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View Full Version : KDE 4.3 - has KDE 4 finally grown up?



samjh
August 21st, 2009, 12:52 PM
Well, I installed KDE 4.3 two days ago (Arch amd64).

What can I say, than "I'm impressed"? KDE 4 has really come a long long way from the Frankenstein monstrosity that was 4.0.

In the two days of using it, it has proven to be:
1. More reliable than all previous KDE 4 versions.
2. Efficient and fast. (My system is using just 380MB of memory after two hours of running, compared to 500+ MB in KDE 4.2 and 400MB in Gnome.)
3. Good on the eyes. The new Air theme is nice, and I've always liked the Oxygen theme. Desktop composition is very smooth, filled with features, and seem to take no extra processing power or memory.

I am of the opinion that KDE 4.3 is KDE 4 all grown up. What do you think?

[EDIT: Eck! I'm too tired. Could a moderator please correct the typo in the title? I wrote "KDe" instead of "KDE".]

Crunchy the Headcrab
August 21st, 2009, 12:56 PM
KDE 4.3 is definitely nice. I think it still needs some work though. Namely it seems like menus and configuration settings are all over the place. What I mean by this is that it is not obvious where I will find certain settings. For example, in gnome if I want to change a personal preference I will find it somewhere in the system > preferences menu. If I want to change how something works in kde, I have to go searching for it. Obviously you can learn your way around kde, but I wouldn't call it intuitive. Things just aren't where you (where I at least) would expect them to be. Another example is something as simple as moving a widget around a panel. I figured it out myself the first time I used KDE, but I've seen many threads where people asked because they couldn't figure it out. Unlock widgets > open panel settings menu > and finally you can drag widgets around the panel. There is nothing to suggest though that you will be able to move them around while you are in panel settings unless you just figure it out.

Gnome on the other hand right click > unlock. It just makes more sense. That's just one small example but there are a lot of things like this.

Bachstelze
August 21st, 2009, 12:59 PM
KDE 4 has really come a long long way from the Frankenstein monstrosity that was 4.0.

All I can say is: the KDE devs knew what they were doing with 4.0. 4.0 was never intended to be installed by casual users for everyday use.

dandis
August 21st, 2009, 01:11 PM
I don't think so, Bob.

K.L.
August 21st, 2009, 01:31 PM
I'm using KDE 4.3 since it showed up in Arch's repositories and I like it. It is stable, highly configurable, it has many useful applications, split packages are very nice and so on.

I finally ditched GNOME :D

chucky chuckaluck
August 21st, 2009, 01:38 PM
i liked kde4 beta, so any improvement is just gravy to me.

sertse
August 21st, 2009, 01:50 PM
The problem with discussions like this is that few people can distance their personal views from a more objective evaluation.

Has KDE4 reached a stage where any problems are because "you don't like it" - and that is fine, all DE/WMs have their unique style, but it's NOT KDE's "fault" - rather an actual problem with KDE?

If the screenshot thread is to go by, and others have observed it too, KDE 4 is gaining a greater acceptance now. There more posts can more cool their desktops are, rather than complaints about it. :)

I personally switch to KDE 4 on one of my laptops. I am fine with it. It's nice in its own way.

automaton26
August 21st, 2009, 01:52 PM
Reports are good - I may even get tempted into a complete KDE4.3/ext4/GRUB2 reinstall, when Karmic arrives.

Smooth.

RiceMonster
August 21st, 2009, 01:57 PM
It's comming along well. I've switched to KDE with the 4.3 release. That means it's pretty good, since I thought I would never stop using Xfce. I'd say it's very good, but there's still some work to do; such as the ability to automount, and work in the network manager area.

Muppeteer
August 21st, 2009, 02:12 PM
I think it's mature, but some things still need work. Kwin, still isn't up to the speed of compiz. Dolphin, is quite slow overall. But i'm very impressed with how little footprint 4.3 has over memory and cpu compared to earlier versions. Even KDE 4.2 was quite hoggish in those areas. I think aswell as others have said, they should make options more optimized. It has improved a lot over KDE 3, but it's still not intuitive.

