KDE 4.1, which is supposed to become the KDE4 version usable by ‘normal’ people, is coming at the end of July. When Ars reviewed the beta release, they were positive in that it was moving forward at an “extraordinary pace”. Despite the positive notions in the news, many seem to have problems actually seeing all the new stuff being done in KDE4 – just like how people fail to see the massive amount of work put into Vista. KDE developer Rafael Fernandez Lopez (I’m sorry for the lack of diacritical marks, an OSAlert bug we’re working on) decided to put together a screencast showing off all the new stuff coming in KDE 4.1.In a blog entry titled “What can KDE 4.1 do for you?” Lopez writes:
Too many things are going on in this amazingly dynamic community, and really interesting ones. I have recorded a screencast [.ogg] which can speak by itself on what way KDE 4.1 is different to 4.0. This way we can see the huge step we have made between .0 and .1 series. I really believe the progress is now a matter of time. We’ve reached a point right now that our libraries are in a pretty good shape, and our applications are stabilizing again.
I am truly amazed by what I’m seeing here. The difference between the features shown in the screencast and whatever I had on my desktop running as KDE 4.0.0 when I reviewed it is massive. It seems like KDE 4.1 is a proper materialisation of the vision the KDE developers have been putting forth ever since the KDE4 undertaking started. I was sceptical about whether or not they would be able to get in all the features needed to make KDE4 usable as a day-to-day desktop by the time KDE 4.1 was scheduled, but it appears I was wrong. That is, assuming stability is acceptable, since that’s an area you cannot judge from a screencast. I’m genuinely looking forward to the moment I can load up the final release of KDE 4.1 and review it for OSAlert.
Sweet follows sour. That’s what I said about KDE 4.0.0 – KDE 4.1 might be the sweet I was referring to.
who’s the author of this post? Thom?
From the blurb:
OSAlert might want to work on the problem of the many mysteriously lost posts first. I’ve observed an alarming number of them over the last few days.
Screencast of KDE 4.1, really enjoyed watching it with the new features and the Kwin composing looks real nice.
This really shows where plasma is going and looks like a different desktop experience to every other, defiantly innovative.
He’s spanish so he has two surnames, Fern~A!ndez and L~A^3pez, so it’d be “Fern~A!ndez L~A^3pez writes:” or “Fern~A!ndez writes:” never “L~A^3pez writes:”
There’s a at least a few ‘Holy sh!t, how come no-body thought of doing that before?!?’ moments in that video. (Granted that someone may have done them before, but this is first I have seen/heard).
The thumbnail scaler? The folder widget (‘plasmoid’) as a repalcement to the desktop icon? The clear way doplhin organizes items by type? Some really neat stuff going on here.
Can’t hardly wait to check those features out first hand…
No, there are not (at least if you don’t live under a rock and sometimes use other OSes).
Done in iPhoto for years.
This is not the first atempt to do something like this. IIRC when I used LiteStep under Windows it had something similar.
Looks like the Windows Explorer to me.
For those interested in how stable it is, I can vouch for the fact that the stability has been increasing hand in hand with features. Things that used to bring it to a crawl within a few minutes (like playing the breakout clone) now have no noticeable effect on performance, compositing effects never crash on me anymore, all the applications I’ve tried are pretty stable (amarok, kontact, etc.). A lot of that has happened in the last month and if it keeps improving at the same rate for the next ~2 months it’s going to be great.
Using the live CD’s here http://home.kde.org/~binner/kde-four-live/ I have no problem at all crashing KDE4 within about 20 minutes of use, by only clicking around the desktop and loading programs. Plasma itself is extremely unstable.
Probably need to wait until KDE 4.3+ before it could seriously be used.
From home.kde.org? At least no one can claim that it is just a problem with some distro’s packages.
Edited 2008-06-02 00:20 UTC
Yep these are recommended by KDE, see http://kde.org/trykde/
I’m not sure where you’re looking. All I see is a reference to KDE 4.0 on that page, which makes sense being that it’s the released version and all.
Nice try.
The liveCD’s that Steve Binner provides are autogenerated by the openSUSE build infrastructure. The 4.1 CD’s are a convenience for the community based on regular snapshots, not some sort of endorsement by KDE that it is ready for prime time.
But go on, if it makes you feel better.
Nice Try? Try taking another look at the link provided, the paragraph with heading “Live CDs with KDE 4”.. still can’t see the link to the KDE4 live CD?
