KDE 4.6 Beta 1 – a First Look

dmbkiwi writes "The first beta release of KDE SC 4.6 was released yesterday. OpenSUSE had packages up almost immediately, so being curious as to what's new, I've downloaded and upgraded to the new release. These are my impressions thus far."

Comments

GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even with each minor release of KDE, GNOME keeps falling further and further behind. Like this release proves once more, we see KDE improving and innovating, while GNOME just sits there spinning its wheels.

It's time to abandon GNOME. It was useful for a short while during the 1990s, when Qt's licensing was problematic, but that's no longer an issue. GNOME has stagnated, and is of little value these days. KDE is offers more features, better performance, greater reliability, and just an overall better experience in every way.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[paulatz]

I'm a long-time KDE lover, but I have to use gnome at work and I do not dislike it too much.

At the moment I do think it is lagging behind, but I know that Gnome 3.0 is on the way and it may be the revolution and modernization it needs. We will see.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[IrquiM]

Exactly - "We will see" - but when? Gnome 3.0 might be an improvement compared to current, but will it be able to compete with KDE? I don't think so unless they've got huge changes they haven't told us about yet.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[IrquiM]

Where?

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing GNOME 3 to KDE 4 is a great way to see the difference between the projects.

On one hand, the KDE devs managed to perform almost a complete rewrite for KDE 4. Qt 4 was radically different from Qt 3, and KDE 4 included a huge number of architectural changes, as well. Although it was an absolutely huge amount of work to do, but the KDE community managed to get it done within a couple of years, they got KDE 4.0 released, and it has provided them an excellent platform to build off of.

The changes for GNOME 3 are nowhere near as radical. It consists of mainly incremental improvements, with the version number being incremented to hide the fact that GNOME hasn't had a major release in almost a decade. They're not even moving to a significantly different version of GTK+ or anything like that, either. Yet this effort was started in 2008, but we aren't expecting to see anything useful from it until 2011, due to delays.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[rqg]

Well, this might depend on personal experience: mine with KDE has been... unpleasant. KDE might offer more features, but they're crammed into the interface in a manner that makes their use unintuitive. Moreover, I would not say KDE offers better performance as all the installs of it that I've seen have been slugish to say the least (compared to Gnome on the same machines). Also, if it's so much better then Gnome, then why so few distro's use it as their default DE?

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[rumith]

It might be an interesting development if in 5 years we abandon both KDE and Gnome, and use ChromiumOS or its forks instead

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[TheLink]

They seem to be planning changes. But I don't like their plans:

http://www.deansas.org/blog/2009/09/24/first-impressions-of-gnome-shell/

One of the main changes to my mind is that it does not have a window list on a panel. You switch applications by visiting the Activity "overlay" and then clicking on the window you wish to switch to. This doesn't really affect me much in practise, I usually use alt+tab to switch windows anyway, where it does affect me is for applications that change the window title, e.g. messenger or gmail, I now have to cycle through alt+tab to check for people replying to me etc.

Rather than a window list the panel now lists the name of the currently focused application. It seems a bit useless, most applications have the application name as part of the window list and I'm not likely to forget the name of an application I've started.

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-shell-list/2010-November/msg00030.html

Just wanted to share a personal experience with GNOME Shell. One of its new and unique attributes is not having the window list or any sort of persistent widget that shows running apps or opened windows. This has benefits, in theory, like helping the user focus on the foreground task.

It's just worth noting that one of its potential downsides is it violates the user's mental model, which makes it undesirable, even if it *may* help increase productivity. With a window list, it's clear to the user where the window goes when it's minimized and how to show it again. In GNOME Shell, the only clear way to tell if a window is minimized is to check if it can't be seen in the workspace, but it's shown in the Overview or Window Switcher (alt+tab). Teling which windows are minimized or not may not have real benefits, but it may be too disorienting for users.

Personally I think they've lost their marbles. How does that help productivity at all? Especially in the cases where you need to use more than one window to do your work?

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[sourcerror]

I just tried Opensuse 11.3 with KDE, and it was really shiny, but haven't seen anything that boosts productivity (and the SuSE folks even removed keyboard layout switcher widget, so overall, it was worse than my gnome-Ubuntu desktop).

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[MMC Monster]

This is coming from a Ubuntu (Gnome) user, so please blast away:

KDE needs to be heavily customized to make it usable for the Joe Public end users. Which is fine. That's what distributions do. The thing is, each distribution does it different, so the user experience with KDE can vary greatly depending on which distro he installs.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Anonymous Coward]

The killer feature for me -- seriously, the reason I use KDE rather than Gnome -- is the ability to make the panel vertical. It's the only reasonable way to work on a widescreen netbook.

(Yeah, Gnome kinda has vertical panels as long as you don't mind them looking horrible and lots of things breaking. No, I do not want to read sideways text, Gnome. And when I looked at some "make vertical panels work properly" bugs, the basic message from Gnome devs was "we don't use vertical panels, go fuck yourself".)

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Well, this might depend on personal experience"

No. You are still not getting it. You don't know the definition of the word troll. Nobody cares what tour opinion is, but we don't want you calling a legitimate poster a troll. You sir are why the mod system on Slashdot does not always work as intended. Please stop being ignorant, and learn what the terms mean, rather than spreading your ignorance like a disease.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or run screaming away from excessive bloatware and switch back to twm, maybe vtwm if you need well managed virtual windows. I do this to avoid the excessive clutter, and gigabytes of useless components of either Gnome or KDE for lightweight environments.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me that Gnome 3 is actually going to innovate in significant ways as opposed to KDE 4.
At the very least they're working on dynamically creating virtual desktops for applications, while the activities feature in KDE 4 is a useless gimmick. You have to create them manually, switch them manually and what do they give you? The ability to have different desktop widgets. It only appeals to the crowd that'd like to rewrite every single application into a plasmoid and have all that crap running in a single process for no better reason than a flashy widget style.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Nerdfest]

I'd even be happy reading the sideways text, but there are several widgets (indicator widget?) that are 150ish pixels wide and do not even rotate sideways, meaning they're useless. I finally gave up and started using the panel at the top with Docky at the bottom, but perhaps it's time to have another look at KDE.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Urkki]

It's time to abandon GNOME. It was useful for a short while during the 1990s, when Qt's licensing was problematic, but that's no longer an issue. GNOME has stagnated, and is of little value these days. KDE is offers more features, better performance, greater reliability, and just an overall better experience in every way.

You're obviously trolling, but you raise a valid point. However, the problem with KDE is, the desktop experience just sucks, for some people. These people, me included, start to get annoyed with KDE as soon as they try to use it. Give us an alternative desktop experience, something GNOME-like, and I'm sure KDE would have tons of converts.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Jello B.]

heh

wait, no

groan

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[salesgeek]

Q: ... then why so few distro's use it as their default DE?
A: Because there was a time, 10 years ago when Gnome was created to address a licensing problem with the library that powers KDE called QT. Gnome was built using GTK (the Gimp Tool Kit), which was GPL. KDE's QT was under a permissive commercial license that was not 100% GPL compatible. So most distributions that cared about free went the Gnome route, despite it consistently lacking features vs. KDE. At this point, KDE's QT is GPL licensed, and has been for some time and KDE has advanced significantly in capability over the past two years to the point that it's really not even close, so far as features, flexibility and technology under the hood go.

Most user complaints stem from people who used a development release (4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3) of KDE 4 and thought it would measure up to a stable release (3.5). This was made worse by Ubuntu and other distributions removing KDE 3.5 around 4.1 and 4.2 being released, meaning there was no real stable KDE release for about a year. Reality is that KDE4 didn't really become usable until v4.4 and has really come into it's own with 4.5. So far as performance goes, if your GPUs drivers are decent, KDE4 will run rings around Gnome (especially if you turn on OpenGL rendering for QT which effectively uses your GPU for rendering everything).

Really when it comes down to it, it's GREAT that there is a choice for users between KDE, Gnome, XFCE, Evolution and GNUstep. Giving users a real choice in how they interact with their computer is a really good thing because new and better ideas come from competition and exchange of ideas. It's unfortunate that people view the whole KDE vs. Gnome thing as some kid of holy war, because the holy part of the war died when QT was released under the GPL.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[houghi]

Why wait 5 years. I never liked KDE nor GNOME. Started with Enlightenment, then went to Windowmaker and now use XFCE due to multiscreen/multi desktop issues.

In the end all I want is something that places the programs somewhere on my screen. But many people are lured by bling instead of productivity. That is the price you pay for thinking that you need as many users as possible.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[diegocg]

For a long time QT was closed source. Then they opensourced it, but only under the GPL license. That pretty much forced comercial distros to ship the only viable toolkit with a sane license (but insane internal architecture) - Glib/GTK. Using Gnome instead of KDE was reasonable for them I suppose. QT was relicensed to LGPL very recently, so I will take a lot of time to change the status quo - if that ever happens.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Bigos]

GNOME has stagnated, and is of little value these days. KDE is offers more features, better performance, greater reliability, and just an overall better experience in every way.

What is the point in relentless chase for more features? I am pleased with spartan Gnome, and to me it offers better experience. People have different tastes, and beauty of Linux is that you can choose different desktop without being forced to use something you don't like. In my opinion it would be better if more energy was spent on adding features and polishing various applications instead of desktop environments.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[udippel]

I understand your point.
But that's exactly what I have been trying for the last half year: I set my KDE to 'no panel', even 'no border'. And - loving it!
This is not to talk up KDE (which is very lousy in places) or talk down Gnome. It is the paradigm that took me some time to get used to. But now you'd have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers ...

Only if someone is interested: I have the Dashboard on a mouse edge, which now takes in principle the task of the panel, except that it is 2-dimensional instead of a line (== more space, no doubt).
Another mouse edge does the 'Desktop Grid', so that I can move to another desktop, while yet another one presents all windows of the current desktop. And it is just beautiful to have all real estate 100% for the applications; with a 'panel' (desktop==dashboard) directly underneath; instead of invading the screen.

I have no clue if this will accepted by the majority (I think not); but something will need to be done against those ugly, overloaded, panels. From where one needs to drop sub-panels with sub-menus, because the total, primary, real estate is just the screen width.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Reality is that KDE4 didn't really become usable until v4.4"

that's funny. The release of 4.4 marked the day I stopped using it altogether. They decided that having 3 RDBMS (one for Amarok, one for Akonadi and one for strigi) is better than having one. They decided that Plasma and Kwin effects should come before memory leaks fixes (i.e.: Amarok) and so on.

KDE is more advanced technically but it's constantly lacking a certain amount of refinement that would make the project far better than competing DEs.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[zach_the_lizard]

Depending on the setup, you can get GNOME and KDE in under 500 MB of RAM, so they're not too bloated.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[larppaxyz]

OpenSUSE integrates very well with KDE desktop. All those little things like automatic detection of new connected monitor and mobile data connection setup are reliable and well done. It looks and feels much more polished than Kubuntu.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[larppaxyz]

You should know that it's not about window manager at all. It's about applications that are made using chosen toolkit. I use KDE and 99% of applications i use are made using KDE/QT. That makes them work well together and experience is constant. Also nothing stops me from using WindowMaker with KDE applications, but i think that would be just stupid.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Yfrwlf]

Most user complaints stem from people who used a development release (4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3) of KDE 4 and thought it would measure up to a stable release (3.5).

Maybe they should consider using appropriate labels then for those "development releases". Maybe stick an Alpha there, a Beta here, you know, something helpful.

Regardless, I can't stand KDE4. As mentioned all over, the interface is incredibly cluttered. While I don't like Gnome for not including more easily accessible advanced options which could be simply hidden/buried one level down, until the KDE developers learn to keep things simple and bury their options hardly anyone uses, and basically actually start heeding user interface design and workflow, Gnome will have to continue to be my DE of choice.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[swillden]

In the end all I want is something that places the programs somewhere on my screen.

