KDE Announces 4.9 Beta1 and Testing Initiative

jrepin writes "KDE released the first beta for its version 4.9 of Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing new and old functionality. Highlights of 4.9 include, but are not limited to: Qt Quick in Plasma Workspaces, many improvements in Dolphin file manager, deeper integration of Activities, and many performance improvements. The KDE Community is committed to improving quality substantially with a new program that starts with the 4.9 releases. The 4.9 beta releases are the first phase of a testing process that involves volunteers called 'Beta Testers.' They will receive training, test the two beta releases and report issues through KDE Bugzilla." I was recently forced into installing GNOME 3 (who knew printing required removing GNOME 2); after trying for a while to get Sawfish working again in the deprecated fallback mode, I gave up and tried KDE again. I have to say that I was surprised: KDE 4.5 was unpolished and painful to use whereas 4.7 is pretty slick. With the GNOME 3 developers catering to some seemingly mythical user, it's nice to see the other major desktop using user feedback to make design decisions.

Comments

Re:Does it still have the deal-breaker?

[icebike]

Just turn off or uninstall what you don't need.

I find it very stable, and rather surprisingly lightweight considering all the bells and whistles it supports. The current version is one of the best versions of KDE of all time, IMHO.

Nobody I know uses the semantic desktop, its simply a developmental toy, and most people turn off the indexing functions, since they pretty well know what is on their machines and where it is. They've even been browbeaten into deep-sixing their "activities" for the vast majority of users that simply wanted multiple desktops without all the widgets. (Its still there, but mostly caged and toothless).

  It does everything I ask of it, and gets out of the way when I don't need it. Their Kmail, which use to be one of the best email MUAs has fallen to unusable status of late, in the midst of another re-write, but Thunderbird and several other are there to pick up the slack.

This

[Tailhook]

OpenSUSE: Linux for grownups that earn a living in Linux.

I tried. I really, really tried to cope with Gnome 3 on Ubuntu. When that failed, I reverted to Gnome 2 and found it neglected; things that should work, things that worked when Gnome 2 was Ubuntu's desktop, don't.

Back to OpenSUSE. You might need to beat akanodi and nepomuk into submission and the current release installer gets NVidia wrong, but those are simple problems for competent users to overcome. Once squared away you're left with a usable, feature complete desktop. Protip: replace the distro Flash with the Adobe's RPM.

I must agree 100% with the 'mythical user' jab. As distributed by Ubuntu Gnome 3 offers only pain and frustration for power users. Maybe Mint fixes it. I don't know. Burned enough weekend time getting to where I'm happy so I'm sticking with OpenSUSE.

I'm not an Ubuntu hater. I absolutely love Ubuntu Server (which amounts to regression tested Debian) and use it for several production systems. I'll give it a few years, hope for some sort of upheaval among Gnome developers and then try again.

Dear Mark Shuttleworth,

You're product is being hurt by Gnome. Designing exclusively for novices and causal users will not work. Things that succeed emerge from the power user. Make them happy first. Then hide the things they need and love behind a simplified interface. Macs do not lack features or capabilities, they just avoid bothering lusers with complexity. That's why OS-X simultaneously pleases both grandma and Joe Programmer. Please Mark, you're smart enough to understand this. Stop suffering these Gnome guys and their tragically bad design. Linux really needs you to figure this out at some point.

I'd pay a license fee for it. I swear.

Your's sincerely,
The Grownups.