KDE 4.7.0 Released

jrepin writes "KDE 4.7 releases provide many new features and improved stability and performance. Lots of visual polishing took place with an update to the Oxygen icons, and improved consistency between panel items such as clock and notification areas. The window manager KWin brings a new shadow system and can now run on OpenGL ES supporting hardware, making it better suited for mobile devices. Network management widget is much improved. Navigating through applications and recent files is easier with the addition of breadcrumbs to the Kickoff application launcher. Kontact groupware solution rejoins the rest of the KDE software, with increased stability, better connection to new services and sharing of communication information between more applications. Dolphin file manager has a cleaner default appearance. The menu bar is hidden, but easy to reach and restore. The file searching interface has been improved. Marble the virtual globe now has voice navigation support and a map creation wizard. Gwenview image viewer now offers the ability to compare two or more pictures side by side. Digikam photo management app brings face detection and recognition."

Comments

Gnome

[Nerdfest]

Not pulling a "Unity"? Right. Carry on then, and keep up the good work.

Re:Gnome

[m2vq]

I've always liked the KDE interface better anyway. It seems more professional (even back in the 90's) while Gnome has always been somehow "childish". And this was even before Unity-time.

Re:Gnome

[Nerdfest]

I like them both, I just found that for low resolution laptops Gnome fit better, while if I had a nice desktop with lots of space for widgets, etc, I'd probably go with KDE. As an Ubuntu user, I'm re-evaluating my options and may go with KDE or possible XFCE if Gnome 3 does not allow me the configurability I need. The ridiculous 'menu at the top' decision of Unity completely rule it out for me.

Re:Gnome

[jimmydevice]

I've felt the same way, too many feet. Rather use gnome though.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE's motd isn't "The user is a idiot" as is the case with gnome.

Re:Gnome

[spaceporn]

For me it isn't only a matter of space, I'm not that fond of widgets. Being an Ubuntu user I prefer indicators, they suit me better than any other option, and they feel less bloated. XFCE is my backup option. I still don't blame Ubuntu for Unity, though. I found myself getting used to it pretty fast. The only direction I didn't really appreciate was the one Gnome took with Shell. That said, it's good to see that KDE is being conservative about their interface.

Re:Gnome

[Nate B.]

Perhaps it's not as prevalent but it does exist in KDE as well. Mind that I was dedicated KDE user after 3.4 hooked me. I stuck with it until 4.4.something, or about a year ago on Debian. I installed a second video card and KDE4 lost its mind and barfed widgets, apps, and desktop backgrounds everywhere. I dumped it in short order, tried GNOME which coped better with the setup only by a matter of degree. I then gave XFCE4 a spin and it handles my Zaphod heads independent desktops like a champ. Session restoration does what I expect by putting apps back on the screen/desktop I prefer them and doesn't bork backgrounds or panels either.

The download/installation footprint of KDE these days makes it a non-starter to see if things have improved with respect to handling independent desktops. If it's working for someone else, that's great. I'm not going back.

Re:Gnome

[Osgeld]

your professional is another mans clown show

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome never "pulled a Unity". That was Ubuntu's doing. If you're talking about GNOME 3's default interface, that was in part because the old UI was hard to maintain and they wanted a fresh base to start off on. It will improve in future released substantially if you don't like it the way it is now (Google about the list of changes in 3.2, it looks great).

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE thinks their users are idiots too. I mean, look at those GUIs. I'm not an idiot, so I don't even use X. I don't even use ncurses. I ban that shit. I'm no fucking idiot.

In reality, just because every KDE configuration menu is endlessly cluttered with endless bullshit doesn't mean it's somehow smarter or more sophisticated, especially when they use it as an excuse to make the defaults in most applications completely horrible (see: Kopete). Many of us just call it "bloat", "bad defaults", "bad design", "stupid", "a failure in usability", etc.

edit: CAPTCHA = "usably". Fitting.

Re:Gnome

[jonahbron]

In my humble opinion, it's not so much "the user is an idiot" as much as "the user doesn't need built-in functionality to change every flippin' thing via a GUI". Note though that I'm talking about Classic Gnome, not Gnome Shell: don't know much about Shell.

Disclaimer: I use Gnome.

Re:Gnome

[SomeKDEUser]

a) your pet bug has actually probably been fixed: there was much work on multi -desktops

b) The size of KDE?? Uhhh, it is modular now.your download is probably smaller than it ever was in the KDE3 days.

Re:Gnome

[siride]

I keep seeing people post these kinds of attacks on KDE, yet they are never followed up with any substantial explanation of what the clutter and bloat actually is. I guess compared to GNOME, where having two checkboxes in a single window is considered advanced and confusing, KDE might look "cluttered". Personally, I like being able to actually do things with my computer. Every other OS lets you do that, why shouldn't Linux?

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried the netbook containment for KDE. It is designed for smaller screens.

Re:Gnome

[ozmanjusri]

your professional is another mans clown show

Or another child's Fisher Price toy .

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no fucking idiot.

Ah. So you're the basement-dwelling kind, then.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

But also not far from it.
The "The menu bar is hidden, but easy to reach and restore." gives you an idea: Why would you hide the thing in the first place??
A user having to restore all the useful but hidden-from-the-retards functions after installation, reminds me of something:
Let's say... they are pulling a "Windows". As always. :/

And then is the whole âoePlasmaâ thing, which has no fuckin' point whatsoever.
It offers you a thousand "Plasmoids", all of which offering pointless bling instead of real usefulness. Which is kinda understandable, considering that you can't see them anyway, since your actual application, with an actual use, lies over them in fullscreen at all times..

But at least it requires 695 MB just for krunner, which seems to have only two features:
1. Offer some kind of merger between the command line and a GUI widget, with the disadvantages of *both*. CLI: Disadvantage of not knowing or having to learn by heart what's available to type in, other than with a *menu*. Widget: Disadvantage of not offering an actual full CLI with scripting abilities and all.
2. Create a jumping animation of the icon of whatever you are executing. I kid you not.
Wow, that certainly needs 695 MB, doesn't it?

Of course plasma-desktop (here with a few barely useful widgets like time, calendar, weather, calculator and k-menu, all on the dashboard) takes another 717 MB,

Yes, most of it is swapped and not actually used by the program. But why allocate it in the first place then?

I am a KDE user, who only uses KDE, because Gnome is even worse... not because I would like KDE..., and because I don't want to go back to Windows 951^W^WXFCE.

Re:Gnome

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Re hidden plasmoids: Some people prefer and use the "show desktop"-button. The rest of us puts plasmoids in the panel, where it is visible all the time (or however you like it.)

If you don't like krunner, don't use it. I find it incredible useful. I use it for math, unit conversion and program launching all the time, plus the occasional shutdown as well. For me, it's the feature of KDE I use the most, and one of the killer features.

Re:Gnome

[impaledsunset]

The way things in the KDE world are done, soon you'd be most likely able to configure your desktop to look exactly like Unity if you like, without that being the default or only choice.

Re:Gnome

[dokc]

Re hidden plasmoids: Some people prefer and use the "show desktop"-button. The rest of us puts plasmoids in the panel, where it is visible all the time (or however you like it.)

Or we use multiple desktops (CTRL F1-F4 per default)

Re:Gnome

[Teun]

KDE's philosophy has since a few years been to keep the desktop space pretty much bare.

At the same time they do allow you to put anything there like in the Win95 days.

The Plasmoids are a flexible way of presenting helper applications, it's realy up to the individual where he wants to park them or how he initiates them, with exceptions there's certainly no need to have them clutter the desktop.

On my system krunner is taking 24,472 Kb, I can't possibly imagine what you are doing with it to get this high in memory use.

Re:Gnome

[DrXym]

Or more aptly, kitchen sink.

KDE has traditionally cared more for eye candy over usability and it shows in the amount of clutter in the UI. Advanced settings mixed with basic settings on so on. It produces a desktop which is intimidating and inaccessible to new users because there is no direction compared to responding behaviour in GNOME, or OS X, or even Windows. Even power users don't need all that crap in their face, and even if they did it would be better to shift it off into a power tool for their benefit.

While GNOME cuts too deep sometimes (and GNOME 3.x has some glaring shortcomings that need a point release to fix), it is no mystery to me why it has pulled ahead in popularity over KDE. Recent versions of KDE have made some effort to rein in clutter (e.g. rekonq is far less of a mess than traditional konq) but it's still not a patch on where it should be.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

'I've always liked the KDE interface better anyway. It seems more professional (even back in the 90's) while Gnome has always been somehow "childish"'

In the 3.x days, I would have agreed with you 100%. For a while there, KDE was becoming known "the desktop for grown-ups".

However, that is precisely why I felt so betrayed when they destroyed any practical use of that desktop in 4.x. I had come to rely on it for getting things done, and it became an unusable mess, that was overly focused on being "pretty" [and failing at that too].

GNOME 2.x is FAR superior these days, for people who just want to get stuff done. Whether GNOME 3.x will usable in the end, or just another KDE 4.x, I don't yet know, but for now, it seems to be going the same way. I've even wondered on occasion if there are decision makers (or decision swayers) in these desktop projects, whose real motives are to prevent the projects from going mainstream.

Re:Gnome

[drinkypoo]

Clown show is better. Shit is just popping out the sides like you have 22 clowns in a 20-clown car. GNOME is just one sad, fat clown turning his pockets inside out.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with Gnome being so 90-ties or childish? No matter how much I like KDE's looks over Gnome, I keep coming back to Gnome after trying each new KDE release. I'm not a fan of good looks, I'd rather prefer comfortable non-distracting workflow, without all these bell and whistles. Although Gnome is far from being perfect, I like it for trying to make things simple. I guess this is why, in the long run I prefer working with Gnome, despite inferior appearance and configuration options.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? The disinformation is very strong in this one, Kimosabi.

Here is a screen shot of the default configuration of Windows Explorer from Windows 7.

http://cdn.gottabemobile.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/windows7explorer.jpg

Here is a screen shot of the default configuration of Dolphin from KDE SC 4.7

http://dolphin.kde.org/images/dolphin4_7_preview.png

In both of these there is no menu bar, in order to provide a bit more vertical screen space I suppose. In both of these there is considerable scope to customise the toolbar and to set bookmarks/favourites.

Only Dolphin has a split screen. Only Dolphin has tabs. Only Dolphin has a zoomer. Only Dolphin has a filter bar. Only Dolphin has plug-ins for access to online repositories. Only Dolphin has selection/de-selection handles. Only Dolphin has a built-in terminal.

http://dolphin.kde.org/images/all_features.png

If anything, in order to offer its users a bit of value, Microsoft Windows needs to "pull a KDE".

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

The way things in the KDE world are done, soon you'd be most likely able to configure your desktop to look exactly like Unity if you like, without that being the default or only choice.