Which programs? Where? On which screen? How do you move them? How do you find and launch the programs you want? How well do all of your programs integrate? How do you find specific files?

What you say is true, but misses the point. There is a huge amount that can be done to make your workflow more efficient than an environment which just requires you to manage everything yourself. I view KDE as something of an ongoing research project in this space, which is also fairly usable. There are some really cool and useful ideas in KDE right now... things like activities which, when fully completed, will allow you to define a set of applications and tools that you use together in particular ways. When you activate an activity, all of the relevant components are started and placed on-screen in the way that you want.

A simpler feature that KDE has long provided -- and which GNOME still doesn't and I don't believe Enlightenment, WindowMaker or XFCE provide -- is the ability to define per-application window settings that affect placement, sizing, etc., so that those apps always act in the defined ways. I use this to make my multiple desktops more efficient. Each of my virtual desktops holds a particular type of application, and each application is assigned to always come up on the appropriate desktop. So I never have to try to figure out which desktop a given app is on.

Comprehensive desktop search to make finding files easy, a good, efficient way to launch programs, seamless integration between applications, both local and on-line -- these are all things that a more sophisticated DE can provide. Oh, and yeah there's also eye candy, some of which has utility, and some of which is just pretty, and I do think aesthetic value is real value as well.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Yfrwlf]

As long as the bling doesn't steal tons of their computer's power, most users would prefer to have both bling and productivity. Something that is nice to look at and to use to get their work done at the same time. Crazy concept, I know.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Yfrwlf]

It would be nice if applications could use a single API for Linux in general, and the program would be rendered appropriately for the DE the user happened to be in. This would destroy the whole "this app is KDE, this app is Gnome" thing. If you could just standardize the API for every service an application needed, whether it be a clip board, or a key store, or a network service, having some good standards/APIs so that apps could be shared between both DE's more would certainly help the Linux ecosystem.

I am glad that there is a lot of recycling due to apps using the same libraries and back ends though, I just wish the front ends could be recycled too.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Galactic Dominator]

KDE needs to be heavily customized to make it usable for the Joe Public end users.

Completely false, and obviously a troll.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[slacknatcher]

i support this, i got this mania for making my system faster and reduce memory footprint, right now when i start my desktop KDE 4.5 linux on a radeon HD card, thw whole system is using 169 Mb of ram, consider this is a 64 bit system (so use a little bit more ram) and a quadcore. i would say that those who complaint about kde (and gnome) beeing bloated and slow doesn't know how to configurate a system :)

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Burz]

It's unfortunate that people view the whole KDE vs. Gnome thing as some kid of holy war

That almost couldn't be helped, since Gnome was explicitly created to try to kill off KDE (if you think that choice of words is harsh, you should read what some of the Gnome founders said back in the day). Gnome was created with a negative goal, and I think that underlying fact prevented them from excelling.

I now use Gnome only because distros tend to write their system settings UIs for Gnome first and then forget to write some of them for the KDE flavor.

The main problem KDE has is one of "sensible defaults", or lack thereof. A lot of buttons and functions that should be optional and looked-for by advanced users is pushed right in your face by default. Trying to coach new users on KDE (4.x especially) has been exasperating. The default KDE configuration should be nearly as simple as Gnome; Neither DE is trying to find a good balance in that regard.

Another problem is that people coming to a Linux distro have to be aware of things like "DE" apart from what their OS is. I usually find people understand when I first explain, but forget basic details and start to feel confused on the subject a couple of months later. Its one of the things that makes them reject "Linux" in the end.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[mtemmerm]

I'm a long time GNOME user myself, and have tried the new KDE release for a couple of days... I absolutely have to disagree. I was happy coming back to GNOME. I find the performance of KDE to be on par with GNOME, with GNOME far outperforming KDE in terms of stability. Also I don't like the overkill KDE is using in its interface, I find it too distracting to get any real work done. It probably all comes down to personal preference? I like running more minimalistic GUI's as opposed to having the GUI in your face all the time.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[SomeKDEUser]

You, sir, are ignorant.

"They" did not decide anything. Because "they" are different groups of developers working along in the same community, but doing completely different stuff. You clearly have no idea how open source works (in fact how software development works: I don't think the guys responsible for MS Office consult much with the guys responsible for the media player component of windows...) And you hide your fundamental ignorance under the usage of technical-sounding acronyms.

As for the 3 DBs...

1) you can configure each of these applications to use the system one if you so wish
2) memory overhead is tiny, so you could argue that the extra robustness could be worth it
3) your comment is akin to saying "I will not use this app, because it was coded by a vegetarian, and I think this is abhorrent". This is not even broken logic, it is no logic at all.
4) do you think flat files would be better? Do you _know_? No clearly, you just spout ignorant opinions.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just stopped using Amarok around 4.0.
It doesn't seem to support hotkeys anymore, and it rarely does what I expect.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Anonymous Coward]

Amarok isn't part of KDE. Tried using another audio player?

Virtuoso isn't a RDBMS, it's a different type of database. You don't need to configure it, it just runs. On a modern system there is plenty of memory to allow both to work without trouble.

I don't like that Akonadi needs MySQL, but it's not an issue really.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[SomeKDEUser]

As the interface of KDE4 is far more streamlined than the interface of KDE3, I call bullshit on your "I can't stand KDE4". In reality, you can't stand KDE in general -- but you probably thought it more effective to bash the 4 version.

As for design and workflow... Let us just say some of us use our desktops [1], and some of us either are clueless or use only their xterms anyway. In the second case, they should switch to using konsole over gterm -- but as WM, they probably use ratpoison.

[1] the faceted search in the latest beta's dolphin is brilliant, the kio-slaves have always been great (KDE has the best file dialog in the whole of computing, bar none), the runners are great (seriously, I used to use google for my unit conversion, but not anymore), kile is the best LaTeX editor on any platform. Kdevelop has become a great IDE for c++. The notification system is unobtrusive, tells you what is going on, and keeps the messages. The directory viewer plasmoid is seriously cool: pre-filtered views of arbitrary local and remote location? Kmail, for all its flaws is the only not-annoying mailer I know of.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[SomeKDEUser]

But why? GNOME exists for you. Use it. What is the point of inventing a jet engine, if you really just want to go to the grocer's store two blocks away?

Some of us use the advanced features, the directory view plasmoid, the integrated search, the file dialogue and its remote capabilities, the tabbed window managing and so on. Different users have different needs.

Progress, technology and infrastructure are not pick-and choose propositions. You get the whole package, good and bad, or nothing. If you want no change, you get no change, and soon enough, no improvement either. This is fine, but then don't get envious of those that took the leap.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[zach_the_lizard]

My own system runs in about 600 MB on boot, but I also have stuff running in the background, such as for sharing files, music, etc. (I need several things running in the background to share music to the 360 and other devices)

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Abcd1234]

In the end all I want is something that places the programs somewhere on my screen.

Sounds to me like you should be using something like Xmonad. All it does is place programs on the screen, and it does it exceptionally well. And it also happens to have *fantastic* multi-monitor support.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPU requirement is where KDE fails for me. Linux is usually a little behind on decent GPU support and the BSDs never have it. If KDE was running on a supported OS (by ati/nvidia) that gets updates, KDE would rock.

I don't mind KDE 4 but I don't like it as much as KDE 3.5. I don't like the newer K menu. I don't want to search for apps, i want a menu!

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this sounds a bit strange and hard to believe, but the people working on Plasma and KWin aren't the same people that work on Amarok.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you would be interested about the next idea as well as you use KDE without panels as I am too and I simply love it and I love that idea!

http://forum.kde.org/brainstorm.php#idea91258_page1

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[westyvw]

I am lured to productivity and for file management and application integration, KDE outshines them all by a wide margin. It has the standard fare: multiple desktops, Expose, etc. But it also has features like combining several pplications into one window as tabs, push to back and max horz/vert. Rename is smart, copying is smart, titlebars and dialog boxes are nice and small too. They also are the only desktop to get single clicking right (bye bye carpal tunnel windows).
I use Gnome on the Laptop, LXDE or XFCE on the Netbook and in the VM, and KDE for the workstation. When I am serious about getting productive and I have a nice big fat monitor, there is only one choice: KDE.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Fri13]

I suggest to check out a taskpanel widget called "Smooth task". You can find it from distribution repository or from kde-look.org.

It gives the Mac OS X dock like a icons or what Windows 7 has as well.
The missing thing is to get it work exactly like those two, as a quickstarter.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Noughmad]

KDE/Qt apps look native in GNOME. GNOME/Gtk apps look horrible in KDE.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Anonymous Coward]

They did all that, and yet it took them about five years to replace the default clock theme, the ugliness of which could be seen from space with the naked eye.

There has to be a better trade-off between high tech and user friendliness. (I'm not saying Gnome is. I can't afford a Macbook so I wouldn't know if OSX is the answer.)

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Urkki]

Progress, technology and infrastructure are not pick-and choose propositions. You get the whole package, good and bad, or nothing. If you want no change, you get no change, and soon enough, no improvement either. This is fine, but then don't get envious of those that took the leap.

Uh... Open source is very much about being able to pick-and-choose.

Anyway, I'm hoping either Meego or Ubuntu Unity will bring something new, that's actually usable for my tastes.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Mystra_x64]

Toggle menu to a plain menu duh. Disabling graphical effects could help too I guess.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[DrSkwid]

They are both GAY

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[SomeKDEUser]

Oh, you can pick and choose, in the sense that you are free of your choices. However, your choices stay constrained by what is technologically possible: ontology based content searching cannot work without file indexing and SPARQL-like access to information. To display your mails/news/contacts across devices requires a consistent, more generic backend -- which is not so useful when you only use a stand-alone mailer on the desktop.

If you want to get "the file attached by X on one of his last week's email" -- which is to me a highly useful use-case -- you basically need your whole desktop integrated, with all manners of as-of-yet unproven technology. Now of course you can pick and choose, but you will only get meh software, the point of which will elude you.

And then you bitch about the fact that they wanted _this_ feature and not _that_ feature (_that_ feature is a load of crap, you say). And the dev who had found a clever way of providing both features in an integrated, generic way becomes sad, depressed, and goes to work for MS (people still hate him, but at least the pay is good).

It's a bit of a philosophical point, about progress and change. Basically, when some new thing becomes possible, it probably became possible because some resources got devoted to it. These resources are therefore no longer available for the things previously possible, which get crowded out. It is a very Human thing to lament those things gone, and fail to appreciate that the new stuff is, all things considered, a better compromise.

The die-hard KDE3 users are a bit like that: they had found the ultimate desktop, and the rug was pulled under their feet. Of course the desktop they like is still there, and KDE4 can do all that KDE3 could -- and even look like it. But it does more, and thus consumes more resources, in terms of computing power, but also in terms of user attention (in that you will see the new stuff). Overall (in my opinion), what the users get to do with their time is more, but I have no measure of that. If it happened that you do not want to try the new things, the desktop becomes worse (though frankly not by much).

I think the opensource community has grown larger, and the old farts (amongst which I suspect I am -- I had a low 5 digit slashdot account, a long time ago) as a reaction to the influx of new blood have become more conservative. This is sad, because it used to be that the Technically Right Thing(TM) would be admired, and leeway was given to those who tried new things.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[IrquiM]

Seriously, KDE doesn't need any customization to make it usable for Joe Public. I use a clean Slackware install - and everything is just as good as in other options, like Windows7

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[IrquiM]

Maybe they should consider using appropriate labels then for those "development releases". Maybe stick an Alpha there, a Beta here, you know, something helpful.

