Your thoughts on KDE 4.0 (S5E10)

[Aq]

What did you think of KDE 4.0? Is it the desktop of the future, or another graphics-heavy waste? Are you using it -- if not, do you plan to switch to it?

If you want to talk about whether "KDE 4.0" was a good name for it, jump over to the existing thread for that.

[haakin]

I haven't listen to the whole KDE 4 review yet, but I have a question for the team:

Was installing KDE 4 a so-hard-task that you need to use a Live CD?

It's quite annoying to listen time after time that "Maybe the problem was that we were testing a LiveCD".

I -as a KDE user- agree in some of the things you said. I hate the new K menu too. But you should keep in mind that a problem that you find the first time you use something is not a big problem really. I mean Stuart had a problem finding how to go up in the K menu. I agree that this is something to be corrected in the future, but it is not a big deal. I'm sure that he won't have that problem again.

And, KDE 4 should have been named KDE 4 Release for Developers or something like that.

Javier

[Aq]

I haven't listen to the whole KDE 4 review yet, but I have a question for the team:
Was installing KDE 4 a so-hard-task that you need to use a Live CD?

Finding spare machines to test it on is a hard task, because I don't have any. Repartitioning an existing machine is a hard task, certainly. Testing it in a (VirtualBox) VM, which is what I actually did, was considerably easier; it meant that I could actually use the KDE desktop without having to worry about whether the Live CD supported my hardware, worry about how much disc space it might take up, or deal with uninstalling it afterwards.

[martinjh99]

Tested on Kubuntu a while back after 4 was released. The menu is like the same as the one in OpenSuse 10

I'm going to wait for 4.1 to use it for good.

[Allix]

Aq , In regard to inserting a usb stick i presume you are using the free version of virtualbox, because it does not support usb, only the non-free does.
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Editions

[sjeapes]

........ But you should keep in mind that a problem that you find the first time you use something is not a big problem really. I mean Stuart had a problem finding how to go up in the K menu. I agree that this is something to be corrected in the future, but it is not a big deal. I'm sure that he won't have that problem again.

I would agree with that if it was a one off. But the impression I got from the show was that there were quite a few oddities like that.
I'm planning to install Kubuntu when it's released and give KDE4 a spin for a month and see how I like it but the inability to do things without having to relearn everything would make me swap back, especially if there isn't a benefit in the new way.

Surely, in an ideal world the user of a UI shouldn't have to think how to use it for the first time, it should just be obvious, even if you're coming from a different background. After all it's not just Gnome users that might be trying KDE for the first time it might be Windows XP/Vista/Mac users too.

[Aq]

Aq , In regard to inserting a usb stick i presume you are using the free version of virtualbox, because it does not support usb, only the non-free does.
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Editions

Did I insert a USB stick? As far as I'm aware, I was using the free edition.

[Allix]

Did I insert a USB stick? As far as I'm aware, I was using the free edition.

it must have been one of the other guys, i need to re-listen to it.

[DJ]

My thoughts on KDE 4 currently amount to 'wouldn't install'... I upgraded my laptop to Debian Unstable so I could install it from the experimental repository, but all the packages had broken dependencies.

[Allix]

My thoughts on KDE 4 currently amount to 'wouldn't install'... I upgraded my laptop to Debian Unstable so I could install it from the experimental repository, but all the packages had broken dependencies.

its called the experimental repository for a reason

[linuxrulz]

I currently use Gnome on Debian Etch 4.0. I got playing around on the Debian website, and thought some people may want to see the following link. Since Debian is used as a base for Ubuntu, etc it might explain their strategy on KDE 4.0.

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-an ... 00001.html

[spamfree]

You're a cheeky lot that's for bloody sure. 'Only 1% of Linux users use KDE'?!?! Sod off! You'll be surprised to hear that, outside your shabby brown Ubuntu drapes lies a world full of KDE users. I can't offer hard numbers but I do suspect the number of KDE users to be closer to 50% of the Linux world. Indeed, only a year ago, Linus Torvalds himself recommended that people use KDE because Gnome(and Gnome developers), in his opinion, was shit! Madvriva, Knoppix, Meppis and many lesser known distros still use KDE by default, Canonical saw fit to support Kubuntu(albeit poorly), Fedora and openSuse both still offer full support for KDE just tick the box at installation. In fact Novell/openSuse are perhaps that largest contributors to KDE despite having spent good money purchasing Ximian and being misdirected by Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza.