In addition you would be able to save that configuration as an "activity", and name it "Unity mockup" if you liked. Subsequently you would be able to re-load that activity, or any other desktop configuration you had saved under a different name, on to one or more of the available virtual desktop screens, at your whim.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

You what? Ok. Complete opposite for me. Gnome has so much padding around every UI element + rounded corners that waste space that I'm really reluctant to use it on anything mobile. And unfortunately there seem to be no decent themes to make it more compact :-(

Re:Gnome

[ThePhilips]

Even power users don't need all that crap in their face, and even if they did it would be better to shift it off into a power tool for their benefit.

While GNOME cuts too deep sometimes [...]

You're brushing off a crucial difference: in KDE, I pretty much always can disable/hide/remove the "all that crap." In the end, making out of the desktop precisely what I need or want.

If GNOME has removed or added something, one is forced to use some quirks and tricks for as long as the developers do not change their mind. It got much better after advent of Ubuntu, but still at times I want GNOME to spary "all that crap in [my] face" - instead of the "beauty is skin deep" it often present.

Re:Gnome

[MBGMorden]

You could just as much call Ubuntu's Unity fiasco "pulling a Gnome Shell". Realistically both Unity AND Gnome Shell suck, and suck bad. For the time being I'm still running classic mode. When that option is gone, I'm off to Xfce or KDE - or god help me even Windows 7 before I bother with Unity or Gnome Shell.

It's "pulling a Unity" because both of them took a perfectly fine, valid, and working interface, and screwed it up in the name of "change". Sometimes developers get so attached to the idea that things need to constantly "change" that they start to see anything difference as good, regardless of actual quality or efficiency.

Re:Gnome

[salesgeek]

It produces a desktop which is intimidating and inaccessible to new users

I don't think there are that many new computer users out there. Maybe it's time to change the assumption that everyone wants or needs welded on training wheels.

Re:Gnome

[Requiem18th]

KDE's motto is "You will use our widgets and you will like it" Otherwise you are an idiot.

I'll switch to KDE when they stop using plasma, or when plasma stops being so fucking arrogant.

Why does KDE reserve two screen corners --half of them-- to configure widgets? Because configuring widgets is all the work you'll ever do on a KDE system, or at least the most important thing you'll ever want to do in your daily life, according to KDE.

Re:Gnome

[DrXym]

New users to KDE. Being dumped in a sea of buttons, menus, dialogs, tabs, secondary dialogs is intimidating. It's a usability nightmare. And it's not about "training wheels" either. The purpose of desktops is to facilitate doing stuff and to do so in the most intuitive, minimal, forgiving, task centric way possible. If that means stripping esoteric settings, moving other stuff off into advanced dialogs or even into a separate a power tools app then so be it.

Users of all levels can easily be accommodated by the same GUI. OS X and Windows manage it. GNOME manages it. KDE doesn't. And that probably explains why it has become the also-ran desktop compared to GNOME.

Re:Gnome

[Tomato42]

If I didn't want to be able to set up my GUI applications using GUI config menus I'd be using CLI applications. At least I'd be able to read archived mail over SSH...

Re:Gnome

[Osgeld]

This is what usually drives me screaming from KDE, I just want crap to work at a reasonable level out of the box, I am not 14, this is not 1995, and I have much better things to do than spend a bunch of effort removing "all this crap" or spend an hour digging through a forum, just to have a sane desktop experience.

I thought we had this GUI thing nailed

Re:Gnome

[salesgeek]

The purpose of desktops is to facilitate doing stuff and to do so in the most intuitive, minimal, forgiving, task centric way possible.

Those are certainly your rules. They won't ever work because they are a hairball of conflict (more on that in a second). My desktop is for getting work done as quickly as possible.

In short, the rules you have are silly, and will not work well, but they probably sound good at the coffee shop or when you are in a room full of people wearing black turtlenecks:

being task centric can be in conflict with doing stuff
(what if I need to interrupt my task... modial dialog madness anyone?)

being intuitive may not be task centric
(computers are multitasking. When you focus on one task, multitasking becomes less than intuitive)

task centric man not be minimal
(complex tasks sometimes require complex tools. Simplicity is nice, but sometimes you need Blender)

minimal may be in conflict with intuitive
(where do I change settings? settings are deprecated)

being minimal may preclude being forgiving
(how do I make it so I can do this? that options does not exist.)

Re:Gnome

[badkarmadayaccount]

Bwahahahahaha! Windows? Please - up until NT 6.1 I had all the power of a basic wm from '85. Even then I wouldn't say that it's actually power user. OS X? Nice and consistent, with some really nice tricks, but still, no cigar. Your environment should fit you like a glove - and hence, be configurable - now, I think we share an opinion about conf dialogues. And I'll pretend I didn't see anything about GNOME managing anything except being obnoxious.

Re:Gnome

[badkarmadayaccount]

Do you have tips on decreasing load times?

Each major release is taking longer

[thsths]

Each release takes longer before it becomes useful. KDE 1.1 was working just right for me. So was KDE 2.3. KDE 3 did not really mature until 3.3 or 3.4. KDE 4 is just now getting there, after 8 minor releases. Some things are still working better in KDE 3, or in KDE 1 for that.

Don't get me wrong, I like KDE. But we are paying a huge price for "progress".

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Anonymous Coward]

It was pretty much fine at 4.3, I'm not sure what everyone is still so damn hung up on, yes yes yes we know 4.0 sucked major balls and 4.1 didn't improve much... but between 4.2 and 4.3 it was all pretty much handled aside from minor shit.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Anonymous Coward]

Each release takes longer before it becomes useful. KDE 1.1 was working just right for me. So was KDE 2.3. KDE 3 did not really mature until 3.3 or 3.4. KDE 4 is just now getting there, after 8 minor releases. Some things are still working better in KDE 3, or in KDE 1 for that.

Don't get me wrong, I like KDE. But we are paying a huge price for "progress".

You are going to have to name something which you think is "still working better in KDE 3", because from an objective perspective KDE SC 4 stomps all over KDE 3, and has done so for quite some time now.

BTW, progress is rampant in KDE SC 4, and it is absolutely stalled in KDE 3.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, progress is rampant in KDE SC 4, and it is absolutely stalled in KDE 3.

Maybe that has to do with KDE SC stopping all development on it in favor of a total (and at the time only partially functional) rewrite? Nah, that can't be.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Lord Kano]

IMHO, KDE peaked with 3.5.x. I haven't had any interest at all in 4.x. I tried a few releases but I got so tired with being disappointed that I just said to hell with it, so I went to Trinity KDE.

LK

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[fast turtle]

Did they return the multiple desktop and individual backgrounds? Locking Apps to specific Desktops?

No they haven't and they're still pushing Dolphin as the File manager instead of sticking with Konq, which worked quite well for that and browsing the web. Hell I found it quite useful when accessing an ftp site that I had write privs as it allowed me to simply copy files from the system to the server.

As a 3.5 user, I would have preferred them to simply bug fix and transition 3.5 over to QT4. Some of the restructuring was needed but the complete change to the UI was totally unneeded. Instead they had to copy MS and Vista and loose the one feature that made KDE stand out for me, which was the configurable desktops, background images and locking apps to specific desktops.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[elfprince13]

You should try OS X. We have these nifty things called Spaces. They don't have background images per desktop, but locking apps to a desktop (or set of desktops) is easy.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[colinrichardday]

I have multiple desktops with individual backgrounds. It also appears that I can lock apps to a desktop (icon->advanced->special applications settings). But I agree with you on Dolphin.

This is on KDE 4.6.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[ManTaboo]

How about settings>Workspace Behaviour>Virtual Desktops>Different Widgets for Each Desktop...It's that easy!

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[siride]

It was three and a half years ago. Get over it.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[SomeKDEUser]

Spaces is a terrible implementation of multiple desktops. As for binding apps to desktops, kwin allows you to set rules which will force apps to launch in a specified desktop.

Also, you can have an activity per desktop, and thus a background per desktop.

The parent has clearly not used KDE for 3 years, and has no clue what he is talking about.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[visualight]

At first you could still use konqueror as a file manager but then they "fixed" it so that konqueror just uses the same kpart as dolphin. And it sucks. Doesn't refresh half the time and when it does it flashes your focus back to the top. Konqeror didn't do that and I loved it.

Konqueror has always sucked as a dedicated web browser though. I've always wondered why they killed the best file browser ever made in favor of the worst web browser ever made

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[SomeKDEUser]

But thankfully, the KDE devs are not wedded to the 90s, and those of us who want a modern desktop still get one. Isn't free software wonderful?

Also, you say you tried a few releases. my guess is you haven't tries in a year. Which is an enormous amount of dev time. So you maybe should keep trying :)

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[ftobin]

Thank you for posting this. I'm not sure if you were trying to be sarcastic, but it's certainly non-obvious how to achieve different wallpapers for each desktop.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[ManTaboo]

I agree that it is not 'completely' obvious. I wasn't trying to be sarcastic, I was simply stating that the functionality is in deed there

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Lord Kano]

Fortunately, some devs are more concerned with doing what works instead of following the herd. Yes Free Software is great.

The KDE team lost me two years ago. I don't care what they're doing now. If I wanted everything I did to feel like I was using a cell phone, I'd buy an iPad.

LK

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh...Trinity KDE. It reminds me of when I gave a shit about KDE, back before the 4.x crap!

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[TheABomb]

All of this, and ksirtet.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they return the multiple desktop and individual backgrounds? Locking Apps to specific Desktops?

No they haven't and they're still pushing Dolphin as the File manager instead of sticking with Konq, which worked quite well for that and browsing the web. Hell I found it quite useful when accessing an ftp site that I had write privs as it allowed me to simply copy files from the system to the server.

As a 3.5 user, I would have preferred them to simply bug fix and transition 3.5 over to QT4. Some of the restructuring was needed but the complete change to the UI was totally unneeded. Instead they had to copy MS and Vista and loose the one feature that made KDE stand out for me, which was the configurable desktops, background images and locking apps to specific desktops.

"Activities" is all about setting up specific Apps, shortcuts, folder views, desktop icons, widgets, etc etc to specific named activities. One can then set up a specific activity to a specific desktop.

http://maketecheasier.com/use-kde-plasma-activities/2010/09/01

By default, all virtual desktops operate on the same activity and look identical. If you add a widget on desktop 1, it will be the same on 2, 3, and 4. Similarly, icons, panels, and anything else you add will all be the same. With activities, however, you can separate each desktop into truly independent workspaces.

To have a unique activity for each desktop:

1.Open System Settings
2.Under the “Workspace Appearance and Behavior” section, click “Window Behavior”
3.Click the “Virtual Desktops” icon.
4.In the Layout section, check “Different widgets for each desktop”
5.Click “Apply”.

After you have enabled this feature, you can add unique icons, widgets, and wallpapers to each individual desktop.

Dolphin works perfectly well with ftp sites, sftp sites and even online code management systems.

http://kde.org/announcements/4.7/applications.php

Dolphin, KDE’s file manager, has a cleaner default appearance. The menu bar is hidden, but easy to reach and restore. The file searching interface has been improved. In addition, Dolphin now has much deeper integration with source code management systems, including the ability to create and clone repositories, push and pull changes, view diffs and much more.