Or distros should stop trying to include everything that came out last week, and do what Slackware does

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Kjella]

Reality is that KDE4 didn't really become usable until v4.4 and has really come into it's own with 4.5.

Funny, because 4.0 was released as being usable. Then when 4.1 came out they said "4.0 wasn't usable, now it's great with 4.1". Then 4.2 came out, and the official line was "4.0 and 4.1 weren't usable, now it's great with 4.2". This has continued for every single point release of the 4 series so far, and each time they've hyped up the current release so that people who have tried it have been on the whole rather disappointed. Making the mature and familiar 3.5 releases impossible to use before the 4 series became (becomes) usable was a major mistake, because people have got used to Gnome during the wait.

Agreed. Now 4.0 through 4.3 was the development releases? That's a solid two years of development, that people now in all seriousness say it should tell you how far away 4.0 was from being ready for the public. Seriously, read the fscking release anonuncement. There's not one word in it that could reasonably suggest it's not a normal end user release. Yes, it's a big x.0 release but normal end user software does have x.0 releases, they don't start at version x.4. All the "we told you so" comments are referring to the little (*) written in 2pt white-on-white font that nobody caught.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Erikderzweite]

Pardon me? I write this from Opensuse 11.3 and layout switcher is right here in tray. You configure it in settings manager and it works fine.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[sourcerror]

The only place I could set the keyboard layout was from Yast, and it only allowed one layout. (I used KDE with the default Plasma shell (KDE), and there was no widget called keyboard-layout-switcher.)

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Erikderzweite]

You set the KDE keyboard layout in systemsettings under Country and Language settings (don't know how it is exactly called in English locale).

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Anonymous Coward]

They decided that having 3 RDBMS (one for Amarok, one for Akonadi and one for strigi) is better than having one.

I get the point of code reuse, but since all those DBs are stand-alone (think sqlite), you would end up with three DBs anyway.

They decided that Plasma and Kwin effects should come before memory leaks fixes (i.e.: Amarok) and so on.

Amarok isn't a core part of KDE, and it has it's own release schedule (like everything in extragear).

KDE is more advanced technically but it's constantly lacking a certain amount of refinement that would make the project far better than competing DEs.

KDE is more advanced technically but it's constantly lacking somebody willing to foot the bill to configure/refine it in a way that would make the project far better than competing DEs.
FTFY ;). However, I prefer (and use) compiz over kwin (I like the effects more, and it has more performance)

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

something will need to be done against those ugly, overloaded, panels. From where one needs to drop sub-panels with sub-menus, because the total, primary, real estate is just the screen width.

Wow.

Ummm... you are aware that the panels can be marked to auto-hide so they don't take up your real estate and you don't even have to see them then, right?


M.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[gottabeme]

No, he's not ignorant. His observations are spot-on from an end-user's point-of-view. This illustrates how the KDE devs are scratching their own itches. That's expected in open-source development, but KDE is a huge project, and it's released to end-users with the expectation that they will use it day-in, day-out. It's delusional to expect end-users to put up with segfaults and utter failures in software after five major iterations. But that seems to be the expectation of many KDE devs--or, at least, the sum of all their uncoordinated expectations.

What KDE needs is an overriding commitment to quality: it should be job #1. Bugs first, features (and ripping-out-and-replacing huge chunks) second.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Or distros should stop trying to include everything that came out last week, and do what Slackware does

Agreed. I hear some guy named "Mosfet" is writing some cool new look 'n' feel stuff that should make it into the next Slack release of KDE. It'll be cool like Cheetah or Puma!


M.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[dbIII]

The "licensing problem" was pretty well bullshit anyway since nobody objecting bothered to actually read the qt licence and the many amendments designed to fix the objections, but once the licence fanatics got bored and left while the decent developers stayed we ended up with a reasonable environment in gnome. Most of it was really "we want something like MS Windows including the stupid fucking registry but under the GPL", but the real developers stopped STUPIDITY like launching things without executable permissions and gradually dragged it away from the clueless zealots. It even included slow MS Windows style data transfer at a time when gnome was only on a single platform and that single platform had pipes - some of the early developers did not have the remotest clue about the platform they were writing for.
That's all way in the past, gnome is cross platform and gconf is no longer the horrible bit of abandonware lurking at that heart of gnome that it was.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[TheLink]

And it is just beautiful to have all real estate 100% for the applications; with a 'panel' (desktop==dashboard) directly underneath; instead of invading the screen.

Maybe you need a bigger screen with higher resolution, or more screens.

To me the panel/taskbar is one of the applications I want to see. I use it very often - when switching from window to window amongst many different windows.

As such it would be counterproductive for me to hide it.

Hiding it makes sense if screen space is so limited that it takes up a significant part of the screen, but once a screen gets big enough, hiding the taskbar makes about as much sense as taking the trouble to hide the screen bezel.

It's slower to have to "jump through hoops" (extra clicks/actions or pauses) just to switch to a different window, compared to just being able to quickly click on the relevant taskbar button and have the desired window foregrounded without any unnecessary delay.

For that reason I find OS X's Expose slower. Yes it may be cool to see the thumbnails of all the windows appear etc, but in the end it is slower than just immediately clicking on the desired window's button.

Same for having to move to another desktop then only being able to switch to another window. What does having to do so add to productivity?

It's like a game cutscreen. Might be nice the first few times, but after a while, some people like me just prefer to skip the cutscreen and get to the "real stuff". The cutscreen just gets in the way.

Or a gun that does a fancy animation/motion before firing. People who need to shoot stuff fast, would consider that a flaw. The gun would need to have significant advantages for people to put up with the flaw.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[sznupi]

WOuld be really interesting with GNUstep - now that apparently it might get used bigtime. Ph333r rms.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Anonymous Coward]

the ability to make the panel vertical. It's the only reasonable way to work on a widescreen netbook.

No it isn't. I have a horizontal panel that auto-hides.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[udippel]

Maybe you need a bigger screen with higher resolution, or more screens

Hmm. I have 2 HD screens, like 1920x1200, and your argument still doesn't convince me. Should I have 4 27" screens? I am afraid, it would not make a difference. Though, one year ago I could have used similar words like you on an argument like mine.
To me it looks like 'panel', which made all the difference from Windows3.1x to Windows95, has been ingrained into the user experience almost like 'computer' is equated with 'Windows'.

I don't say that what Plasma offers is the end to all needs. I for one have another bunch of potential ideas. But 'panel' is dead, for me personally. When I happen to get one, be it on W7, Maverick 10.10 or elsewhere, I feel like someone handed me a crutch to walk up a staircase.

Where I do understand your argument is "slower than just immediately clicking on the desired window's button". But that doesn't apply to me, since my panels were always on auto-hide. These days, instead of a half-brew (that is half-complete) panel, I get a full screen of tools, applications, displays, folders ... . So for me, there is progress.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[lanner]

Second this. I am a vertical panel user.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[TheLink]

I do understand that some people might want the "taskbar" to go away completely so that'll be a valid _option_ but any talk of getting rid of it without _replacing_ it with something better would be as stupid as having a Desktop GUI web browser that does tabs but has no actual tab "buttons/headers" to actually click on.

Assuming enough screen space, how many people would want their browser tabs to be on autohide (or even removed totally - requiring them to go to another "screen/mode" to switch tabs), despite browser tabs taking up screen space, and thus them not getting a full screen of the browser page as a default. How would such a feature help them?

A web browser for a device with a tiny screen might be a different case. But I'm talking about desktop GUIs.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[udippel]

You don't get this one totally correct. There is no 'attachments' on slashdot, otherwise I'd love to attach a screenshot of my Chrome screen; with no borders, no 'max'/'min'/'close', but all tabs at the very top of the screen.
I don't want to convince you at all, sure, but at least I can tell you that there are people around who don't mind to give 100% real estate to an application; be it a browser, mail client or office application. There is lot of work to do on 'intelligent' switching, but rudimentary it works here, of course: clicking on an '@' link brings up the full screen mail client, clicking on an attachment there, switches to the same 'total' full screen office.
And with the 'typical' auto-hide lower screen edge, I get Dashboard popping up in all its beauty. If I need to start something else, know the time (actually, I'd love to have an on-top applet above all screens to display the time) that's what I do.
And no, I don't want to see some ugly 'Start' button, systray, network strength, CPU-load, date, keyboard layout, username, shutdown button and so forth all the time. But that could be just me.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why shouldn't people indulge in a little bling? Sometimes I think this old-school command-line-centric attitude that you only need a window manager "to place windows on the screen" is perhaps one of the things that is holding back linux adoption.
Honestly, Linux is so much more swift and efficient in its use of memory than windows, so we can afford to use those extra resources to give ourselves a little luxury. Why shouldn't I have a nice, comfy working environment, a little compositing, transparent window decorations?
The discussion we're seeing here is full of examples of people switching entire operating systems because some detail in the desktop environment bothers them. We can't pretend it isn't the most important part of the user experience in any operating system.
And by the way, my ubuntu 10.10 with KDE 4.5.3 is using 1.1. gigs of RAM - on a computer that came with 4 gigs.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[TheLink]

By Chrome can I assume you mean the Google Chrome browser? In that case, does your browser have tabs displayed? If it does, then what's the big difference between having "ugly" task buttons displayed and equally "ugly" tabs displayed? Why are you having those ugly tabs when you could give 100% real estate to a web page?

Now see what I'm talking about? The reason for those ugly tabs is very similar to the reason for ugly task buttons.

Where you see ugly clutter, I see exposed functionality.

I'm fine with GUI designers catering for people like you who don't like all that ugliness. But nowadays it seems like too many GUI designers are trying to get rid of functionality, and making things slower and more difficult for people like me.

p.s. if you ever use MS Windows maybe you can get a small screen and dedicate half of it to a super huge task bar (windows doesn't let you drag it out more), and then move it out of the way of your two big screens. Or maybe put an app just to do that with thumbnails of app windows on that screen - a permanent "Expose". ;)

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[udippel]

Or maybe put an app just to do that with thumbnails of app windows on that screen - a permanent "Expose". ;)

Right. Except, I have it underneath and that suits me fine.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[salesgeek]

To be fair to the KDE dev team, they did warn everyone all over the place - it's just that many chose to ignore the warnings.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[SomeKDEUser]

No. He is wrong. He (like you apparently) assumes there is one team, and some sort of hierarchy, and that developer resources are attributed arbitrarily.

This is wrong, and ignorance is not a valid point of view.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Risen888]

Okay, I will.

KDE needs to be heavily customized to make it usable for the Joe Public end users.

In my experience that's untrue. I sell KDE desktops to "Joe (and Jane) Public," and I ship vanilla KDE except for my custom color scheme and logo. People seem quite pleased. What customizations would you make?

The thing is, each distribution does it different

Examples, please.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Risen888]

"Cluttered?!" You obviously haven't even seen a screenshot of KDE 4, have you?

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[KugelKurt]

KDE needs to be heavily customized to make it usable for the Joe Public end users. Which is fine. That's what distributions do. The thing is, each distribution does it different, so the user experience with KDE can vary greatly depending on which distro he installs.

Strange. When I look at Kubuntu, openSUSE, and Fedora (just to name three big distros), apart from artwork they are pretty much identically preconfigured.
OTOH when I see GNOME in Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Fedora the differences are huge. Depending on the distribution the differences are:
Nautilus is either in spacial or browser mode.
Placement of window title buttons.
Placement of desktop panels.
Default "Start Menu".
Etc.

So what does this teach us? According to your logic GNOME is unusable by default and requires heavy tweaking while KDE's Plasma Desktop is seen as good in its upstream configuration.

