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View Full Version : KDE 3.5.x vs KDE 4.x -- Poll 1



Faolan84
September 6th, 2008, 04:27 AM
Okay, it's no secret that the KDE 4.x branch has been nothing short of a dissapointment to many users. Many users have already stopped using KDE altogether because of the hubris displayed by many of the KDE development team in current months. Now KDE is faced with either a future of obscurity or a change in direction it seems. However, I have not seen any polls of opinion reguarding this suject. So in earnest of this I would like to conduct a few polls to help gather some data points so that developers from Ubuntu and other distros can use this information in reguards to how KDE 4.x vs KDE 3.5.x should be handled.

This poll and discussion is to plot how many users are using KDE 4.x vs those who have not made the switch or those how have went to other environments or window managers. Please refrain from flaming and back up any critism with real source or provable facts and not conjectures or false statements based on opinion.

bp1509
September 6th, 2008, 05:17 AM
d

Faolan84
September 6th, 2008, 05:43 AM
Honestly, my experience after using KDE 4.1 for five days can be summed up in this post that I made to Linux.com which pretty much is a harsh reveiw, but one that I feel is needed and is long over due because I go for the source of the problem and I also gave constructive critism on how the current problems can be fixed.


Firstly, I will say that I used KDE at first (from 2000 up to late 2006), but now I use GNOME because the the experience with KDE is that the devs just no longer care about the 3.x branch and they have basically consigned the desktop to a future of obscurity by releasing the monster that is KDE 4.x.

The 4.x branch had a lot of great ideas like Solid, but Plasma was poorly implemented and then used as the selling point the new branch. Features like mac-style menus are missing, and there is prety much no way to make the panel smaller than the default size. They should just bring back kicker or make the plasma panel have the same functionality. Secondly, everything about Plasma seems fake. It's really that bad. They took the desktop metaphor (eg, icons, panel, etc) and threw it all away.

There are bugs that are numerous, including one where trying to import a whole folder full of wallpapers into the wallpaper selection list just causes the folder's name to be selected in import box and then when you try again when you realise "whoops" and just select the one wallpaper you want BAM! it does acknowledge your selection.

Now this is comming from someone who abosolutely loved the KDE 3.x branch (3.5 rocked) but switched over when I saw the **** hit the fan with 4.x branch. Face it, 4.x probably will not be ready for the desktop until the 4.3 release at this rate. In fact they should not have released it until 2009 and maintained bug fixes in 3.5 along with a transition to QT4 which was also poorly handled.

And of course the most important thing to mention: KDE 4.x has only a few core apps which many are just shadows of their former selves. Amarok isn't ready, neither is KDevelop, KOffice, or K3B which are programs that people also will use on a day to day basis. Let's face it, with some of these programs (KOffice) estimating a stable release in 2010 it's obvious that things aren't going so well with the 4.x branch and if something isn't done soon to correct these mistakes then GNOME and XFCE are going to have a lot more users here soon and the debate over QT vs GTK will also be over if that happens.

Maybe if the KDE developers did something along the lines of just add in the functionality of the old 3.5.x branch, confine plasma to a more limited role as a layer above the desktop that displays widges (similar to adesklets but more functional), bring back kicker, and stop trying to be "revolutionary" then *MAYBE* people would not have been so resentful towards the release. But instead of a simple port to QT4, we had the "pleasure" of being force fed Plasma which in the end spoiled what would have been a great desktop.

Also I sincerely hope that KDE devs are reading this and taking this to heart because if you are going to release this on Windows too, I doubt you will get very far. However, I do want to end this on a good note and that is Okular is a great concept. I like what I'm seeing in the new KOffice but it's not exactly in a usable state right now. Amarok 2... I hope it looks more like the old Amarok when it's finally released. Also, I like the new scripting interface, that was a good move and so was solid. Integrating Strigi was nice but Nepomuk (spelling?) was horrible and I had to stop it becuase it was just stalling things up. I do see some potiential in 4.2 if you can bring back what 3.5 was to many of the users.

awakatanka
September 6th, 2008, 07:21 AM
People complain about futures that already are done in trunk our will be in very soon. All i see at a lot of post is people that talking about what other people say. You can see that a lot of people didn't even try it our tried it a long time ago. Try to read kde.dot and see what is coming and is done before complain about things that already done our coming soon.

I hate it when people say kde4 isn't working because they say so, no its working and lots of people use it, it doesn't work for you atm and that is something different.
No one is forcing people to use kde4 kde3 is still updated, so if you can't use kde4 atm because you need something then stay at kde3 that have everything you need. And switch if its working lke you want. And that kde dev don't care about kde3 any more is totally bull they have just updated it.

People that use kde3 and switch to gnome is also something stupid, they hate kde4 because its different but switch to gnome that is totally different from what they used,talk about contradicting examples. Stay with kde3 because it works for you and wait when kde4 is ready for you. And the examples of prg's that have no kde4 version isn't a big deal you can use the older kde3 version still. Again you are not forced to use kde4 you can still use kde3. And those prg's also don't have anything to do with how kde4 works.

And make a poll on a ubuntu forum isn't smart because you get wrong numbers.

Faolan84
September 6th, 2008, 08:18 AM
(1) The Ubuntuforums are also used by Kubuntu users.
(2) We are not whining about KDE 4.
(3) GNOME actually follows a paradigm that is more similar in nature to KDE 3.5.x than KDE 4.x

KDE 4.x broke the desktop metaphor in significant ways that one could argue that it is not a desktop environment in the traditional sense. In many ways it is something different and I don not think it is a bad thing necessarily, but it does present several usability challenges and I understand that the 4.x branch is still pretty much a wait and see scenario -- but it's not looking all that great right now for KDE.