Also your attempting to twist my words, I never said KDE endorsed this link, I said they recommended it otherwise they wouldn’t have put it on their site as an example of trying out KDE4. As KDE is non functional without an OS to run it upon, of course they have to link to a linux distro’s so one can try out the KDE DE.
Clearly you are only trying to troll, hence I will put a challenge to you to provide a link to any linux distro with KDE4 on it (available as ISO), where someone can easily download and try out KDE4 out.
Where is this stable version of KDE4 you claim exists?
No one ever said it was stable. I believe discussing a beta state which by definition cannot be a stable release right? He just made a statement of relative stability “i.e. these packages are stable enough for me”
this is a virtual image of daily builds so you can test it happily inside a vm.
http://etotheipiplusone.com/kde4daily/docs/kde4daily.html
If you want stable stick with 4.0.4 but be aware that it is very different to 4.1 and even maybe not as stable
The link is for a LiveCD of KDE 4.0.1, which is already obsolete, considering KDE is already at 4.0.4 and about to hit 4.0.5. This post is about KDE 4.1, which is still developmental. That was my point.
Ok, semantics win. KDE only “recommends”. Doesn’t “endorse”. I’m not sure what the difference is, but you seem to think there is one, so I’m not going to argue.
You’re kidding right?
Are you familiar with Ubuntu? Fedora? They both ship with KDE 4. Don’t ask me for a link, unless you really want to be pedantic. Even OpenSUSE 10.3 shipped with KDE4, before it was even officially released.
The stable version of KDE4 I’ve claimed “exists” is available on a number of distros, including the two previous mentioned ones, as well as openSUSE 11, and Debian, and Gentoo, and I believe Mandriva, and the list goes on.
You missed the point of the article, which was about KDE 4.1. KDE 4.0.x is already out and in production. Has been since January. I can understand the confusion though, it’s an easy mistake to make when you don’t really understand the topic at hand, and can’t be bothered making the effort to.
Personally I’ve never had much luck with live cds of kde4.0.x and 4.x .
However whenever I have built from svn it has been more stable (except when big changes went in like WOC).
Those packages are built quickly and shoved onto a live cd so you can’t expect production quality not to mention the fact that it is STILL BETA people getting crashes is not exactly unexpected.
You should expect crashes…those that don’t have them are the lucky ones.
there are still 2 months to go. Feature freeze is in effect…it’s bug fixing for the next 2 months before release.
If you feel that it isn’t ready for you until 4.3…so be it…just be aware that for many of us it is perfectly usable at 4.1 (or will be)
Binner’s KDE4 CDs haven’t worked too well for me… didn’t even enable hardware accel for my Intel video card by default, and was pretty unstable (circa 4.0.3).
The best LiveCD I’ve tried was the Kubuntu Hardy KDE4 edition. Worked really smoothly, including the compositing niceness.
I wanted to be more impressed… but I’m not
It still looks half finished
It still looks like the bastard child of <insert x> system
It still uses space so badly ‘white space’ is everywhere
Really guys
I hate gnome enough but I dont hate it THAT much! I honestly used to think both Gnome and KDE had its merits, but at this rate it wont be till KDE 8 before I even consider making a switch.
What we need is a common platform… something as sexy as either aero or aqua but similarly as consistent Compiz/Kwin have went a long way to at least get the decorators right but the ‘start’/launcher menu/bar on both current major linux managers barely meet the consistency of Windows XP
I didn’t want drawers lying open with my widgets hanging out on the AmigaOS desktop and active desktop was one of the first things I disabled on win98… why the hell would I want the contents of ‘folders’ on my desktop now?
Sure, I dont know what the answer to this mess is.. I’m not even going to begin to find one (understanding the complexity of how OSS works) I’m also not a Gnome fanboy…
Linux and its bazillion managers had an edge on windows right up until Windows XP, sure XP looks like it came off the same line as mattels toys but it looked that way right across the board.. After XP the only manager that even came close was enlightenment and even that was only ever half supported by anyone. Then the great fertile OSS soil lay barren until Compiz/Kwin, I just wish to hell we could do the same with our application launchers – get that right and you can add a bazillion desktop osx-like widgets later to your hearts content.