Btw: The differences will be even bigger in upcoming spring.
openSUSE won't ship GNOME 3.0 and hence not use GNOME Shell by default. Fedora will use GNOME Shell, while Ubuntu will ditch it completely and adopt Unity.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[KugelKurt]

Most user complaints stem from people who used a development release (4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3) of KDE 4 and thought it would measure up to a stable release (3.5). This was made worse by Ubuntu and other distributions removing KDE 3.5 around 4.1 and 4.2 being released, meaning there was no real stable KDE release for about a year. Reality is that KDE4 didn't really become usable until v4.4

What are you talking about? I'm very happy with KDE SC 4 since its 4.2 release. Same with most critics who gave the 4.2 release great reviews.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[KugelKurt]

that's funny. The release of 4.4 marked the day I stopped using it altogether. They decided that having 3 RDBMS (one for Amarok, one for Akonadi and one for strigi) is better than having one. They decided that Plasma and Kwin effects should come before memory leaks fixes (i.e.: Amarok) and so on.

1.) Amarok is NOT part of the KDE Software Compilation. KDE's music player of choice for the SC is Juk.

2.) Amarok and Akonadi both use MySQL.

3.) Nepomuk doesn't use MySQL because for its task Virtuoso offers better performance.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[KugelKurt]

observations are spot-on from an end-user's point-of-view.

KDE does not release any applications for end users. KDE releases source codes of applications to distributors who in turn deliver a preconfigured package set to their users.
If you think that shipping Amarok to end users is wrong, don't bitch about KDE. Bitch about the distributors who decided to ship it instead of Juk, Clementine, Bangarang, or whatever.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[KugelKurt]

To be fair to the KDE dev team, they did warn everyone all over the place - it's just that many chose to ignore the warnings.

Which of the big distributions was only Fedora. Kubuntu, Debian, openSUSE, Mandriva etc. all continued to ship KDE 3.5 at that time.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[KugelKurt]

Maybe they should consider using appropriate labels then for those "development releases". Maybe stick an Alpha there, a Beta here, you know, something helpful.

Distributors were warned all over the place that 4.0 and 4.1 were not completely ready. Additionally KDE 3.5.10 wasn't released one month after 4.1 for no reason.

One problem at that time was that everything was still called "KDE". Since pretty much exactly one year we have a more distinct branding in KDE. To put it in today's terms:
KDE Platform 4.0 and KDE Applications 4.0 were ready for release. KDE Plasma Workspace was not.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[KugelKurt]

Funny, because 4.0 was released as being usable.

No, it wasn't. The following article was distributed via KDE's info channels: http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/01/talking-bluntly.html

All major distributors except Fedora stayed with KDE 3.5 for that reason.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[smash]

I was a die-hard KDE user between 1.0 or so and 3.5. I found the earlier releases to be intuitive, and provide me funky ways of "getting shit done". I tried 4.0, 4.1, 4.2 and after seeing NOTHING that helped me be more productive, and UI change that was unintuitive and painful to use, I gave up.

Gnome is a bit "meh" but it works well enough for basic stuff. I'm no die hard gnome fan either, but at least it doesn't feel deliberately awkward.

I'm just very very disappointed to see what became of KDE after 3.5.

Personally, from a UI perspective I reckon it peaked around 2.0 or 3.0. I'm sure there will be plenty of developers or die hard 4.x users who will refute this and provide a million reasons why 4.x is technically better, but at the end of the day, if its painful to use, none of them are really relevant.

If i want a shiny UI that does very little to help me get things done effectively, but i can spend all day tweaking, I'll go find something less bloated.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[smash]

You can "call bullshit" on people not liking KDE4 in particular all you like, it won't make it true. I've been using it since 1.0 and 3.5 was the last version I actually LIKED.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[KugelKurt]

I just stopped using Amarok around 4.0.

There is no Amarok 4.0. It is currently at version 2.3 and a separate project from the Software Compilation.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[KugelKurt]

If you like KDE 3.5 so much, just use Trinity: http://trinity.pearsoncomputing.net/

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about the current crop, but even TWM let you specify some window management properties per application. Not that I have a problem with KDE or Gnome or anything, it's great to have a body of applications with a consistent UI and everything, but this particular functionality is not new in any sense. It's great if it's more usable and useful to mortals, now, though.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[Murdoch5]

Well as a gnome fan I don't see the need for gnome to change that much, it's sleek and works perfectly. It comes with a great toolkit and out preforms kde at ever bench mark. So falling behind doesn't mean alot, it's a more high quality DE.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[gottabeme]

No--didn't you notice where I mentioned "the sum of their uncoordinated expectations"?

There is no (or very little) hierarchy, but there ought to be more. Quality is not valued highly enough in KDE right now. My impression is that it's more of a playground for many of the devs--code that should still be considered beta, or even alpha, is pushed out in "stable" releases. Bugs and regressions and feature-disappearances are not taken seriously enough. As much as I prefer KDE over GNOME, it's no wonder distributors are putting GNOME up as the primary UI, because--sadly--it's more reliable.

Sure, they do it for free, so they're entitled to do what they want. But consider Debian: its developers and maintainers work for free as well, but they put quality at the top of their list. It's done when it's done, and it's not released with known, serious bugs. A little bit of self-sacrifice--giving new, fun code a lower priority than maintaining and fixing existing code--is called for, IMHO.

By the way, developer resources are attributed (did you mean distributed) arbitrarily, aren't they? Each dev does what he wants, when he wants--isn't that arbitrary?

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[gottabeme]

Um...I don't think shipping Amarok is wrong. I think shipping Dolphin and KPackageKit and plasma-desktop that all segfault regularly is wrong, after 5 major releases no less.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[badkarmadayaccount]

JuK, DragonPlayer, etc, why doesn't someone make a Winamp clone the wires into phonon, and have a nice consistent and usable multimedia experience. It seems like that years old Win freeware got a shitload of stuff right - along with intuitive default key combos, and a very well designed and powerful configuration panel.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[badkarmadayaccount]

Trinity project might interest you.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[badkarmadayaccount]

Whoa! Mind sharing some tips?

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[badkarmadayaccount]

Most of what you listed are characteristic of OS/2 WPS.

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[badkarmadayaccount]

Well, you can technically write a Gtk+ wrapper for Qt. Any takers?

Re:GNOME keeps falling further and further behind.

[A Jew]

Then why not have GNOME reimplement itself atop KDE? GNOME UI, KDE tech, perfect combo, no?

Strong Opinion != Troll

[Zero__Kelvin]

A troll is not "Somebody who states facts you don't like, in a way you don't like". It is also not "Someone who has strong opinions, and isn't afraid to state them.": While I think that claiming that Gnome "is of little value these days" is taking things a bit far, it would be foolish to argue that KDE is not leaps and bounds ahead. In fact, about 4 months ago I did an update of the dev branch of my favorite distro and the KDE packaging was broken (Not KDE's fault for those who don't understand Linux distribution), causing me to wind up in Gnome instead. I was not only thoroughly disgusted, but as a one time Gnome advocate (circa 1990's as the GP indicates) it has certainly fallen far behind KDE for use on modern systems. If you are using older hardware then KDE may not be for you, however, thereby making Gnome a WM that has some use.

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually agree with you, but please distinguish DEs and WMs. KWin and Matacity are WMs.

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[Zero__Kelvin]

Excellent point, and I acknowledge that I should have said DE. Maybe KDE could come up with a way to remind me that it is a Desktop Environment ;-)

For those following along at home, Compiz is another example of a Window Manager, but Gnome and KDE are definitely Desktop Environments, and I was wrong, wrong, wrong about that particular detail.

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[TitusC3v5]

The technology behind KDE4.x is certainly several steps ahead of Gnome, but in terms of stability, I've yet to use KDE4 for any period of time without dealing with multiple application crashes. Whether this is a KDE problem or the applications themselves, I'm not sure, but it keeps me tied to Gnome for the time being for my day to day needs.

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[Ginger Unicorn]

No, but a good troll is indistinguishable from those things. This Anonymous Coward has clearly posted a very subtly crafted troll.

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[zach_the_lizard]

As a daily KDE user, the only crashes I experience are from Amarok, and then because I am using the VLC Phonon backend (which isn't fully stable, but is getting there). It makes Amarok crash on exit and somewhat rarely when changing songs.

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[TheCycoONE]

I get crashes in system settings sometimes, and I have a friend who gets crashes in konq frequently. There are a few parts of KDE that are very crash prone and daily users learn to avoid them without thinking about it.

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[Burz]

Wait, this is scary! An app (VLC) that twists my Mac's bluetooth audio into catatonic spasms is being used as an audio back end??

Yikes...

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

And how is that relevant in any way, shape or form? You _are_ aware that Mac quite probably isn't even a prioritized platform for the vlc people, and that the entire audio system on you Mac have about zilch in common with the one used in Linux? Vlc is welcome to assrape your Mac for all I care, as long as it works as advertised otherwise.

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[Zero__Kelvin]

"No, but a good troll is indistinguishable from those things. This Anonymous Coward has clearly posted a very subtly crafted troll."

He has done no such thing. You, however, I am not so sure about ;-)

Hint: The post, even if made by a troll, is not a troll post when indistinguishable from a non-troll post. Why? Thought provoking intelligent discussion is not an artifact of a troll post.

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[Zero__Kelvin]

It would be helpful if you could provide more information such as KDE version in the form 4.X.X, as 4.x has no meaning in this context. I guarantee you that KDE 4.4.3 is stable. In fact I have been using KDE 4.x for more than a year, and all the versions I have used have in that time frame been stable. There were certainly stability issues in very early KDE 4 releases, however those have been ironed out for some time.

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[Burz]

LOL! Yeah "probably"

It just so happens that VLC mangles audio on both platforms, but the Linux version is the one that matters and is totally unrelated to the Mac version. :^D

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, vlc on Linux is not the same thing as vlc on Mac, just like it in the past used to definitely NOT be the same thing on Linux as on Windows. I could never understand why people kept advising newbies to use vlc on linux, until I realised they had never tried it themselves. You see they thought the same way you do; They had been using it on Windows and thought it was ok, and pretty newbie-friendly. The fact was that while it might be ok on Windows, it absolutely sucked on Linux, until quite recently. And since there are probably less vlc users on Mac than on Linux, lower prio. Nothing strange at all.

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[IrquiM]

As a daily KDE4 user, which only have problems when I upgrade the packages while I am still using the system, I'd say it's your distro's fault, and not KDE!

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[walshy007]

highly recommend MPD, there are many interfaces for it I tend to use ncmpcpp but I believe there are some graphical ones and even web ones.

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[Risen888]

I use KDE exclusively. Nothing ever crashes. Ever.

No, I take that back. The flash plugin in Konqueror goes down like the Hindenburg, every fucking time. But it doesn't even take the browser with it. (I do use Firefox as my main browser, partially because of this.)

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[KugelKurt]

As a daily KDE user, the only crashes I experience are from Amarok, and then because I am using the VLC Phonon backend (which isn't fully stable, but is getting there). It makes Amarok crash on exit and somewhat rarely when changing songs.

Delete VLC's PulseAudio output plugin. What you are experiencing is actually a bug in PulseAudio.

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[Bent Spoke]

Couldn't get kmail (kde 4.5) to even stay running under Ubuntu 10.10. On Ubuntu 10.04, had to run kde 3 to get an even usable kmail.

Really, these may all be just Ubuntu issues, but kde does not really seem viable to Ubuntu users.

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[smash]

You must be new here...

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[Burz]

By that reasoning, VLC should basically be a Windows application and the Linux version relegated to the back burner.

But what you seem to be saying is the Linux version's problems are an aberration just because VLC *should* be mainly a Linux program.

