to prevent the user from acting in an insecure, inefficient or disorganised manner, but simply to make doing things the right way easier. At the end of the day, all that matters is the user CAN do things how they want to (in this case dumping files to an un-organised directory) rather than encouraging the user to do so (by mapping a directory to the desktop).

After all, the desktop directory thing was a KDE decision to begin with, there is nothing in the system's hardware architecture that implies a desktop directory, nor is it part of Linux or any layer underneath KDE. Most Linux desktop managers don't do it that way and historically many other systems haven't either, Windows 3.1 used it as a task manager which seemed an appropriate enough use for it and I believe NeXTStep did it like that too. If KDE want to change what the desktop represents from a directory to something else, I say go for it.

Re:Plasma again...

[HeroreV]

It looks weird because the red, green, and blue pixels are arranged differently. I guess I should have called it "subpixel rendering" instead of "subpixel antialiasing". I just think it's interesting the effect subpixel rendering has on screenshots. Who would have guessed screenshots would one day have hardware compatibility issues?

(BTW, I'm using a Dell 2001FP LCD monitor. It's has a 20.1" size, a 1600x1200 resolution, a 4:3 aspect ration, and a matte finish.)

This is Greate News

[Anonymous Coward]

With Vista going so badly the time is right to stick to MS

Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[Anonymous Coward]

It feels like this desktop is stuck in 2000.

Maybe at some point the strategy of lets clone Win2k/98 to make Windows users want to migrate to something familiar sounded good but it has been close to a decade now...

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[MrNaz]

Constantly trying to reinvent a perfectly round wheel results in
a) New problems that need to be worked out from scratch
b) Totally different use patterns which may or may not work in the real world
c) Reluctant users

Personally, I don't see a problem with following patterns that were created for Windows. There's no reason that the existing desktop format can't be extended and have features added to it if need be. This "lets go a totally different direction just coz we don't want to follow MS" is stupid. MS spent huge amounts of R&D finding out what regular users will be able to use, and freeriding on that seems like a good idea to me.

Also, open source software doesn't have a good track record when it comes to ground up usability designs. Compare GIMP, Pidgin and Blender with their commercial counterparts. Then look at how long Linux has taken to get to a point where it's considered barely usable by the every day user.

Oh, and anyone who throws in a "but my grandma has been using Linux since 1965 for $fooTinyUseCase" gets a kick in the backside.

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[Psychotria]

Have you even used KDE 4.1? It is nothing like Windows 2K. I guess I really shouldn't respond to trolls.

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[Anonymous Coward]

if you don't like it how about you STFU and go code/configure your own version?

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[ilikepi314]

From what I can tell with using KDE since 4.0.0, it appears KDE4 will be a nice balance once its fully implemented.

Icons and the taskbar and a "start menu" type thing will not go away, so if you prefer a more Windows-like interface, you still have it right there. There's also the work on a Mac-like bar, so people that don't want to change their habits from other OSes will still be able to use essentially the same interface as before.

However, the groundwork is being laid for departures from that; if you prefer, eventually you'll have a large library of Plasma apps to choose from, as well as many customization options. And that's just the desktop; I know KOffice was also experimenting with a new streamlined approach to documents, though I am unsure how much they're doing and how much they abandoned.

But that's the difference - you can now (or will, once it's finished and officially released) fully mess with the desktop, instead of only being able to change a few colors or behaviors of pretty much the same static desktop, as it was before. Keep the standard Windows model, or completely throw away the panel and start menu and set up little applets to do what you need, or anything in between; You choose. And I think that's a powerful thing, to give people that option - certainly a defining characteristic of free software.

Maybe the Windows GUI will eventually prove itself to still be the best; but depending on what people come up with in the next few years as Plasma matures, we may be discussing how we can't even imagine using a computer without a Plasma-esque GUI. :)

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[CrispBH]

Oh, and anyone who throws in a "but my grandma has been using Linux since 1965 for $fooTinyUseCase" gets a kick in the backside. More importantly, can she ship me the schematics for her time machine? Cheers :)

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[GreatBunzinni]

Also, open source software doesn't have a good track record when it comes to ground up usability designs. Compare GIMP, Pidgin and Blender with their commercial counterparts. Then look at how long Linux has taken to get to a point where it's considered barely usable by the every day user.

Your comment is a bit silly, to say the least. After all, in order to try to prove that all F/LOSS is somehow inferior to all commercial software, you picked up the GIMP and Pidgin, which are two of the most god-awful UI examples there is. Nonetheless, you failed to cite what the commercial counterparts are. In fact, if you compare Pidgin, which is a god-awful mess, to MSN Messenger, the "commercial counterpart" isn't exactly great either. Not by a long shot.

If that wasn't enough, you try to use Blender as an example of how F/LOSS is somehow always inferior. Well, that is a stupid example due to Blender's origins as a closed-source, proprietary, commercial product which only ended up being liberated by pure luck. And yet, there are quite a few users swearing by Blender's UI. You see, just because it is different to all that crap you got used to it doesn't mean it's bad.

But the biggest issue you chose to ignore is that F/LOSS presents us with quite a lot of examples of superb usability when compared to proprietary, closed-source, commercial counterparts. For example, both GNOME and KDE are leaps and bounds above and beyond any desktop environment that Microsoft has been pushing for the last two decades, not only in UI design but also in technical prowess.

So care to rethink your silly argument?

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[Macka]

From what I can tell its dick heads like you that don't like what's on offer who should STFU and go do your own coding.

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[suckmysav]

I agree. I like that KDE is there, and I like that other people like it, and I know that a lot of people hate Gnome.

Me? I simply don't get KDE.

To me, it looks messy, cluttered and slightly juvenile.

That is coming from someone who migrated to Tux around about the time XP was released (meaning I was a bonafide 2K user). The person that helped me switch told me that I should use KDE because "it is most like Windows".

That lasted about 6 months until I discovered Gnome. I much prefer the clean lines of Gnome.

I still have KDE on my Ubuntu box, and fire it up occasionally just for fun (ie new version). I also use it at Uni (Scientific Linux) and I have XFCE on my old P3 laptop. I'm not fanatical about any of them, I just prefer Gnome, XFCE and KDE in that order.

Having said that, it really is all about choice.

I guess that's what makes Linux great.

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[Mystery00]

I have compared Blender to its commercial counterparts, Blender is better.

GIMP needs improvements in a few areas (what does't though?), but it's nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be.

You're right about Pidgin, even though it's the only chat program I use, I sure do wish its developers would find someone with interface design knowledge.

As far as Windows vs Linux is concerned, I feel you're statement is fairly accurate. Trying to be different for the sake of being different while ignoring some simple GUI concepts is incredibly stupid.

In fact I'm going to pick on Slashdot, I know we're all computer literate and know what a <p> tag is, but do we REALLY need to use HTML inside our posts just to get some line breaks? If you're going to setup Javascript functionality for everything, then how about updating this ancient post box.

In the Options menu there is a "Comment Box Size" setting: Is this really the year 2008? How do you expect non-webdevelopers to know what the number 50 for the Column variable is suppose to specify exactly? How about just adding resizing functionality to this box that uses.. dun dun dunn... the mouse, you know, that thing invented all the way back in the 1960s.

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[Spacejock]

I dual-boot Windows and Ubuntu Linux, spending 95% of my time in the former (MS Visual Studio and my own novel writing software), and 5% in the latter. What I'd really, really like is a way to make the KDE or Gnome desktop font as similar to Windows XP as possible.

I've searched the web and found a few solutions, but I don't want a theme which adds a Windows start button to KDE, and I don't care about the system tray. It's the desktop font - resolution, type face and size - which I find really distracting. Firefox also seems to do its own thing, despite me juggling fonts & sizes in the options.