I live in hope… if I wasn’t optimistic in general I wouldn’t have taken the time to post this drivel
btw… before you mod me down further for thinking me a troll…
why not parry my statements? you know that whole ‘debate’ thing that people hear so much of but rarely actually do?
Give me YOUR vision for what KDE will become for you.
Edited 2008-06-02 00:34 UTC
There is nothing to debate, everything you mentioned is subjective at best.
It’s like me saying; “I don’t like the colour red, it’s a bad colour, debate it.”
Edited 2008-06-02 01:02 UTC
Actually your arguments are very hard to understand because you haven’t really explained them very well.
You talk a lot about consistency, but you don’t really define in what sense. Can you give some examples? Is XP really the epitome of consistency that you claim it is? What about all of the differences between Live Messenger, IE7, Media Player and Office? Those programs all look nothing like each other.
What exactly is the problem that you have with the application launchers? How does XP do this better? Why do you think that XP is a better window manager in any way, for that matter. It doesn’t even have multiple desktops! It’s missing plenty of useful features that are present in any Linux desktop, and it is simply left in the dust when it comes to the more advanced compositing features of the modern X WMs.
Comparing Plasma to Active Desktop is certainly very inaccurate and unfair. The whole folder view opinion is interesting, too. A traditional desktop with icons is just one big folder view itself, really! The Plasma folder view allows an area for traditional icons (in the form of files, as they ever were), or more than one area if you want to organise things that way. Making a set of icons just another widget makes things simple, IMO.
I’m not expecting KDE 4.1 to solve the desktop problem outright, but based on the current rate and direction of progress I am expecting a good desktop, suitable for day-to-day use and with a lot of cool new features, to boot. Apart from that, it seems that there is a lot more untapped potential in the new KDE 4 system, and I think we will see it go from strength to strength in the years to come.
Actually, the way things work, you can only either mod down/up, or discuss. Not both. So if you get modded, it won’t be from anyone that actually wants to discuss your post, because they won’t be able to anyways.
I wouldn’t mod you down for thinking you a troll, but I wouldn’t “parry” your statements either since you really have nothing of substance to discuss.
As far as I’m concerned, you’ve decided on the merits of a car based on the color, without bothering to drive it to see how it feels.
And if I could, I would go back and mod you down simply for forcing me to resort to a tired and overly abused car analogy to get my equally ambiguous point across.
ahh … you are right. I’ve not used 4.1
I’ve only used every main KDE release packaged since redhat 5.2, broke gnome installing 4.0 in my current distro, booted 4.0 from cd and used 4.0 from a virtual machine.
It’s funny though, so many comments yet nobody has said “Well I like KDE 4.1 because …” Just “You shouldn’t ask us for our opinion because we wont give you one because…”
Why should people who actually use it have to justify it to the people who want to judge it based on screenshots? If you want to try it, it’s available on a number of distros.
In fact, with little effort, it’s fairly easy to download and compile from SVN.
Try it, you might be surprised.
If you think that aero is “sexy” then you have no taste.
Stupid troll.
When I try to be objective I’m a troll…
When I don’t consider alternatives I’m a fanboy..
I dont even use Vista anymore, on its merits the one thing Vista *might* have depending on your subjective opinion is a pretty skirt.
Uhm, what one person thinks is sexy is called an OPINION, and everybody is entitled to their own. I also think Aero is sexy, compared to XP or pre-leopard OSX, it’s almost pornagraphic. It doesn’t come close to Leopard or a nice tricked out KDE +compiz or KDE 4, but that’s just me.
why the hell would I want the contents of ‘folders’ on my desktop now?
If you don’t like it, set FolderView containment as your desktop containment and stop complaining.
Edited 2008-06-02 02:41 UTC
I would like you to enlighten us what you mean by half-finished.
Bastard child of how many systems…I would think that borrowing ideas from various systems is a plus if they are good ideas.
I somewhat agree that oxygen does not make the best use of space… but it is a lot better than the gigantic widgets you usually get in default gnome installations.
sexy as aqua (good goal) but then you completely ruin your point by mentioning the gaudy aero.
You are aware that you’re not required to have widgets on your desktop? You can have nothing if you so desire.
The folderview metaphor is an evolution on the use of the desktop for file management where you can have any folder(s) as a dumping ground for all your crap (I honestly don’t believe you have never used your desktop as a file manager i.e. dumping files and folders). Again…you are not required to have them there.
enlightenment and xp are completely opposite to in terms of philosophy to each other one is kitchen sink and the other is lightweight (what the hell are you doing comparing them)
OSS soil laying barren until Compiz/Kwin? can I ask what you’re smoking?