KDE 3.5.x was essentially broken, parts of it such as the aRts sound server are no longer maintained. There was a problem maintaining KDE 3.5.x that went well beyond just Qt4.

There is no part of the KDE UI, AFAIK, that is not at least retained capability from KDE 3.5.x, and much of the desktop UI is vastly improved.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[AvitarX]

I bet it's even easier if you search "desktop" or maybe "backgrround" in the settingds app.

I though kde4 was ok from 4.3, and 4.6 was the first that was really good (no crashes on my laptop, or graphical curuption).

I am willing to bet with the new changes it's now really good (clean up of open gl).

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[AvitarX]

I've always loved dolphin for it's speed and obvious dual panes, and wondered why all other file browsers feel slow and sucky.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Lord Kano]

It was three and a half years ago. Get over it.

Count me in his camp. KDE4 is poop. I still use KDE 3.5, the Trinity KDE project is proof enough that a substantial minority of KDE users feel as we do.

I dispute the notion that it's "progress" to copy what everyone else is doing, but implement it with your own little twist.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[SomeKDEUser]

Uhhh. Nope, that is GNOME (or apple). KDE still has a desktop which feels like a desktop. The mobile/tablet thing is just an option: on a small screen, I prefer the UI designed for it, and on large screens, the classical desktop UI.

I also note that although you haven't tried the desktop in two years, you still feel justified in saying horrible things about the work people are doing for free. I guess the recent article about people behaving like psychopaths on the internet was not too far off the mark.

BTW, you may criticize, this is your freedom, and makes for good debate. You may even say "two years ago, I thought it sucked". But it is dishonest to say it still suck when you could not be bothered to try. Presumably because you derive joy in being cruel to people you have never met because of a perceived slight you received years ago. About a computer programme you got for free.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Anonymous Coward]

I dispute the notion that KDE4 is poop. I dispute the notion that there is a single, solitary thing about Trinity KDE that is better in any way than KDE4.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[The Master Control P]

Personally I'm stuck on the unbelievably, mind-warpingly horrible performance.

Half a minute to generate a few thousand .jpg thumbnails in konqueror? Dragon player sputtering and dropping frames on a 640x480 video? It doesn't even seem to be exclusive to multimedia. The entire qt4 framework is so shockingly slow it's unbelievable... Every damned release they keep saying "performance is even better" and yet the instant I moved any window, the screen slowed to a slideshow for an appreciable fraction of a second while it apparently dug something out of cache.

I've since installed xfce4 and never looked back. KDE is basically unusable on a 2.7Ghz dual core Athlon2 and has been since 4.x came out... I'm not joking when I say that xfce4 is more responsive on a 15 year old SGI Indy on than KDE is on my normal desktop, despite having 1/50 the CPU power, 1/30 the memory and a 2MB framebuffer graphics card.

The only part of kde4 that I've ever missed is the "mouse mark" applet.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[tick-tock-atona]

Did they return the multiple desktop and individual backgrounds? Locking Apps to specific Desktops?

Yes.

No they haven't and they're still pushing Dolphin as the File manager instead of sticking with Konq, which worked quite well for that and browsing the web. Hell I found it quite useful when accessing an ftp site that I had write privs as it allowed me to simply copy files from the system to the server.

Yes they have. Konqeror is still there, and can be set as the default file manager if you want.

As a 3.5 user, I would have preferred them to simply bug fix and transition 3.5 over to QT4. Some of the restructuring was needed but the complete change to the UI was totally unneeded. Instead they had to copy MS and Vista and loose the one feature that made KDE stand out for me, which was the configurable desktops, background images and locking apps to specific desktops.

As I said, all these features are available, accessible, and are arguably better than they were in KDE 3. I honestly don't know how you haven't been able to discover them.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Yet other people report stellar performance on low-ends, so it's not clear-cut what is going on --- it could be a defective driver, some application going haywire on you, or a distro problem. I don't own a low-end computer (an Athlon64 is my current lowest-end), and on these KDE works just fine. The 1Gb RAM machine is struggling with the number of facebook tabs my wife wants to put on it, though.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[EsbenMoseHansen]

How the heck could KDE4(.0) copy Vista?

As for your desktop woes, I think your problem is that you are using Desktop for the usecase Activities were designed to. If you instead of multiple desktop use multiple activities, you can have your wallpapers and your application configured per activity. As a bonus, you could even have some application on more than one (or all) activities, if that makes sense for you.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Freultwah]

Spaces is a terrible implementation of multiple desktops.

And you back your claims how exactly? Or is it just sufficient to blurt something out?

I switched from KDE 3.5.x to OS X 10.6 on the desktop at the end of 2007. Save a few glitches with Microsoft apps, there was absolutely nothing about Spaces that came up short in any way compared to KDE. Things have only got better since.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Anonymous Coward]

The main thing is that I got rid of my virtual desktops and replaced them with activities.

The activities directly allows different wallpapers, plasmoids and so on.
They just are virtual desktops on steroids...

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they return the multiple desktop and individual backgrounds? Locking Apps to specific Desktops?

Yes. They did. A long time ago

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[BlackCreek]

> Also, you say you tried a few releases. my guess is you haven't tries in a year. Which is an enormous amount of dev time. So you maybe should keep trying :)

You see that is what many FOSS devs (specially Linux Desktop devs (specially KDE devs)) don't seem to get.

Trying out a desktop takes time and effort. Most people have better things to do in life than "trying out KDE/Gnome/XFCE/etc every 3/6/12 months" to see which are the latest (mostly useless) desktop new effects and integration gimmicks.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[jadrian]

The confusion arises because there's a small paradigm change. You now have activities, which are more generic. The idea is that you run an activity for each particular task you want to accomplish, therefore each activity may have completely different settings and even provide you with completely different user interfaces. And in that context a virtual desktop becomes just a bit of extra space within an activity.

Now you may still say want a wallpaper per desktop anyway, but that's not any more sensible than asking for say, different icons per desktop. And of course this can be generalised to any particular widget. So KDE provides you with an option to change those widgets per virtual desktop. You looking for a specific option for wallpaper only, is a result of your habits based on the fact that previously, there wasn't much else you could change.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[horza]

Yikes I've always found Dolphin slow, crash-prone, and I hate the fact 1-click launches. For me its the weak point of KDE. Try ROX.

Phillip.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[elfprince13]

Yes, Spaces lets you set the rules as well to force apps to launch in a specified desktop. That is exactly what I was pointing out to you in my previous post. I'm not sure why you felt the need to point out that kwin could do that too when we were discussing exactly that feature. But no, I haven't used KDE in quite some time (exactly 3 years). But I have used OS X for a very very long time, and clearly do know what I am talking about (Spaces). I don't have to know KDE to respond to someone else's description of its features.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[siride]

"I dispute the notion that it's "progress" to copy what everyone else is doing, but implement it with your own little twist."

How is KDE 3.5 any different? KDE 3.5 copied Windows 2000 and KDE 4 is copying Vista. Aside from superficial things like that, the KDE way is just as present in KDE 4 as in KDE 3.5. For the things that have changed, and you don't like, you very easily can change it to be like KDE 3.5: the K menu, the desktop, the file manager can all be configured to be like KDE 3.5. You can even use Plastik as your theme if that makes you feel more at home. On the plus side, everything works better and is actually being updated.

I'm saying this as a former die-hard KDE 3.5 fan who did not switch to KDE 4 until KDE 4.5.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[vgerclover]

Did they return the multiple desktop and individual backgrounds? Locking Apps to specific Desktops?

Others have already explained how to do the first, and as for the second:

• Go to the title bar of the application you want to restrict to a desktop
• Advanced
• Special Application Settings
• Geometry
• Check Desktop, Force, Desktop

While you are at it, you'll see that you can set any attribute of that application's windows from here, even some that you most likely didn't even know existed.

No they haven't and they're still pushing Dolphin as the File manager instead of sticking with Konq, which worked quite well for that and browsing the web. Hell I found it quite useful when accessing an ftp site that I had write privs as it allowed me to simply copy files from the system to the server.

I don't see what your problem with Dolphin and FTP is:

Is FTP access possible? Dolphin uses the KIO slaves like Konqueror and hence can access all common protocols like ftp:// home:/, file:/, system:/, media:/, remote:/, applications:/, sftp:/, fish:/ and smb:/.

As a 3.5 user, I would have preferred them to simply bug fix and transition 3.5 over to QT4. Some of the restructuring was needed but the complete change to the UI was totally unneeded. Instead they had to copy MS and Vista and loose the one feature that made KDE stand out for me, which was the configurable desktops, background images and locking apps to specific desktops.

All those things still exist, and they are also some of the reasons I use it too.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[ftobin]

To be honest, after reading your first first paragraph, I'm still having a hard time comprehending it, probably because the idea of an "activity" seems to be an abstraction that I am unfamiliar with. The last sentence "And in that context a virtual desktop becomes just a bit of extra space within an activity" definitely loses me. My gut is that the abstraction of an "activity" is not something that should be exposed to the user. You're going to lose 95% of your audience.

Most users of KDE I've encountered have no idea what those thingies at the top-right corner of their desktop is for. It's certainly not obvious to me, from the terminology chosen, that having different "widgets" for each desktop gives me the ability to have different wallpapers on each (I'm still not sure if widgets == activity).

I'll note I've been using KDE for over 12 years, enjoyed my different backgrounds for each desktop, and until yesterday thought they were gone forever with KDE 4 (and probably were gone for the first few versions of 4). I've seen plenty of other snippets on the web concerning this as well, and the fact that people are *still* complaining about this loss goes to show that the new paradigm is not being presented well.

The concept of Multiple Desktops is obvious, and has real-world parallels. This generic abstraction called an activity...not so much. I'm really curious what the driving force was for this. Abstractions have cost, and I'm not clear what has been gained by this one.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[vgerclover]

You see that is what many FOSS devs (specially Linux Desktop devs (specially KDE devs)) don't seem to get.

You seem to think that FOSS devs are out to get users, when in fact they are out to make the best software they can, regardless of time to release and user base uptake. For people that want timed releases or that want its pet peeve solved/implemented without the will to do it or pay to get it done, that is undesirable, for people that are willing to either use "old", proved versions or follow along with experimental code for software that strives for excellence, this is great. To each its own.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[m50d]

Here's my missing feature: no way to set a default transparency for foreground windows. Still. It was there in kde 3.5, I've filed a bug report about it, but nothing.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[bcmm]

Multiple desktop have worked since the beginning. If I recall correctly, having different wallpapers on each desktop requires that you have a different "activity" on each desktop (i.e. different widgets).

Locking applications to specific desktops is easily done with window-specific kwin settings, in pretty much the same way as in 3.5. Right click the window title bar, select Advanced > Special application settings. Who modded this up?