It's like reading novels in 11pt Times New Roman all day, and then picking one up set in MS Comic Sans or Courier New. The difference is like a smack to the eyeballs.

(For the record, I've been importing and configuring TTF and Bitmap fonts into Linux since, I think, the Redhat 4 days, including converting the MS Sans Serif system font to some other oddball format. I just haven't hit on the right setup.)

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[suckmysav]

Hey, that's a great idea.

Alternatively, I guess he could just go and use another desktop.

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[Rhapsody Scarlet]

The GUIs of Windows 98/2000 are essentially tweaks of what Windows 95 had. Now I happen to remember Windows 95 was explosively popular, which happened for a reason. It worked. Cloning what works isn't a bad thing at all, what the developers of GTK+ did is a bad thing. I'd take a clone of Windows 2000 over that god-awful mess any day of the week.

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[Vectronic]

"...but do we REALLY need to use HTML inside our posts just to get some line breaks?"

I suggest you take a glance at the option just under "50 for the column variable"

Slashdot still defaults to "HTML Formatted" for new users I think... but if you switch to "Plain Text"... you can type "normally" (ie: enter = new line) while still being able to use bold and italics and also

Paragraphs

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[stevey]

You're right about Pidgin, even though it's the only chat program I use, I sure do wish its developers would find someone with interface design knowledge.

The other examples I can understand; I'm not a gimp user and I do get confused when I use it. Blender looks awful, but again I don't use it and I know that heavy users do swear by it.

But Pidgin? I use it daily. I see nothing wrong with it.

I have a list of users, I double click on them and I get to chat - whilst it could be flashier I'm having a hard time seeing how the UI is bad.

Any comments would be welcome - so long as they're not about resizing the text entry part ;)

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[xtracto]

Oh, and anyone who throws in a "but my grandma has been using Linux since 1965 for $fooTinyUseCase" gets a kick in the backside.

Translation:

And anyone who dares to disagree with me gets a kick in the backside...

Threatening posts that you disagree with is also censorship ;-)

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[Anonymous Coward]

www.livejournal.com

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[robot_love]

Damn. That's bothered me forever. Thanks.

See? Easy-peasy!

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[flibuste]

Sorry but that's a very valid point and you're just an arrogant troll. Many developers are blindfolded enough to think their views fit better what the users want than years and a bunchload of dollars invested in R&D, then invest their time in re-inventing the same thing again, with maybe a slight difference no one really cares about (or that makes a feature totally missing the point). Just look at the current Pidgin controversy for a good illustration of the parent's opinion. It's in yesterday's /. news. And (since the parent mentionned it), look at the usability disaster that GIMP is! It's so incredibly bad it should actually have a room in a museum somewhere. Why didn't people just followed the examples provided by the very successful commercial applications that are around in this field? Why is that such a big buzz around making GIMP look more like the Photoshop layout? Any answer to that besides "do your own coding"? (which we probably do better than you according to your level of language and the total lack of ideas expressed in your post).

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[Anonymous Coward]

R&D does not necessarily translate into the end user experience. There's a little thing called "the bottom line" that haunts the dreams of many a well meaning (corporate shill) coder.

I don't like bad mouthing myself in public, so forgive my anonymous cowardice.

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blender was a commercial package when it was built from the ground up. Apparently, when you get familiar with the blender interface you can become very productive.

It's about familiarity. If you are familiar with Photoshop and then try and use Gimp, sure you'll thing it sucks because it's not the way you are used to using a drawing package. That does not mean gimp does not have effective usability.

I've used MS Paint and no matter how familiar I get with it, it's still ineffective. MS has spent huge amounts on R&D and they still have worked out MS Paint sucks and needs work.

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly, all of that R&D that he is speaking about is directed at how to create HCI that sells. It doesn't matter if it sucks as long as people buy it. It is comparable to the movie industry where the movies that get made are the ones that can be effectively marketed to consumers in order to sell lots of tickets. The consumer products sold by Apple and MS(both of whom have done much research), are designed according to marketing and branding not usability and productivity. This is necessary if they want the sales volumes that they have. Should Linux emulate this? If they want to capture a comparable percentage of the market then they will have to. If they want to offer highly productive interfaces then they will have to do something different.

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oh, and anyone who throws in a "but my grandma has been using Linux since 1965 for $fooTinyUseCase" gets a kick in the backside."

Why every person who actually dont know things, must say that?
Why you just cant say straight "I dont know jack sh*t what I'm talking about, but dont try to explain why I'm wrong, because I will KILL YOU!!!" (And then chairs are flying again somewhere).

"Compare GIMP, Pidgin and Blender with their commercial counterparts."

Funny, I like how GIMP has better GUI than Photoshop on multiple monitor and when handling 25+ photos same time. (actually only reason why it is bad is lack of 16-32bit support!)
Pidgin, much better to IM than Live Messenger or Trillian if you use windows. Blender... Have nothing bad to say about that, so great possibilities to customize GUI so I dont need to fight with it when Im doing work.

And soon you might say that KDE or GNOME desktops are terrible and only good way to go is Vista GUI with Office 2007 Ribbons used everywhere...

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[suckmysav]

Uh, ok

[backs slowly away]

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[penix1]

My biggest beef with KDE4 is typified in your post. It is littered with promises of what is to come without delivering any of it to make a usable desktop. They are working on toys ignoring core functionality. This *IS* the release of 4.1 the long promised "it is scheduled for 4.1" the KDE devs kept posting to every bitch to the last release. This release is still crap IMO. More, I'll wrap up all their problems with it in one word...PLASMA! That POS is being forced down users throats and any attempt to add functionality to disable it has met a brick wall. Worse, almost all development on 3.5.* has stopped to concentrate on getting the limping KDE4 up to some sort of scratch.

Look, I'm in favor of cleaning the code up which is a big motivating factor in doing KDE4. When you add hours to my day because you screwed up my workflow, I take that personally. Most users do. And when you make it impossible for that user to set up a reasonable likeness to what they have been using for years, don't bitch when users treat KDE4 the same as Vista and refuse to adopt it.

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[MrNaz]

She would, but they got lost under the mountain of sarcasm you seem to have missed :P

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[MrNaz]

Get off your knee0jerk horse. I love FLOSS, however if you think that it has up until now a good track record with user friendliness then you're fooling yourself. It's getting better, mainly because FLOSS devs are realising that they have sucked in this area up until now and have endeavoured to improve. Head in sand attitudes are not helping.

KDE and Gnome have not been ahead of Windows despite having quite a few neat tricks up their sleeves. If you take a brutally honest look, the fundamentals are still easier on Windows than in any Linux desktop. Adding cool extras is good, but the main game is in the average users's day to day use case, which is an area Windows still leads in. In fact most of this thread is about whining that KDE/Gnome copy Windows too much. Aside from perhaps the barest of bare minimum use cases, Windows use is still far easier for the average luser than any Linux flavour or remix. I'm not talking about clicking to launch OpenOffice or Firefox. The average user also needs to install apps that they want, add new hardware when they get it and other things like that. FLOSS is not quite there yet.

Saying all this does not mean I am saying FLOSS is inferior or that I don't support FLOSS. It's not a one or the other question. Get off that binary high horse of yours.

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[MrNaz]

No, it's threatening anticipated and oft-used canned responses that are either deliberately misleading or plain stupid. It's not censorship, they can still make the point if they like, I'm just pre-emptively pointing out how stupid the reply I know some people will give is.

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[MrNaz]

You don't think that even MS knows that MSPaint is a totally invisible app that nobody but the most idiotic user would use? There are piles of free alternatives. Also, were MS to add anything else to MSPaint we'd get Adobe and the open source community calling antitrust and unfair competition due to bundling. MS won't without good reason include anything other than a trivially functional app in Windows, and graphics tools is something MS will gladly stay out of.

