KDE 4 Preview: Quite Impressive

[vishzilla]

http://polishlinux.org/kde/kde-4-preview-rev-723381/

[miggols99]

That looks very impressive! Much much better than what I've seen before. I'm still waiting for Raptor (new KDE menu) which looks very good in the mockups. I've heard that thay will wait until 4.1 to put that in. I like that they enabled compositing by default. When the live cd comes out (beta 3) I will actually be able to test it out!

[EdThaSlayer]

KDE4 looks very nice. Can't wait till it comes out. When is GNOME going to release their next version?

[OoooMatron]

Yeah it looks good. For me they still have too large buttons/icons and no seperator line splitting the appearance for functionality.
The bottom of this windows for instance
http://polishlinux.org/reviews/kde4/kick_lea.png

Also, it still seems the majority of space is taken up by functions you maybe not use regularly and the actual work space becomes too small
http://polishlinux.org/reviews/kde4/dolphin.png


Other than that though it looks impressive and if it is stable and fast it would defintely get a shot on my desktop. It still has that ambience of KDE ugliness though that remind me of big lego bricks.

[OoooMatron]

KDE4 looks very nice. Can't wait till it comes out. When is GNOME going to release their next version?

Gnome development is much slow and less feature rich then the new KDE. KDE seems to spend a lot of time developing application suites as well as the appearance.

[Morbett]

Which KDE-based OS do you guys recommend I install to try out KDE4 when it is released? Kubuntu won't offer it in December so I'll have to find another OS. Suse?

[Phil Airtime]

Which KDE-based OS do you guys recommend I install to try out KDE4 when it is released? Kubuntu won't offer it in December so I'll have to find another OS. Suse?

I hear it'll be included in the KDE edition of Fedora 8.

These screenshots look lovely, but whether I'll get on with it is another matter. I've never been into KDE, it feels a bit clunky like Windows.

I'm impressed if these shots are real. Usually with projects like this, the most beautiful mockups come out with wonderful clear fonts and the real thing is let down by awful font rendering and shoddy graphics.

[GeneralZod]

I'm impressed if these shots are real. Usually with projects like this, the most beautiful mockups come out with wonderful clear fonts and the real thing is let down by awful font rendering and shoddy graphics.

None are mockups, to my knowledge.

Some pics that are definitely mockups can be found here:

http://www.nuno-icons.com/images/estilo/

It remains to be seen how well the Oxygen team can match them.

[Phil Airtime]

None are mockups, to my knowledge.

Some pics that are definitely mockups can be found here:

http://www.nuno-icons.com/images/estilo/

It remains to be seen how well the Oxygen team can match them.

Those are the mockups I remember from a while back. If they ever match those (with those nice fonts and not the god awful default KDE font), they've got Mac beaten for pretty UI.

[lzfy]

Looks awesome. Can't wait to install it on my desktop.

[n3tfury]

that looks pretty good! it always looked a bit candy like to me and that dragon? when that thing appears it makes me think i'm using an OS for kids.

[Laterix]

KDE4 looks very nice. Can't wait till it comes out. When is GNOME going to release their next version?
Gnome 2.20 was just released (http://www.gnome.org/)few weeks ago. Gnome is released twice a year just like Ubuntu in such a way that every new Ubuntu release has a new Gnome.

[marco123]

Very, very nice.:) Will definitely try it when it comes out, maybe with Hardy? Amarok is starting to look nice too.

[happysmileman]

Also, it still seems the majority of space is taken up by functions you maybe not use regularly and the actual work space becomes too small
http://polishlinux.org/reviews/kde4/dolphin.png
Other than that though it looks impressive and if it is stable and fast it would defintely get a shot on my desktop. It still has that ambience of KDE ugliness though that remind me of big lego bricks.

All of those extra functions have a close button clearly visible though, and AFAIK you only have to close them once, the next time you open up Dolphin they won't be there, you can also move them around and even have them all on one side controlled by tabs.

I suppose we'll find out hopefully by the end of the year, though in my opinion it's looking great, I might even install Kubuntu 7.10 on my external drive to test out KDE4 betas and RCs (definitely not going to even attempt it before 4.0 on Gentoo :P)

[Ireclan]

Eh....I saw a few glimmers of brilliance in that preview, but not as much as I was hoping for, possibly due to its limited scope. What confused me was that there seems to be a new style called Bespin...Wasn't Oxygen the official icon schema?

[happysmileman]

Eh....I saw a few glimmers of brilliance in that preview, but not as much as I was hoping for, possibly due to its limited scope. What confused me was that there seems to be a new style called Bespin...Wasn't Oxygen the official icon schema?