I wish you’d tell us what you consider positive attributes in an app launcher…especially seeing as though you seem to worship the xp start menu.
I see you mention that your post was drivel…yes I would agree with that, no need for me to mention it.
edit: I hate it when I succumb to feeding trolls
Edited 2008-06-02 02:46 UTC
please see my comment further up regarding Aero
look at this image:
http://cache.lifehacker.com/assets/resources/2008/01/screen2.jpg
then look at this one
http://files.opensuse.org/opensuse/en/thumb/d/dd/GNOME_VMware_Launc…
I’m not saying the 2nd one is a good example, Gnome is not exactly renowned for its aesthetics either, but comparing the two, the only useful addition (JIMHO( to the other is the recently used applications – which is where I’m referring to XP since nobody can deny that XP was the first modern OS with recently launched applications. Better looking? is subjective but it still packs more into the same space.
Looking at the image below, and comparing it to the first one I’ve given here, I really cant see why everyone wants to believe KDE 4.1 is soooo much better… WTF is the ‘whitespace’ for between the sections and the ‘>’ ???? no auto-sizing? not even a border or drop shadow between the ‘sections’ and the ‘options’ at the bottom?
http://www.wellesley.edu/Computing/WinXP/images/startmenu.jpg
I dont care about the widgets, of course you can add as many or few as you like… I also think it’s great that KDE is borrowing the best used features of other OS’s, nothing worse than reinventing the wheel and building on existing innovation imho is the best thing anyone can do…
The reason I feel KDE is a bastard is that yes, it does borrow things from other places… but apart from the pillowed out ‘space’ look, it has nothing really to identify itself. In fact KDE almost tries too hard not to look like another OS that it just becomes ‘not another’ OS.
The widgets I’ve seen so far in KDE actually look pretty good imho – almost as good if not better than the ones in OSX… but that has never been my point.
Look at the video again.. take away Kwin, take away the ‘widgets’ (btw, noticing the AmigaOS ref, I dont think you really know what ‘widget’ means)
The effects in Kwin/Compiz are fine… but nobody is seriously going to use falling snow in their working environment ala dreamscene ala activedesktop.
So, take away the effects, gnome and kde can do that equally as well with either Compiz or Kwin..
Take away the ‘widgets’ KDE at the very least has a nice amount of applets that developers will build on that in the future.
I guess this doesn’t look so bad:
http://mimo.netsons.org/index.php/2008/02/24/kde-41-changelog-visua…
but what’s with all the transparency? (4th image down) can anyone point me in the direction of a kde theme similar to this that actually has a non transparent border?
Please dont get me wrong here, sure its a hell of a lot better looking than gnome.. but I dont think Gnome has changed from its default win98 look since the beginning. I use gnome, I hate gnome, I WANT KDE to look good so I can actually see the point of using it. I just find it infuriating that the same people that moaned XP looked like something sold by Fischer Price suddenly have such high esteem over the current default KDE 4.1 look, take away the kinky effects and the applets… and you have nothing?
If you take away all the visual effects, you still have a desktop environment that works, unlike Windows XP. Windows XP doesn’t have multiple desktops, you can’t shade a window, you can’t move it or resize it without using the title bar, it doesn’t come with any applications worth mentionning, doesn’t have a spellchecker and so on…
Most of the things you complain about are subjective anyway.
There is absolutely nothing in that Demo that actually demonstrates an improved workflow, interaction between applications to leverage services ala NeXTSTEP and more.
In short, it’s boring eye-candy that entertains and distracts one from actually getting more Work Done.
We know you kiss the ground that NEXT walks on, but there is a reason why NEXTSTEP walks no more and is dead, why GNUStep has not been able to follow in its shadow, why OpenStep never got taken up and why Mac OS X, which followed on from NEXTSTEP, isn’t quite as wonderful as the way you remember NEXTSTEP to have been. You didn’t have to worry about half the things there as you do on a modern desktop.
Besides, for those of us who actually remember NEXTSTEP (however you want to capitalise that silly name), yep it had decent programming tools and architectures, some half-decent applications were created, but in terms of what you manage these days, the way you manage it and the volume of it, NEXT had nothing to compare with what is in that video.