Konqueror is still around, still maintained and improved, and still works fine for file browsing. Many improvements to Dolphin apply to Konqueror too, since they use the same kparts to view directories. I absolutely prefer Konqueror, but must reluctantly agree that users that can't manage to change a single file-type association should probably be using Dolphin.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Anonymous Coward]

Well:
- 3.0: 04-2002
- 3.3: 08-2004 (2 years and 4 months)
Versus:
- 4.0: 01-2008
- 4.5: 08-2010 (2 years, 7 months)

I don't know how mature you considered 3.3, but for me KDE 4.4 was "good enough" while KDE 4.5 was mature. Of course there are specific applications that were not even good enough last time I checked (kbibtex), but a lot of them are better than KDE 3 (amarok, kdevelop and majority of basic stuff).

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest, after reading your first first paragraph, I'm still having a hard time comprehending it, probably because the idea of an "activity" seems to be an abstraction that I am unfamiliar with. The last sentence "And in that context a virtual desktop becomes just a bit of extra space within an activity" definitely loses me. My gut is that the abstraction of an "activity" is not something that should be exposed to the user. You're going to lose 95% of your audience.

Most users of KDE I've encountered have no idea what those thingies at the top-right corner of their desktop is for. It's certainly not obvious to me, from the terminology chosen, that having different "widgets" for each desktop gives me the ability to have different wallpapers on each (I'm still not sure if widgets == activity).

I'll note I've been using KDE for over 12 years, enjoyed my different backgrounds for each desktop, and until yesterday thought they were gone forever with KDE 4 (and probably were gone for the first few versions of 4). I've seen plenty of other snippets on the web concerning this as well, and the fact that people are *still* complaining about this loss goes to show that the new paradigm is not being presented well.

The concept of Multiple Desktops is obvious, and has real-world parallels. This generic abstraction called an activity...not so much. I'm really curious what the driving force was for this. Abstractions have cost, and I'm not clear what has been gained by this one.

OK, I will try to explain the abstract concept. I will start with the idea of virtual desktops, since you are familiar with that.

On a given generic desktop (be it GNOME, or even XFCE, OSX Lion or Windows 7) you can change the wallpaper, place icons, place widgets, place shortcuts, place files, change the panel, put shortcuts in the "quick access" region, change the size and the position of the panel(s) ... basically set it up how you like. Windows 7 gives you only one desktop on which to do this, as does OSX. Gnome lets you have as many virtual desktops as you like, some parts of which are the same on all virtual desktops, and some parts can be different from desktop to desktop.

OK with all that so far?

OK, you can do all that on KDE virtual desktops. KDE implements everything on the desktop ... the panels, the taskbar, the menu, the wallpaper, the shrotcuts ... everything as widgets. They are all widgets to KDE's Plasma. By default the behaviour is like GNOME, with most of the desktop configuration (i.e. the widgets and their size and placement) appearing the same on all virtual desktops. However, KDE has a non-default setting which allows different virtual desktops to have different sets of, and layouts of, widgets.

OK with all that so far?

OK, now on KDE, you can play with a configuration of desktop widgets, and set it up perfectly for just how you like it. The thing is, you have the ability to "save" that setup and give it a name. Lets call it "just how I like it". OK, you can save a given desktop setup as a thing called an "activity" and name that activity "just how I like it". You can "load" the activity saved as "just how I like it" on virtual desktop 1, and on virtual desktop 2 if you like, or indeed you can load it on to as many virtual desktops as you want. When you load a named activity on to a virtual desktop, the entire desktop setup will switch to the configuration as you saved it.

Now imagine that "just how you like it" is actually a bit of a compromise. Perhaps when you are browsing the net, you would rather that the main panel was actually placed down the left-hand side of the desktop screen, rather than at the bottom, because that gives you more vertical screen real-estate. You might also like a lot of URL shortcuts to be readily available, and you are not so interested in shortcuts to other applications, because you are browsing the net not running applications. OK, you decide to chan

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Lord Kano]

For the things that have changed, and you don't like, you very easily can change it to be like KDE 3.5

Almost, and for me almost isn't good enough.

LK

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Lord Kano]

Good and bad are subjective terms. I can't authoritatively declare that the software is bad. What I can declare is that I don't like it. I think that KDE 4.x is shit.

BTW, you may criticize, this is your freedom, and makes for good debate. You may even say "two years ago, I thought it sucked". But it is dishonest to say it still suck when you could not be bothered to try.

Also, I can say that I lost faith in the ability of the KDE team to make a good desktop. And because I lost faith in their ability, I will not try their newest shit.

Presumably because you derive joy in being cruel to people you have never met because of a perceived slight you received years ago. About a computer programme you got for free.

You presume incorrectly. I like hitting fanboys in the face with other, more balanced, opinions.

LK

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[ftobin]

Thank you for writing this up. I see it now that a activity is a "desktop settings" configuration. It definitely has power, but I'm curious to see if it's harnessable. I wonder how many people using KDE are aware of this.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[SomeKDEUser]

Preemptively calling software you have not tested "shit" is balanced. Okayyyy. Must be the same "balanced" fox uses...

Software development is not about faith. It is an evolutionary process where the state at any point is not a good measure of the state in the future.

That being said, you clearly like gratuitously insulting people for no valid reason. That is not the hallmark of a nice person. Or a balanced person. And insulting the KDE team because they dared give you something you were not quite satisfied with is... obscene, I guess.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Lord Kano]

If someone has a recent track record of making shit, it's not unreasonable to expect their newest work to be shit.

If Bill Cosby were to make Leonard Part 7, I would not go see it. Why? Because Leonard Part 6 and Ghost Dad were shit.

That being said, you clearly like gratuitously insulting people for no valid reason.

Try a cool shower. It soothes the butthurt. I have not insulted anyone. I have insulted some peoples' work, but not them.

And insulting the KDE team

Correction: Insulting their work, not them.

because they dared give you something you were not quite satisfied with is

Correction: They stopped development on a good product to put out a shit product. It's fitting that they patterned the UI after Vista, because Vista was Microsoft's big screw up too.

LK

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[SomeKDEUser]

"I have no faith in those people because they only produce shit", sayest thou.

But you are not insulting them, just their product, which by your own admission, you did not try.

Sad.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[siride]

Which things would those be? I'm serious. What's really missing?

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Lord Kano]

My posts are right here. You can't misrepresent what I said, when you're replying to me saying it.

Try addressing what I actually said, fanboi.

My implication wasn't that they only produce shit. If I felt that way, I wouldn't want to use KDE 3.5 either. My implication was that their recent work has been shit.

It's not an insult to have no faith in someone.

LK

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[SomeKDEUser]

I don't need to misrepresent your comments, they are there for all to see. I am just pointing out how wrong and nasty they are. And I am not even a KDE dev!

KDE3 came out many years ago, developed by a different group, some members of which are still working on KDE4.

But by and large, the group is different. Some developers have only arrived during the last development cycle.

You refuse to test their work and declare it "shit". On a (very frequented) public forum. People whom you have never met, do not know, and whose only sin is to be part of the same project which displeased you many years ago.

And you have the gall to think yourself justified.

Never mind that I think you are wrong about KDE 3 and 4: this is the realm of opinion (more or less, at least I know what I am talking about). I just think you need to be told that the way you are behaving towards fellow humans is crappy. The sense of self-satisfied entitlement and selfishness which permeates your postings is sickening.

You are not a nice person.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[jadrian]

You already got a really nice response here, but let me just add a few things.

If you like the "multiple desktop" metaphor then think of activities as different "offices", these are different works spaces that you can go to to perform different tasks, and each office may have it's own decorations, all different kinds of appliances on sight, some appliances always running by default, and possibly multiple desks to put your stuff. Unfortunately the implementation is still (in my opinion) a bit primitive. But eventually it should provide you with all different kinds of office spaces (activities) optimised to work in a certain kind of way, and furthermore make it easy to define your own.

For instance, you could have your Programming Environment. Here programming tools as icons on desktop and panel. By default it could open a couple of konsoles with different tabs in common directories in one of the virtual desktops. In another maybe Git client logged in to your main repository and another konsole. Of course you could be running two such activities of this same kind, one for your Java project and another for some Haskell project, and alternate between both. And when you're not using one of them you could pause it, and ideally in practise this could work as a local "suspend" or "hibernate", i.e. free your processor and possibly memory until you want to return to it and have everything back up running again in the previous state.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Lord Kano]

I don't need to misrepresent your comments

Clearly, you do or else you wouldn't need to try to invent things that I never said.

The sense of self-satisfied entitlement and selfishness which permeates your postings is sickening.

You must be new here. This is the internet, it's a place where most people act as though their opinion is the most important one in the history of man. From my perspective, my opinion is the only one that matters.

You are not a nice person.

Try a cool shower, fanboi. It soothes the butthurt.

LK

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Anonymous Coward]

Count me in his camp. KDE4 is poop.

Then why are you even here in this thread? Don't like the 4.x releases? Fine. Just don't use it and don't comment every damn article how much it's "poop". That's called trolling in internet slang...

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE 4 is copying Vista

That's a lie.
Changing desktop icons to the new concept of Folder View: Not present in Vista or any other Windows version.
Everything on the desktop is a widget: Not present in Vista or any other Windows version. (Vista only has the sidebar and Vista came after KDE3's SuperKaramba)
Plasma Netbook: Not present in Vista or any other Windows version.
Plasma Active: Not present in Vista. Win8 will come with an optional tablet GUI. If anything, Windows is copying from KDE/Android/iOS here...
An actually useful window manager: Not present in Vista or any other Windows version.
Plasma Desktop's grid view (introduced with 4.5 or so): Not present in Vista or any other Windows version.

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Lord Kano]

Count me in his camp. KDE4 is poop.

Then why are you even here in this thread? Don't like the 4.x releases? Fine. Just don't use it and don't comment every damn article how much it's "poop". That's called trolling in internet slang...

No, it's called "negative feedback", if all the team hears is the adulation of fanboys, they'll have no idea that they're doing anything wrong.

LK

Re:Each major release is taking longer

[Anonymous Coward]

Each release takes longer before it becomes useful. KDE 1.1 was working just right for me. So was KDE 2.3. KDE 3 did not really mature until 3.3 or 3.4. KDE 4 is just now getting there, after 8 minor releases. Some things are still working better in KDE 3, or in KDE 1 for that.

Don't get me wrong, I like KDE. But we are paying a huge price for "progress".

Paying for what? I thought Linux is FREE?

Wireless system connections

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they fix the disabled checkbox in Knetworkmanager for setting a wireless connection as system? Because I've been waiting for that one since ... 6 years ago? Longer? Because quite frankly, I could care less if the shadow system is improved or the icons have more lens flare on them. User experience is ruined by not being able to do something basic like set up an always on wireless connection out-of-the-box without resorting to installing additional packages and configuration file hacking.