Having said that, I fear that KDE may have jumped the rails under its present leadership with regards to KDE 4.0. To begin with, there is the user backlash to KDE 4.0's release. Aaron can backtrack all he wants but, as stated in another post in this forum, the KDE developers did present 4.0 as a completed work right up until the official release where upon it suddenly became an early release, a developer's release, more of a beta and a long list of other excuses. The most ludicrous reasoning of all was that KDE 4.0 was not KDE4. What!??

But, despite their desire to have many people using it and their claims that it is ready to go, KDE 4.0 is a developer release. KDE 4 changes many things at its very core. QT4 for one thing and then the replacement of DCOP with D-BUS. These two changes alone mean that very nearly every application that currently works on KDE 3.x will not run on KDE 4.0 without being ported (read, rewriting). When people see a 10 year old project release it's fourth major version, they expect a certain amount of maturity and stability. This isn't a 0.0.5 project on SourceForge and they expect, not unreasonably, for things to work.

There are many matters of taste that I, and many other KDE users, do not care for in KDE 4.0. These include the Slab menu(Novell's "better start menu"), the desktop real estate wasted on excessively thick and video card crushing translucent window borders around Plasmoids and many more.

Leaving matters of taste aside, there are some fundementally misguided choices that are being made about the very foundation of the KDE platform. Why bother with Plasma when we've had Panel and SuperKaramba for years and fewer and fewer people are using SuperKaramba? Further increasing my misunderstanding of the choice, the Plasma panel is nearly impossible to configure! This is progress? Replacing applications like Konqueror, a cornerstone of KDE, with immature, featureless and broken apps like Dolphin is equally ill advised. Amarok, the on again off again default audio player is still full of ridiculously annoying bugs and broken/immature features at 1.4.8 but, rather than fixing it, they start over with Amarok2. Will KDE users have to wait another two years for it to reach the level of 1.4.8?

Printing is broken! Printing! WTF?

KDE 4.0 is an enormous disservice to KDE and with the likes of LugRadio already sticking the boot in about KDE's usage levels it only makes things worse.

[eyecon]

I have been a KDE user for a very long time. Overall, it is the best desktop around. 4.0 is a disappointment primarily in terms of project leadership, direction and constancy of purpose.

1. There seems to exist a general underlying assumption that plasma is of great importance. I doubt that. Indeed, it looks like the plasma team hijacked the project. I think that KDE lost a sense of what users really want.

2. IMO, this should have been released as an RC or Beta. It is not release quality.

3. I would have preferred incremental releases. 3.5.8 could have been compiled against QT4 (possibly with a transition to Cmake) as 3.60. Then the plasma desktop followed by the new "panel" could be implemented over a stable base. This would have prevented taking on too much at one time. Moreover, this would prevent what might be perceived as a complete loss of development on the current branch.

4. I am not at all sure about Cmake. Doing so introduced a new learning curve. OK, I confess that it's a new trick to this old dog. Cmake has made it more difficult - for me - to work with the SVN code during development.

Overall, the way that we work should depict the desktop (form follows function). In that respect, KDE4 seems ass backwards. The cute widgets are more hindrance than help. KDE4 gets in my way.

[shanghai]

I don't think it was completely fair to test it from a live CD. It's easy to install it as an extra desktop environment and log in to a KDE4 session.
The USB ports worked fine just plug in and a window pops up in the right hand bottom corner with your device detected so I don't know what went wrong there during your test?
I will keep KDE4 installed it works quite well already for me. I agree that the interface including the slab-alike menu can improve a lot.

[angrymike]

"1. There seems to exist a general underlying assumption that plasma is of great importance"

I think this assumption only lies with the users/"reviewers". Since Plasma is the "eye-candy" bit, it gets a lot of attention. Very few people have actually "reviewed" the massive changes that took place. (Solid, Phonon, QT4, CMake, etc...)

"2. IMO, this should have been released as an RC or Beta. It is not release quality."

IMO it was time to release. A ".0" release always has issues and being a believer in "Release early, Release Often" this seems perfectly fine for me. Some people don't believe this, but I think it is the best way to do open source.

"4. I am not at all sure about Cmake. Doing so introduced a new learning curve. OK, I confess that it's a new trick to this old dog. Cmake has made it more difficult - for me - to work with the SVN code during development."

If you check out the windows bits and try to develop there, you will see the brilliance of this decision. This of course assumes you want to see KDE apps on windows. I would be interested to see how it made your life more difficult, I think it is pretty easy.

I think KDE4 is about where it should be, early adopters will find the problems and they will be fixed. This is how it has always been, and will be, in the free software world, KDE4 will not change this.