Re:Strong Opinion != Troll

[KugelKurt]

KDE SC 4.5 didn't include KMail.
Seems Canonical didn't do a good job packaging Kontact 4.4.
SC 4.6 will officially include Kontact again, this time featuring KMail 2.0.

4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Alwin Henseler]

I've played around a bit with KDE 4.x (don't remember exact version) in Ubuntu 10.04, but I wasn't very impressed. It look very slick, gives a feeling of advanced tech under the hood, but:

After fiddling with settings for hours, I concluded it's too much work to get settings to suit my taste. Do a setting here, and something else doesn't work quite how you want it. Try a setting there, and it doesn't do what you expect, or you see no effect at all. Only to find later there was some override that caused previous setting to be ignored.

I don't have time for this crap, a desktop environment is just one of many things you have to configure when customizing an OS, it shouldn't take a day to wander through its configuration. This wouldn't be a problem if defaults are chosen well enough that you're done with changing very few things from the default, but that's not the case. From what I understand, SuSE offers one of the best out-of-the-box KDE experiences, but hey I'm not changing distro's just to have nice defaults on the desktop environment.

To me, it comes across as a typical case of too much unnecessary complexity - users don't care, they just want something that they can get familiar with in a short time. And where they can easily find the most important settings. Beyond that, additional complexity just wasts memory, CPU cycles & developer time. Which is really a shame given all the effort that goes into a project like KDE. Disclaimer: that's just my current impression, maybe these things are much improved in later releases like the one reviewed here...

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, it's a Linux user trying to do his best to make sure Linux never gets widely adopted. How quaint.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Alwin Henseler]

I have 0 problems getting around / get work done on KDE (any version), and have regularly used KDE for day-to-day work years ago. My point was it just takes too much time to get to know it (well). Especially for ordinary users, who don't have the patience a power-user might have. With that as a given, anything that a n00b user (count me out) can't find quickly, is lost on that user. And you'll have to agree that non-power users are the vast majority of desktop users.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, I feel the same way.

Well, except for the "looks slick" part. To this day it still looks like a cartoon desktop.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Stumbles]

Exactly. It is a PEBCAK thing. KDE does not required any fiddling for the average user and is very usable out-of-the box, even those versions distros have tried to "personalize". I run only kde straight from source and even there for the newb it does not require any fiddling about at all. Even so, I still like to twiddle with the settings simply because I can and do not need dropping to a terminal to do so; and there is a slew of them that can be changed using the systemsettings. But I do have to agree with TFA about Activities. Still trying to wrap my brain around that and just what I would use them for.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[ThePhilips]

[..] users don't care, they just want something that they can get familiar with in a short time.

Users do not - but professionals do.

All the little things chip time very fast - the time I'd rather did something useful, instead of bunch of mousewavings, modern desktops tend to impose on me. That's where the hundreds/thousands little options come into play: they allow user to remove the road bumps from the daily workflow.

That's why highly customizable desktops like KDE/Flux/WM/IceWM/etc would remain popular: many who graduate from being an end-user find GNOME, after getting "familiar" with it, quite limiting.

Though sure if you spend 90% of time in Evolution and FireFox, then you pretty much do not care what desktop you run and the whole argument about the desktop environments becomes moot.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Anonymous Coward]

I've played around a bit with KDE 4.x (don't remember exact version) in Ubuntu 10.04, but I wasn't very impressed. It look very slick, gives a feeling of advanced tech under the hood, but:

After fiddling with settings for hours, I concluded it's too much work to get settings to suit my taste. Do a setting here, and something else doesn't work quite how you want it. Try a setting there, and it doesn't do what you expect, or you see no effect at all. Only to find later there was some override that caused previous setting to be ignored.

I don't have time for this crap, a desktop environment is just one of many things you have to configure when customizing an OS, it shouldn't take a day to wander through its configuration.

You are not customizing OS when you are customizing the desktop (there is no more K Desktop Environment, there is a KDE SC what is a brand for different technologies what are released at same time, like Plasma Desktop, Plasma Netbook and Plasma Mobile or Plasma Media Center and then KDE platform and KDE apps). If you want to customize the OS, then you do it only by patching the Linux (or any other monolithic kernel) and compiling it with your own settings. All other software is configuring them and not the OS.

Which is really a shame given all the effort that goes into a project like KDE. Disclaimer: that's just my current impression, maybe these things are much improved in later releases like the one reviewed here...

Clearly you do not know what you are talking about as KDE is not project, it is a community what is managing multiple different projects and many of those projects gets released in KDE SC.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Jahava]

PEBCAK. KDE is useful in its default settings. As a rank n00b, you probably should try to get to know it before fiddling with settings you don't understand.

Really? This is the attitude you chose to go with?

What we have here is an OP who gave an honest and accurate critique of his/her experience with KDE. Simple as that. They thought it was too complicated, and that the complexity wasn't valuable. It didn't work in a manner that they desired, and that resulted in them disliking the software. This is exactly the kind of feedback the KDE team wants. All of the OP's problems should not exist - that's one of the KDE team's design goals. The OP's impressions, experiences, and feedback could, if funneled down to the right people, result in a superior desktop experience for everyone.

Instead you are quick to dismiss and blame the OP as incompetent and useless. This valuable feedback, while dismaying in the sense that it depicts a KDE team failure, is extremely useful for both parties. The user seems open and interested in thoroughly using the product, and the design team wants to create a product the user wishes to use. A person with the slightest (a) intuition, or (b) training in psychology and human-computer interfaces would tell you that this type of cooperation between developer and end-user is priceless. But here we have you, whose attitude is one of the stronger cancers on the open-source community.

Not every product is for everyone, but mainstream desktop environments and window managers are the exception. Creating a central piece of software as complex and feature-rich as KDE is extremely challenging. For any given use-case scenario, KDE has to provide a direct and obvious path to an end-goal while ensuring that every other feature keeps a low profile. This is hard stuff, and KDE is groundbreaking in their approach. Their team has developers, artists, engineers, managers, and designers all striving for this goal. The OP is a critical piece in that puzzle.

And as a disclaimer, I do, and probably always will, love KDE. KDE4 started out weak (by design) and is building towards an amazing desktop environment. Every subsequent release provides marked progress towards that ideal. I hope we get an entire gamut of feedback from every possible class of user, because that gives the KDE developers the kind of information they need to make good design decisions towards an ideal desktop environment.

Assholes like you really need to stop getting in the way of that ideal.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Teun]

Neither am I a n00b.

And that's exactly what pisses me off in Gnome, there is so little to configure, except for a theme you more or less have to accept what the developers gave you.

But the people who's private computers I keep running are quite happy with the configurability of KDE, the standard set up is OK and some of them get quite adventurous once they understand the power of the right-click.
They have mainly older single processor machines with a max. of 1GB RAM and even then it is a beautiful and responsive desktop without the weaknesses of Windows.

More than once visitors who saw some of the options I showed them (especially in Dolphin) asked how to enable them in Windows 7 :)

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[cyber-vandal]

Well said that man. Way too many arrogant wankers in the OS community. PEBKAC would more appropriately apply to the dick you've so comprehensively put down.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[MrHanky]

My two points are:
* KDE isn't complicated in general use.
* The user chose the option to delve into the system and fiddle with things. That's the PEBCAK part. Not incompetence as much as misguided geekiness. It's your own fault if you spend hours tweaking instead of simply using a tool the way it's designed.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[mobets]

What would be the point of having options available to tweak if they are unusable?

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[devent]

After fiddling with settings for hours, I concluded it's too much work to get settings to suit my taste. Do a setting here, and something else doesn't work quite how you want it. Try a setting there, and it doesn't do what you expect, or you see no effect at all. Only to find later there was some override that caused previous setting to be ignored.

Can you give a few examples? Everything in KDE can be setup in the Settings. It's pretty stread forward and easy to do. But you really don't need to "fiddling" with it for hours. The KDE desktop is easy to use out of the box.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[HermMunster]

I use Linux every day for everything. I demo it to customers. Most are awe inspired by it, by what it does, how it looks, and that it is free. I have used Linux in my business for the past 4 years as servers, diagnostic machines, workstations for myself and for customers. One thing I have noticed is that if I set someone down in front of Linux without telling them about it, even those who know little to nothing about computers, they'll begin using it as if it were Windows. So please don't get me wrong. I genuinely want to have these issues fixed, but the devs seem to have their own agenda which doesn't always match that of the user.

No doubt KDE (yes, even 4.6) needs some work. The designers seem to have a mindset that they are right, about all things. There's nary an effort to recognize the wisdom of the users.

One thing that currently bites at me is that there's a bug where if you drag and drop a file or folder onto another on the desktop (such as dropping a file into a folder) all the icons realign to the left side of the desktop, thus wiping out any folder and file organization you have. To top that off it is a well reported bug that is extremely annoying to the average user. One of the bug reports has it marked as important and fixes have been made, but not completely. Due to this it became clear, from reading the comments by the devs, that there would be need to change many places in the code to fix it. That leads me to believe that it is quite messy.

It used to be that any attempt to do something on the desktop would cause the icons to realign. If you made a link it would happen. If you created a folder it would happen. If you deleted a file it would happen. If you moved a file into a folder it would happen. They cured some of them but they seem to have abandoned the rest so we still have to deal with the issue and it is very annoying.

I have used KDE from 4.2 and up, up until this problem cropped up. What's worse is that this problem occurred a few releases back and was fixed. Now it's back and only partially fixed.

Gnome has a simpler aspect to itself, though it too is messy and can annoy you. Clicking too fast with the right mouse button can and will cause gnome to choose the option under the cursor when the menu pops up. That has been reported over and over to the gnome devs but no one will take the time and effort to resolve it. It is one aspect that shows gnome to be messy and unpolished.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[zach_the_lizard]

Because someone, somewhere, finds them useful? People like all kinds of crazy things, or even different things.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I think KDE has very good programmers, from the top of the field, but they need professional artists(paid, full time) and people really experts on UI, because sadly they are not, and default config is too complex(it was last time I tested KDE one year ago).

Today Windows 7 or macOSX offer a simple configuration that works, ubuntu do that too with Gnome, but the Ubuntu default themes are just so Ugly that it hurts. They copy MacOSX but only on the bad things(buttons up-left but ugly instead of beutiful, background universe image but then completely different colors on different places that doesn't mach, like dark colors with bright ones).

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[HermMunster]

That purple theme has to go. I was looking at an older version of a default install of Mac OSX and I can see where they got the idea.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried KDE 4.x at a couple of different versions, most recently KDE 4.4.5 in Debian Squeeze and I can say that they have put a lot of work in that I can see in resolving some of the settings inconsistencies. The first time I tried it (one of the 4.1 versions, can't remember exactly) it was a bitch, there were graphical glitches and many instances of duplicated/redundant/conflicting settings in System Settings that made it a horrible experience. I couldn't get the screensaver to stop kicking in, I'd set every setting relating to power management, screen saver, display management that I could find but the goddamn thing would still kick in after 10 mins. Nuke and write off. I just switched to Squeeze last week and it's a far better experience. System settings has been streamlined and simplified, I haven't had any issues with duplicates (which is not to say they don't exist, just I haven't had to scrap with them). Suffice it to say, they've made great strides.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Galactic Dominator]

It's anything but honest and accurate. KDE4 works quite well with little to no customization.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Burz]

Well I have to coach novices to Ubuntu when I make a decision to "go around MS" for clients. I gotta tell you: KDE 4.x is a nightmare to coach people on. Its very, very intimidating as its constantly throwing (useless) visual cues at the user such as control panels that always slide out of windows when you mouse over them. KDE defaults are too confusing and I quickly found out that people won't put up with it.

Windows-like chrome does not make a UI as sensible to use as Windows.