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[AvitarX]

I can't find a way to easily sort users by what account I have them on. I have to mouse over and read if I want to look.

I would like the ability to collapse my work list and only have my friends show while at home. and visa versa at work.

These are separate logins, but I cannot find a way to group by them. I admit to not spending too much time, but I did try to google for it, and I read the name and scimmed the descriptions of every plugin I had.

I actually think the resizing text input is brilliant, though I don't see why it they didn't add an option if people are really pissed by it. I guess option creep is as big a risk as feature creep though.

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[AvitarX]

Can't you install the Windows theme, and then go back and change the decorations, icons, etc. but leave the fonts?

Then save this as your new theme?

This assumes that those other solutions have indeed it on the right setup.

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[AvitarX]

Have you used Kword 2?

They use a ribbonish interface on the right edge, and I love it.

It also lets my page look like a page.

double the effort

[joe 155]

I'm not a kde user but I must say some of the things that I've seen about it would make me consider giving it another go. I quite like some of the ideas they've got, but I can't help but feel that its a bit of a shame that we have two desktop environmnets for Linux which effectively means twice the effort and a dividing of the developers. I know that there are idealigical differences between the two camps... Perhaps this is part of the downside of open source. We've had the same thing with pidgin - in the end perhaps we could all just get along?

Re:double the effort

[ameyer17]

Actually, there's more than two.
XFCE definitely counts as a "desktop environment".
If you expand that to include window managers, you'd add at least fluxbox, blackbox, openbox, windowmaker, ratpoison, and icewm.

Re:double the effort

[Yogiz]

"Two desktop environments for Linux"? Are you referring to Gnome? There aren't just two desktop environments, there are a lot more and this is in no way a bad thing. The beauty of Linux is that you have choice. You can use whatever the hell you deem necessary. I for example am perfectly happy on my fluxbox. KDE, Gnome, Xfce, they all have their pros and cons but what are pros for one user are cons for another. Choice and competition are always good things and merging all the Linux DEs into one giant blob would most certainly not achieve anything.

Re:double the effort

[Anthony Boyd]

I can't help but feel that its a bit of a shame that we have two desktop environmnets for Linux which effectively means twice the effort and a dividing of the developers. I know that there are idealigical differences between the two camps... Perhaps this is part of the downside of open source. We've had the same thing with pidgin - in the end perhaps we could all just get along?

Please no. Let's foster competition. Especially in the case of Pigdin. This is how developers route around damage. This is Open Source working as intended.

Re:double the effort

[Psychotria]

Unfortunately fluxbox is not a Desktop Environment; it's a Window Manager.

Re:double the effort

[Ant P.]

You have it all wrong.

Linux offers people a _choice_ between a dumbed down desktop and one built for power users. Other OSes only give you one option unless you jump through hoops, and it's rarely the second.

Re:double the effort

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree, the gnome guys need a gigantic fucking kick in the arsehole.

Gnome is one gigantic case of 'not invented here' syndrome. instead of one brilliant desktop we have one decent desktop (KDE) and one clunky, slow desktop (GNOME).

losers.

Re:double the effort

[Yogiz]

You are kind of right but not quite. Fluxbox is not just a window manager. It contains it's own tools to run other programs (fbrun), have menus and all the such. I would consider it still a desktop environment as I don't need much else to be able to use the desktop. It all depends on the definition.

Re:double the effort

[Anonymous Coward]

An ENVIRONMENT should provide frameworks that can give basic, common facilities that can be used and integrated in your desktop apps. Fluxbox provide nothing like that. Even Windows 3.11 had more libs to be used in your apps than Fluxbox.
It's no desktop environment when all the desktop applications you are running are reinventing nearly all the wheel and have nothing in common. You can't "target fluxbox". You can't make a "fluxbox app" as opposed to a KDE app or a Gnome app. There is no integration and communication possible.

Xfce is on the road to become the third actual desktop environment with the Xfce Foundation Classes and the other common libs they are making use of to build new Xfce apps.
http://xfc.xfce.org/index.html

Re:double the effort

[Cal Paterson]

Having keybindings and a program launcher certainly does not make fluxbox a desktop environment.

Re:double the effort

[oyenstikker]

What is the difference between a "Desktop Environment" and a "Desktop Shell"?

I used to use KDE. At one point I discovered that I could replace "startkde" with "kicker & kdewin" for drastically shorter startup times and I noticed no difference in functionality whatsoever.

I then went to e16 and then to e17. What are these "Desktop Shells" lacking that a "Desktop Environment" provides? True, e17 does not have a system tray, but there are plans to add one, and I currently use a standalone tray.

Note: I do have "gnome-settings-daemon &" in my .xinitrc.

Re:double the effort

[domatic]

It's a fuzzy line but "Desktop Environments" basically try to abstract EVERYTHING. This means sound, network, filesystem access, and so-forth. When they do this well enough, you'd have to open a terminal to tell you are on a BSD as opposed to Linux. Furthermore, the abstractions can be somewhat portable. KDE apps, though not the parts you'd normally call a "Desktop Shell" like the Desktop and menues, are coming to OS X and Windows. So we'll be able to run things like KOffice, Amarok, and K3B on those environments without replacing their file and desktop managers.

So it looks the main distinction is that DE's provide an API that be used by applications irregardless of whether they are running the "Desktop Shell" or not.

Re:double the effort

[oyenstikker]

But the applications like KOffice work just fine under any other wm, or even no wm. kdelibs and kdecore handles that stuff. The desktop shell portion is separate, no?

Re:double the effort

[domatic]

Yeah. That is basically what I was getting at. Running say KDE apps inside say XFCE is little different from running them on OS X. So yes the desktop shell is separate. When running KOffice on OS X what you have is an application using "KDE APIs". When running it on KDE, it is the office portion of a full "Desktop Environment". I'm saying is that a DE is a "Desktop Shell"+"extensively encompassing API" and furthermore the Desktop Shell is developed against those self-same APIs so that you can have a highly integrated desktop whose apps work together.

Happily the apps will work without the shell but when running them on a "foreign" environment you get complaints about all the services that start up in the background. That's because a set of apps that go together have to talk to each other and "foreign" apps somehow and they need to do this without reinventing the wheel every time you write a new one.

Re:double the effort

[fast turtle]

That would define it as something like.. Desktop Shell.

You mean like Dos 6.2.2 with the window manager feature turned on?

Re:double the effort

[flibuste]

Examples like Pidgin fork maybe working as intended but I still can't stop thinking that there's a lot of waste of good will and efforts in the Open Source community, which in the ends bites back and generate products which quality could be better.

Re:double the effort

[Fri13]

By DE definition, Fluxbox isn't DE. There are only three currently. KDE, GNOME and XFCE. All others are window managers.

There are few things what DE needs, example:
1) Actually own apps, example for filemanagement
2) Icons on desktop
3) Offer a framework for what you can make your apps for that DE. Like KDE, GNOME and XFCE allows.

And then there are other things, called as the "Window managers" what just Fluxbox is, not as DE.

"Fluxbox © is yet another windowmanager for X."
(from Fluxbox site).

There is three DE and multiple Windows managers for GNU/Linux OS. It's great that there is multiple software for OS to give graphical desktop what allows better usability to whole system. No need to cry out like on Windows or MacOSX that you dont like GUI.

KDE vs OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE
http://arstechnica.com/news.media/kde41a1themes.png

OS X:
http://laptoping.com/wp-content/mac_os_x_leopard_screenshot.jpg

Flame away about being 'shallow' and talk of 'eye candy' but how the hell can anyone expect average computer users to want to migrate to Linux when the desktop looks like a hobbyist Windows knockoff.

