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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."
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
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...
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?
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".)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."