I love that ridiculously easy line that gets trotted out on these occasions via a three step decision process:
1. If Mac OS X does even a small amount of eye candy in this way then it’s modern, stylish and the doyenne of usability thinking.
2. If some Gnome person hacks together some eye candy that isn’t really stable for anyone to use in any release, and demonstrates it at a conference, there is general whooping and hollering all round as to how cool it is.
3. If anyone else does something like that then its boring, purely for entertainment purposes and ‘distracts one from actually getting more Work Done‘.
You should trademark that phrase. Really. I don’t know about you, but quite frankly I would rather look at and work with that KDE desktop than a NEXTSTEP one any day. If I could actually find a NEXTSTEP desktop.
Does that help you get work done? Well, if people do it and use it and have a decent desktop to look at I suppose it must do otherwise Microsoft, Apple and free desktops like KDE wouldn’t be doing it.
He does kind of have a point though. Why don’t we see more screencasts showing of all the cool productivity related improvments we’ve heard about, rather than just the more visual improvments. Show us cool new ways to tag, organize, find and use our data. Show us how Kmail and the PIM suite will make it easier for use to handle multiple large inboxes and keep track of our contacts and schedules. The KOffice crew should get together with the KDE crew and produce a screencast showing how that combo of KDE4 and KOffice2 will blow OpenOffice out of the water. Please give me a screencast that wows me with substance and function rather than style.
Wobbly, transparant windows are all cool and stuff, but they won’t ‘sell’ KDE4.
It still is half finished.
Well it kind of is. KDE4 has been lifting bits and pieces they like from all over the place and trying to tie them to together in a uniform desktop environment. Unfortunatly the whole tying together thing doesn’t seem to be quite done yet. Hopefully they’ll put more work into that once the individual pieces are in place.
Kind of have to agree, but it bothers me less and less the more I use KDE4. I guess I’m just becoming numb to it.
I have no idea why _you_ would or would not want it. However I know that I do want it and think it looks like a good idea that would fit into the way I like to work and organize things. Fortunatly KDE let’s me use this feature and you turn it off, making us both happy.
I just discovered MintMenu in the latest beta of Mint Linux (www.linuxmint.com). I’m not sure what you are looking for, but I agree with you that most launchers have been somewhat lacking and Mint Menu is the first one I actually kind of like.
AFAIK, Mint menu:
http://linuxmint.com/img/screenshots/elyssa/mintmenu.png
… is an adaptation of Tasty Menu:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/preview.php?preview=1&id=41866&file…
Written in Python, I believe.
Quite possibly. I haven’t looked too much into it, I was just really quite impressed the first time I used it.
What I do know however is that, to me, this
http://linuxmint.com/img/screenshots/elyssa/mintmenu.png
Looks one hell of a lot better that this:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/preview.php?preview=1&id=41866&file…
Why cannot either of his comments be moderated. He speaks a lot of truth, and here we go again, we have the Linux brigade (or Linux lovers tm as I call them) who blindly mod down anything that is anti Linux (even if merited). I really wish that the osnews.com moderating facility would be moderated for obvious abuses.
Dave
It’s funny… looking at my comments history, it would appear quite a number of people have found one comment, buried it and then sought out every other comment with my display pic and just buried it ‘just because’ I dont think I’ve ever been buried below 0 before in my time here and yet my last 5 comments are -4 or below.
Sure, I use gnome… and its kinda ok… in the same way that a ford escort is kinda ok. Gnome and KDE dont live nicely together so I try not to install both these days. Want me to pan Gnome just fore the sake of it?
Here is my desktop most of the time..
http://4development.net/Screenshot.jpg
The gnome bar looks like its been cut and shut from win98, texturing it doesnt help, the icons look flat and misaligned both on the bar and on the desktop..
awn and the desktop cube effect in compiz makes a reasonable job of getting rid of the bottom bar but I’ve never found anything to properly make the main bar looking anything half as nice as os x OR XP OR Vista… the same goes for the bar in KDE, looks fine till you actually start using it.
All I’m saying is… show me what KDE can do to improve my life as a linux user, how does dolphin sort files, what can I do in that I cant already do in nautilus?
You all must think I’m moaning about KDE for the sake of it… or because I’m some kind of Gnome bigot.. I’m not, I’m just sad that it would appear Linux in general has so much potential and yet carries so much clunk.