Re:KDE vs OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

how the hell can anyone expect average computer users to want to migrate to Linux when the desktop looks

Perhaps they don't want to have to pay a coupla hundred dollars for a point release on their OS every few years & have a nice free office suite (neooffice sucks balls)

Re:KDE vs OS X

[dhavleak]

It's not really as bad as the ars screenshot would have you believe. For instance, look at this one instead. And remember how easy it is to apply themes to any linux desktop - there are some really slick themes out there.

But your point is still valid. The one thing I've never been able to get to grips with about the linux desktops are the fonts. Unfortunately between MS, Apple, Adobe all the font rendering IP is locked up pretty tight so it doesn't look like we're gonna get better fonts on the Linux desktop anytime soon. At least not out of the box that is.

Re:KDE vs OS X

[woot account]

>neooffice sucks balls

Good thing the Aqua port of the selfsame free office suite is now in beta, and NeoOffice will soon be history.

Re:KDE vs OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, seriously, I agree. I hate themes that imitate windows or OSX. But please tell me you can tell the difference between an emulator window and what is running inside that window.

Re:KDE vs OS X

[Gilesx]

It's pretty much well established that if people want to use a good looking Linux desktop, they'll use Gnome....

Re:KDE vs OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, every time I do my yearly let's give Linux another chance the first thing that jumps out at me are the awful font rendering.

However, in that screenshot it really isn't the font rendering that is the problem it is the almost headache inducing UI element spacing problems. The one off apps I throw together in Inteface Builder look like polished commercial apps compared to that screen. I can only assume Linux developer tools don't have anything like the snap to guides that give every OS X app that elegant look and feel.

The difference in UI layout reminds me of the dramatic difference there was when I first took a document I carefully typed up in Pagemake years ago to a friend who was a professional pagelayout person and the amazing professional quality difference she made with 30 secs worth of font and spacing changes.

Re:KDE vs OS X

[Psychotria]

"Pretty much well established" by who?

Re:KDE vs OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

dude wtf are you smoking cause i want some.

gnome is shit.

Re:KDE vs OS X

[k1980pc]

How do we identify the active window on that desktop. Is it the light gray one? Which is like, all of them? Also the blue highlighter is available on both dolphin and K-menu. Bad UI.
OS X leopard made it bad by making the contrast on two extremes between active and inactive windows, but this is much worse.

Re:KDE vs OS X

[cp.tar]

>neooffice sucks balls Good thing the Aqua port of the selfsame free office suite is now in beta, and NeoOffice will soon be history.

This is welcome news.

I don't like OO.o too much, though I guess it is the best open office (heh) suite. NeoOffice, however, takes all the bad sides of OO.o and adds total lack of integration on Macs, including the keyboard shortcuts for Home, End, PgUp and PgDn.

What I want is a simple, modular office suite with good desktop integration.
But I'll be quite satisfied with better integration alone.

Re:KDE vs OS X

[Trogre]

Do you really have three photos of the same hot air balloon, with 3 different names?

Please tell me that KDE 4.x does preview icons like 3.x and every other current desktop.

Re:KDE vs OS X

[bs7rphb]

The one thing I've never been able to get to grips with about the linux desktops are the fonts.

Try defoma.

Re:KDE vs OS X

[SomeKDEUser]

I don't know what you consider good font rendering. I sure hope it is not what apple produces, because that is horrid, wrong, blurry, and plain sucky. Oh, and _incredibly_ slow.

And then there is the Windows Way(TM): when in doubt, don't antialias... I suppose it is like for everything, after having seen something wrong for many years, you end up thinking it is actually correct. For example, so many people think the absence of ligatures is correct -- or worse, that underlining text is acceptable, because they used MS Word(TM) for so long.

Re:KDE vs OS X

[SomeKDEUser]

There is a kwin plugin that slightly darkens the unfocussed windows.

Alternatively, the colour palette can be altered between focussed and unfocussed windows. It is de-activated by default, because changing the colours of a whole application at once causes flickering.

Re:KDE vs OS X

[SomeKDEUser]

Not in the file dialog, no. It has a preview pane, but no inline previews.

That sucks, and I really wish this feature will be back soon.

Re:KDE vs OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course. But you can disable them, just like any other desktop.

Re:KDE vs OS X

[pherthyl]

Yay for comparing a random screenshot of an alpha to a carefully put together screenshot of a released version, with different sizes and levels of detail. Lots can be seen from that!

Re:KDE vs OS X

[Haeleth]

Yeah, every time I do my yearly let's give Linux another chance the first thing that jumps out at me are the awful font rendering.

I'll grant you, the default settings do truly suck. FreeType auto-hinting is hideous. This was a big sticking point for me as well.

However, it does only take a few minutes to change the configuration to something that looks just as good as OS X. Clearly there are other things putting you off Linux, which is fine (it isn't the right choice for everyone), but next time you give it another chance, take the time to disable auto-hinting and watch as the fonts become bearable before your very eyes...

Re:KDE vs OS X

[Hooded One]

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=152030

Warning: lots of developer whining in that bug.

Basically, the Oxygen artists insisted that having the default window decoration obey the user's color settings for the window frame (which solve the problem of active/inactive distinction) was just too ugly to bear. Never mind that the first question everybody else had when looking at a KDE4 desktop was "how do I tell which window is on top?" The first response was "you're supposed to have composite support, then the shadows will tell you." That didn't go over too well. They also claimed they were working on a bunch of alternate ways to show the focus, and that supporting colored title bars in the meantime was completely unacceptable.

Eventually, the KWin maintainer stepped in and said they didn't have a choice, and that the default window decoration had to conform to certain expectations. There was a bunch more whining, however, so finally he just forked the "Ozone" decoration where the only difference is that window frame color works (but you still have the option to do it the blended way).

Anyway, long story short, having active/inactive window frame colors is supposed to be the default in 4.1.

Love KDE4 idea, but devil in the details

[AlvinTheNerd]

I am using KDE 4.0, yeah its rough, yeah some basic functionality isn't there. And I think it is a poor setup not to be able to do things like drag and drop and make things smaller than default. Everything can be made larger, but never smaller.

However, despite all the failures, which I believe will come around, KDE is really moving to the next step and once the polish is applied it will outshine the rest. A desktop were apps of every shape and color can be integrated. Where the best ideas don't have to be accepted by the head developers, customization, and opening the doors to open source even further. It is a place were truly original ways to organize data and display information will come. It is were we will begin to move beyond just making a windows 3.1 gui more fancy and with more features. I think these are worthy goals. I put up with the annoyances now because I want to be part of it. I think it will be big.

But seriously, developers, start getting functionality working. You have to get people to use it. The widgets will come but you need functionality to get people to use it. No drag and drop for icons on the desktop, can't move around widgets in the bottom bar, right clicking doesn't give you widget specific options. And when they do, it is very limited, like the digitial clock being set to 12 hour time. I know these aren't sexy to work on, but nothing else matters if this isn't done.

Lastly, what I think will make the biggest appeal is making kde install easy on vista. People hate the vista interface, but have to have it for the new stuff underneath like directx 10. If you can make kde4 stable and install smooth on vista, you will have a firefox style pickup of it.

Re:Love KDE4 idea, but devil in the details

[couchslug]

"And I think it is a poor setup not to be able to do things like drag and drop and make things smaller than default. Everything can be made larger, but never smaller."

That's why I switched back to 3.5. Big effing stupid everything will be fine when I'm old(er) and blind, but I can see ATM and teh largeness is annoying. That's also why I don't use Gnome.