As for myself, I now use OS X and try to point people in that direction when a Windows alternative is called-for.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you're a real atom-splitter aren't you? I guess you think bicycles are useless too, because you can't work out how to ride one, and cars because you're not deemed competent to drive one. "Sour grapes" in other words, and an attitude most commonly found among small children. Have fun in your kindergarten.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Abcd1234]

Users do not - but professionals do.

Yeah... you know... I'm gonna have to call BS, here.

What *exactly* does KDE offer that a "professional" will find shaves *that* much time off their day-to-day lives?

Hell, the "professionals" I come across often want the exact *opposite* of KDE... things like xmonad, awesome, and so forth, are an attempt to get the DE the hell out of the way so we can just get on with our jobs, already.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[antdude]

Do you prefer KDE v3? I don't like v4 as well and prefer v3.5.10. People say the later v4.x releases are better and good as v3.x which I haven't seen. I am going to stay with the latest v3.x as long as I can until I can't use it anymore. :(

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Kjella]

Exactly. It is a PEBCAK thing. KDE does not required any fiddling for the average user and is very usable out-of-the box, even those versions distros have tried to "personalize". I run only kde straight from source and even there for the newb it does not require any fiddling about at all.

Ah, denial. It's so wonderful to explain why you're running the second most popular DE of a OS with 1% desktop market share. Why would anyone bother to complain when all you'll be met is with is "LALALALA PEBCAK" and if you go "screw this" the answer is "well good riddance we don't need n00bs like that, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out". Do you know what the difference between you and Steve Jobs is? His reality destortion field affects everyone, your only affect yourself...

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[IrquiM]

More than once visitors who saw some of the options I showed them (especially in Dolphin) asked how to enable them in Windows 7 :)

Hope you told them that all they had to do was to install KDE?

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is when KDE comes default busted.

The early 4 versions HAD NO ABILITY FOR DESKTOP ICONS.

People were VICIOUSLY DERIDED for asking how to obtain them.

We were told to use the horrendously obfusticated dock system and that we didn't need icons.

Since I apparently don't need icons and gnome sucks, fluxbox it is.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Zarhan]

What *exactly* does KDE offer that a "professional" will find shaves *that* much time off their day-to-day lives?

    Well, I count myself as professional, and one of the nicest features for me is that I can easily configure attributes for specific windows. I remember back in the 90's having to manually edit .fvwm2rc. Now, I can just put rules right-click title bar and pick "special window" or "special application" settings. My firefox always starts up on Desktop 2. My VirtualBox always on Desktop 6. My Konsole sessions on Desktop 1. My file manager on Desktop 5. My IM applications on Desktop 4. And so on...

    And that's just the easiest part - beyond that, for example, I don't want usually any windows to steal focus. However, if my VPN goes down, I want KVPNC to definitely steal focus immediately to bring attention to it.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Risen888]

With that as a given, anything that a n00b user (count me out) can't find quickly, is lost on that user.

That. Is. Not. True.

If you insist on babying people, they will act like babies. And if you think people can't be taught, you're a bigot. I have met a great many "computer ignorant" people in my life, but I have never once met someone who was "stupid." Ignorance can be fixed. Have some respect for people, for Christ's sake.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides, everyone knows that the current definition of PEBCAK is Problem Exists Between Computer and KDE.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Anonymous Coward]

PEBCAK. KDE is useful in its default settings. As a rank n00b, you probably should try to get to know it before fiddling with settings you don't understand.

Really? This is the attitude you chose to go with?

What we have here is an OP who gave an honest and accurate critique of his/her experience with KDE.

Did you READ the OP message?

He did not give ANYTHING accurate and neither he were HONEST. He just said "tweak here and there" mumble jumbo without telling exactly what was the problem.

KDE does not need such bug entries or even discussion as the KDE is so awesome community where people who are honest really writes what is the problem and where the problem is and what they were expecting and all that is good critic and not bashing as the OP message was!

Instead you are quick to dismiss and blame the OP as incompetent and useless. This valuable feedback, while dismaying in the sense that it depicts a KDE team failure, is extremely useful for both parties.

- In the world there is lots of injustice!
  - Like what?
- Lots of injustice!

That you call accurate, usefull and valuable feedback?

the OP did not say ANYTHING usefull or valuable. The exactly same message could be used for GNOME community and GNOME itself if just KDE and KDE SC would be switched.

So please read again and point where is the accurate problems told and what was expected and how to fix them.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Abcd1234]

Well, I count myself as professional, and one of the nicest features for me is that I can easily configure attributes for specific windows. I remember back in the 90's having to manually edit .fvwm2rc. Now, I can just put rules right-click title bar and pick "special window" or "special application" settings. My firefox always starts up on Desktop 2. My VirtualBox always on Desktop 6. My Konsole sessions on Desktop 1. My file manager on Desktop 5. My IM applications on Desktop 4. And so on...

So you like the window manager. Great. A window manager is not a desktop environment (Xmonad could do everything you describe quite trivially).

Again, what the hell does the *DE* do for you?

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Zarhan]

So you like the window manager. Great. A window manager is not a desktop environment (Xmonad could do everything you describe quite trivially).

I don't know or care what's the difference between a DE or Window manager. I just use it.

But ok, if by "desktop environment" you mean how it benefits all applications working together, then I give you Kwallet and Kioslaves that work in and with all KDE apps. Typing sftp:/ or camera:/ or smb:/ in any file open dialog and acting with files just as if they were local - that's great.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Anonymous Coward]

Also Kde shortcuts, some shortcuts need better defaults but the flexibility of the system is awesome, you can define keyboards shortcuts for every application(and usually for quite a few actions) including global shortcuts and multiple shortcuts for the same thing.

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[Anonymous Coward]

You are the asshole (you called it first by yourself) who did not even read the OP!
The OP did not give _anykind_ accurate or honest critic what was problem!
And here you are waving your hands yelling how KDE (=community) needs responses _exactly_ like the OP!

Read again the OP and you should notice that there ain't single point what would be said what is wrong and where and how it should be! NOT A SINGLE INFO!

The OP was full of bullshit wanked to the slashdot. "oh, the KDE SC is so terrible because it feels so terrible!"
And then you come along to say "damn, you are so accurate and KDE needs your kind comments to solve the problems!".

Re:4.x KDE releases failed to impress me

[badkarmadayaccount]

Dude, take a chill pill. Don't bring the whole OS stack in the discussion. AAAnd, most of the reason GNOME is widely used, is historical inertia - due to licensing issues - not any specific KDE fault the can't be fixed by the distributor.

"Service Temporarily Unavailable"

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never had a good experience with the KDE beta software, works abous as well as the pages "Service Temporarily Unavailable".

Arch Linux had already

[Anonymous Coward]

It is nice to hear that openSUSE got now packages as Arch Linux had packages ready in [kde-unstable] repository since the files were tagged.
I believe Mandriva has in few days (if not already).

Re:Arch Linux had already

[shutdown -p now]

When is Arch not the one to have fresh packages in the repository first? Isn't that one of the major reasons of using it in the first place?

Re:Arch Linux had already

[KugelKurt]

openSUSE's Unstable repo contains weekly snapshots of KDE SC trunk.

Nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

I definitly like the release, because now that they've got the big things sorted out (like having a git plugin for dolphin and making desktop effects smoother), maybe they will now have some time to look into the details (you know, like getting printing to work, stop kmail from crashing when fetching emails, or giving the music player amarok a little more than just a play-button).

I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[metrix007]

I stayed away from the 4.x serious in particular. not least because of all the Akondai stuff. I think a DE should be as minimal as possible...provide a shell, file browser, and maybe some basic applications. KDE seems to want to manage everything, and there is so much stuff running in the background that I have no idea what is needed and what is not. I also think it is somewhat childish to start every application with a K...but hey.

I should note that I am arguing from ignorance here about my knowledge of the workings, just my brief experiences. But, that is the impression I got. Is there any truth to it, and if there is, why has the KDE team gone down that road?

It seems to be less about configurability and themes and more to do with how much you think your DE should be responsible for.

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[Cwix]

I also think it is somewhat childish to start every application with a K...but hey.

Yea and Microsoft should stop naming things like Windows DVD Maker, Windows Live Mail, and Windows Media Center.

Wait.. whats your point again?

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[salesgeek]

Here's what's going on:

1. Akonadi - makes sense now that most people have big address books, have to sync calendar & contact data with multiple cloud based services and have multiple email addresses. The idea is much like an SQL server: let MySQL do the storage and retrieval work, and let the client application focus on logic. It's a great idea, but it's taken some time to get the implementation right. One of the real reasons that there are only a few viable desktop PIM applications is that you have an amazing amount of code to maintain to store and retrieve data. The Akonadi model will really pay off as developers start using it to integrate PIM data into their applications.
2. All the stuff running in the background: check the service manager in system settings. Now, if we could only get the program name reported to ps to be the same as the clear, easy to understand description in the service manager.
3. Well... there's AmaroK, BasKet, Okular and many others that don't start with K. It is actually nice though to be able to quickly see what is KDE and what isn't by the file name.
4. The recent two releases have really cleaned up a lot of the nagging problems KDE has had since the 4.0 change. The desktop is rock solid now.

You have to be kidding about configurability and themes, though. Even our desktop themes (see QTCurve & Bespin) and window decoration themes (see DeKorator & Arorae) have themes.

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[marsu_k]

I also think it is somewhat childish to start every application with a K...but hey.

FWIW this trend has been going away with the 4.x series. The default file manager is Dolphin, image viewer Gwenview and so on. And FFS, they're just names, it's not like many gnome programs don't start with a G, and iM iSure iOther iExamples iExist.

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[mickwd]

"I also think it is somewhat childish to start every application with a K...but hey."

And then Apple copied them with the letter i, and I've never heard anyone describe that as childish.

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[Anonymous Coward]

Names aren't that important anyway - the distro I'm using lists them by function first, name second. (Eg, Ktorrent's listed as 'Bittorrent Client', with 'Ktorrent' barely visible underneath. When you think about it, that makes sense - and end user doesn't really care what the tool's called, just what it does.

Most of the time a name doesn't tell you anything useful about the program anyway. Firefox for example - what the hell is a firefox? Why is it in my computer?

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[metrix007]

Sure, Because as far as names go Kontakt oozes professionalism and reliability just like Windows Live Mail. Wait, what?

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[metrix007]

So, wait, Akondai is just PIM stuff? I thought I remember it clashing with sound daemon of some sort. I wonder if Akondai needs to be on every PC, when most people are storing their stuff, at least contacts in the cloud. Why replicate it in many places? Anyway, thanks for the explanation.

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[udippel]

The desktop is rock solid now.

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=201620
is the bug for your taste. Filed on July 27, 2009 and until now without activities from the side of KDE, but close to 20 duplicates, because everyone is running into it all the time.

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[HermMunster]

That's disingenuous. Most KDE apps are selected from the menu and have descriptive names. The executable may be obscure yet when you look at the executables from Microsoft's product they too use obscure naming.

Virtually everything under Gnome and KDE is presented with descriptive names, because they too are just links to the executable (just like Windows).

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[Ralphus Maximus]

Here's what's going on:

1. Akonadi - ... It's a great idea, but it's taken some time to get the implementation right.

They still don't have the implementation right. My latest install is less than 3 months old, I finally get it to where is loads on boot. This is the first time since KDE 4.0. Now, I boot the box, the cpu is maxed. Kill -9 Akonadi, kill -9 the indexer, kill -9 a few other related services, and guess what, no fscking contacts. Restart Kontact. Rinse-repeat until Akonadi decides it wants to cooperate.

I can't trust Kontact to safeguard my contacts anymore. The idea of Kontact is great! It really is a great PIM. But they need to get far, far away from that piece of shit Akonadi. Until they do, or make it bulletproof, Kontact is useless. And that's a real shame.