Now, as for making judgments that are not based in fact -- I made sure to actually use KDE 4.1 and I did not enjoy the experience, but like I said I did believe it had redeaming features such as Solid, Nepomuk, and other goodies.

My main beef was with Plasma and the fact it is so poorly implemented, and to top it off many of the programs like Amarok, KOffice, K3B, and other do not have any released versions for KDE4 and the current versions do not integrate all that well theme wise or functionality wise. To top that off a lot of the programs were neutered to the point that they were in my own words "shadows of their former selves".

There were a lot better ways the KDE team could have operated the roll out of a major release such as this but they chose to use the worst meathods possible, even going as far as making the release announcement sound like it was hearlding the trumpets for the Second Coming:
KDE 4.0 release announcement: http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.0/
KDE 3.5.9 release announcement: http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-3.5.9.php
Both were provided so you can make to comparision and so no one can say "KDE 4.0 was announced as a developer's release" when it was clearly not according to the *OFFICAL* release statements. Now I know about early versions, but given KDE's past reputation with the 3.x series I did not expect that they would be so caught up in their hubris as to do something like this on what they advertised in their own words a "significant release marks both the end of the long and intensive development cycle leading up to KDE 4.0 and the beginning of the KDE 4 era".

The best route the KDE could have took was to just port over everything to QT4, then released it as KDE 3.6, then created a development branch called KDE 4.x where they worked on developing the new platforms. When the platforms were done they could have said that they were only going to release security patches for the 3.6 branch (which would already be ported to QT4). Then they could just add in the new functionality to the appilcations and do a little bit of code clean up and released it all as KDE 5.x. Perhaps KDE should look into revamping their dev cycle and versioning policies where they have a development and a stable branch and make sure there are no communication problems between the two.

Lastly, I am aware that KDE 3.5.x is still being updated, but it is so at a slower pace and eventually in the near future it looks as though it may be dropped in future Kubuntu releases prematurely. It would be interesting to hear an offical maintainer's opinion on the 3.5.x issue. KDE 3.5.10 may remain in 8.10 but will it be there in 9.x? And if it is dropped then that leaves users with the obvious choice of having to switch if KDE 4.x isn't ready by then and the next release (4.2) is scheduled to be in Febuarary 2009 so it may be too late to include it in the first Ubuntu 2009 release.

As I said once before: a lot of the complaints that KDE has made in 4.x are comparable to the mistakes that were made in the early Gnome 2.x releases as far as featurecide goes. There difference is that the Gnome developers realised early on in their mistakes and corrected them by adding back the features. The KDE developers have responded by ignoring at best and at worst flaming users with valid critisms and that has turned a lot of users off to KDE 4.x. I even was told by one of the developers to "**** off" in reguards to comments I made on improving KDE. It's that attitude that towards the user that really discourages me from seeing any real improvements to 4.x.

myusername
September 6th, 2008, 08:21 AM
i will use kde4 when it gets more stable and more apps are developed for it

GeneralZod
September 6th, 2008, 08:22 AM
i will use kde4 when it gets more stable and more apps are developed for it

Something like this should really be added as a poll option.

Faolan84
September 6th, 2008, 08:34 AM
Those are my thoughts. I'm tracking the development fairly closely. It really does seem like a good project, just poorly implemented as of right now. It needs more apps -- I definately agree on that. I'm really hoping this thing will blow over when 4.2 is released. Maybe our critisms have been heard and will be worked on to make things like Plasma bearable and the interface more like it was with 3.5.x (some miss things like mac-style menus and other more obscure options). I do have to say I was impressed with the new capabilities of KWin. It was in many ways better than compiz. It looks like it could be promising should the developers actually be willing to take some critism and user input into consideration.

misfitpierce
September 6th, 2008, 08:35 AM
I just recently got back into using KDE environment and must say that KDE 4 is in my opinion nicer. I think its about the same under the hood with few tweaks but KDE4 suits me fine and runs perfectly fine. KDE4 FTW!

Incense
September 6th, 2008, 08:41 AM
There are a lot of things that I really like about KDE. The 4.1.1 release made things even better. I'm still waiting for some apps to be ported over, and just overall better distro support for KDE 4. OpenSUSE 11 did a great job with their KDE 4 desktop, but it's just not quite there for me. Kontact is still pretty crashy, GTK apps really slow down my lappy, and well, overall things feel slower. I think the next round of KDE distro releases will be very interesting. That all being said, I'm typing this on Gnome while I let KDE 4 cook a little bit longer. Yeah I know I can use 3.5.10, but after spending as much time as I did in KDE 4, it's really hard to go back.

Faolan84
September 6th, 2008, 08:45 AM
Well I am just thankful that Ubuntu was conservative in the way they handled the switch. If you like 4.x it is there. If you don't you can choose 3.5.x. Fedora left users with no choice when upgrading to Fedora 9: they got KDE 4.x whether they wanted it or not. But to be fair Fedora is a development distro for testing new technologies for Red Hat Enterprise, so it's designed to be bleeding edge, not rock solid. I just hope Ubuntu retains that choice with 8.10 and the future 2009 versions because it looks like the 4.x branch has a long way to go. Perhaps after they've ported over all the features from 3.5.x and smoothed over the rough edges they should rebrand it KDE 5 or give it a different name entirely because it looks like their jumping the gun really did create some ire and backlash. Maybe they should call it Phoenix Desktop Environment if they can pull this off.