As a user, I want a VERY easy to configure desktop I don't have to spend time fvcking with. and don't care if it looks old-fashioned to some people.

KDE 3.5 is excellent, so I could care less how long 4.whatever takes to sort out.

Re:Love KDE4 idea, but devil in the details

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I like the new style, but on my EeePC I changed it to save space. Fonts to 8pt, style to Plastique, saves a lot of room over oxygen.

Re:Love KDE4 idea, but devil in the details

[Anonymous Coward]

But seriously, developers, start getting functionality working. You have to get people to use it. The widgets will come but you need functionality to get people to use it. No drag and drop for icons on the desktop, can't move around widgets in the bottom bar, right clicking doesn't give you widget specific options. And when they do, it is very limited, like the digitial clock being set to 12 hour time. I know these aren't sexy to work on, but nothing else matters if this isn't done. The exact same complaints apply to Sun's Project Looking Glass. :-(

However, in the case of KDE, there's a good chance that these issues will be fixed.

WUBI is great for testing KDE 4.0

[G3ckoG33k]

Yesterday I installed KDE 4.0 on my corporate laptop!!! Next to Windows, without touching the partitions! All thanks to a small program called wubi and which makes it possible to install Kubuntu and the others _inside_ Windows partitions. So far I have less than four hours of experience with KDE 4.0, but have only found minor details to complain about - like some menus don't get their contrasting font color if you switch to a dark colored widget style. As Debian user I cannot say that Ubuntu is _easier_ to use than Debian. I don't understand why people pursue that mantra. Yes, it is easy to use, but so is Debian. But, without wubi in Sid I won't touch my partitions. KDE 4.0 both look and work nice (so-far) and from what I hear 4.1 is even better. Sounds great!

Don't forget ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... to pay your $699 cock-smoking fee you licensing tea-baggers.

Feature freeze, no new features only bugfixing?

[Edulix]

That's not true my friend, I think you misunderstood the 4.1 Release Schedule. We're in soft feature freeze, but planned features can still be added to the code until May 19th ;-)

Re:Feature freeze, no new features only bugfixing?

[johannesg]

You are apparently involved with KDE, so maybe you can help me understand: what is plasma? I have read a lot of "vision", I have seen a few toys applets, but I cannot seem to get a feel for what is really is and what it will mean.

I don't think having puzzle toys and the weather channel on my desktop is a great revolution, so I must be missing something. But what?

Re:Feature freeze, no new features only bugfixing?

[lbbros]

Shameless plug on the Plasma FAQ (which I, among others, work on):

http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Plasma/FAQ

The first three questions should answer at least part of your doubts.

Re:Feature freeze, no new features only bugfixing?

[Viol8]

"incorporating semantic application elements,"

Oh great , more bloatware, just what we need when KDE isn't exactly quick to start with.

Re:Feature freeze, no new features only bugfixing?

[xtracto]

Plasma aims to change that, incorporating semantic application elements, and bringing cooperating technologies to the user's fingertips in a way that is visually appealing while easing work flow.

Howdy, it seems some of the Apple and Microsoft marketing guys are contributing to KDE!. BTW, you forgot to add the word synegry. It always sounds more buzzworthy :).

Re:Feature freeze, no new features only bugfixing?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Plasma aims to change that, incorporating semantic application elements, and bringing cooperating technologies to the user's fingertips in a way that is visually appealing while easing work flow."

"Plasma takes a different approach, engaging the user by creating a dynamic and highly customizable environment."

"[Y]ou can use tools provided by Plasma to take your experience further, letting your desktop take shape based on what you want and need."

Damn, are you sure this is an open-source project? Lookit all that marketing-speech.

Re:Feature freeze, no new features only bugfixing?

[LaurensVH]

BTW, you forgot to add the word synegry. It always sounds more buzzworthy :).
I'd use synergy. synergy is misspelled latin for "without niggers".

Re:Feature freeze, no new features only bugfixing?

[Otter]

Beyond the usual replies to complaints about the duplication of effort, I'd suggest that worrying about duplication of effort by Enlightenment is particularly unnecessary.

Re:Feature freeze, no new features only bugfixing?

[lbbros]

The biggest point is probably containment switching and customizing. Containments are the "containers" for applets, or plasmoids, and the idea is that you create them according to your needs (activity-based) and then switch among them on the fly. It's different from X11 virtual desktop switching because (in theory) each containment could be totally different. You'd switch between them by zooming in and out (Zooming User Interface - ZUI). Implementation of this is already under way in current SVN.

Disclaimer: I'm not a KDE developer, just a user who likes to follow bleeding-edge development.

Re:Feature freeze, no new features only bugfixing?

[conares]

Another Slashdot moment....

KDE for FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

But when will we get KDE4 for FreeBSD? I know netcraft confirms its dieing but there's no reason not to port it anyway.

Re:KDE for FreeBSD

[Epsillon]

Ports are being developed and currently reside in the area51 repository. Subscribe to the kde-freebsd@kde.org mailing list to follow progress. Currently, the biggest show-stopper is the co-existence of KDE3 and KDE4 on the same system, along with QT3x and QT4x libs in ${LOCALBASE}. I prefer to continue to use 3.5.8 (although arts is broken on 7.0-R for certain configurations of hardware, but arts is well known for being a PoS anyway) until 4.x is stable.

The version of Netcraft the trolls use must be different to the one I see each month which consistently has FreeBSD hosts in the top ten on an equal footing with everyone else. There are currently (2008.05.01.21.13.05 UTC) four BSD hosting sites in the top ten, leaving that other OS and It Isn't Secure to fight over the remaining six places. Assuming the unknowns aren't FreeBSD, of course.

PolishLinux (p)review of KDE 4.1

[michuk]

Here is a related (p)review of latest revision of KDe 4.1 (not the exact alpha just released): http://polishlinux.org/kde/kde-4-rev-802150-work-in-progress/ "Plasma has gone under major API changes and is still a bit wonky, Dolphin gets tabs (hell yeah!), Phonon gets a Gstreamer backend, KWin gets wobbly windows (hell yeah!), and KInfoCenter and K3b get KDE4 ports. KDE 4.1 will be sure to blow your mind." A bit more comprehensive and screenshot-rich than the ArsTechnica article.

Re:PolishLinux (p)review of KDE 4.1

[Anonymous Coward]

Arstechnica has some serious idiots "writing" (more like spitting back what others already have written) for them!

Mainly a Jeremy Reimer (who has no degree or certifications even in computer sciences, nor years to decades of professional hands-on experience in the field of computers either).

For example, Jeremy Reimer was caught email harassing, libelling, & threatening others (as well as the entire arstechnica crowd there (Reimer and his friends) being caught "posting as others under alternate logon guises" to 'support one another' & getting caught red-handed in it @ Windows IT Pro magazine forums, how embarassing) here:

http://windowsitpro.com/articles/index.cfm?articleid=41095&cpage=216#feedbackAnchor

And, for the arstechnica people's stupidities there, Jeremy Reimer had large portions of his personal website removed from his website forcibly by his hosting provider for his idiocy (along with his fellow arstechnican Jay Little having his website removed in its entirety from his hosting provider CrystalTech.com).

Thus, I have no doubt your review is much better than theirs, just judging by the fact they have "fake it till you make it" types like Jeremy Reimer "writing" (slobbering on the page, plagiaristically) for them.

It makes me wonder why slashdot posts their dribble here at all, when there are talented and knowledgeable people who come here (such as John Carmack for instance) who can spot their lack of skills, know how, and credibility in an instant.

Re:PolishLinux (p)review of KDE 4.1

[Anonymous Coward]

APK spotted. Get lost.

PIM

[tick-tock-atona]

I really hope kde-pim will make it into this release, as the kde3 version gives me grief when using IMAP, however this looks far from certain...