Cheers,
RM

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[apoc.famine]

Funny thing is that if MS did stop calling things MS* and Windows*, there would be cries of duplicity and deception.

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[Burz]

And then Apple copied them with the letter i, and I've never heard anyone describe that as childish.

Um, dude, that's cuz names like "iChat" and "iWork" make some sense.

Think about it. Prepending a 'K' or 'Gn' onto most names does little to help a user identify with them.

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[Anonymous Coward]

Or WinThis and WinThat (like Winpatrol, Winamp etc).

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[Anonymous Coward]

The application names should be unique. And application names are usually copyrighted or registered trademarks.

There can only be one Photoshop or one Windows Media Player.

And who the hell actually say that all application names should be english? If the application names are german (Krita, Digikam, Kate etc) or even distribution names are other language than english (SUSE (German), Mageia (Greece) etc) then why the hell it is only those who feels that English is the only proper language feels they are bad names?

Best thing is that application name is possible to pronounce (Kate, DigiKam, Krita etc) but still they have totally unique name so when user talks about the application name, others can easily remember what it is about or even use internet search engine to find out the application.

When every application starts being "Text editor" or "Office" or even "*shop". They really loose their identity and they becomes a gray software what does not actually mean anything.

K and G in the application names are not problem. They can be well part of the app name (digikam, Kate, Konversation, Kopete etc" or they can be attached to them (Krename, Ksubtitles, KOffice).

After all, it is just the name and by same way every english speaker should be as well angry if they need to pronounce or type foreign names like "Jürgen", "Katariina" or "Jussi".

Hell, even people has problems to pronounce the "Linux" or "Linus Torvalds" correctly. I have not heard so much about demands to change Linux name to some kind other like "Felix".

How about other OS names than just Linux:

NT
XNU
HURD
FreeBSD
NetBSD
OpenBSD
SunOS
HP-UX
AIX
PARAS
MINIX
MULTICS
SYMBIAN
NOS

K and G in the application name is very small thing and those who feel it is so terrible. They should go and check do they use correct names of the applications like "Adobe Photoshop" or "Microsoft Office" or even "OpenOffice.org" or do they use "Office", "photoshop" and "office".

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[Fri13]

What is the web browser?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3vv0_RNTM8

Is the Firefox really so much worse?

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[IrquiM]

Let me do that for you know then: Copying KDE thinking and trying to be inventive by starting everything with an i and then a capital letter is childish!

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[gottabeme]

You are absolutely right. Akonadi should be tested thoroughly for at least a year with no changes other than bugfixes before being put into a stable release.

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[sznupi]

Windows Live Mail doesn't mean anything, it's a marketroid description with "catchy" word of the moment added.

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[Anonymous Coward]

actually the only gnome programs that start with g now are gedit, gwibber, and GIMP.

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[KugelKurt]

I stayed away from the 4.x serious in particular. not least because of all the Akondai stuff. I think a DE should be as minimal as possible...provide a shell, file browser, and maybe some basic applications. KDE seems to want to manage everything

KDE is a software developer, not a product. KDE's desktop environment is called KDE Plasma Workspaces and doesn't include Akonadi.

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[Burz]

K and G in the application name is very small thing and those who feel it is so terrible.

It communicates a lack of care and taste to the user who shouldn't feel compelled to track which programs go with their DE anyway. Knowing what OS you have should be enough!

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[badkarmadayaccount]

Fedora KDE respin not clear enough for you?

Re:I have not liked KDE for quite a while

[A Jew]

I think it works because I is a word, and is incorporated as part of a somewhat descriptive name. I work. k work. Not the same.

Here's a direct link to a screenshot from TFA

[moonbender]

A picture says more than a thousand words? From TFA:
  http://everydaylht.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/snapshot1.png

Re:Here's a direct link to a screenshot from TFA

[Jello B.]

what's your point, that the dude that wrote the article has terrible taste in his customized theme?

That's all...?

[Windwraith]

Wow, after such a long delay since 4.5 I expected...something else. 4.5 was a specially troubling release for me, and I see no indication of the introduced misbehaviors being fixed...I'll go cry in a corner.

Re:That's all...?

[Jello B.]

long delay? they release every six months

Re:That's all...?

[Windwraith]

But the bugs and annoyances in effect exist since 4.5 beta. It's really annoying.
Stuff like gtk icons vanishing at *random* from the systray, odd focus issues (many apps never focus text input by default, making a quick "open program and search" take more steps than it should) and annoyances with the notification system, and plasma can randomly eat a lot of RAM for no apparent reason, even without using any plasmoid.
Kwin's effects aiming for usability (such as zoom and present windows) still haven't had a single tweak, the former being impossible to use with the mouse (I have a hand handicap, compiz supports it, but I require kwin's window settings) and the later still being unable to present windows using proper spacing (a 4x4 grid has a lot of empty space and minuscule windows, no matter your settings).
Krusader (now an official part of KDE) still hasn't fixed the "run every program you double-click into $HOME/Documents" bug, because no one takes care of the kdelibs bug causing it. A filemanager that can't run double-clicked apps in 2010. Please.

KDE4 has been having a long story of tiny annoyances being left unfixed. This is the reason people is so divided about it. On one hand you have a lot of almost exclusive things that are incredibly good. Things that save time, things that you can set up to your tastes. GOOD things.
On the other hand you have a lot of tiny annoyances, strange little bugs, and decisions like starting Akonadi just because you placed a clock in your panel. The network manager app still does nothing here, forcing me to use the gtk version. It's been in this state for a couple years at least.
They really need to start reading the brainstorm pages, fix little bugs and try to do something like Ubuntu's papercuts. They can't focus a full release on polishing only the fetish of the moment.

Year of Quanta4?

[JoeCommodore]

Is this the year they finally port Quanta to KDE4?

Re:Year of Quanta4?

[Anonymous Coward]

not yet.
see milian's blog: http://milianw.de/tag/quanta

Still using KDE 3.5.X...

[roubles]

because KDE 4.X was _not_ designed to work over VNC: http://forum.kde.org/brainstorm.php#idea90400

Re:Still using KDE 3.5.X...

[Abcd1234]

Just OOC, have you tried using freenx, instead? If the goal is to run a full DE over a low-bandwidth connection, NX is a *far FAR* superior solution.

Re:Still using KDE 3.5.X...

[oddfox]

I honestly think if more people knew about NX they would never use VNC unless it was absolutely the only solution available, period. VNC just blows chunks way too bad, and NX makes things so easy when bandwidth is important. Anyone who has not tried NX and uses VNC should seriously give it a try because the difference is night and day.

Re:is it stable?

[HermMunster]

When you see the icons on the Windows desktop change to generic and then slowly back to their icon that's the windows desktop manager crashing and reloading.

KDE doesn't crash on me. Yes, programs can and do crash, but to say that KDE crashes all the time indicates you have something wrong with your system.

Exactly. I was a KDE4 early adopter

[aussersterne]

because I was a longtime Fedora (since Fedora 1) and KDE (since KDE 1.0 Beta 3) user. When Fedora 9 (I believe) shipped with KDE4, I installed and determinedly used it for about a month and a half before it became clear that it was a time sink, unstable, poorly integrated, lacking in features and documentation and so on. It was, frankly, in my way.

Between Fedora 9 and Fedora 12 I used GNOME and logged into KDE periodically to see whether things had improved.

Throughout it all I submitted multiple bug reports and got back a whole bunch of WONTFIX, RESOLVED that didn't fix the problem at all, and instructions that if I wanted something fixed, I would have to do it myself. Each successive release would break any progress I'd made in getting the previous release to work the way that I wanted/needed it to, and major need didn't get addressed in either environment. And then GNOME announced the whole GNOME Shell fiasco to match the KDE4 fiasco and I immediately switched to Mac OS.

I still have a Linux install on my system (had been a Linux user since '93), but I only use it to do a few serious technical/maintenance tasks, which means that it rarely (once every 2-3 months) gets started.

Looking across the field at Firefox, OpenOffice, and Linux these days, it's starting to seem as though OSS is in danger of losing relevance.

Re:Exactly. I was a KDE4 early adopter

[sznupi]

There were times when you cherished such "turbulent" software... (just saying, not merely its characteristics had to change)

facets are the in thing

[josepha48]

Google has done faceted browsing in their image search, macys.com has added faceted browsing in this browse, and this seems to be the 'next in thing'. I do think that faceted browsing would be nice in a file manager.

I'm so looking forward to when speech to text actually comes to the desktops. It would be nice to be able to talk to my computer like I talk to my phone (my android actually does pretty good speech recognition).

Re:is it stable?

[jadrian]

Maybe is an issue with proprietary nvidia drivers?

You're arguing with the KDE fanbase

[nuonguy]

Do you realise that? These are the people that _like_ KDE and are going out of their way to report their findings. These are valuable members of the community and excellent ambassadors.

You're dismissing their feedback. This is what the MacOS8 guys were doing before Steve returned. Srsly.

I did a fresh install of my favourite distribution and I'm very disappointed with how buggy KDE is. And I'm a KDE fanbois, no joke. But explaining away short-comings isn't going to improve KDE, never has, never will.

Even if KDE's default is usable, that doesn't explain kmail's failure to receive some messages where mutt and apple's mail have no issues. When konsole is full-screen on one monitor of a dual monitor set up, apps under konsole don't come to the fore when I ALT+TAB to them. And more.

FWIW, I'm still using KDE daily and have learned to work with it. But please, for the love of GUI, please no new features until the most egregious bugs have been fixed.

Re:You're arguing with the KDE fanbase

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do I get the feeling your "favourite distribution" is "Ubuntu"...?

Re:You're arguing with the KDE fanbase

[nuonguy]

I have not yet taken the time to try Ubuntu. I hope to do that one day.

What difference does it make which distro I choose?

KDE 4.x and Gnome (current release) are all crap

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been using KDE since version 1.1 on my old SuSe 4.3 or 5.3 ... don't remember, but it was something like 10 years ago.
Since then KDE has worked and done exactly what I wanted a desktop manager to do... have a decent menu system, be coherent with all the goodies it brings and place things on my desktop relatively fast.

KDE 4.x is pure crap and so is gnome. And there is only ONE single reason they are pure crap... they both rely on pulseaudio for sound.
There is absolutely no way to install KDE 4 or Gnome without installing pulseaudio and have your audio to work properly.

I have moved to LXDE and I'm really happy. It does exactly the same that kde 3.5 did before the KDE team started using pulse audio... it has a decent menu systyem, it's coherent and places things on my desktop.

The other reason KDE 4.x was not installed is that after making a calculation on revenue lost just for changing to that desktop it was more than easy to find that it's a bad idea to change from KDE 3.5 to 4.x.
My workers cost me about 100 euro/hour. As an experienced KDE user it took me more than 4 hours to set KDE 4.x working properly, yet the sound still was crashing if the pulseaudio daemon died due to some reason. With 20 workers that would be a cost of 20 x 4 x 100 = 8k euro in total. Since we do video edits here, the sound is very important, so it's about 1 crash per machine per day... usually it was about 3 or 4 netting an hour of lost work every two days, or 10 hours of work per month and worker... or 10 x 100 x 20 = 2k euro lost per month because someone is stupid enough to rely on pulseaudio.

Simple math:
1 ) Change from KDE 3.5 to 4.x = 8000 euro setup cost for configuration and worker training.
2 ) Monthly lost work hours/revenue = 2000 euro
3 ) yearly total = 8000 + (2000 * 12) = 32.000 euro in lost money.