EdThaSlayer
September 6th, 2008, 08:47 AM
All I gotta say is, at least KDE takes risks. :)

awakatanka
September 6th, 2008, 08:49 AM
(1) The Ubuntuforums are also used by Kubuntu users.
(2) We are not whining about KDE 4.
(3) GNOME actually follows a paradigm that is more similar in nature to KDE 3.5.x than KDE 4.xIf you want correct numbers use kubuntu forum there it will be more correct then on a gnome centric forum

Saying the same thing over and over again where the dev. people say it will be in later is whining about a future you missing but others don't our can life with it till its there

When Gnome 2.0 was there people also complained about that.


but it's not looking all that great right now for KDE.Other people think different including me


My main beef was with Plasma and the fact it is so poorly implemented, and to top it off many of the programs like Amarok, KOffice, K3B, and other do not have any released versions for KDE4 and the current versions do not integrate all that well theme wise or functionality wise. To top that off a lot of the programs were neutered to the point that they were in my own words "shadows of their former selves".Thats not a kde4 problem those prg's are made by others for kde, complain at those dev people and not at kde4 dev people. And name a example where it doesn't functionality wise under kde4. Complaining about that it does look a bit of under kde4 i don't understand you going to use them under gnome and they also look different there.



Lastly, I am aware that KDE 3.5.x is still being updated, but it is so at a slower pace and eventually in the near future it looks as though it may be dropped in future Kubuntu releases prematurely. It would be interesting to hear an offical maintainer's opinion on the 3.5.x issue. KDE 3.5.10 may remain in 8.10 but will it be there in 9.x? And if it is dropped then that leaves users with the obvious choice of having to switch if KDE 4.x isn't ready by then and the next release (4.2) is scheduled to be in Febuarary 2009 so it may be too late to include it in the first Ubuntu 2009 release. Complain at kubuntu because they are not including kde3. But why would they they already short on people to make it a good kde centric distro. Maybe you can help them our stick to something that works for you. If you want bleeding edge then life with short comings till dev people include them.


As I said once before: a lot of the complaints that KDE has made in 4.x are comparable to the mistakes that were made in the early Gnome 2.x releases as far as featurecide goes. There difference is that the Gnome developers realised early on in their mistakes and corrected them by adding back the features. The KDE developers have responded by ignoring at best and at worst flaming users with valid critisms and that has turned a lot of users off to KDE 4.x. I even was told by one of the developers to "**** off" in reguards to comments I made on improving KDE. It's that attitude that towards the user that really discourages me from seeing any real improvements to 4.x.I still see people complaining about futures they want in and gnome dev don't put in, users have different fews then dev people. Users don't see the whole road, dev people know what road they are taking and see the whole picture they think is needed.

awakatanka
September 6th, 2008, 09:03 AM
Those are my thoughts. I'm tracking the development fairly closely. It really does seem like a good project, just poorly implemented as of right now. It needs more apps -- I definately agree on that. I'm really hoping this thing will blow over when 4.2 is released. Maybe our critisms have been heard and will be worked on to make things like Plasma bearable and the interface more like it was with 3.5.x (some miss things like mac-style menus and other more obscure options). I do have to say I was impressed with the new capabilities of KWin. It was in many ways better than compiz. It looks like it could be promising should the developers actually be willing to take some critism and user input into consideration.
xbar is trying to make a osx bar for kde4 still not there but there is someone trying to make it. http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/universe/plasmoid-xbar
I also mis futures but i know that there coming, and for me kde4 is workable and i enjoy it, but i can understand also that it isn't for some but they still can use kde3.5 till its ready for them. But what i can't understand is that people say they switch to gnome because they missing things in kde4 when they where happy with kde3.5 that still there to use till kde4 is ready.

david_lynch
September 6th, 2008, 09:08 AM
Something like this should really be added as a poll option.
+1 that is what I would have chosen if it were an option.

Faolan84
September 6th, 2008, 09:24 AM
Well I'll agree with EdThaSlayer, they sure as heck know how to take a risk and I definately respect them for that. it will be interesting to see how things peter out over the next release. Maybe with Fedora picking it up and a few other distros offering it as a choice Ubuntu and OpenSuSE it 4.x will attract more developers who can then add the missing features and come up with better implementations.

Also, I wasn't aware that Kubuntu had their own special forums, that everyone just used Ubunutu forums since Kubuntu really isn't a separate distro, it's a part of Ubuntu, just like Edubuntu and Xubuntu. Thanks for pointing that out awakatanka. As for numbers, I don't see too much bias, as of right now it looks like the the kde 4.x users make up about half the stack. I also made sure to tag it correctly and I may have made wrong assumption by thinking Gnome fanboys would flood the threads and polls, but that doesn't seem like that is happening and isn't very likely.

Well the problems right now is that the release cycles of all the related KDE projects are off kilter and will not be ready until early 2009 at least because they too are reinventing the wheel. It just seems like there is too much effort going into too much change at the same time. And the way many devs have been responding to the critisms that are coming out of these new works isn't promising. Don't think that I am a hater, I'm not. I'm just looking at things from a realistic standpoint as of this moment.

I'm also looking foward to the KDE 4.2 release and hoping it will not be another let down like KDE 4.0 and 4.1 were. Remember, initially 4.1 they said they were going to bring back most of the core functionality, they didn't and when asked about it one developer even told me that the claim was never made when it was and that most of the core functionality should be in by the 4.2 release.

So, I will be checking out the 4.2 release when it is ready, but I'm also looking at it with a sceptical eye and comparing it to KDE 3.5 and GNOME. And yes, I am hoping it rocks my socks off.

JillSwift
September 6th, 2008, 09:26 AM
+1 that is what I would have chosen if it were an option.
ditto.

