Slashdot Mirror
KDE 4.4 Released Alongside Website Redesign
Cryophallion writes "KDE 4.4.0 has finally been released, along with a redesign of the KDE.org website. New features include tabbed windows, improved desktop search and social desktop features. 'Major new technologies have been introduced, including social networking and online collaboration features, a new netbook-oriented interface and infrastructural innovations such as the KAuth authentication framework. According to KDE's bug-tracking system, 7293 bugs have been fixed and 1433 new feature requests were implemented.' A feature guide is also available."
I have not used KDE since 3.
The simple reason is that Ubuntu and Gnome feel more finished than KDE did to me.
Gnome really works well for what I need. I use it to launch programs and to manage files.
Where I think both Gnome and KDE are blowing it is complexity.
Take a look at the settings in both of them sometime. Way to complex.
The other place I feel they are falling down is supporting applications.
I love choice but there needs to be some good defaults.
Oh and I wish GTK had a better file dialog.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The API "documentation" is still completely unorganized and most of it is just Doxygen pages. While the Doxygen tagging is fairly good, this is not a "manual," it's a reference. And what about Plasma? I've wasted hours hacking applets without a real understanding of the APIs. The Plasma API front page is pretty much useless.
Although I suppose somebody will now yell at me for being too lazy to contribute to the docs... I'd be happy to, if I had some kind of handle I could grab to bootstrap myself and start delving into it. But seriously, no, you don't get good docs by people who are unfamiliar with the code just staring at it and trying to document their own misunderstandings. Somebody who actually designed and wrote this crap needs to step in. Please?
Honestly, give up on Kubuntu if you want to use KDE. In fact, even using Ubuntu + KDE which was more stable than Kubuntu in my experience, I still had to manually customize a heap of stuff and it felt flaky. Then I switched to OpenSuse 11.2. Bliss I tell you. It is KDE how KDE should be done. I didn't have to tweak anything - even Firefox fitted in from the get go. Give OpenSuse a try. Those guys know what KDE should feel like and it shows when you use their distro.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
I had used KDE3 for about 1-2 years, when KDE4 appeared. No question, 4.0 was impossible to use, and 4.1 was painful (my experience is with kubuntu). However, the breakeven for me was with KDE 4.2, when I thought this was a product at least as good as KDE3. Yes, there were features in KDE3 that KDE4 was missing, but there were also loads of new features, concepts and functionality in 4.2 that 3.5 couldn't do. I also always found 3.5 quite ugly.
I totally disagree with your notion of "digging the hole deeper". As much as things got better from 4.0 to 4.1 to 4.2 (in my opinion), they just continued on that trajectory to making 4.3 way better than 3.5. Now, I have been using KDE 4.4 betas for at least a month (in a production environment -- call me stupid, but I am just amazed about KDE4), and I am still thrilled how much better and nicer it got! Hell, I am even using the "crappy" kubuntu distro everyone is yelling at. OK, call me a fanboy. But you should know that I also seriously tried GNOME, and LXDE, and Xfce, and even IceWM -- I all didn't like them and went back to KDE4.
Maybe, it is just that you were so used to KDE3 and so good at it and so happy, that there was no way of matching your productivity with something as new and innovative as KDE4? I think KDE4 is going into a new, exciting direction, and that it will pay off that they did everything from scratch at some point. Similarly, Linux sucks for so many people who have been conditioned to using Windows, that they don't get anything accomplished in a different environment. Could that be some of the reason for your disappointment (along with your anger)?