Hell, even buying my workers new workstations with windows 7 ultimate would cost less... and windows 7 crashes much less than KDE 4.x

Now the same math after moving to LXDE:
1 ) Setup cost = 2000 euro (took one hour per worker)
2 ) Monthly lost work hours/revenue = 0 euro LXDE doesn't takeover the sound stuff like a borg and takes care of the visual things as expected... so there are no crashes at all.
3 ) Yearly total = 2.000 euro in lost money.

And here you have a real life example on how windows is chaper than linux when running KDE. This one is true and now all my company workstations are running LXDE... we hate windows here :)

Agreed, 110% (well put man, totally)... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"And as a disclaimer, I do, and probably always will, love KDE. KDE4 started out weak (by design) and is building towards an amazing desktop environment. Every subsequent release provides marked progress towards that ideal." - by Jahava (946858) on Saturday November 27, @09:33AM (#34357674)

Well put, I agree 110% - & additionally, you were FAIR & HONEST in your assessment of KDE4 over time as far as "stability" & what-not in LINUX distros that utilize it.

(E.G.-> Others here about 1-2 weeks ago told me "Oh, you're stupid for using KUbuntu because it's unstable" & KUbuntu's my preferred LINUX "weapon-of-choice" & yes, it defaults to using KDE 4 as its interface (4.5.2 build iirc, & I am on 4.5.3 currently & fully updated)).

Yes, sure - KUbuntu has had its "hassles" in the past, but that doesn't mean they don't FIX them - because even the troll that was hassling me on using KUbuntu "backed off" in the end, especially after others here "rode him" and corrected he on it (which is what put the troll to rest in the thread I speak of here - others did that for me, after I even said "I don't see the hassles you speak of in KUbuntu" etc. in reply to that troll as well).
Anyhow/anyways:

I saw this thread here today, & you KNOW I am interested... So, I came in here to see what the scoop is on KDE 4.6, & that's myself yet again only "giving away" the fact I like KDE, & a LOT (it runs on a LOAD of other OS' too, lol, even WINDOWS (though I am NOT SURE how "stable" it is in Windows or if it runs on Windows 7 64-bit even)).

I saw a lot of feedback on it, & I can't wait until the folks @ KUbuntu state its "ready to roll" on KUbuntu using KDE 4.6 in fact... yes, it's that good/I like it (again). I usually see news of that here:

http://www.kubuntu.org/

However, nothing yet so far I have seen (I'll look again).

---

"Really? This is the attitude you chose to go with?... Instead you are quick to dismiss and blame the OP as incompetent and useless" - by Jahava (946858) on Saturday November 27, @09:33AM (#34357674)

No doubt, he's probably YET ANOTHER "/. wannabe" who *THINKS* he "knows all" about computing... only FOOLS act that way, especially to anyone who is a "noob", because when you come RIGHT DOWN TO IT? We've all been noobz @ some point in time, and in many things.

His name-tossing reply only evidenced he's not only a "noob" in computing (because you NEVER KNOW who it is you're talking to here in computing, nor what they've achieved themselves in this art & science, vs. what you have) but also, apparently, a "noob in life" (probably some juvenile kid is my estimation, offhand).

APK

P.S.=> Also, lastly (but NOT least)? I liked this best of all from you:

"This is exactly the kind of feedback the KDE team wants. All of the OP's problems should not exist - that's one of the KDE team's design goals. The OP's impressions, experiences, and feedback could, if funneled down to the right people, result in a superior desktop experience for everyone." - by Jahava (946858) on Saturday November 27, @09:33AM (#34357674)

Speaking as a multiply degreed professional developer of nearly 17 yrs. here, & one who's been multiply internationally published in printed media of good repute (such as Windows IT Pro mag amongst a dozen others) for softwares I've written since 1996?

You are DEAD-ON RIGHT...

I.E.-> I've gotten some great ideas and made needed fixes based on what users told me - couldn't have done it, w/out 'em in fact! apk

Re:KDE 4.x and Gnome (current release) are all cra

[sznupi]

So what does work nice enough for video editing on Linux to not be a waste a money?...

Argh. KDE 4.x still has alpha-level software.

[gottabeme]

KDE should be approaching around version 4.3 now, not 4.6. Why? It still has alpha-level software in full releases. Example: yesterday I filed a bug on Nepomuk because it fails to follow moved files (files moved in Dolphin, no less), and it loses the assigned tags and ratings. It's completely undependable, and therefore completely useless. I might as well put the tags and ratings in the filename. Nepomuk is missing basic functionality--it should be considered alpha-level software--yet it's presented to the user in a full "KDE SC release" as if it's feature-complete, reliable, and ready to be trusted and used to its full extent.

KDE needs to go the way of Debian and release "when it's ready." If I were a betting man I'd put money on people losing email to this new Akonadi backend because I know many bugs are going to be discovered and fixed only after 4.6 is released and put into the hands of unsuspecting users. Akonadi and the KDE PIM software should be tested to smithereens before it's even released as a first beta! There's no way I'd trust this new backend with my personal email archive! I lost email to old versions of KMail in 3.5, and that was a codebase that'd been worked on for years! There's absolutely no way Akonadi should be considered ready for primetime and released until it's been heavily tested and verified to function correctly and reliably, preferably with extensive unit tests. I don't care that KDE is developed by people for free in their spare time; they're expecting users to trust this new software with their important data, so they should make absolutely sure it's as tested and vetted as possible before releasing it to average users.

I still use KDE 3.5 on my laptop because even in KDE 4.5 I can't get the Plasma taskbar to look as clean, readable, and usable as Kicker in 3.5. I'd have to spend a week hacking a Plasma theme with custom PNGs just to get a clean taskbar with a plain translucent background that doesn't waste screen space on big, ugly borders and shiny, barely-readable buttons.

Not to mention that KPackageKit constantly crashes in Kubuntu 10.10, popping up a segfault error on top of whatever you're doing whenever it feels like it. (Don't even ask how many dupes of this bug are reported on bugs.kde.org.)

The bottom line, IMHO, is this: KDE shouldn't release anything (going back to 4.x) until it has feature-parity with previous versions, and until it is as tested and reliable as possible--in other words, "when it's ready." Anything else merely frustrates users and hurts its reputation--and sometimes risks data loss, as well.

But, of course, "voices of reason" like this (IMHO) have been sounding off since 4.0 and have always fallen on deaf ears. *sigh*

Sad but true.

[gottabeme]

Sad but true. Even in 4.5.1 I still get segfaults from Dolphin and plasma-desktop from time to time. Shouldn't those have been ironed out by, oh, I don't know, 4.2, at least?

not rock solid

[gottabeme]

Even KDE 4.5.1 is not rock solid. I still have segfaults in Dolphin, plasma-desktop, and KPackageKit. KDE 3.5.10 is more stable and reliable, and that's why I still use it on my laptop. It's sad, really.

Re:not rock solid

[Risen888]

Are you still bashing your head against Kubuntu? Jesus, you've gotta stop hurting yourself like that, it's unhealthy. The last time I had segfaults in Dolphin or plasma-desktop was probably about two years ago (4.3?).

KPackageKit has historically been a clusterfuck. Whatever version they shipped with Kubuntu 10.10 seems to be a pretty big improvement, but I still wouldn't trust it to manage my system.

Re:is it stable?

[gottabeme]

Nope. Even with KDE 4.5.1, plasma-desktop (the primary UI process!), Dolphin (the primary file manager!), and especially KPackageKit (the primary package manager!) segfault with some regularity.

It's not a system problem--it's unfixed bugs in KDE, bugs which I don't encounter when using 3.5.10.

I think I'll pass on this

[beermad]

I used to love KDE. In fact I've used it for something like ten years and even put up with the beta-level KDE4.0 in the foolish belief that it was worthwhile. But the sheer arrogance of the developers and their constant issuing of useless code has finally driven me away. Case in point, kaddressbook. Most recent version delivered to Mandriva lost all contacts set up in previous versions (you could get them back, but only after digging around to find out how) and not only deleted mailing lists but pretended to allow the creation of them while actually losing them as soon as they were saved. And apparently it's all the fault of the distros for not realising KDE were releasing non-functioning code and putting it out, not the fault of KDE for releasing crap. And they intend to keep it up. To quote http://userbase.kde.org/KAddressBook_4.4 "KAddressBook is a work-in-progress. That doesn't mean that it's unstable but it does mean that it's not complete. The layout you see in this version is very different from the older version, and it's quite possible that the next version will be different again, as we see more features being available to us again." With that sort of attitude, I suppose it's hardly surprising they've decided that everybody has to use over-blown useless crap like Nepomuk and Akonadi that just takes up huge amounts of system resource for little (if any) benefit. Having dumped KDE for IceWM, I now have a far more reliable, faster computer that's unencumbered by useless bloat. And about the only thing I actually MISS from KDE is the newsticker. But there are Firefox plugins that do the job, even if not quite as well, so it's a price worth paying to be shot of these "It's up to us whether we break your computer and if you don't like it, blame yourself or your distro" pillocks.

Re:I think I'll pass on this

[panda]

I worked on KDE 2.0, did some coding for KMail, and then because of time constraints from job and family had to give up on it. I quit using KDE soon after because I realized that other than one or two applications, I spent 90% of my day doing command line stuff. I used the BlackBox window manager for many years. Then, last year, I tried KDE 4.something again. Man, was I disappointed. The environment may have been nice and the look much improved, but very basic stuff was missing from a lot of the applications. Konqueror was hardly useable as a browser. There was no way to manage certificate and key stores, even using the dedicated application for that. Basic stuff that was there in 2.0 was simply missing. I don't know what discussions were had or what decisions were made since I left the community but someone seriously screwed the pooch on version numbering. To my mind, 4.4 or whatever I was using should have been a 4.0 pre-release. I got the impression that KDE's focus now is on the gee-whiz bells and whistles and they are less concerned with shipping something that works.

These days, I really don't give a crap about "desktop environment." I use the applications that I use, and again, I still spend a lot of my day writing command line applications to get real work done, mostly shuffling data from place to another or fixing problems created by user or programmer error. Frankly, KDE 4 felt like it was getting in the way, and its native applications (and I know some are written by the KDE team and some not) were lacking in features. I was forced to use applications that didn't integrate with the environment just to do something useful.

BTW, I feel pretty much the same way about Gnome, but I suppose that I am using Gnome since I switched from Kubuntu to Ubuntu. I really don't care, since the applications that I use don't integrate with any desktop environment.

Re:KDE 4.x and Gnome (current release) are all cra

[walshy007]

KDE 4.x is pure crap and so is gnome. And there is only ONE single reason they are pure crap... they both rely on pulseaudio for sound. There is absolutely no way to install KDE 4 or Gnome without installing pulseaudio and have your audio to work properly.

This is completely false, I run pulseaudio-free workstations with kde that use jack as the audio backend.

With this out of the way the rest of your post is meaningless.

Re:Argh. KDE 4.x still has alpha-level software.

[walshy007]

The bottom line, IMHO, is this: KDE shouldn't release anything (going back to 4.x) until it has feature-parity with previous versions, and until it is as tested and reliable as possible--in other words, "when it's ready." Anything else merely frustrates users and hurts its reputation--and sometimes risks data loss, as well.

Been using kde 4 since 4.0 and I have never experienced data loss etc, some apps had stability issues circa 4.0 and 4.1, but I'm using it for my primary machine and cannot actually think of the last time I had a segfault.

I know this is a 'works for me' kind of post, however I have installed systems running kde for quite a few people (although none of which with kubuntu) and none have ran into any issues thus far.

Re:KDE 4.x and Gnome (current release) are all cra

[KugelKurt]

If you hate KDE so much, why are you even visiting this story?

Re:KDE 4.x and Gnome (current release) are all cra

[evJeremy]

"There is absolutely no way to install KDE 4 or Gnome without installing pulseaudio"

Stop using Ubuntu then.