Faolan84
September 6th, 2008, 09:44 AM
Okay, I admit that I see there is a flaw in the poll concerning future use of KDE 4.x; however that was not done on purpose and I apologise about that oversight. The purpose of the poll was to conduct a poll that recorded the present tense and mood. If you feel that you will use KDE 4.x in the future it would be best answer that you are using 3.5 until it is no longer supported becuase the next logical step would be to upgrade to the 4.x branch because by that time the 4.x branch should be fully matured.

Thanks and thanks again to everyone who did point out that mistake, I should have been clearer in my wording. Yeah, I see that in a way I did ask a loaded question however it was not meant to be loaded or have a negative emphasis.

Also, to those asking why one would switch from 3.5.x to GNOME instead of 4.x. Yes KDE 3.5.x is a great DE, but it just isn't getting the love it deserves right now because all the work is going into 4.x. Gnome is a great alternative, I'm not a fan boy of either and I think Gnome is almost equally as good as KDE 3.5.x as of now.

However, with the way things are going in the 4.x branch, it wouldn't surprise me if KDE turns down a dead end road and KDE 3.5.x uses an unsuppored version of QT so any revival of the old branch would require a full port to QT4. There is a lot of risk in this project and because one of the things I do for money is Linux consulting and installation it is important to know that I'm suppying my customer with a desktop environment that will be supported and improved for years to come.

GeneralZod
September 6th, 2008, 09:50 AM
It might be worth getting a concrete list of specific things people are missing from KDE3. I follow the project very closely and have recently started working dev'ing on it myself (with, I should note, a focus on re-implementing some of the feature regressions from KDE3) and can probably tell you whether something has been removed by design or whether it's currently on someone's TODO list. I keep hearing about how the KDE devs are ignoring users because they won't reinstate certain features, but people rarely seem to bother to mention which features until they are pressed, and when they are pressed, a very high proportion of the time it turns out to be a feaature that someone is working on, or intending to work on.

So let's get some features listed, and please be specific - items like "not-sucking!" are hardly helpful ;)

Getting some obvious ones out of the way:

- KOffice, Amarok, K3B and Konversation are definitely scheduled for porting. The problem here is manpower, rather than stubbornness.

- The Mac style menu bar is also intended to reappear (in fact, work started back in April or so: http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/playground/base/plasma/applets/menubar/). Again, the problem here is manpower: Friedrich is also the maintainer of Okteta, which is currently consuming most of his time.

- There's a pledge from the Konqueror/ Dolphin devs to treat any feature regressions caused by the use of Dolphin as bugs. This incidentally has been my focus so far: I'm planning to blog about it when I have a few more patches reviewed and committed ( my blog is here (http://ssj-gz.blogspot.com/), and syndicated on planetkde.org, if you are subscribed to that. If you're not, you should be ;)). The developers, incidentally, have gone out of their way to support me on this :)

- Mapping the whole desktop to ~/Desktop i.e. KDE3-style desktop-as-a-filemanager - this is already in SVN as aseigo promised, though is currently pretty rough. Incidentally, there probably does not exist a better example of "the devs are ignoring users oh wait actually they're going out of their way to service user requests" than this.

- Thumbnails in file dialogs (one of the features I miss most from KDE3). I don't want to put words in Peter's mouth or make promises on his behalf, but there's a concrete (and, IMHO, much better than KDE3) plan for this which will hopefully materialise before 4.2, time-permitting. The same plan will probably be used to provide thumbnails to Plasma's folderview.

- Keyboard shortcuts for launching apps/ etc aka "KHotKeys". Michael Jansen is spending as much time as he can spare on this - his blog is here (http://michael-jansen.biz/blog/mike/2008-09-03/introduction-planet-kde), and is also syndicated on planetkde.

- Auto-hiding of Plasma panels - already done, needs refining.

Faolan84
September 6th, 2008, 10:15 AM
GeneralZod, thank you. You have seemed to address most of the qualms I have experienced with KDE 4.x. Also another "bug" I have found with plasma is that there needs to be an option to shrink the panel bar to smaller sizes. I found I could make it bigger, but if you try to shrink it, the other half shows up at the top of the screen and the default size is way too big. It would also be nice if you could have the panel be able to catch the same background colour as the current set theme instead of the Plasma theme. In fact there should be an option to even show/hide all the widgets via something like Meta+F12: for instance let's say I'm working and I want to check the weather forcast for friday with my Plasmoid. I hit the command and the moment I release it is gone. That would be cool.

Also, I found it hard to configure the desktop to switch virtual desktops via the keyboard. Now, keep in mind, I'm one bad motha *hush your mouth* so I like to have those kind of things binded to the keyboard simply because I don't like to use the mouse if I don't have to. And by the way I love the new alt-tab options. The devs did a great job there.

Now I guess all I'm waiting for is the other apps to come out. Hopefully the pace is picking up and you and others find yourselves ahead of schedule. I liked KDE 3.5.x, and I want to like KDE 4.x.

Also, Nepomuk is great, but I do have to say it's as slow as molasses and a real show stopper if you enable tagging. it took my dual core 64-bit behemoth with 2 gigities or RAM down faster than Monica Lewinsky. And when it was working things would just stall... one moment I would be working and the next even the clock wasn't ticking on the panel. At first I though it was the return of the 1990s style computer freeze. So, system responsiveness under heavy load can be a real pain in 4.x. This never happens in any other desktop environment except for in Windows and pre MacOS X.