Re:PIM

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

There are only a handful of things that really bug me on KDE4 (4.0), but this is one of them. akregator from 3.5x seems to work okay under KDE4 (other than the "launcher" complaining that it can't find akregator...after it successfully starts it), but kmail's IMAP support appears to be broken when run on kde4. Give me kmail and akregator (hopefully with enclosure support now), real metadata in dolphin, ability to revert to KDE3's "sort by date" algorithm, and LET ME PROPERLY RESIZE AND POSITION THE FRIGGIN' "Panel" and Widget font sizes, and I'll be pretty happy.

My opinion on 4.0.3

[Ant P.]

They've made it look nice but that's about as far as it goes. Most of the things I care about don't work this time around, and among other things I was a bit annoyed to find out that its opengl desktop stuff runs slower than compiz while doing less.
They're trying too hard to copy vista when they should really be concentrating on making a good desktop.

Re:My opinion on 4.0.3

[Kangburra]

I've been using KDE for a while now but a quick try-out of 4.0 made me install XFCE and Gnome again. I am now happy in GTK-land with GDM loading xfwm4 and nautilus.

Sorry but my DE should not take that much power, Vista is a mistake, why follow them down that road?

Re:My opinion on 4.0.3

[arevos]

KDE 4.0 is allegedly meant to use less memory and processing power than KDE 3.5, so I'm not sure what you mean by following Vista.

The 4.0 desktop effects did seem sluggish though, but hopefully they'll have sorted that out by 4.1.

Re:My opinion on 4.0.3

[pherthyl]

I think the 4.0.x releases were a mistake, but 4.1 snapshots are a lot better already, to the point where I wouldn't want to go back to anything else. Give it another go when 4.1 comes out.

Re:My opinion on 4.0.3

[Kangburra]

They didn't seem sluggish, they are sluggish. Click, wait, wait, wait, program opens. I understand that I was running an unfinished product but this effect was for their entire program suite.

Per-pixel Alpha Transparency

[Anonymous Coward]

Soooo does anyone know if KDE can do per-pixel alpha transparency?

Too much candy?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Perhaps the candy is nice if you have a huge dual screen system. I have not tried it on my dual screen desktop yet.

I have tried it on my small-screened laptop and found the candy annoying and pixel hogging. Yes, I know I can turn it off...

As my 16 year old son said of the jello-wobble screens: Cute, but what's the point!

Re:Too much candy?

[gbjbaanb]

As my 16 year old son said of the jello-wobble screens: Cute, but what's the point! and to think people said the same of Vista! Look how wrong they tur... oh yeah.

Seriously, Microsoft's main marketing effort in flogging copies of Vista, and persuading the world that Vista was the thing to have was entirely down to the UI. The fact that Vista hasn't had the expected take-up is partly down to it being a unhelpful resource hog and that too many bloggers said so. If Vista's UAC, Aero etc worked as we expected and there was just 2 editions, I think MS's recent results would have shown an increase in profits, not a drop. Most of those sales would have practically been down to the fancy UI.

KDE could well be getting it right instead.

Re:Too much candy?

[CastrTroy]

I have one of those "Vista Capable" laptops. What I just figured out the other day, is that if you switch to the "Windows Classic" theme, then the system actually runs quite smoothly. the dwm.exe process goes from about 90 MB to about 5 MB, and it runs just as quickly as XP did. For the most part anyway. I think that MS could have saved themselves a lot of bad press if they just would have told retailers to enable the classic theme by default on low end machines. Sure it wouldn't look pretty, but at least it would have been fast enough to be usable.

Re:Too much candy?

[Enderandrew]

I love the wobble window effect. That's just me.

Re:Too much candy?

[clampolo]

Not just you. It has no practical purpose but I like the thing too.

Re:Too much candy?

[AvitarX]

I really liked the dragging down of a corner to peek behind a maximized window in earlier versions of the wobbly windows. I can't seem to make that happen anymore though, but it was useful.

Now I just set my move transparency quite high and click the titlebar to see through, but it is much less intuitive, and harder to read.

Using it in production environment

[xSacha]

I am using KDE 4 (latest builds) at home on my laptop and desktop. Yeah, production environment.

Q. But it's an unstable alpha right?

A. Right, a lot of the KDE4 applications crash. Never fear, for any buggy KDE4 app I simply run the equivalent KDE3 version instead.

Q. But this uses a lot of memory to have kde3,qt3,kde4 and qt4 loaded at same time right?

A. Right, but it still manages to use under 500MB and run smoothly with compositing enabled thanks to the new code and efficient toolkits (qt3 and qt4).

Q. So sure, they keep rewriting stuff and a lot of the applications are unstable. However, this doesn't mean you can't start using it now. It's a really nice desktop environment. Enjoy it now :).

A. This must be hard to setup though right? Having KDE3 one run instead if KDE4 one is buggy.

Right again but most distros shipping a KDE4 version (Opensuse, Ubuntu) do all that hard work for you. They still use the KDE3 version for anything remotely unstable. So you shouldn't get any crashes using it. If you do though, it's not hard to install the earlier version.

Re:Using it in production environment

[MisterBlueSky]

You have your Q's and A's mixed up

Re:Using it in production environment

[radimvice]

You have your Q's and A's mixed up

Like he said, he's using KDE4, it's still got a few bugs to work out~

Good luck to them

[Wheely]

Been a Linux/KDE user for longer than I care to remember and I really, really donÂt like KDE 4.

I wish them luck with the project as I think there is some really impressive technology underneath that interface.

However as a tool to use to get things done it has all the worst aspects of OSX (and there are many) together with the dumbed down minimalism of Gnome.

Since KDE 4 I find I mostly only use Linux at work now because if I am going to have to use the bastard child of OSX and Gnome on my home machine I may as well use the god awful OSX because at least that supports all my gadgets out of the box.

My favourite apps are all Linux; digikam, amarok, k3b but non-kde 4 versions of these are a dead end now.

Where does someone who enjoyed the complexity and reconfigurability of KDE 3.5 go these days except a different platform.

Re:Good luck to them

[Teun]

After running Kubuntu 8.04 Remix for 2 days I recognised a lot of what you just said and reverted back to the KDE 3.5 desktop which is stable, highly configurable (and pleasantly familiar).
I sure hope the developers will not go the Gnome way of locking everything up!
But right now KDE4 is a system in it's infancy and we have to give the guys some time to develop this impressive new model.

Re:Good luck to them

[Wheely]

I agree it is in its infancy but when I was running the original KDE Beta releases (prior to KDE 1.0) it was in its infancy too. However, it was, in my opinion, a vast improvement on what was around at the time in terms of features and usability. It was the infant child of KDE 3.5 but it is still recognizable as such, at least in terms of philosophy and direction.

KDE 4 on the other hand, may be an infant child, but to me it looks like it has the genetic code to grow into a beast that tells you how to work rather than the other way around. It hasnt even got any prettier in its short life.

If it would have been possible to shove the new technology underneath an interface that kept the same sense of user control then we wold have had something.

Re:Good luck to them

[pherthyl]

>> My favourite apps are all Linux; digikam, amarok, k3b but non-kde 4 versions of these are a dead end now.

What are you talking about? Amarok 1.4.9 was released very recently, Digikam is still getting a release for KDE3, and k3b works just fine. None of those apps are released for KDE4 yet. The premier versions are still KDE3 apps.

When the KDE4 versions are released, you can run them in your KDE3 desktop with no problems. I don't see what you're complaining about.

Re:Good luck to them

[SiChemist]

Maybe enough of us kde3 lovers will remain to start a project to put the kd3 interface on the kde4 internals. I love kde and use it on all my computers, but kde4 seems the wrong way to go. And the developers don't seem to interested in the opinions of long-time users.