I think the Oxygen project is mainly about icons, but there's a theme built around it now since it got fairly popular, it's quite likely that bespin is still going, just no longer as default set.

Also in my opinion KDE4 looks brilliant, I'm especially interested in the Plasmoids, and the libraries, but I suppose I am fairly interested in programming so that's not a surprise. Amarok 2 also looks very promising, and in general the look of it rocks

The only thing that annoys me is the schedule, I can understand how it'd take very long to complete a project of this scope, but they should have tried to be more realistic about the release dates in the first place, as soon as I saw October 23rd as a release date I immediately asked how they hoped mto manage that, now I know it was just being over-optimistic.

[GeneralZod]

What confused me was that there seems to be a new style called Bespin...Wasn't Oxygen the official icon schema?

As noted, Bespin is an unofficial style.

Originally, the Oxygen style was developed by Thomas Luebking, author of the Baghira (OS X clone) style. At this years' aKademy in July, however, a meeting was held and a peer review of the style revealed a lot of unmaintainable code and allegedly poor coding practices, and (also allegedly) the criticism caused Thomas to walk off and the Oxygen style was begun from scratch by other developers [actually, I think it took Plastik as a base, but Thomas's code was dropped].

This new version of Oxygen is developed in KDE SVN and will, if all goes to plan, be the default style for KDE4.0. Bespin is Thomas's continuance of his old Oxygen code under a different name. It is not developed inside KDE's SVN, and will likely be a third-party only style for KDE4.0

[tr4nce]

I'm sorry, but kde4 looks terrible...:(
Dolphin looks confusing... and look at amarok2! What a dissapointment, but I will give it a try. Let's hope that there will be more polished themes on the final release!

[maagimies]

Well, that's something.
I always liked my KDE apps lean and mean, but the ones featured here have GIANT buttons and HUGE text, and tons and tons of wasted UI space.
Most applications here look like a kids toy, or atleast designed by one.
Well, it's still KDE so I can hopefully customize it, reducing font and button sizes to somewhat less than a quarter of the screen they are now :D

Also, separators, use them.

The Plasma stuff didn't look bad.
edit:
Amarok was quite a mess too... but that's probably only because they had every single feature open at the same time for demonstration purposes.
For some reason I couldn't find the playlist on the screenshot?

[kingofpain]

What in God's name is this?
http://img30.picoodle.com/img/img30/9/10/13/f_amarokm_54ef38f.jpg

It's starting to look just as confusing as the lastest winamp, which is a total mess!

[happysmileman]

What in God's name is this?
http://img30.picoodle.com/img/img30/9/10/13/f_amarokm_54ef38f.jpg

It's starting to look just as confusing as the lastest winamp, which is a total mess!

Well playlist is on right, everything else appears to just be a feature there for demonstration, the centre where the equaliser settings is the plasma part, that is I think where the settings dialogs will go possible, so you can use them while using other features of it?

Correct me if I'm wrong here

[Darkhack]

If these screenshots are any indication of what's coming down the pipe, I'll be sticking with GNOME for a while. Plasma and KWin compositing look good though. Other than that...

1. Window decoration is ugly. Window bar, and the min/max/close buttons just look shoddy.

2. New kmenu looks like it would take a lot of clicks to navigate. They'd be better off putting the "Favorites", "Applications", and "My Computer" buttons on to the kicker directly instead of inside the kmenu. Similar to how GNOME does it.

3. Scrollbar looks trashy

4. When a section (five items at the bottom) is selected in the kmenu, it has a very blocky gray box around it. They need to try to make it smoother and not so... Windows 98ish.

5. Horrible waste of screen space. Especially in Dolphin. Besides, I like Konqueror. Let's just hope they don't screw that up on the 4.0 release. Seriously, it almost looks like they TRIED to waste screen space. Thanks KDE, but I'm not blind, and I'm not seven. I want a desktop for adults.

6. The search window at the bottom of Kate is a UI disaster.

7. Amarok... wow... just... wow. I'm at a loss for words at how terrible this looks.

I know my post seems like a "bash KDE fest" but I really do love KDE. I just honestly believe these screenshots are WAY under par for what the KDE team is capable of.

[Erunno]

2. New kmenu looks like it would take a lot of clicks to navigate. They'd be better off putting the "Favorites", "Applications", and "My Computer" buttons on to the kicker directly instead of inside the kmenu. Similar to how GNOME does it.

4. When a section (five items at the bottom) is selected in the kmenu, it has a very blocky gray box around it. They need to try to make it smoother and not so... Windows 98ish.