But thanks for addressing concerns posted here. It is good know that the KDE team is listening.

awakatanka
September 6th, 2008, 10:22 AM
- Thumbnails in file dialogs (one of the features I miss most from KDE3). I don't want to put words in Peter's mouth or make promises on his behalf, but there's a concrete (and, IMHO, much better than KDE3) plan for this which will hopefully materialise before 4.2, time-permitting. The same plan will probably be used to provide thumbnails to Plasma's folderview.
I read somewhere on aaron blog that hitting F11 gives you show preview but it is not yet shown in file dialogs

what i missing but can't find anything about is bleutooth in kde 4. Anyone have something to read on that?


GeneralZod, thank you. You have seemed to address most of the qualms I have experienced with KDE 4.x. Also another "bug" I have found with plasma is that there needs to be an option to shrink the panel bar to smaller sizes. I found I could make it bigger, but if you try to shrink it, the other half shows up at the top of the screen and the default size is way too big. It would also be nice if you could have the panel be able to catch the same background colour as the current set theme instead of the Plasma theme. Isn't that a old bug that is already gone ? i don't have hat behavior in kde4 intrepid what i have is that at a certain point the icons don't shrink anymore, also on kde-look there was a plasma theme that adept to color of kwin theme, didn't tryed it yet so dunno if it works. edit : found it http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Aya?content=76197 going to try it ;-) edit 2 : works

GeneralZod
September 6th, 2008, 10:42 AM
GeneralZod, thank you. You have seemed to address most of the qualms I have experienced with KDE 4.x.

Good to hear, and you're welcome :) You can find a much fuller list of things that are currently going on here:

http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE4/4.2_Feature_Plan

Do note though that these lists are generally quite ambitious, and there are some items there were originally scheduled for 4.1 (or even, in a handful of case, 4.0!)


Also another "bug" I have found with plasma is that there needs to be an option to shrink the panel bar to smaller sizes. I found I could make it bigger, but if you try to shrink it, the other half shows up at the top of the screen and the default size is way too big.

I generally shrink mine to the size of the system tray icons (24 or 22 pixels, IIRC) but have seen the bug you mention here and it is still present. It might be worth filing a bug report: on the face of it, it seems like ones of those bugs that the developers simply must have noticed, but there are many instances of "obvious" bugs being triggered by doing things that the devs didn't even consider. Worst case: Aaron gripes at you for posting a duplicate ;)



It would also be nice if you could have the panel be able to catch the same background colour as the current set theme instead of the Plasma theme.


I'm not sure what the plans are, here: so far, colourisation of the panel has been handled solely by downloading Plasma themes, and I'm not sure if saying "let this particular panel be blue" is on the roadmap. I'm sure I heard someone mention that they were going to try using SVG tinting to get the kind of effect you are talking about, however, but can't find anything about this, now :/



In fact there should be an option to even show/hide all the widgets via something like Meta+F12: for instance let's say I'm working and I want to check the weather forcast for friday with my Plasmoid. I hit the command and the moment I release it is gone. That would be cool.


So to be clear - the behaviour would be like the current CTRL+F12, but with the difference that the Dashboard goes away as soon as the shortcut combo is released? Sounds like a good idea to me; probably worth filing a wishlist item. Again, worst case is that you catch Aaron in a grumpy mood ;)




Also, I found it hard to configure the desktop to switch virtual desktops via the keyboard. Now, keep in mind, I'm one bad motha *hush your mouth* so I like to have those kind of things binded to the keyboard simply because I don't like to use the mouse if I don't have to. And by the way I love the new alt-tab options. The devs did a great job there.


Keyboard shortcuts are in general in a rather sorry state. I suspect that Michael's work should help with this.



Now I guess all I'm waiting for is the other apps to come out. Hopefully the pace is picking up and you and others find yourselves ahead of schedule. I liked KDE 3.5.x, and I want to like KDE 4.x.


"Ahead of schedule" is probably too optimisitic, but thankfully the pace is indeed picking up :) July had a record-breaking number of commits, and August was just a whisper behind.



Also, Nepomuk is great, but I do have to say it's as slow as molasses and a real show stopper if you enable tagging. it took my dual core 64-bit behemoth with 2 gigities or RAM down faster than Monica Lewinsky. And when it was working things would just stall... one moment I would be working and the next even the clock wasn't ticking on the panel. At first I though it was the return of the 1990s style computer freeze. So, system responsiveness under heavy load can be a real pain in 4.x. This never happens in any other desktop environment except for in Windows and pre MacOS X.


Interesting metaphor :) This is probably Strigi rather than Nepomuk (Nepomuk should be almost entirely idle the whole time, except when a) Strigi is indexing and feeding it data or b) some app is querying it/ passing along information for storage). I'm not sure that the answer is, here: Sebastian Trueg (author of K3b and lead Nepomuk developer) has a "semi-reimplementation" of Strigi which could be more efficient (Edit: forgot the link (http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3573), or Strigi could improve, or an alternative indexer like Tracker could be adopted. This should probably be filed under "we'll have to wait and see".



But thanks for addressing concerns posted here. It is good know that the KDE team is listening.

No problem :) Anyone else? :)

GeneralZod
September 6th, 2008, 10:48 AM
I read somewhere on aaron blog that hitting F11 gives you show preview but it is not yet shown in file dialogs


Yep, that's correct (and it works wonderfully well with videos - switching between two different video previews is so fast it always surprises me). What I'm talking about is the previews for each file, all showing at once, like in Icon Mode in a file manager.



what i missing but can't find anything about is bleutooth in kde 4. Anyone have something to read on that?