Re:Wireless system connections

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they fix the disabled checkbox in Knetworkmanager for setting a wireless connection as system? Because I've been waiting for that one since ... 6 years ago? Longer? Because quite frankly, I could care less if the shadow system is improved or the icons have more lens flare on them. User experience is ruined by not being able to do something basic like set up an always on wireless connection out-of-the-box without resorting to installing additional packages and configuration file hacking.

You are kidding, right? Wireless connections are inherently portable and therefore transient, they are not always available. This is in fact the whole point of a wireless connection, that it is NOT always on.

If you want an always on connection, plug in a network cable, so that it is always on.

Re:Wireless system connections

[Anonymous Coward]

So that's a no then? Instead of fixing the broken box (something that has just WORKED on Gnome since forever, by the way) - the KDE fix is "plug in a network cable".

Re:Wireless system connections

[bmo]

Some people can't run wires through walls.

Grow up.

--
BMO

Re:Wireless system connections

[bill_mcgonigle]

You are kidding, right? Wireless connections are inherently portable and therefore transient, they are not always available. This is in fact the whole point of a wireless connection, that it is NOT always on.

No, the point is that you don't need a wire. You do realize that some people have their entire homes/offices setup with wireless as they don't need to run wires and wireless is fast enough for then, right?

Perhaps you only use laptops with wireless connections, but your use case does not describe the broader market.

Re:Wireless system connections

[layer3switch]

This is in fact the whole point of a wireless connection, that it is NOT always on.

You mean like cellphone, wireless keyboard and mouse and of course GPS. You really nailed it. /sarcasm

Re:Wireless system connections

[Anonymous Coward]

You are kidding, right? Wireless connections are inherently portable and therefore transient, they are not always available. This is in fact the whole point of a wireless connection, that it is NOT always on.

If you want an always on connection, plug in a network cable, so that it is always on.

1. A very good troll
2. Clueless

You are one of these two.

Re:Wireless system connections

[jonahbron]

that it is NOT always on.

Kind of like a network cable, right? They can be disconnected FYI.

Re:Wireless system connections

[colinrichardday]

Did they fix the disabled checkbox in Knetworkmanager for setting a wireless connection as system?

No, it appears not, as the box is grayed out, at least in 4.6.

Re:Wireless system connections

[Anonymous Coward]

So that's a no then? Instead of fixing the broken box (something that has just WORKED on Gnome since forever, by the way) - the KDE fix is "plug in a network cable".

I didn't say it was "No" ... I said only that wireless is intended to be a transitory connection, it dpends if you happen to be within 100-odd feet of a particular wireless router or not. It is not normally available until after a given desktop user logs on, even in Windows.

There is no penalty for this. If you need network drives to be mounted via a transitory wireless network connection, just run smb4k in the system tray after you login. Set up smb4k to see your network drives, then include it in auto-started applications. It will work exactly the same as the equivalent of network drives over wireless as in Windows.

Re:Wireless system connections

[ManTaboo]

I thought the whole point of a wireless connection was for mobility and convenience. The fact of the matter is knetworkmanager was a fail when 4.0 was released imho. I had nothing but issues with it on 3 out of the 4 machines I run. Shortly after I discovered wicd and never looked back. It may require a little more configuration depending on your needs, but I have no problems with it period!

Re:Wireless system connections

[SomeKDEUser]

ifup is the way to go for permanent connections at the system level. Networkmanager is crappy for multi-user systems anyway.

Now if you are a single user, well, what is wrong with "connect automatically"??

Re:Wireless system connections

[Anonymous Coward]

You are kidding, right? Wireless connections are inherently portable and therefore transient, they are not always available. This is in fact the whole point of a wireless connection, that it is NOT always on.

No, the point is that you don't need a wire. You do realize that some people have their entire homes/offices setup with wireless as they don't need to run wires and wireless is fast enough for then, right?

Perhaps you only use laptops with wireless connections, but your use case does not describe the broader market.

I don't know if the updates to the KDE network manager in KDE SC 4.7 now allows a wireless connection to be defined as the system network connection, or not.

If one's use case absolutely requires wireless networking to be running before any user logs on, and setting this up has not been enabled in the KDE network manager, why not simply install and use the GNOME network manager?

http://jeffhoogland.blogspot.com/2010/04/howto-use-gnome-network-manager-in.html

A lot of people like to make mountains out of molehills, it seems.

Re:Wireless system connections

[Anonymous Coward]

You are kidding, right? Wireless connections are inherently portable and therefore transient, they are not always available. This is in fact the whole point of a wireless connection, that it is NOT always on.

If you want an always on connection, plug in a network cable, so that it is always on.

I know better than you and you're going to take it up the ass like I want it!

You wouldn't happen to be a GNOME developer would you?

Re:Wireless system connections

[Anonymous Coward]

You are kidding, right? Wireless connections are inherently portable and therefore transient, they are not always available. This is in fact the whole point of a wireless connection, that it is NOT always on.

If you want an always on connection, plug in a network cable, so that it is always on.

I know better than you and you're going to take it up the ass like I want it!

You wouldn't happen to be a GNOME developer would you?

Apparently you missed the part where this was an issue in KDE that doesn't exist in GNOME.

Re:Wireless system connections

[Anonymous Coward]

You are kidding, right? Wireless connections are inherently portable and therefore transient, they are not always available. This is in fact the whole point of a wireless connection, that it is NOT always on.

If you want an always on connection, plug in a network cable, so that it is always on.

I know better than you and you're going to take it up the ass like I want it!

You wouldn't happen to be a GNOME developer would you?

Apparently you missed the part where this was an issue in KDE that doesn't exist in GNOME.

KDE can use any of several network managers, including wicd and GNOME network manager, if one wants to. Unlike GNOME, KDE is not "exclusive". It isn't a "KDE issue" at all, it is a minor capability of the default (but replaceable) network manager in KDE4 that has not been functional in previous releases of KDE4. I don't know if it is fixed yet, or not, but if the default KDE network manager doesn't suit anyone's particular needs, just replace it for goodness sake!

Re:Wireless system connections

[Anonymous Coward]

he has a point.. wireless connections are NOT reliable.

Re:Wireless system connections

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they fix the disabled checkbox in Knetworkmanager for setting a wireless connection as system? Because I've been waiting for that one since ... 6 years ago? Longer? Because quite frankly, I could care less if the shadow system is improved or the icons have more lens flare on them. User experience is ruined by not being able to do something basic like set up an always on wireless connection out-of-the-box without resorting to installing additional packages and configuration file hacking.

No clue why it is hard for people to answer the question that was asked directly instead of going off on a tangent, but then again... Anyhow, here is a good source on why that is the case for some people:

http://lamarque-lvs.blogspot.com/2011/07/some-clarifications-about-plasma-nm.html

Search for "system connection" if you do not want to read through the whole article.

Re:Wireless system connections

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Try searching their bugzilla.. in this case, that would give you bug 204340, which is indeed fixed and should be part of 4.7.

Re:Wireless system connections

[Teun]

Or use wicd, it makes a connection even before X is up.

And it has a very transparent GUI for configurations.

Re:Wireless system connections

[quantumphaze]

Not disabled on Arch Linux with kdeplasma-applets-networkmanagement 1:git20110713-1

I'm running 4.6.95 still

Re:Wireless system connections

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Such questions are better posed to bugzilla. See bug 204340, which will show you that this was fixed between 4.6 and 4.7.

Re:Wireless system connections

[Anonymous Coward]

Or use wicd, it makes a connection even before X is up.

And it has a very transparent GUI for configurations.

wicd is an even better alternative ... it has less dependencies.

Re:Wireless system connections

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they fix the disabled checkbox in Knetworkmanager for setting a wireless connection as system? Because I've been waiting for that one since ... 6 years ago? Longer? Because quite frankly, I could care less if the shadow system is improved or the icons have more lens flare on them. User experience is ruined by not being able to do something basic like set up an always on wireless connection out-of-the-box without resorting to installing additional packages and configuration file hacking.

No clue why it is hard for people to answer the question that was asked directly instead of going off on a tangent, but then again... Anyhow, here is a good source on why that is the case for some people:

http://lamarque-lvs.blogspot.com/2011/07/some-clarifications-about-plasma-nm.html

Search for "system connection" if you do not want to read through the whole article.

Thankyou very much.

For those too lazy to read the link, here is what it says about "system connection".

One user commented in the other blog: "I also still have problems with knetworkmanager/plasmoid, mostly because of creating new connections. for example I am still unable to create "system connections", because that checkbox is greyed out, and there is no possibility (perhaps except login as root) to activate it."

This is not a Plasma NM bug, it is your distribution that disabled "system connection" checkbox. We have nothing to do with it. Ubuntu is one distribution I know that does disable the "system connection" checkbox.

Executive summary: It is not a KDE issue then, it was a Kubuntu issue.

Is this a production release or another alpha?

[Anonymous Coward]

The last time that I tried KDE was when they released their 4.0 release. As it turned out, "4.0" meant "release 4, alpha 1".

Is it safe to use KDE in a production environment yet? Can you do things like surf the *internet* or rotate a cube of workspaces?

Re:Is this a production release or another alpha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Re:Is this a production release or another alpha?

[siride]

Short answer: yes. Longer answer: yeah, it's pretty usable, actually seems more polished and complete than KDE 3.5 was. I was a hold-out, too, lest you accuse me of being some KDE 4 fanboi.

GTK integration?

[Nutria]

How's that coming?

As a Firefox user who's children love Flash games, that's a /sine qua non/.

Re:GTK integration?

[bill_mcgonigle]

As a Firefox user who's children love Flash games, that's a /sine qua non/.

What doesn't work for you? My daughter plays flash games on my home PC, which is Fedora 14 w/ KDE 4.6 and Firefox. I use the leigh123linux repo for Flash updates.

Re:GTK integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

How's that coming?

As a Firefox user who's children love Flash games, that's a /sine qua non/.

Integration of GNOME/GTK+ applications in KDE is very good.

http://kde.org/announcements/4.7/plasma.php

Recognizing the modular nature of KDE software and the ability to mix and match applications from many different sources, KDE has also improved the Oxygen GTK themes, making applications from GNOME (and other applications using GTK+) blend seamlessly with KDE applications in your Plasma Workspace.

It would be fair to say that integration of GNOME/GTK+ applications under the KDE SC 4.7 Plasma desktop is orders of magnitude better than integration of KDE applications under the GNOME desktop of any variety.

Re:GTK integration?

[siride]

Don't forget QtCurve, which I find to be considerably better than the ugly and garish Oxygen theme.

Re:GTK integration?

[RobbieThe1st]

Seconded!
Personally though, I like the clearlooks/cleanlooks style to be better than both, but...

Also, I run a very mixed desktop - half KDE, half GTK apps on top of a KDE desktop, with Metacity for my window manager. How more mixed could you get? :P

Re:GTK integration?

[Nutria]

What doesn't work for you?

Nothing, since I use GNOME 2.32. But v3.0 and (since I use Ubuntu) Unity approacheth.