This is a reimplementation of the openSUSE Kickoff menu. Novell verified the design in professional usability tests where it was tested alongside other menu designs (including Windows XP and the original KMenu). The amount of clicks is not the ultimate measurement for usability. The documention describing the usability tests can be found online. If you disagree with the methods or the conclusions I'm sure you can point them out point by point. In my opinion it beats the usual "I think therefore it is" approach.

The GNOME approach wastes a lot of valuable taskbar space at all times. Kickoff has the "Favorites" tab to quickly start your most commonly used applications (2 clicks).

Other than that Kickoff is still work in progress as it was started just a short time ago. The original Kickoff tabs are visually part of the content pane above so I guess this will be sorted out in time.


5. Horrible waste of screen space. Especially in Dolphin. Besides, I like Konqueror. Let's just hope they don't screw that up on the 4.0 release. Seriously, it almost looks like they TRIED to waste screen space. Thanks KDE, but I'm not blind, and I'm not seven. I want a desktop for adults.

You absolutely must hate GNOME then since most default themes feature rather largish widgets and icon/text combinations. I guess this (meaning: no crammed menu bars) was probably identified as a usability best practice and KDE4 is trying to sort out some of its interfaces where reasonable after years of complaints by parts of the Linux userbase.


6. The search window at the bottom of Kate is a UI disaster.

As far as I know this is the advanced view, there's also a simpler inline search very similar to that of Firefox. Plus, as you can see the screenshot displays a code file and developers have usually more advanced needs when it comes to searching.


7. Amarok... wow... just... wow. I'm at a loss for words at how terrible this looks.

Well, thanks for contributing this very precise criticism. I for my part am worried about the lack of a playlist and the Amarok developers seem to have a firm stance against a default playlist for some alleged usability reasons (see above "I think therefore it is").

[Polygon]

i will agree, amarok does look pretty confusing.

[happysmileman]

Well thanks for contributing this very precise criticism. I for my part am worried about the lack of a playlist and the Amarok developers seem to have a firm stance against a default playlist for some alleged usability reasons (see above "I think therefore it is").

What's this about lack of a playlist?

[Erunno]

What's this about lack of a playlist?

Truth to be told, I haven't used Amarok 2 yet (not sure if it is developed in trunk/) so my information may be not very accurate. As far as I understand the issue the developers want to either get rid of the playlist completely (unlikely in my opinion) or make it a far less visible piece of the interface and pushing their new context browser to the forefront as they seem to have a hard time understanding why people would want to create long playlists to begin with.

[mech7]

The amount of clicks is not the ultimate measurement for usability. The documention describing the usability tests can be found online. If you disagree with the methods or the conclusions I'm sure you can point them out point by point. In my opinion it beats the usual "I think therefore it is" approach.


Sorry to say but if you use computer allot this menu would really tick me off.. Linux menu's still kinda suck compared to vista.. hit windows button, type and enter :) no click needed at all, that is how menus should work :) I got bad case of RSI from clicking unnecessary buttons :p

[Erunno]

hit windows button, type and enter :) no click needed at all, that is how menus should work :) I got bad case of RSI from clicking unnecessary buttons :p

Kickoff has an integrated search which can also act as an application launcher. What you describe already works in Kickoff today.

[jdq997]

This is looking nice. It isn't confusing. Those extra windows in Dolphin and Amarok all look like they can be closed. For an ultra clean OS a stock Gnome install will do the trick. For those who want eye candy and bells and whistles KDE will now supply them out of the box. I look forward to trying it. I'm guessing it won't be refined enough for every day use until mid 2008, and then the various distros will supply their own adjustments to the look/feel. Good progress so far.

- Jason

[qazwsx]

I hope that there is still good old kick *** kmenu (well actually I strongly belive that there is).

I just don't understand most of the critic. It's KDE not GNOME! It's cuustomized of course. I think that KDE users understand that they wanted show KDE some good old KDE action taken to the limit on those pics. I quess it's just harder to GNOME users understand that concept.

I have used couple of beta releases but now I am really waiting for the release!

:popcorn:

[GeneralZod]

Those extra windows in Dolphin and Amarok all look like they can be closed.

Not only that, but in Dolphin at least, they are not present by default: Just (IIRC) the File Manager view, Places panel, and Information panel. Whoever said that these screenshots were deliberately overloaded in order to showcase features was bang-on, and I'm betting the same applies to amaroK.

Incidentally, anyone interested in Dolphin might want to check out this clip: I found it disturbingly fun to play with, and it looks like this guy did, too :)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0FuB4YZfC4s

[blithen]

Like many Gnome users have said and I will now say. Once KDE4 comes out I will give KDE another try.