Lots of info here, and reasonably recent, too:

http://liquidat.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/kde-bluetooth-for-kde-4-first-test-release/

Half-Left
September 6th, 2008, 02:06 PM
(1) The Ubuntuforums are also used by Kubuntu users.
(2) We are not whining about KDE 4.
(3) GNOME actually follows a paradigm that is more similar in nature to KDE 3.5.x than KDE 4.x

KDE 4.x broke the desktop metaphor in significant ways that one could argue that it is not a desktop environment in the traditional sense. In many ways it is something different and I don not think it is a bad thing necessarily, but it does present several usability challenges and I understand that the 4.x branch is still pretty much a wait and see scenario -- but it's not looking all that great right now for KDE.

Now, as for making judgments that are not based in fact -- I made sure to actually use KDE 4.1 and I did not enjoy the experience, but like I said I did believe it had redeaming features such as Solid, Nepomuk, and other goodies.

My main beef was with Plasma and the fact it is so poorly implemented, and to top it off many of the programs like Amarok, KOffice, K3B, and other do not have any released versions for KDE4 and the current versions do not integrate all that well theme wise or functionality wise. To top that off a lot of the programs were neutered to the point that they were in my own words "shadows of their former selves".

There were a lot better ways the KDE team could have operated the roll out of a major release such as this but they chose to use the worst meathods possible, even going as far as making the release announcement sound like it was hearlding the trumpets for the Second Coming:
KDE 4.0 release announcement: http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.0/
KDE 3.5.9 release announcement: http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-3.5.9.php
Both were provided so you can make to comparision and so no one can say "KDE 4.0 was announced as a developer's release" when it was clearly not according to the *OFFICAL* release statements. Now I know about early versions, but given KDE's past reputation with the 3.x series I did not expect that they would be so caught up in their hubris as to do something like this on what they advertised in their own words a "significant release marks both the end of the long and intensive development cycle leading up to KDE 4.0 and the beginning of the KDE 4 era".

The best route the KDE could have took was to just port over everything to QT4, then released it as KDE 3.6, then created a development branch called KDE 4.x where they worked on developing the new platforms. When the platforms were done they could have said that they were only going to release security patches for the 3.6 branch (which would already be ported to QT4). Then they could just add in the new functionality to the appilcations and do a little bit of code clean up and released it all as KDE 5.x. Perhaps KDE should look into revamping their dev cycle and versioning policies where they have a development and a stable branch and make sure there are no communication problems between the two.

Lastly, I am aware that KDE 3.5.x is still being updated, but it is so at a slower pace and eventually in the near future it looks as though it may be dropped in future Kubuntu releases prematurely. It would be interesting to hear an offical maintainer's opinion on the 3.5.x issue. KDE 3.5.10 may remain in 8.10 but will it be there in 9.x? And if it is dropped then that leaves users with the obvious choice of having to switch if KDE 4.x isn't ready by then and the next release (4.2) is scheduled to be in Febuarary 2009 so it may be too late to include it in the first Ubuntu 2009 release.

As I said once before: a lot of the complaints that KDE has made in 4.x are comparable to the mistakes that were made in the early Gnome 2.x releases as far as featurecide goes. There difference is that the Gnome developers realised early on in their mistakes and corrected them by adding back the features. The KDE developers have responded by ignoring at best and at worst flaming users with valid critisms and that has turned a lot of users off to KDE 4.x. I even was told by one of the developers to "**** off" in reguards to comments I made on improving KDE. It's that attitude that towards the user that really discourages me from seeing any real improvements to 4.x.

Honestly,maintaing 3.5, 3.6 and 4.x as well, do you think KDE has devs have unlimited resources or something?

I dont think 3.x user realize how bad usability wise it is in many respects, even if you have 3.6 it would still take time to port apps to Qt4. You can use KDE3.x apps in 4.x if you dont want to wait, how hard is it to understand this?

If KDE4.x was not here where is the Innovation coming from, you seriously can't deny that KDE4.x does have it because it does, it's speed in developement is very fast lately. KDE3 users has ripped apart KDE4 without even seeing whats it's capable of, 4.1 shows just how good it's getting.

From my own point of view doing the graphics and themes for KDE4.2 games it's a pleasure to work with.

Northsider
September 6th, 2008, 03:28 PM
I still use KDE3.5 I hate KDE4 simply because I feel that there is excessive menu clicking. I hate the menu. I feel like KDE 4 is trying to appeal too much to windows users or something, I dunno. I just liek 3.5 better

plb
September 6th, 2008, 03:30 PM
I imagine many people will switch once amarok 2 comes out lol

awakatanka
September 6th, 2008, 04:40 PM
I still use KDE3.5 I hate KDE4 simply because I feel that there is excessive menu clicking. I hate the menu. I feel like KDE 4 is trying to appeal too much to windows users or something, I dunno. I just liek 3.5 better

There now 3 kind of menu's to choose from, and one is the old menu they also use in kde 3.5 so thats no excuse. :lolflag:

Northsider
September 6th, 2008, 10:20 PM
There now 3 kind of menu's to choose from, and one is the old menu they also use in kde 3.5 so thats no excuse. :lolflag:

HAh... well I tried KDE4 when it first came out...maybe it's time for another go. Thanks

linuxguymarshall
September 7th, 2008, 01:31 AM
I use gnome most of the time but I find KDE 3.5.x is better than KDE 4.x. I like the plasmoids but I think the KDE 4 menu is too cluttered

linuxguymarshall
September 7th, 2008, 01:32 AM
There now 3 kind of menu's to choose from, and one is the old menu they also use in kde 3.5 so thats no excuse. :lolflag:

Wow. I use KDE 4 when the Kubuntu remix came out.... im gonna get it right now :)