It's been a long time (Mandrake 7.0) since I used KDE, but ever since then I've consistently read of theming and font problems mixing GTK and KDE apps.

Re:GTK integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty good - there is a gtk-oxygen theme that renders gtk2 (gtk3 in next version) widgets identical to kde-oxygen. 1.1 is released to go with KDE 4.7 which gets the animations close to identical and makes changes to colours etc work in gtk immediately using dbus. Appart from the file open/save dialogs I can't really tell if an application is GTK or KDE these days.
http://hugo-kde.blogspot.com/

If you don't like oxygen (the default KDE style) then QTCurve has a corresponding GTK style that works quite well.

Re:GTK integration?

[bill_mcgonigle]

I guess I don't notice them. There's an optional thing you can install to force KDE font preferences onto GTK apps, if you want the consistency. I don't think I've installed that on a new machine in a while though.

Re:GTK integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget QtCurve, which I find to be considerably better than the ugly and garish Oxygen theme.

I find Oxygen to be perfectly fine, except for the indistinct "active title bar". With the Oxygen theme by default the active title bar is the same colour as the active window border. There is a setting obscurely called called "highlight window title" which fixes this, however.

Re:GTK integration?

[Ant P.]

orders of magnitude better than integration of KDE applications under the GNOME desktop of any variety.

Nope, Qt supports GTK+ themes natively so those KDE apps work and look fine under GNOME. None of this playing-nice-with-others effort came from the GNOME camp, of course.

Re:GTK integration?

[timbo234]

It's well integrated, just like it was on 4.6, 4.5, 4.4 and so on.

What exactly is wrong with it? Maybe it's a distro thing because I've been using Opensuse for the past 2 or 3 years and GTK apps have always looked good out of the box.

Quit whining

[pinkeen]

There will always be something that doesn't work as it should or as you would like it to be. KDE 4 is a stable, solid desktop environment. I used KDE as my day-to-day working dekstop since 3.x. I jumped the wagon when they ironed out showstoppers in SC4 and don't look back.

BTW I wonder why there is so much complaining about KDE when it comes to some minor features? Such scale is unseen in windows world. Maybe windows users don't complain so much because ms doesn't care about fixing and improving things anyway? Here you can discuss and have things fixed or even redesigned in a matter of weeks or months.

Re:Quit whining

[RobbieThe1st]

Isn't there an old quote that states that when soldiers stop complaining, they've lost hope(or something like that?

It's exactly that here: With KDE, it's possible to make change happen. Windows? No way!
So, people complain. Because it might get better.

Re:Quit whining

[SomeKDEUser]

It is a mystery to me too. Even the mac users who obsess about the tiniest details of their holy interface are not nearly as anal as the kde3-or-death users.

And it makes particularly little sense as KDE SC4 is better in pretty much every way as KDE3. Maybe is comes from investing so much emotion in your desktop and being shown that deep down, at was not nearly as great as it could be. Perhaps linux users care more about their software than normal users, and any change is seen as a personal insult.

Re:Quit whining

[IrquiM]

Some people just can't handle change.

We had the same issue when we changed from Office 2003 to 2007.

Re:Quit whining

[Anonymous Coward]

)
Syntax error would bring down the internet you fool.

Re:Quit whining

[alantus]

The reason for all the complaining is because KDE 4 was a big step backwards compared to KDE 3.

Some users decided to give it a shot anyway thinking that with time this would improve, but the developers focus their attention in things that users don't care much about, like the whole semantic desktop thing.

Just check out this blog entry from one of the KDE developers:
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2010/05/i-dont-need-no-stinking-nepomuk-right.html

This guy is completely disconnected from the users.

Re:Quit whining

[marcello_dl]

luv your fine sarcasm

Re:Quit whining

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a mystery to me too. Even the mac users who obsess about the tiniest details of their holy interface are not nearly as anal as the kde3-or-death users.

There's no real mystery here.

Mac users expect Steve Jobs (well, Jonathan Ive, really), to provide them with "the integrated user experience" they love so much. A huge part of that user experience integration is the fact that they have no choice. They get what they're given (which, from my little experience of Apple products, is amazing!). And they get what they expect (all Apple priducts have the same dea behind how they're designed, and it's easy to go from one to another),

FOSS users, and, as I understand it (being a Gnome user) especially KDE users, expect to be able to have things exactly how they like them. They (we) expect that with some, but not too much fiddling, things will work as expected. We come from a position of expecting computers to bend to our will -- even if it's after a fight, whereas Mac users expect to have to conform to the Mac way of doing things, and loving it.

This is why I hate the Unity and Gnome Shell concept as much as I do. As pretty as they are, or promise to be, they allow very little configurability or maneuverability (even ignoring the horrendous bugs), all in the name of "integrated user experience". I think I can manage to integrate my own experience, to be honest! (They also assume that Desktop users no longer exist, but that's a rant for another comment).

Perhaps linux users care more about their software than normal users

Yeah, I think they do. They invest more in it (not financially, of course, but emotionally). And it's axiomatic that those who care enough to comment on a /. post about changes in KDE are more invested in it than those who're just happy to live their lives, barely even noticing the changes that happen around them.

Re:Quit whining

[archen]

BTW I wonder why there is so much complaining about KDE when it comes to some minor features? Such scale is unseen in windows world. Maybe windows users don't complain so much because ms doesn't care about fixing and improving things anyway?

Where I work we've recently started migrating from Win2k to Windows 7 and I can assure you all I hear is complaints about pretty much everything. The difference between Windows and KDE/Gnome is that windows users don't have a choice. What else are they going to use? Yeah, exactly. Basically they take whatever MS gives them and they live with it.

Re:Quit whining

[Osgeld]

you can only fix something so much before it looks like a monstrosity, kde has bypassed that point years ago, its a vomit pile of weird controls and slow performance, and why? so a nerd can tweak it out without having to open a text file?

Re:Quit whining

[timbo234]

Me too. I was as annoyed as anyone by KDE 4.0-4.2 and the way distro's switched to it when it was only beta (perhaps even alpha) quality. But since 4.3 or 4.4 it's got much better, and the current KDE 4.6 on Opensuse is like night and day compared to 4.0.

Re:Quit whining

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason for all the complaining is because KDE 4 was a big step backwards compared to KDE 3.

No, it's not. KDE3 sucks balls. Plasma Desktop since 4.2 is pure awesome.

Re:Quit whining

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the ugliness factor. The sad fact is the kde4 is an disturbingly amorphous, messy blog of indiscernible features and color choices. Kde3, while not being the most stunning visually, still looked decent, and you could definitely tell where things ended and where things began.

kick ass

[Osgeld]

polished icons as the number 1 improvement, this will be worth the pain!

Good Job guys really burning the midnight oil on that one

Re:kick ass

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't see "polished icons" listed as a number 1 improvement. I found a page saying there was updates to the Oxygen theme but I didn't find it a worthy of cynicism.

I agree though in general that I'm sick of hearing about improvements to icons and themes. Once the quality is there is at a certain level, it doesn't matter anymore and the desktop devs need to stop touting such things. It's lateral change because it just boils down to what one graphics artist thought looked better than another graphics artists. This is a largely an aesthetics-based change... meaning improving nothing quantitatively.

Re:kick ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Actualy no :) The new icons are better at a tecnical level, same as the mimetipe changes in the previus 4.6... The older ones were not optimised for all sizes and were blury in some sizes such as 32x32 plus the size 256x256 important for scaling was non existent. So there was actual improvements in the icons...Usualy the imprvements in the theme that get reported is mostly about the GTK2 and the GTK3 port of the oxygen theme that will improve the experience for the users, or some chages in the code that makes it even faster...

Cheers

Re:kick ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Im sure there are many user who use gnome because gtk+ >>> oxygen. I would be shocked if there was more than 3 percent of gnome users who would chose to swap GTK+ for oxygen qtcurve is another matter but its still not as good.
They have made it better but some of the old oxygen themes were just terrible.

Re:kick ass

[Toonol]

There are 256x256 icons? At what point do these start being called 'images' instead?

I guess it makes sense, but that's one of those things that makes me feel numb... like a 35mb calculator application, or a 1.2 gig file to store a 20 minute anime rip.

Starting to get out of hand!

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole Linux desktop thing is starting to get out of hand! You've got Unity and Gnome 3 gearing up for netbooks and tablets. Does Ubuntu and Gnome.org honestly feel that users are going to un-install Win 7 for something like what they have to offer? Do they feel manufacturers are going to buy into it and start shipping Linux machines? As long as KDE remembers it's desktop users it's fine other wise I think they'll have a rough time like Gnome.

Re:Starting to get out of hand!

[RobbieThe1st]

Some mfgrs will. Why? Because it's generally loads better than Windows on underperforming hardware. Sure, gaming performance might be a little less, and benchmarks might not show it, but as far as overall responsiveness, Linux beats Windows any day.
Also, if Meego takes off, there will be an opportunity to throw a KDE or Gnome front-end on your Meego tablet, either aftermarket or stock. And it just might be an improvement there.

You can use both

[dbIII]

I've got a few users running on gnome with Kwin as the window manager because the window manager that comes with gnome won't beep the PC speaker and it also very badly messes up some things with some legacy applications (eg. mouse clicks don't work!).
Personally I've had the same Enlightenment desktop theme since 1997 but have E17 at home.

Please widen kde.org!

[Anonymous Coward]

For the love of god, I am so sick of websites catering to the iPad's portrait format and limiting horizontal resolution to 800 pixels(or whatever). I have a 1080p monitor and I can fit two kde.org websites into it horizontally.

Re:Please widen kde.org!

[MikeUW]

It may surprise you to know that the majority of the world is not yet using 1080p monitors.

That said...nobody's forcing you to view every page fullscreen. Also, with a near-1080p monitor myself, I could care less if the screen is filled entirely from left-to-right. That actually reduces readability of most text.

Ever see a newspaper print its text all the way accross the page? No, they use many smaller columns to break-up the text. Since the website is not printed on paper, it's somewhat irrelevant if there's blank space on the sides.

Aside from all that...what the heck does this have to do with the release of 4.7?

Re:Please widen kde.org!

[EsbenMoseHansen]

It's a valid complain, but apparently not easy to fix. Why aren't website designs fluid, so that they scale to to the browser window? Mostly because support for the table-bit of CSS 2.1support is still broken in many modern browsers, I hear. Which makes it hard to get that holy-grail 2/3-column design-with-top-and-button that web designers love.

Re:Please widen kde.org!

[imsabbel]

Your link tells me that >85% have _more than_ 1024 horizontal pixels. Include all those that have 1024 (which is still 25% wider than 800), you got notreason for 800 pixel site width.

Re:Please widen kde.org!

[Hatta]

The human eye can best read lines between 60 and 80 characters long. Trying to read longer lines is fatiguing.

Now I agree that a fixed pixel width is not the way to achieve the desired effect, but you really don't want to be reading 200 character long lines.

Clueless.