Re:Good luck to them

[Wheely]

Then look a little more carefully and think a little harder.

Re:Good luck to them

[pherthyl]

I guess a whiner will always find something to bitch about..

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Bugs aside , Vista looks promising!

[Viol8]

"KDE 4.1 is out, and bugs aside, it looks promising. T"

Come out , what kind of stupid comment is that?! People slam MS for shipping buggy code but when its OSS , weelll thats ok right? Hello? Double standards anyuone? No its not ok. If its still full of bugs it should have remained as an rc , not an official release!

Re:Bugs aside , Vista looks promising!

[chuckymonkey]

Also with Opensource, nobody is forcing you to upgrade. If you don't like what they're doing you can refuse to upgrade and not suffer any detriment or you can just fork it and start your own branch.

Re:Bugs aside , Vista looks promising!

[Wheely]

DonÂt be silly. You can not do this with something like KDE unless you persuade an army of other people to join you too. Anything that uses KDE libs would have to be forked at the same time. It is not a realistic option.

I'm an idiot

[Viol8]

Ah hell , just spotted its an alpha , ignore my stupid comment.

Ugh... waste of screen space?

[multi io]

I mean, look at this. Are they purposefully trying to waste as much screen real estate as possible? It looks like they deliberately put 50 pixels of even more no-quite-brushed-metal-looking empty space around each little button there.

Re:Ugh... waste of screen space?

[pherthyl]

That's the preview for plasma themes. It only shows up when you click the combo box, so screen space usage is irrelevant. Not great, but better than no preview.

KDE4 in Kubuntu Hardy

[MattBD]

I recently upgraded to Kubuntu Hardy. After much agonizing, I eventually decided reluctantly to stick with KDE3.5 - for me it's just not ready yet in Kubuntu. But since Intrepid Ibex will include KDE4.1, I'll be very glad to switch to that. KDE4 is brilliant - just not yet.

The design still looks very confused.

[delire]

Thankfully they have got rid of those absurd glass borders. On immediate appearance however I think it still looks pretty discontinuous and lost as an overall design.

Why such vast tracts of grey? In some of the screenshots on the PolishLinux site window elements are surrounded by entire football fields of grey nothingness.

Why the faded titles in the panel? What are they intended to signify?

Why are the minimise and maximise icons raised, tiny and 'stuck on' rather graphically integrated into the window title? Window barnacles? In some screenshots they look annoyingly small to be a mouse target, especially compared to the window title.

Why is the panel so g i g a n t i c? To show off the icon authors scalable icons in all their glory or is there a practical reason to swallow so much valuable realestate? I would certainly never want to see this on my laptop..

Such things make KDE4.1 look lacking in vision, despite so many improvements graphically and otherwise in other areas. Perhaps it's time to cave in and simply pay an accomplised designer to pull it all together. Alternatively, why not hand it over for critique to a master's degree design class?

Re:The design still looks very confused.

[idlemind]

I agree. This is a common problem amongst every gui I have seen in Linux. Design choices appear to be random and by committee so the overall look is inconsistent and unpolished. Vista looks better because it is consistent. As is OSX. If Linux on the desktop is a true goal then they really need to get a real design team.

Also, what is the deal with basic OS programs being referred to by their name? Dolphin? Why not just call it 'file browser'? This is really confusing and overwhelming for new users. Something we should work towards is a more intuitive task oriented system. Office 2007 actually does a really good job of this.

Re:The design still looks very confused.

[pherthyl]

>> Dolphin? Why not just call it 'file browser'?

It is called the file browser in the menu.

Re:The design still looks very confused.

[pherthyl]

>> Why such vast tracts of grey?

Partially due to incomplete dialog design on the snapshot they are testing. This isn't released software. Also it depends on what you're comparing it to. Mac UI also has a lot of empty space, mostly because of the icon+text toolbars.

>> Why the faded titles in the panel? What are they intended to signify?

I don't see this anywhere in the link you gave. I think in the ars screenshot, it's just a bug in the theme.

>> Why are the minimise and maximise icons raised, tiny and 'stuck on' rather graphically integrated into the window title?

Yeah I don't like those either. I usually change the titlebar to something more sensible, like Plastique.

>> Why is the panel so g i g a n t i c?

Not sure, but it's been like that for ages (in the KDE 3.x series as well). I always resize it much smaller.

Re:The design still looks very confused.

[idlemind]

Right, but every application is "App Name - Task" and my point is the app name is really irrelevant especially for basic OS tasks. The task should be the focus. The app names only add noise. From a usability stand point it's just bad.

Re:The design still looks very confused.

[pherthyl]

You mean in the title bar of the apps? I guess so, but I don't see how that will confuse anyone. By the time you have the application open you will know what it is.

I guess it would be ok if it was named something like KDE File Manager, but then people get pissed about everything being KDE Something, just like the pseudo standard of kname was ridiculed for so long.

If you just name it "File manager" or "Archive manager" then you can't keep different apps apart. Sure most people should only have one of each type of application installed, but realistically you might have two different apps for the same task due to one app doing a task better than another one. So now you have the gnome File Manager and the kde File Manager with the same name and you can't keep them apart.

And where do you draw the line? Photo Editor? Well there are tons of those with different capabilities. Or Web Browser? Well same problem. For some basic utilities it might work, but the more complex the app gets, the less useful a generic name will be. Anyway, people on other platforms don't seem to be getting confused by meaningless application names, so I don't see the problem.

Re:The design still looks very confused.

[Haeleth]

Also, what is the deal with basic OS programs being referred to by their name? Dolphin? Why not just call it 'file browser'? This is really confusing and overwhelming for new users.

A default OS X setup presents the user with unintuitive names like "Finder" and "Safari". But nobody complains about that.

Why? Possibly because it actually isn't a big deal. It only takes a few minutes to learn that "Safari" is the web browser, or that "Excel" deals with big tables, or that "Dolphin" is a file browser. Humans are good at associating arbitrary symbols with meanings: that's what language is.

If it's not easy for people to find the file browser in KDE 4, then the problem lies in where that file browser is located and how it's launched, not what it's called.

Re:The design still looks very confused.

[spitzak]

How about having the title show *only the name of the file it is working on*. This should include the full path name. That I would like to see. There is no reason to show which program: the user either does not care, or can easily figure it out by the name of the file, or can open the window and look at it to figure this out.

It used to be that windows were titled this way. Whatever happened? This is not just Linux, but Windows and OSX as well. OSX is worse, the "dock" *only* shows the program, as though which file is completely irrelevant!

Copied what?

[Narishma]

I find it funny some people say KDE should stop copying Vista, others OSX, Gnome or Win2K. If you want to say they copied something at least agree on what it is.

Re:Copied what?

[Ilgaz]

If they say KDE copied OS X because it supports OS X Widgets, you can tell them about this page:

http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-widgets-specification-1-0/#acknowledgments

"The specification for the widget object builds on Apple's [Dashboard] reference."

IMHO if everyone agrees on one specification, doesn't re-invent their own standard, Widgets _will be_ huge. They aren't huge because of anarchy yet.

I can tell what people did copy. Xerox. Of course, in MS case, it was like copy of copy so it sucked.

Re:Copied what?

[Wheely]

When everybody is heading in the same direction i.e dumb, simple, controlled and ugly it doesnÂt matter which of them you pick.

Re:Copied what?

[Wheely]

I do not suppose you have had too much exposure to OSX then.

I see similarities in the way things like the config tool works. I see the same daft inconsistencies and worse, the same attitude of this is how it is, adapt or go away.