I read something a while ago that we'll be able to theme qt windows soon. Does anyone know anything about this?

pluviosity
August 21st, 2009, 02:27 PM
I've had a few minor hiccups here or there, but KDE 4.3 is good and snappy for me. Automount is definitely one thing I would like for it. Also, I miss Gnome Do now that I'm in KDE again. I'd like to see Krunner expanded more.

Overall, great release.

Muppeteer
August 21st, 2009, 02:30 PM
I've had a few minor hiccups here or there, but KDE 4.3 is good and snappy for me. Automount is definitely one thing I would like for it. Also, I miss Gnome Do now that I'm in KDE again. I'd like to see Krunner expanded more.

Overall, great release.

Why not use Gnome-Do in KDE? I do.

hyperdude111
August 21st, 2009, 02:59 PM
I haven't been too keen on kde 4.x so far, but since the beta of 4.3 i have switched from gnome.

I also like how Kde handles dual monitors but it could do better with KDM.

pluviosity
August 21st, 2009, 03:01 PM
Why not use Gnome-Do in KDE? I do.

Do uses the (IMO) hideous default Gnome icon set in KDE, which I can't stand to use long term. That, and I do get some of the same functionality in Krunner (though Do has far more plugins than Krunner has runners available), so I opt for the KDE app. A Docky clone for KDE would be nice but not necessary.

oobuntoo
August 21st, 2009, 03:16 PM
I've been testing Kubuntu Karmic for the last couple months and KDE 4.3 (beta, rc, and final) has been rock solid. I'm dual booting it on my system along with windows 7 RC. I have never seen font rendering, with minor tweak, on linux looking this good. It's almost as good as Windows 7 with ClearType turned on.

Memory usage is a lot smaller than previous version of KDE. On my system, plasma-desktop uses the most memory among KDE processes, about 35~45MB. Kwin, with compositing turned on, uses about 25~35MB. All this after a whole day of uptime. The top two processes in terms of memory usage belong to xorg and Firefox. Xorg uses any from 27MB to 130MB, but usually hovers around 45MB. Firefox 3.5.2 uses 60MB or more, depending on how may tabs are opened. As I'm typing this, there are 208 processes running, including Firefox, and the total physical memory being use is 440MB. That is not bad at all.

aaaantoine
August 21st, 2009, 03:45 PM
I've been using KDE since 4.1. Just as 4.2 improved over 4.1, 4.3 has a lot of improvements over 4.2, more than I can count.

It's been compelling enough for me to use in a production environment since 4.1, so my standards are pretty low, I guess. ;)

Oh, and to answer the poll question: there are still some kinks that need to be worked out, but maybe that's just KDEmod.

RiceMonster
August 21st, 2009, 04:27 PM
I've been testing Kubuntu Karmic for the last couple months and KDE 4.3 (beta, rc, and final) has been rock solid. I'm dual booting it on my system along with windows 7 RC. I have never seen font rendering, with minor tweak, on linux looking this good. It's almost as good as Windows 7 with ClearType turned on.

Memory usage is a lot smaller than previous version of KDE. On my system, plasma-desktop uses the most memory among KDE processes, about 35~45MB. Kwin, with compositing turned on, uses about 25~35MB. All this after a whole day of uptime. The top two processes in terms of memory usage belong to xorg and Firefox. Xorg uses any from 27MB to 130MB, but usually hovers around 45MB. Firefox 3.5.2 uses 60MB or more, depending on how may tabs are opened. As I'm typing this, there are 208 processes running, including Firefox, and the total physical memory being use is 440MB. That is not bad at all.

I find the memory usage is fine once nepomuk is turned off. It uses 150MB of ram. What the hell?

wersdaluv
August 21st, 2009, 04:39 PM
Other than KWin's speed (compared to Compiz) and the lack of GNOME Do (GNOME Do is way better on GNOME, of course), two big reasons why I can't switch are my main apps are gtk (and I can't stand even the slightest visual inconsistency... and yes, I tried Qt curve, Qt using gtk's theme and a lot more) and Kubuntu's not-so-good implementation of KDE.

sertse
August 21st, 2009, 04:46 PM
I find the memory usage is fine once nepomuk is turned off. It uses 150MB of ram. What the hell?