[Anonymous Coward]

You really have no idea what you are talking about. You are essentially parroting the argument that Mac OS X was imaginary “progress,” as you imply, because it was feature incomplete compared to Mac OS 9. The reality is: future development could not be made on the existing platform. The same is true with KDE. The programming models and APIs found in the three series (Qt included) were insufficient for the demands designers would place on it.

Bottom line: sometimes, in engineering, you have to cast-off bad decisions and make fresh ones with the benefit of hindsight.

Re:Clueless.

[siride]

The only mistake they made with 4 was treating 4.0 as a release. If they had waited longer for an actual release, or been serious in indicating to people that it was really 4.0 tech preview, then a lot of the bad feelings towards KDE 4 would not have arisen.

Best Distro to try this new KDE with?

[Lord of the Fries]

So let's say I did a lot of Linux back in the day, now days, I do it rarely under vmware with OSX. I've been installing (k)Ubuntu now and then again. What's the best KDE friendly distro these days (running under vmware)?

Re:Best Distro to try this new KDE with?

[nzac]

Most distros support KDE well enough that it does not matter. Make your decision depending on what you want

openSUSE supposedly is pretty good for KDE (i run gnome) from what it see it has pretty good visualisation support (used with WMware often).

You will have to at least upgrade to tumbleweed (like testing) or factory (sid) to get 4.7 before November I suspect though.

Re:Best Distro to try this new KDE with?

[markdueck]

I've used openSuse for 3 years - from kde 3.5 -> 4.2 till now. Just got a Sandy Bridge laptop with an i7 and Kubuntu is the only distro that runs acceptable, but as soon as suse 12.1 is out, I'm switching back. there's no comparison in the professionalism of these 2 distros. Maybe it's more a being used to, but everyday I have points that irk me about kubuntu. The only other distro I would like to try some is Fedora, but there KDE is not the default, so have lower hopes for it being as good as openSuse.

Re:Best Distro to try this new KDE with?

[Beelzebud]

Slackware is a great KDE distro. If Slackware scares you off, try the KDE edition of Mint.

Re:Best Distro to try this new KDE with?

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenSuSe, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, Slackware, Sabayon, Chakra, MEPIS, Mageia then Kubuntu (in order of Distrowatch page rankings) are the Linux distributions which ship KDE4 by default. Arch is neutral, and it gives a fairly good cutting-edge KDE installation.

The KDE SC is the KDE SC, it is pretty much the same on any of these distributions. The KDE Plasma desktop is highly configurable, so the default configuration which ships with each distribution is not much of an issue. Choose between them based on their repository/package manager/number of packages/distribution arrangements which best suit you. For example, if your ISP has a locally-hosted un-metered repository for OpenSuSe, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva and Kubuntu distribution packages, as my ISP does, but not the others, then this would influence your choice.

I have heard that Linux Mint is preparing a KDE4/Debian rolling-release variant. This also could be a good option for many people.

Re:Best Distro to try this new KDE with?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have KDE on ArchLinux and it work greate

Re:Best Distro to try this new KDE with?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slack AFAIK doesn't support 4.7 and won't do so.

Anyways, Fedora guys are doing pretty good job packaging stable KDE software... However, I'd prefer Arch Linux because of its rolling-updates bleeding-edge nature (some people might suggest Chakra but I don't trust it yet).

Re:Best Distro to try this new KDE with?

[Anonymous Coward]

as of now 4.7 is not available in Tumbleweed, but there is a functional "upstream" repo for both 11.4 and 11.3, found at http://en.opensuse.org/KDE_repositories

Re:Best Distro to try this new KDE with?

[Anonymous Coward]

You will have to at least upgrade to tumbleweed (like testing) or factory (sid) to get 4.7 before November I suspect though.

PCLinuxOS, Sabayon, Chakra, Arch and, I believe, an upcoming version of Linux Mint KDE/Debian are all "rolling release" distributions. KDE 4.7 will be available first in such distributions.

http://techie-buzz.com/foss/linux-mint-11-kde-debian.html

For example, Arch Linux has KDE 4.7 in its testing repository right now.

http://www.archlinux.org/packages/testing/x86_64/kdebase-workspace/

Chakra has been releasing re-spins monthly:

http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=06791

Although they are still rolling releases some other distributions such as PCLinuxOS are a bit more cautious, and they will have a longer testing period before they upgrade to the latest KDE SC 4.7.

Re:Best Distro to try this new KDE with?

[CynicTheHedgehog]

As much as I hate to say it, Kubuntu is the one I've had the least amount of frustration with (I've tried OpenSuSE, Fedora, and Chakra besides). There's a lot more eyes on Kubuntu and a lot more forum posts related specificly to Kubuntu, so it's easy to find answers, and Canonical does a good job of installing the basics by default (codecs, flash, binary drivers, etc.).

Re:Best Distro to try this new KDE with?

[bigdaisy]

I got a Sandy Bridge laptop recently with only the Intel HD 3000 graphics. I was aware that Kubuntu 11.04 wasn't going to play nice with the GPU, as the kernel was too old, so I installed 64-bit "Fedora 15 KDE Plasma Desktop Spin" (catchy name) on it instead and it worked surprisingly well. Fedora have back-ported lots of the Linux and X/Mesa stuff for the Intel HD 3000 GPU to kernel 2.6.38 and that sold it to me. It locks up a few times a week, though, so it's not perfect. It still needs a few more back-ports.

I tried a clean install of Kubuntu 11.04 64-bit on a separate partition of my desktop machine (AMD), but I lost count of the number of things that were severely broken with it in only five minutes of toying about. No thanks. I'm staying with Kubuntu 10.10 32-bit on that machine for now, but I've finally lost all faith in it; as KDE 4 gets steadily better, Kubuntu gets steadily worse.

Having found that "yum" on Fedora has solved the "RPM hell" that made me abandon RedHat for Debian a decade ago, and having migrated to Kubuntu half a decade ago because Debian+KDE was too much of a headache to configure and maintain, I'm on the lookout for any distro that can do a decent KDE desktop with good Intel HD 3000 support (i.e., Linux 3.x) and the minimum of packaging/configuration fuss. Fedora 15 should keep me going until then.

Re:Best Distro to try this new KDE with?

[mr_da3m0n]

Interesting, I always found Kubuntu to be exremely frustrating and a poor KDE experience overall, it isn't very integrated with the ubuntu stuff, unlike vanilla ubuntu. Maybe I should try it again, but i'm reluctant at this point :(

Re:Best Distro to try this new KDE with?

[vgerclover]

The best distros for KDE are either the ones that modify it the least, or the ones that customize it with such attention to detail that it's great. In my opinion, the best so far are:

• ArchLinux
• Slackware
• SuSE

Re:Best Distro to try this new KDE with?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not kubuntu.

In my experience, openSUSE and arch work pretty well.

Re:Best Distro to try this new KDE with?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don' t know about running under vmware, but openSUSE 11.4 with kde is beautiful and functional, I recently switched to it from Ubuntu and I much prefer it.

Re:Best Distro to try this new KDE with?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing except Arch and Gentoo actually *have* KDE 4.7 yet. When it does make its way into other distros, Debian is always a pretty safe bet.

Re:Best Distro to try this new KDE with?

[timbo234]

Opensuse, they aim to support KDE and GNOME equally and don't do it as an afterthought or side project (*cough* *cough* Linux Mint, Kubuntu).

Re:Best Distro to try this new KDE with?

[badkarmadayaccount]

Side question: I installed 32 bit fedora by mistake - should I bother fixing it (3 GB RAM), and are there any easy methods?

Re:Best Distro to try this new KDE with?

[bigdaisy]

I went with 64-bit on the laptop because it was a fresh install and my laptop has 8GB of RAM. There's probably no need to "fix" your install if you have invested much extra time in setting it up for yourself. 64-bit can be a bit faster, but probably not so much that you'd notice it for everyday tasks. Though some tasks, like audio encoding and general compression, are a bit faster: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_natty_pae64

In other news, Fedora 15 just pushed out Linux kernel 2.6.40 (aka 3.0)! Thanks Fedora people! I hope it fixes my stability issues. If it does, I'll be happy to stay with Fedora and will probably move my desktop machine to it instead of Kubuntu.

How is it with the tablet+stylus ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone with a thinkpad convertible or similar? If you don't mind sharing your experiences with this KDE...

Personal review.

[Gravis Zero]

i've been on Gnome a while and have seen KDE advance. Plasma seemed particularly interesting and how they integrated apps seemed cool. today i tried KDE again and now i'm back in Gnome 2.x writing this.

complaints:

my biggest complaint is that they took away the desktop icons. it's a big deal. i have files on my desktop that are fast and easy to access and they took those away from me! i searched a good half our trying to find how to restore them but low and behold, it's not just a configuration, they removed that functionality completely. if you are about to say, "hey! you cant criticize, Gnome 3 does that too!" i would like to reiterate i'm using Gnome 2.x for that same reason.

it's graphics accelerated but not snappy. i expected since the graphic render system is offloaded that it would be super snappy but alas, it is NOT! opening a new file manager window or any thing else took a second, sitting there with a "busy" cursor. before you blame my hard drive, please know that i have a very high-speed SSD (cost me an arm but talked them down so i could keep the leg). even Gnome's file manager (Nautilus) renders faster and it's no slimline file manager.

one annoying thing is the file manager's configuration fragmentation. in the file manager, you can right click lots of different things and configure them but not everything. it's really annoying to have to open eight different configuration windows instead of just one with a well organized system for configuring everything in the file manager.

setting up widgets in the panels can be a little clumsy trying to put a widget between two others and i hope that will be addressed.

conclusion:

it's pretty but it can be frustrating to use. it's not ready for general consumption.

and please dont tell me KDE is for "advanced users and not you, noob!" or some BS because i've been on the Linux scene over a decade using everything from kernel configuration frontends to IDEs to that damn fish applet. i know what i'm talking about.

Re:Personal review.

[Talavis]

I can agree with Dolphin etc not being that fast, but as for your requirement of files on the desktop: just right click on the desktop, enter the settings dialog and change to a folder view. Can't get much easier than that.

In my opinion, there are a quite a few small things that annoy me, but the positive much are much more common. I think Plasma is mainly just plain annoying though.

Re:Personal review.

[Bambi Dee]

my biggest complaint is that they took away the desktop icons.

? Mine are still there. Open the desktop settings and switch it to "Folder View" and/or add one or more Folder View widgets yourself. You can also drag application icons from the launcher to the desktop.

Re:Personal review.

[PeterBrett]

conclusion:

it's pretty but it's not exactly the same as GNOME 2.x so I don't like it, and I can't be bothered to type trivial questions into Google.

FTFY.

Re:Personal review.

[quantumphaze]

my biggest complaint is that they took away the desktop icons. it's a big deal. i have files on my desktop that are fast and easy to access and they took those away from me! i searched a good half our trying to find how to restore them but low and behold, it's not just a configuration, they removed that functionality completely. if you are about to say, "hey! you cant criticize, Gnome 3 does that too!" i would like to reiterate i'm using Gnome 2.x for that same reason.