I’m concerned that the only thing Linux developers are good at (for whatever reason) is reinventing proprietary UI designs.
If anyone has been following my tirade you’ll notice I mentioned how Linux looked soooo much better compared to 2k % win 98 — god it did at the time, even BeOS was better than 98 but it all seems to have went downhill fast since. Now that all the closed source unices have went down the tubes, and/or opened up to the community… where is the multiple innovative desktops of yore?
Has the desktop interface matured that much that there is nothing left to create? Or have the rock solid unix traditions of 20 – 30 years been churned around by the community so much that there is no more creativity to ‘steal’? (apples time machine aka rsync or ‘spaces’ suddenly come to mind in the ‘stealing’ category)
Compiz and kwin seem to have been the only unified upgrades to linux in years, quasi-transparent terminals were a nice touch 10 years ago but how long did linux take to catch up with os’x transparency?
Gnome and KDE were nice in a time when Microsoft users were stuck in a world full of motif windows.
So from that point of view, KDE has came a long way and I really respect that, but I dont need to see another cube, I dont need to see another widget I dont need to see how leet you programmers are at making linux look like leopard (or better than, in many ways)..
I guess I should weather out kde 4.1 a little…
http://www.nuno-icons.com/images/estilo/raptor/find.png
that jimho looks really nice… well apart from the search box and star looking slapped on….
I’ll keep wandering till I find something I like, I’ve been in both kde and gnome camps in my time, I guess both of them will eventually stop sucking at some point. (and no, neither of them suck enough to go back to windows)
I’ve just yet to see something from either Gnome and / or KDE other than Compiz/Kwin that made me take a step back and go ‘woah, I want to use that over x in windows/osx’
.. and I dont think there really is that much subjectivity about it. (unless you have a long grey hair/beard and think anything that requires a mouse is too newfangled)
Good points, sadly, I don’t think that many people here are going to care. That’s the sad part…
We have the ‘how dare you even question us’ approach that is so often due to peer pressure. I ain’t a lemming, so I say what I believe, I don’t like to follow others. Sadly, most of society just simply follows others in order to either look cool, or just be the “norml”. People hate to stand out, they hate to be different. They’re so afraid of how others will judge them because of it, that they simply elect to be a lemming and conform and not question anything. This is why people just jump on your posts. Plus, many here are illiterate users who simply cannot read and comprehend the moderation rules – READ THEM AGAIN guys! Just because you disagree with someones post does NOT mean you mod them down.
I really wish osnews.com would mod the moderation and punish those who abuse it on a regular basis for their own self gratification of their own personal view of the world.
I like the KDE find look, but agree with you, I did a quick 2 sec ugly hack in Photoshop to remove the star, and round the corners of the search field, which looks a LOT better imho:
http://www.macro-images.com/web/images/find.png
Dave
In the screencast at 2:57, what is that they are playing with?…
All the $$ spend by Microsoft and couldn’t even come close to this rich functionality…. I am sure it will take a few pass to be solid stable but its the right direction…
This lookes really good. I remember the first time I heard about KDE4 a long time ago, and thought of a KWin with built-in compositioning, and here it is
Not to mention the other new stuff that was shown in the video! I was, and still am a little reserved towards the idea of splitting up Konqueror, but Dolphin looks nice. Hope I can get used to not have web-tabs and filemgmt.-tabs in the same app… Well, time will tell, and I supposed the stability and functionality also will be improved with time 
…so after all the complaints from the community about the lack of screen estate, Mr.Seigo decided to throw in some more stuff just to make it all worse? Like the desktop toolbox: people complaining? Lets add another one to the panel! Or why use the desktop for what its for: files…lets add a widget that is just floating there and covering the desktop for the files.
I really have been patient, but the obvious innovation does not necessarily mean good innovation; there is no shame in sticking to well proven concepts…or at least let the users choose to use the new and improved look OR the old and well proven look. The “we know best” attitude was what made pidgin fork, and this may as well happen to KDE if the foundation (or should I say a selected few key persons) keep ignoring what the users want by saying “usability tests shows that this is better and you suck” or “I am the boss and you are just users”…but at this rate I believe it soon would be easier to just start all over again.
