Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
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.
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.
-- $G
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.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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.
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.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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.