SunnyRabbiera
September 7th, 2008, 03:24 AM
I dont know why KD4 is rated so high in the polls, its crap.
Plasma is as stable as a glass house made in a desert located right on top of a fault line, I have had very little luck with KDE4 ever since it came out.
Too many bugs, waaaaay too many.

klerfayt
September 7th, 2008, 04:01 AM
4. I'm using KDE 3.5.9 with Hardy Heron and will make the switch to KDE 4.1 with Intrepid Ibex

doorknob60
September 7th, 2008, 04:55 AM
If you asked me this last week, I would've said that I prefer KDE 3.5 to 4.1. But right now I'm using Kubuntu Intrepid ALpha 5 and I love it! I'm probably gonna wipe my Debian (with KDE 3.5, 4.x is buggy in Debian right now) because KDE 4 is that good :D KDE FTW :KS

Faolan84
September 7th, 2008, 07:14 AM
Well I just tried the Kubuntu implementation and it is a LOT better than the Arch version that I used. Many of the stuff like my panel bar size issue was half solved (some icons in the bar don't scale when you tell the bar you want it to be tiny). Using the for two days now I see that even though I'll be sticking with Gnome for now, I'll probably be making the switch with KDE 4.2 when hopefully Kmail will be available in Kubuntu and so will Amarok 2 more than likely. Hopefully by then Kopete will also have a weird bug solved where it imports into one of my contact groups a bunch to people who I had on my iggy list on my previous Kopete settings -- only a Yahoo issue but I delete them and I get disconnected, maybe this information is with Yahoo but Pidgin doesn't do it.

So on a later note, Ubuntu's implementation's are better than Arch's when it comes to KDE 4.x. A lot of the 4.1 stuff there is much like it was in 4.0. A lot more bug fixes. So is there any plan's to implement GTK masking like in KDE 3.5.x where you can make GTK programs look like the rest of the KDE/QT4 apps? or did I miss something in the default options. So things are looking even better on our front.

doorknob60
September 7th, 2008, 07:20 AM
Were you using Kubuntu 8.10 or 8.04? I know 8.04's implementations is just okay, at least when I tried. I prefer 8.10's by a long shot. Anyways, for the gtk thing:

For 8.10:

sudo aptitude install gtk-qt-engine

For 8.04:

sudo aptitude install gtk-qt-engine-kde4

Also, Kmail is in 8.10, and amarok 2 is in 8.10 too, although I prefer 1.4.x still (and that's what comes default)

If you wanna try it though:

sudo aptitude install amarok-kde4

EDIT: Also I'm really surprised this hasn't been moved to recurring discussions yet :-P

EDIT2: Nice you live in Eugene, I used to live there :)

Faolan84
September 7th, 2008, 08:25 AM
I was trying the 8.04 implementation. I don't like to run software off the development tree of Ubuntu. It's hit and miss -- but then again KDE 4.1 has been hit and miss. But it's good to know that Amarok 2, KMail, and friends will be in 8.10, maybe I'll try that version when it's released.

I just thought that KDE 4.1 failed in a lot of ways, but if the 8.10 version is better that's awesome. Also thanks for pointing out that tip with GTK+ masking.

Faolan84
September 7th, 2008, 08:27 AM
Oh, and yes Eugene is really nice, and I'm surprised too. I think the mods don't really want a thread like this to have a sticky or reoccurring status because it might invite the trolls and I will say that it is a subject that is often associated with flamewars on most tech and linux forums.

awakatanka
September 7th, 2008, 08:54 AM
If you want some new things to try on hardy you can also use the neon project of amarok.

KDE4 Neon for hardy (http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/User:Apachelogger/Project_Neon/KDE) The road to kde 4.2
Amarok 2 Neon for hardy (http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/User:Apachelogger/Project_Neon) The road to amarok 2

Zlatan
September 7th, 2008, 07:35 PM
I will use Kubuntu over Ubuntu WHEN it will handle resources (CPU and RAM) better than Ubuntu, when Konqueror will be usable with Gmail and when Koffice will handle all main office file formats.
If i go with Kubuntu, it would be reasonable to choose KDE apps, wouldn't it?
:)

billgoldberg
September 7th, 2008, 07:37 PM
Okay, it's no secret that the KDE 4.x branch has been nothing short of a dissapointment to many users. Many users have already stopped using KDE altogether because of the hubris displayed by many of the KDE development team in current months. Now KDE is faced with either a future of obscurity or a change in direction it seems. However, I have not seen any polls of opinion reguarding this suject. So in earnest of this I would like to conduct a few polls to help gather some data points so that developers from Ubuntu and other distros can use this information in reguards to how KDE 4.x vs KDE 3.5.x should be handled.

This poll and discussion is to plot how many users are using KDE 4.x vs those who have not made the switch or those how have went to other environments or window managers. Please refrain from flaming and back up any critism with real source or provable facts and not conjectures or false statements based on opinion.

This post will not give any right stats.

Because a lot more KDE users will take part than gnome, xfce, openbox, fluxbox, icewm, ... users will.

Faolan84
September 8th, 2008, 02:29 AM
Well it's hard to pin down "the right stats" to begin with. I'm just trying to get some rough estimates along with some comments behind the answers. It's not exactly scientific but it works none-the-less.

Faolan84
September 11th, 2008, 01:29 AM
bump.

Faolan84
September 11th, 2008, 02:32 AM
That seems to be the general feel of things. Once KDE 4.2 comes out I think I'll most definitely consider the plunge. I'll also try the Ibex implementation when it comes out but I don't think I'll be wow'd just yet. It needs to cook just a bit longer.