Right click Desktop -> Desktop Settings. Change Layout from Desktop to Folder View (it defaults to $HOME so change it to $HOME/Desktop).

it's graphics accelerated but not snappy. i expected since the graphic render system is offloaded that it would be super snappy but alas, it is NOT! opening a new file manager window or any thing else took a second, sitting there with a "busy" cursor. before you blame my hard drive, please know that i have a very high-speed SSD (cost me an arm but talked them down so i could keep the leg). even Gnome's file manager (Nautilus) renders faster and it's no slimline file manager.

Do you by chance use an Nvidia card? I find that 2D performance sucks worse than an Intel card for Kwin.

In krunner put "kwin --replace --graphicssystem=raster". I found that increased Kwin performance (especially resizing) on Nvidia at the expense of 3D apps.

Re:Personal review.

[RichiH]

> my biggest complaint is that they took away the desktop icons.

Which is why you can switch to folder view.

> it's graphics accelerated but not snappy.

It's vector graphics. Until you have built a cache of the sizes custom-rendered for your system, it takes a bit. For how long did you try KDE?

> it's really annoying to have to open eight different configuration windows

Specific examples?

I have my own problems with KDE and I am definitely not one who migrated to 4.x lightly, but your issues seem to stem from being used to Gnome and simply accepting that you can't change any settings, anyway (no, their "registry" abomination does not count).

Re:Personal review.

[Anonymous Coward]

my biggest complaint is that they took away the desktop icons. it's a big deal.

Nope. To enable desktop icons, right-click on the desktop, and select "desktop settings". In the dialog box that opens, if widgets are locked, unlock them. Using the pull-down selector labelled "Layout", change from "Desktop" to "Folder view". Click "Apply".

Voila, desktop icons. So much for your biggest complaint.

it's graphics accelerated but not snappy.

Au contraire, it is wicked fast and very snappy.

one annoying thing is the file manager's configuration fragmentation. in the file manager, you can right click lots of different things and configure them but not everything. it's really annoying to have to open eight different configuration windows instead of just one with a well organized system for configuring everything in the file manager.

WTF? You cannot get a more configurable, snappy, flexible and powerful file manager than Dolphin. None exist.

http://dolphin.kde.org/features.html

and please dont tell me KDE is for "advanced users and not you, noob!" or some BS because i've been on the Linux scene over a decade using everything from kernel configuration frontends to IDEs to that damn fish applet. i know what i'm talking about.

Clearly you do not.

Re:Personal review.

[salesgeek]

Hmm.

1. Desktop Icons.
Right click on desktop, select Desktop Settings. Change to "Folder View" and set place to "Desktop". Done. If there is no Folder View, then you are either are using KDE 4.0 or have botched your install of KDE.

2. File Manager Speed
I'm not sure what the complaint is about 1 second open to window time for a modern file manager.

2a. File Manager Configuration
I agree with you that Dolphin's control panel isn't the best. It's too dumbed down. There are two other KDE file managers: Konqueror (Explorer style) and Krusader (Norton Commander style), both of which are more configurable than is Dolphin. Try them and use the one you like.

3. Widgets in panels.
Works fine for me, but it would be nice to have a little bit of snap to position.

On your conclusion, I have to just kind of sigh and roll my eyes. Your experience is indicative of someone with little experience in that you were unable to recognize a GPU driver issue.

Re:Personal review.

[salesgeek]

WTF? You cannot get a more configurable, snappy, flexible and powerful file manager than Dolphin. None exist.
Konqueror and Krusader would like a word with you. :)

Re:Personal review.

[Gravis Zero]

I'm not sure what the complaint is about 1 second open to window time for a modern file manager.

no. for me, Nautilus open a new folder window instantly.

I agree with you that Dolphin's control panel isn't the best. It's too dumbed down.

that's not what i was talking about.

Works fine for me, but it would be nice to have a little bit of snap to position.

my issue is that they snap to hard to position but it ends up being the wrong position.

On your conclusion, I have to just kind of sigh and roll my eyes. Your experience is indicative of someone with little experience in that you were unable to recognize a GPU driver issue.

i have the latest Nvidia drivers (binary package) installed and it runs my games and other OpenGL programs with ease. stop being a bully.

KDE-full in Ubuntu or openSuSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu has more software and better support for high end hardware. OpenSuSE runs nicely on netbooks and low end hardware (is KDE deliberately broken in Ubuntu to be so slow on low end hardware?). OpenSuSE has very well polished system management interface (YaST). More stuff works out of the box in Ubuntu (with KDE-full) than in openSuSE.

KDE Telepathy

[mutlu]

There are many new features in this KDE release, but the Slashdot entry did not mention the first technical preview of KDE Telepathy that is released in parallel to this KDE release. While not fully there yet, it already offers many of the features we know from Gnome's Telepathy. Even better: I really like their vision, which is to integrate Telepathy into all applications that deal with communication (such as mail) or contact data. No matter which program you use, you will be able to contact your "friends" directly from there. This is, however, largely to-do and expected with the next KDE release. Given that KDE Telepathy is released as its own package, however, you will get updates without having to wait for official KDE releases.

KDE4.x is getting pretty good now.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just a shame it took so long for it to evolve into a usable and stable desktop. After losing hope due to months of buggy, incomplete and lame releases that prevented me from using my computer in the same way(s) I could with 3.5.x, I actually switched to Windows 7 some 8/9 months ago.

I installed Kubuntu 11.04 yesterday, with KDE 4.6.2. I've not yet tried 4.7, but KDE4 is extremely good now. I just hope the devs begin to recognise that having revision numbers two-thirds of the way to the next major release is far from being an acceptable situation, and this has tarnished the reputation of KDE for quite some time to come.

Re:KDE4.x is getting pretty good now.

[Teun]

that having revision numbers two-thirds of the way to the next major release is far from being an acceptable situation, and this has tarnished the reputation of KDE for quite some time to come.

Huh?

What could be wrong with KDE4.28 ?

Re:KDE4.x is getting pretty good now.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just a shame it took so long for it to evolve into a usable and stable desktop.

I see you weren't around to watch the gnome 2.0 train wreck.
The value of your views would greatly benefit if you went back and tried every version of gnome from 2.0 to 2.16, and then look at the time scale. As for Windows, well you know for how long Vista was baking, including a completely failed and ultimately aborted attempt, and it still failed so badly that they had to spend several years to make it acceptable in the form of Windows 7? Not to mention all the false starts and failures that lead to OSX, which in is argued to have been mostly useless until several years after 10.0?

If you're going to whine about someone's "tarnished" reputation, look around first, and be fair.

Re:KDE4.x is getting pretty good now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Chances are good it'll STILL be Amarok...

Why glow and transparency by default?

[Anonymous Coward]

I cannot imagine using KDE defaults for working with such amount of effects. GNOME defaults aren't full of those, but you can add some eyecandy if you like. Maybe KDE should hide some effects in default settings?

E17/Bodhi

[water-and-sewer]

Lots of comments here comparing KDE to Gnome 2, 3, and Unity, and a couple of posts praising LXDE (which I also like). I'm surprised there are so few who have mentioned E17. I installed Bodhi Linux (Ubuntu with E17 desktop) on a netbook and have been extremely impressed:

1. Fast, low memory usage, but ...
2. Manages to be beautiful ...
3. Without being in your way.

Its "Run Everything" (equivalent to Alt-F2 run dialog) is exceptional, the menus are generally sensible, and it's easy on the eyes. I'd highly recommend it. It's given me much of what I like KDE4 and is conceptually easier (multiple desktops, etc.) than KDE4's confusing Workspaces/Activities/etc. metaphor.

I also use Windowmaker.

Re:E17/Bodhi

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the menus support diagonal motion to sub-menus?

I found Enlightenment (and all the light window managers) to be a little too picky in that regard for me.

If Slackware scares you off, try Mint

[Anonymous Coward]

If Slackware doesn't scare you off, try Gentoo.

Re:KDE

[Teun]

So much gray though...

Yeah, Ubuntu brown is so much more appealing...

Arch

[Anonymous Coward]

The simplicity and stability of slackware in a rolling-release format with bleeding-edge packages, minimally altered from upstream just like slackware. Slackware is great, but for KDE 4 you really need the latest and greatest (4.5.5 doesn't cut it -- IMO the 4.x series still hasn't caught up to 3.6 in terms of polish). Arch doesn't play games like most of the popular distributions. They give you what you want and then get the hell out of the way.

konsole

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I still not use saved profiles to open up all my old tabs and commands?

Too late for me...

[srees]

As a long time user of KDE (12 years or so) I finally got sick of the bugs - especially from 4. I decided to try out Gnome a year and a half ago on one of my desktops. I've taken my time adjusting to it, and have come to appreciate it. It. Just. Works. Myriad networking issues? No more. Enabling Compiz? No sweat. I just finished converting my last machine to Gnome two nights ago. My computer is like new, seems much less bloated. I've always thought KDE was a good switch for Windows users, and Gnome for Mac. My kids, lol, get to start with Gnome. Folks who say KDE is stable and proven? Crazy. True, it doesn't bail out like Windows, and it does work...mostly. Admittedly, perhaps it is my distro's implementation of it. Who knows. However, I'm much happier with stable, functional, usable, and friendly Gnome than 'pretty' with KDE. Someday, in a few years, maybe I'll consider KDE again. If they've actually prioritized bug fixes over eye candy - especially networking. It'd be nice if they threw in audio preview too, like Nautilus - I find that handy.

What?

[Jorl17]

Desktop Environments? In all my 4 pcs I run gentoo+openbox+fbpanel+pcmanfm+my own stuff and it replaces all that bloated crap. When I did use desktop environments, I used Gnome, since KDE just looked like crap to me (3.x times).

worrying"improved performance" vs unneeded...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using KDE since version 1,0 and i used FVWM and tried most of the other WM's / DE that are about, but for 14 years i always preferred KDE
maybe its just me, but any software on any platform i've seen mentioning ' performance improvements ' worries me,
- the speed of opening app windows and stuff. - which is a personal gripe of mine,.seem to never *actually* get faster
perhaps the un-needed (for me) akonadi and nepomuck which i just make totally non-executable,
are eating up the very same CPU cycles at one end of the spectrum, that tightening up code at the other end is releasing,,,

the assumption that we're all corporate suit-wearing office workers, networked, deadlined, time tracked, PIM;med, who need
desktop searches running, indexing and generally making itself feel important, with no real simple or safe way to fully remove these
bothers me,

This hiding of features too, is a retrograde UI step in many ways, because thats taking away the very ideas that made KDE,
into er .. KDE - and its very strengths ARE its flexibility, configurability, and powerful customization options -
hiding things from users is best left to Gnome et al - even Linus, if memory serves right, was a KDE user, up until,
well, have a google for it ...
as long as KDE never requires pulseaudio tii .. but dont get me started again ..