Many might find all of this exciting, and I agree that as a research platform it IS exciting, but as a day to day desktop environment, KDE is dead to me. While waiting for KDE4 I have been trying to use Gnome instead, and now that KDE4 is here I see no reason for going back. That is a rather lame end to 9 years of KDE usage for me. It is really disapointing…but hey…I am just the user so f–k me right?
Edited 2008-06-02 06:39 UTC
For starters, when you lock the widgets the button on the panel goes away (and I think the locked is the normal state, as I guess you don’t resize and reposition widgets every day).
As for the icons, the plan is to make it possible for them to cover the desktop (because the whole desktop can be just one widget/plasmoid), but it’s not there yet, and unfortunately might not be for 4.1.
I for one always wanted to have several groups of icons on the desktop that grouped together and didn’t mix, so for me this feature is very cool.
Finally, come on, what is kde4? Is it just plasma? Kwin? If you don’t like plasma or kwin, nobody’s stopping you from using gnome-* or xfce-* or whatever replacements of those utilities, and use other kde4 apps all the same. You even have the gtk-qt4 engine if you want all of them to use qt, or the qgtkstyle if you want all of them to use gtk, so what’s there to complain?
I for one use the apps I like on any of my computers, be it under gnome or kde4 or kde3.
You have to be kidding.
The Windows-only IT staff at work spend a good deal of their time beseeching people: “don’t put your files on the desktop”.
Your post and others on this thread sound just like a series of made-up rants to me.
Honestly.
For example … if for example you don’t like the KDE 4.1 menu, you can always just replace it with the same style of menu as was used in KDE 3.
Soon enough, other options will also become available … such as Tasty Menu for example:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/preview.php?preview=1&id=41866&file…
… or if you prefer, Raptor menu:
http://www.raptor-menu.org/
http://pinheiro-kde.blogspot.com/2007/10/raptor-join-fun.html
… or Lancelot menu:
http://www.jarzebski.pl/read/lancelot-wraca-do-gry.so
Whatever floats your boat.
There will be a lot more options by the time KDE 4.1 is released. If you don’t like the default menu … use one you do like.
Well exactly !!!
KDE lets you do exactly that. Sheesh!
Select the old menu style in, choose a “retro KDE 3 look” theme, and away you go … you would get the underlying improvements to the KDE core with very nearly the same look and feel as before.
Plasma is not KDE 4 … and even if it were, Plasma is very configurable.
Any particular reason or is it just some pet peeve?
I personally think the desktop is a great place to dump files and do so all the time. Just because it doesn’t fit into your way of working doesn’t make it bad, and trying to make everybody work the way you work will just piss people off.
Roaming profiles is one reason. Too many files on the desktop kills the intranet performance when people try to logon or logoff. If a size limit is reached for too many files on the desktop, then roaming profiles corrupt.
In addition … there is the issue of the “hit by a bus” scenario. You should not keep the company’s files that you are working on in your own private directory areas … they should be stored in a public directory belonging to your project or your department.
There are very solid reasons for not using the desktop as a file manager … any largish network of Windows machines should have such a policy.
Edited 2008-06-02 12:40 UTC
But those are all policy issues and issues tied specifically to your particular windows network implementation, and not connected to the general concept of using you desktop as a place to dump files.
But this true for any storage on local hard drives and has nothing to do with the desktop, and isn’t really relevant for personal files anyway. At work my desktop area points to a folder on a central fileserver so all my files can be accessed from there if necessary. Anything that needs to be stored in different places can be solved more or less transparantly throught clever use of symlinks and mount points.
These are all solvable if one really puts ones mind to it. Especially if one happens to have the source code to the OS and all the infrastructure code
It’s one thing to say, saving files to the desktop is a bad idea when using the OS and particular setup and policies we happen to have. It’s quite another to say saving files to the desktop is a bad idea.
The problem with this reasoning is that a fair percentage of computer users do not really “grok” what they are doing.
In this scenario … it is often easier to just implement an office-wide policy of “no files on the desktop … all working files are to be stored in the <whatever> area” (or perhaps in Sharepoint or some other collaboration utility). The reason for such a policy can most simply be stated as … “when the files are stored there, they are correctly backed up nightly, and all of the people in the office who should have access to the data can see the latest copy of the file”.
A home computer is an entirely different scenario. Fill your boots as far as file management on your own system goes … as long as you don’t carry the habit into a networked collaborative environment.