As for features, from everything I've heard the KDE team is working hard the make 4.2 a kickin' experience and I'll take their word for it because it seems like most of the developers realised the hype that that came with 4.0 and 4.1 did convince a lot of people and at worst was a turn off. KDE seems to be back on track, I've tried some of the latest builds and things are definitely looking better.

We just need a more applications and some of the features from 3.5.x reimplemented. That shouldn't be too much of a stopping point for the dev team because they are half way there now.

doorknob60
September 11th, 2008, 02:35 AM
I will use Kubuntu over Ubuntu WHEN it will handle resources (CPU and RAM) better than Ubuntu, when Konqueror will be usable with Gmail and when Koffice will handle all main office file formats.
If i go with Kubuntu, it would be reasonable to choose KDE apps, wouldn't it?
:)

For Gmail in Konqueror:

Settings > Configure Konqueror > Browser Identification > Click New > Type in "mail.google.com" for the site, choose Mozilla 1.7.3 on Windows XP for the browser, works flawlessly. I don't have problems with any of the features at all :) And also Open Office comes with Kubuntu, Koffice simply isn't as good yet. Also yeah, use KDE apps for the most part, but you don't have to. I use Firefox as my main browser and it looks good and doesn't have any problems. With the gtk-qt engine, it looks native. Also, I'm impressed with the stats. Don't flam me, I know they're not too accurate, but considering over half the voters on a poll in a Gnome Centric forum using KDE 4, where people in KDE forums sometimes don't even like, iss pretty impressive IMO :)

danbuter
September 11th, 2008, 02:38 AM
I used KDE 3.5 for 6 months. I liked it, but it was resource-heavy. I've attempted to use KDE4 multiple times, but it crashes way too much for me. Currently, I've been using xfce, and really like it.

Faolan84
September 11th, 2008, 02:58 AM
I've heard that of the goals of KDE 4.x was to clean up the code base and to make things work more efficiently so when 4.2 comes out it might be faster than 3.5.10. Also, XFCE is pretty awesome. It just has a few ascetic inconsistencies here and there with some GTK+ themes. But in many areas it is better than Gnome. They only reason I don't use it is because there are certain programs that I use that pretty much pull in all of Gnome and seem to work better in Gnome.

I heard though that the Gnome team is trying to fix the dependency issues with Project Ridley which is where they are moving a lot of the Gnome UI widgets and common functions over to GTK+ libraries. That's all being do to prepare for Topaz. The only real beef is that the Appearence dialog is slower than grandma driving to the Cracker Barrel in her Buick.

Zlatan
September 17th, 2008, 10:53 AM
For Gmail in Konqueror:

Settings > Configure Konqueror > Browser Identification > Click New > Type in "mail.google.com" for the site, choose Mozilla 1.7.3 on Windows XP for the browser, works flawlessly. I don't have problems with any of the features at all :) And also Open Office comes with Kubuntu, Koffice simply isn't as good yet. Also yeah, use KDE apps for the most part, but you don't have to. I use Firefox as my main browser and it looks good and doesn't have any problems. With the gtk-qt engine, it looks native. Also, I'm impressed with the stats. Don't flam me, I know they're not too accurate, but considering over half the voters on a poll in a Gnome Centric forum using KDE 4, where people in KDE forums sometimes don't even like, iss pretty impressive IMO :)

I tried to make Gmail work on Konqueror, but I was not successful yet. Maybe I should give another shot. Considering Koffice- I do not need a lot of features, gnome-office is feature-enough for me. What I need is support of main file formats, including doc and xls, unfortunately... And yes, OpenOffice is the best alternative ATM.
One more thing- I would like to see KDE4 less resource hungry:)

Bakon Jarser
September 17th, 2008, 11:06 AM
Thought you might find this article interesting.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080710131440951

mips
September 17th, 2008, 11:27 AM
I tried to make Gmail work on Konqueror, but I was not successful yet.

What's the problem?

Zlatan
September 17th, 2008, 12:38 PM
What's the problem?

Google Reader was not marking "All items read" nicely. Can not remember VERY corretly what was there too, but FF3 worked much more nicely.
I will try that case after Intrepid Ibex will come out, would like to use "pure KDE" apps.

mips
September 17th, 2008, 04:28 PM
Google Reader was not marking "All items read" nicely. Can not remember VERY corretly what was there too, but FF3 worked much more nicely.
I will try that case after Intrepid Ibex will come out, would like to use "pure KDE" apps.

What version of konqueror are you using?
I'm using 4.1.1 and have set the browser identification to Firefox 2.0.0.8 in order to get the full view and not the basic view for the google mail site.

syms
September 17th, 2008, 05:35 PM
i stopped using kde just because i am sick of kde4

Zlatan
September 19th, 2008, 07:14 AM
What version of konqueror are you using?
I'm using 4.1.1 and have set the browser identification to Firefox 2.0.0.8 in order to get the full view and not the basic view for the google mail site.

Currently I am a Gnome user:) But as I said, I will try Intrepid's Kubuntu. If there will be issues with Gmail again, I will come back with this. Have a nice day;)

alexandari
February 22nd, 2009, 06:02 PM
I`ve been using KDE since mandriva 2007. I`ve been using GNOME since I`ve switched to ubuntu. I installed Kubuntu with KDE 4.1 1 month ago on the other computer and I love it. It`s nothing I`ve ever seen before and I think it`s great. Btw,I`ve seen the new K menu look before KDE 4 was released. I was checking out SuSe 10.2 (if i`m not lying to myself) and...it was there :) I prefer it over the classic KDE menu