QFT. I've installed KDE4 on my netbook on that things, and turning off neopmuk/strigi was the main difference (along with turning off desktop effects, but you'll be crazy to have them on a netbook) between it just barely tolerable, and actually being usuable.

For the record. I can get KDE 4.24 here to use ~160 ram on startup, and ~360 ram in use over a full day. It never reaches 400 ram. (On the other hand, when I ran fluxbox, it never got past 250. ever. But that apples and oranges :P)

toupeiro
August 21st, 2009, 05:00 PM
I have to admit, I've been an avid gnome user for a long, long time, always trying KDE, but never really liking it since the big 4.0 face lift and tummy tuck. I will say though that since trying the 4.3 beta some months ago, I've not switched back... I'm much happier with it. I think part of what is keeping me on is that I don't like the way gnome 3 looks at all. I always liked the way KDE 4 looked, but I never liked the way it felt until now. So, I expect it will continue to enhance itself with this look for a while and I won't have to bother getting too familiar with the new gnome unless it happens to be earth smashingly good.

BigSilly
August 22nd, 2009, 09:15 AM
Hmm. This is a real worry now as Windows 7 looms. Gnome could end up looking like the poor relation behind W7, KDE4 and Mac. It's never been the prettiest environment (though it can be configured much nicer than I had previously thought), but it's clear the painful generational leap of KDE4.0 was a necessary move that's now paying off. I'm not sure Gnome 3 is the answer either.

Thing is, free or not, Ubuntu still has to look the part up against the other OS's. If it continues to use Gnome, then some serious visual improvements are going to have to be made.

nomnomnom
August 22nd, 2009, 09:19 AM
Hmm. This is a real worry now as Windows 7 looms. Gnome could end up looking like the poor relation behind W7, KDE4 and Mac. It's never been the prettiest environment (though it can be configured much nicer than I had previously thought), but it's clear the painful generational leap of KDE4.0 was a necessary move that's now paying off. I'm not sure Gnome 3 is the answer either.

Thing is, free or not, Ubuntu still has to look the part up against the other OS's. If it continues to use Gnome, then some serious visual improvements are going to have to be made.

+1

As much as I love GNOME, it takes some tweaking to make it look as good as Windows Vista or OSX.

By default Ubuntu is ugly.

Ekeluo
August 24th, 2009, 03:51 PM
In a word - YES.

In many words - It's stable, fast (little lagging from Kwin, but still), very customizable and of course beautiful. The only problem is Kubuntu isn't just the best it could be. Improvements are coming by the boatload though and I hope (and will contribute to it) it's all good by *K*armic *K*oala (geddit???:P)

toopi
August 25th, 2009, 06:36 PM
There's also something in 4.3 that made me switch back to KDE entirely.

Before KDE 4 release, I was using both desktop environments interchangeably, so that I could keep up with their changes over time. But at KDE 4.0 release, as you've all experienced, it was crashing left and right. I kept on coming back to it after its point releases (i.e. 4.1, 4.2). Unfortunately, those relases somehow couldn't keep me long enough to stay on KDE for more than a few days.

It was only at some time after the release of 4.3 beta, I could never go back to GNOME. My opinions are very subjective, of course.

Now, whenever I log back into GNOME, it just feels too plain and dull.

NTolerance
August 31st, 2009, 07:19 AM
Yeah, I think it has. Gnome has a big foot in the door of the 1990s from a looks standpoint. The Dust theme helped me stay with Gnome until recently, but after seeing that KDE 4.3 has become stable and good-looking, I don't think I can go back to Gnome.

Make no mistake, Compiz cannot make Gnome look better. By default, Compiz only makes it presence known when you move windows, open menus, etc. When the desktop is not being actively clicked on it looks very dated compared to Win7, OSX, KDE4, etc...

Plasma widgets are quite cool. Gnome projects like panel applets, Screenlets, Gdesklets, etc... are either dead or dying.

Finally, the Human icon set has served us well, but compared to Oxygen it's quite horrid. This is especially apparent when using Netbook remix.