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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."
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.
this post contain no useful information, no need to mod it down
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.
This is blinging
Where?
This is blinging
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.
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
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?
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...
It might be an interesting development if in 5 years we abandon both KDE and Gnome, and use ChromiumOS or its forks instead
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).
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?
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).
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.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
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.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
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".)
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.
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.
what's your point, that the dude that wrote the article has terrible taste in his customized theme?
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.
Is this the year they finally port Quanta to KDE4?
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
heh
wait, no
groan
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.
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.
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.
because KDE 4.X was _not_ designed to work over VNC: http://forum.kde.org/brainstorm.php#idea90400
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.
"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.
Depending on the setup, you can get GNOME and KDE in under 500 MB of RAM, so they're not too bloated.
SSC
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.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
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.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
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.
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.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
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.
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.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
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.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
KDE needs to be heavily customized to make it usable for the Joe Public end users.
Completely false, and obviously a troll.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Maybe is an issue with proprietary nvidia drivers?
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)
SSC
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.
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.
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.
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.
KDE/Qt apps look native in GNOME. GNOME/Gtk apps look horrible in KDE.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
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.
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.
Toggle menu to a plain menu duh. Disabling graphical effects could help too I guess.
Quick way to get 30% Funny 70% Troll: defend Opera browser on
They are both GAY
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
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.
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
This is blinging
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
This is blinging
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
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.)
You set the KDE keyboard layout in systemsettings under Country and Language settings (don't know how it is exactly called in English locale).
So what does work nice enough for video editing on Linux to not be a waste a money?...
One that hath name thou can not otter
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*
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
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?
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
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.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
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.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
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.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
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.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
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.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
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.
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.
WOuld be really interesting with GNUstep - now that apparently it might get used bigtime. Ph333r rms.
One that hath name thou can not otter
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.
Second this. I am a vertical panel user.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
-- $G
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.
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.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
"Cluttered?!" You obviously haven't even seen a screenshot of KDE 4, have you?
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you hate KDE so much, why are you even visiting this story?
"There is absolutely no way to install KDE 4 or Gnome without installing pulseaudio"
Stop using Ubuntu then.
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.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
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.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
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.
If you like KDE 3.5 so much, just use Trinity: http://trinity.pearsoncomputing.net/
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.
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?
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
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.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
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.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
Trinity project might interest you.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
Whoa! Mind sharing some tips?
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
Most of what you listed are characteristic of OS/2 WPS.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
Well, you can technically write a Gtk+ wrapper for Qt. Any takers?
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
Then why not have GNOME reimplement itself atop KDE? GNOME UI, KDE tech, perfect combo, no?