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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."
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.
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 ;-)