[p_quarles]

Of course, KDE4 (assuming it's beta) is in the repos. Out of curiosity, has anyone given it a try? I'm just wondering if it's a "fun" beta or a "migraine" beta. If the former, I'd like to test drive it.

[LuisAugusto]

It looks really well.
What is it? Why are there some many trolls here? I mean, this is an Open Source project, I want to believe you aren't bashing it because you like more other projects.

I mean, come on, putting everything Dolphin can show at the same time, it's trolling, by default it just show the Places sidebar.

Amarok, as I already posted out (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=571184), has a new playlist that looks nice, however, I'm still a little skeptic about the rest of the GUI.

And, come on, ¿bashing the taskbar? Based on what? They all do the same thing, you may not like the color, but come on.

About Kickoff, well, it was put face to face with KMENU and Vista Menu, and it was the overall winner on their tests, favorties and search cover 90% of the situations better than the regular menu.

Kwin_Composite looks nice, the new Oxygen Theme is still lacking a lot, but it's 100% work in progress. Okular is impressive, Kontact, Juk, Plasma, Konqueror, System Settings, everything is looking better than it does in KDE 3.5.* (of course, it buggy, it's in development).

[thisllub]

Sorry to say but if you use computer allot this menu would really tick me off.. Linux menu's still kinda suck compared to vista.. hit windows button, type and enter :) no click needed at all, that is how menus should work :) I got bad case of RSI from clicking unnecessary buttons :p

e17.

[purdy hate machine]

Sorry to say but if you use computer allot this menu would really tick me off.. Linux menu's still kinda suck compared to vista.. hit windows button, type and enter :) no click needed at all, that is how menus should work :) I got bad case of RSI from clicking unnecessary buttons :p

The exact reason I use katapult (http://katapult.kde.org/)

[lzfy]

Of course, KDE4 (assuming it's beta) is in the repos. Out of curiosity, has anyone given it a try? I'm just wondering if it's a "fun" beta or a "migraine" beta. If the former, I'd like to test drive it.

I tried beta 2 to to see how stable it is. At this stage I would only recommend it to test the plasmoids, to see how they look like. The rest is very buggy. IIRC beta 3 is coming out today so I would wait for that if you want to give it a try.

[GeneralZod]

I tried beta 2 to to see how stable it is. At this stage I would only recommend it to test the plasmoids, to see how they look like. The rest is very buggy. IIRC beta 3 is coming out today so I would wait for that if you want to give it a try.

I think Beta 3 is being bumped back to Thursday as they have an official release of 3.5.8 to do, first.

[maestrobwh1]

As of today, the only way I can pull up the programs menu is to at+f2 and then type kicker... but it is the same menu as my 3.5.8 menu and it does not look like the kde 4 screenshots I see elsewhere. Odd, but I get this on both machines. Anyone getting the kde 4 menu?

There are some plasmoids that work, but I am not impressed as of yet. 3.5.8 with compiz is way more impressive at this point as far as what the ubuntu packages look like.

I followed the directions here:
http://kubuntu.org/announcements/kde4-beta3.php (http://kubuntu.org/announcements/kde4-beta3.php)

[luca.b]

Kubuntu's packages of KDE4 are quite broken. I'm compiling from source every few days and KDE4 looks to be shaping up pretty nicely.

Not to mention that if you have a recent build, you can always help triaging bugs on Saturdays on the #kde4-krush channel on freenode. Quite a number of issues have been reported and fixed this way.

[Incense]

KDE 4 is looking fantastic. OpenSUSE has a KDE 4 beta 4 live disc if you want to give the new DE a go wihtout risking your current system, or for use in a VM.

http://home.kde.org/~binner/kde-four-live/

[GeneralZod]

or for use in a VM.


Also, plug-plug:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=609503

;)

[Dimitriid]

its that KWin thing using 3D acceleration? That'd be such a disappointment, kde 4 was supposed to be a speed improvement yet it will greatly limit itself by using a feature currently and largely as experimental as the pathetic 3d drivers companies like ATI put out.

[fuscia]

i'm posting from opensuse's live beta, now. haven't figured out how to take screenshot yet. this looks really nice, though.

[GeneralZod]

its that KWin thing using 3D acceleration? That'd be such a disappointment, kde 4 was supposed to be a speed improvement yet it will greatly limit itself by using a feature currently and largely as experimental as the pathetic 3d drivers companies like ATI put out.

It can use 3D or just fall back to the 2D mode used in KDE3.