The cute little plasmoids or OSX dashboard widgets are fun for about ten minutes and thereafter only serve as tools to impress people who you are trying to persuade to make the same choices you did.

At least the Linux apps are not as brain dead as the OSX equivalents.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

hmm

[DigDuality]

I don't really care what the KDE developers state, but the way they have gone about releasing and hyping KDE 4.x.x is stupid. They built and built and built the hype for the 4.0 milestone, even though they were screaming it wasn't perfect. But the hype outshone the voices of caution. Now everyone was waiting for some stability in 4.1, and we're not going to get it then either, again, after hyping 4.1 will be usable. By the time the 4.x version is usable no one will give a crap about it. I, personally, was looking forward to 4.x series to be usable but it doesn't look like that'll happen for a year or so and I'll keep my happy ass right at 3.x until then.

Re:hmm

[pherthyl]

So you gazed into your crystal ball and figured out that 4.1 will not be stable? Since it hasn't been released that's quite the accomplishment. I use a snapshot of 4.1 at work, and I haven't seen it crash in weeks.

swirly yellow thing in top-right corner

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know if you can get rid of that annoying swirly yellow thingy in the top-right corner yet? I really liked 4.0, but it drove me nuts that someone thought I needed that thing so much that I should not have the option to remove it.

Re:sounds like Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron...

[javabandit]

Exactly the same thing with the Ubuntu release. All hype. And then a release comes and it's (knowingly) buggy as hell.

Doesn't shipping with a beta web browser that is known to be broken and extremely unstable enough evidence? I can't even print in their version of Firefox 3 without the browser crashing.

Wireless support (especially in laptops) is (yet again) a nightmare. No progress really has been made. Wext is insufficient in many cases. Ndiswrapper doesn't work a lot of the time. Gnome or KDE network manager doesn't work sometimes and doesn't have enough configurability.

Hot (and even cold sometimes) laptop docking support is again non-existent or broken. Especially if you have an external monitor. So corporate usage isn't possible.

So back to KDE -- same kind of thing. Incomplete or broken features for two releases now. Some very basic things were knowingly overlooked in order to have time to add unimportant polish.

When is "desktop Linux" going to figure out that getting the basic stuff correct and solid along with ease-of-use is the important thing. Nail that first, and then add on all of the polish.

Any improvement to the horrible start menu?

[metamatic]

I hate to harp on about it, but that start menu has got to be fixed.

I see that it's now resizeable, but that doesn't fix the basic problem of it hiding all the contextual information about where you are in the menu structure and being useless for people who rely on spacial memory.

I'm seriously wondering whether I'll have to switch to GNOME or Xfce.

I like KDE

[Peaker]

I like KDE better than I like Gnome (due to KIOSlave/KParts being available in all URL/file prompts, etc).
I really miss using "ggl:blah" in my run dialog.

However, two things have been keeping me with Gnome lately:

1. KDE applications start slowly.
   
2. Ubuntu is much more mature than Kubuntu.
   

The second is inevitable, I guess, and is being worked on, so there's less to complain about.

But the first really annoys me - launching one of the smallest KDE applications I could find (kate) as a benchmark of app startup time shows that it takes 3 seconds to start, whereas gedit takes about 1 second to start in Gnome, and notepad takes unnoticable time to start in Windows.

I am really puzzled by these weird startup times. What is it that these programs waste their time on at startup? Can't those things happen "lazily" later in the run of the program, when they are actually needed?
Are there inherent penalties of Linux executables that have lots of dynamic libraries, and in the case of KDE, C++ mangled symbols?

Re:I like KDE

[bh_doc]

There is always time taken in loading the supporting libraries, which really only affects the starting time of the first app that uses them. For subsequent apps that also use them, they're already loaded. Have you ever tried to start gedit while running a KDE desktop? It might give a similar result.

Better than 4.0 I hope

[HermMunster]

KDE 4.0 was pre-alpha. I mean it was bad. It was almost criminally bad. Significant rebuke has been placed on the KDE team. Such a horrible release that even now is still quite bad even with the updates.

KDE 4.1, hopefully will be much better. We'll see.

KDE 4.x has the potential to change the landscape of desktop managers in Linux but if these guys can't get it worked out and faster than say 5 years, it will seriously disappoint.

Re:Better than 4.0 I hope

[Just Some Guy]

KDE 4.0 was pre-alpha.

Umm, yes. That's why the KDE project announced all over the place that 4.0 was a developers' release and not meant for end users.

My experience with KDE4

[The Infamous Grimace]

So I've been using Ubuntu 7.x on my Toshiba laptop for the last several months, and found it pretty easy, albeit with certain caveats (getting wireless to work was a pain, as was graphics - ATI chipset) I'd tried KDE quite some time ago, and was interested in trying it again. So I downloaded and installed the KDE4 Remix for AMD64 machines. Looked fine at first, but then came those damn wireless issues again. I downloaded, built and installed ndiswrapper, grabbed the latest XP drivers (Atheros AR5007EG chipset), and thus began my long struggle. I finally got it to see the card, but it wouldn't connect; it would stall when trying to obtain an IP address. Ok, screw this, time to download the latest 32-bit version and try again - I'd been using a 32-bit version of Ubuntu, so I felt confident I could get it to go. Only, the torrent for the supposed KDE4 Remix CD isn't; it's the 3.x install disc. Ok, open a terminal, sudo apt-get install build-essential, launch Adept, and do a full upgrade. At this point I went to bed, because the servers were SLOW. When I awoke, I had to re-download some items, apparently the servers timed-out. Ok, now time to install kubuntu-desktop-kde4. Looks good. Looks can be deceiving. Cleaned out all(?) vestiges of ndiswrapper, rebuilt, reinstalled, and added the driver. However, when it came time to load it with modprobe, my computer would hang. Ok, reboot, remove, and let's try that older version (1.47) that I still have. Make distclean clean ; make uninstall ; make ; make install. Only, make fails with an error about 'CFLAG's being changed. To Hell with this, I'm going to make 1.52 work if it kills me. What I finally ended up doing was leaving it alone after it built and installed, and just added it to the modules load list. After rebooting, it worked like a charm.
So, now that it's installed and wireless is working, I can start messing around with it. A couple of things jumped out at me right away -
    1) Dolphin throws up an error message every time I close an app that was launched via it.
    2) You can't drag-n-drop from the desktop to a Dolphin window. WTF?
    3) How does one add an app to the launcher? I installed xtightvnc, and have to launch it via a terminal window.
    4) When I resize the 'Task Manager', the bottom couple-three rows of pixels of the clock gets cut off. Not so much that you can't tell the time, but it's obvious enough.

Anyways, I'm going to give it a whirl, and see what else. I do like the general look better than 3.x and GNOME, but frankly it's about usability.

-peter

won't work. (Re: double the effort)

[vdboor]

You're making a simple math equation, but 1 + 1 is not always 2.

If you combine the developers working on GNOME and KDE you won't end up with one project that's twice as productive. In fact, it will be very unproductive because each set of developers have vastly different vision.

Two parallel projects keep each other motivated to become the best one. It also creates playground to implement new features. Sometimes GNOME might not like an idea because it's to controversial. When the developer can implement it in KDE and get successful with it, GNOME may copy the feature. -- and visa versa. So no productivity is really lost here.

Merging two two commercial companies gives a similar problem. Sometimes managers refrain from merging two companies after all when it becomes clear the cultures are too different. It would cut the productivity making the merger useless; the added value of merging the companies would be lost by the lower productivity.

4.1 Alpha's Quirk is "Crashing a lot" :-)

[billstewart]

According to the article, 4.1's still in the crashes-a-lot type of alpha stage. Some kinds of quirks I can put up with, but it's obviously not for me yet...