Well, as I said … fill your boots. My own recommendation here for Linux is to use your home directory rather than your desktop. Most “open file” dialogs start at your home directory (not your desktop) anyway, and it is fairly easy to put a quick-launch filemanager icon to open up your home directory with a single click anyway.
Back to the offince network scenario … as far as Linux goes … implementing samba means that there should be a commonly-accessible area to store files other than the desktop. I can’t comment on “roaming profiles” for Linux … I have never encountered such. Rather than Sharepoint, in a Linux context or a mixed environment, one would probably be better off using a collaboration system such as Citadel, Alfresco or Open-Xchange.
Edited 2008-06-02 14:57 UTC
That’s one solution. Another solution is to look at how your employees work and try to tailor your IT solution to accommodate them. If people like to save stuff on their desktops, why not make sure that their desktop folder is stored on a central server and backed up. It’s not like its impossible to implement. Perhaps make a more flexible rule like “you can store personal working copies on your desktop if you want, but make sure project files that everybody needs to access are stored in the correct project directory”.
I’ve been on both sides of the fence on this. And while I know from experience who much easier the IT departments life is if they get to dictate (seemingly) arbitrary rules and force people to follow them, I’ve also seen how much happier employees are if IT shows some flexibility to fit their infrastructure around who people actually like to work. Most work most people do does not need to be instantly accessed by their co-workers.
AFAIK if you do this, people’s desktops will not start at all if there is a problem with the server.
If you have a server down, it is possible to set up clients so that they can start up, and people can perhaps generate new text (to be pasted into working documents later, when the server is up).
There is some possibility, albeit small, that productive work can proceed even when the server or network is down.
Roaming profiles is one reason. Too many files on the desktop kills the intranet performance when people try to logon or logoff. If a size limit is reached for too many files on the desktop, then roaming profiles corrupt.
In addition … there is the issue of the “hit by a bus” scenario. You should not keep the company’s files that you are working on in your own private directory areas … they should be stored in a public directory belonging to your project or your department.
There are very solid reasons for not using the desktop as a file manager … any largish network of Windows machines should have such a policy.
All quite good reasons, sure, but do you happen to know if such roaming profiles suffer from the same shortcomings in Linux environment? (Or some other *nix for that matter?) Also worth of note is that there should be a company policy for not storing company data in your personal directory areas, including desktop. Would be good to explain also why not, people are more inclined to follow rules if they understand the reasoning behind them.
The situation is different for home users though; all the people I know like to store frequently accessed files on the desktop, and like f.ex. I do, I store some temporary files there where they are very quickly and easily accessible and then later on store them in the more proper location. The folder view widget has some serious shortcomings in this regard, it just doesn’t cut it yet.
In my (limited to school really) experience of large scale *nix deployments, the home directory generally simply resides on a file server. I have no idea what the implications of roaming profiles are on windows, but the only problem I can think of affecting *nix desktops would be if you’re constantly opening huge files. The desktop is treated just as any other part of your home directory.
As for KDE 4.1 and the folder views, I rather like the idea of being able to display multiple directories on the desktop. The folder views can also filter by file type, so you could have one type of file in one folder view and another in a separate one. It makes for a very organised desktop, unlike the messiness of current desktops.
I’ve been trying out a SVN version of KDE 4.1 on Arch (there is a repository of compiled SVN packages for Arch) and I find it to be somewhat stable considering it’s not to be shipped for another two moths (end of July). The only time plasma has crashed for me was when I was logging out.
The KWin effects are working quite well too. Those were lagging quite hard on 4.0 for me.
You’re moaning about screen real estate and you’re using gnome?
You know that you could set the Folderview applet as a containment and have your desktop classic style if you so desire.
For those of us that like our desktops nicely compartmentalised it is actually quite useful as I can have different areas using different folders instead of the “old” way of doing it by dumping all your crap in the desktop folder.
People keep moaning how their desktop is being contaminated by chunky desktop widgets…blah,blah,blah… IT IS ALL OPTIONAL
Those that seem to have such a personal relationship with their desktop environments “KDE is dead to me” always seem take it as personal insult when something isn’t exactly to their liking. GET USED TO IT. No desktop will ever be 100% to your preference…ever.
The best one can do it to make allowances in terms of configs and default options to please as many people as possible. For the rest create as many options as possible in a sane way.
What can’t be seen in those videos is that this is only the current state of plasma. It is designed in a way to enable maximum flexibility on the desktop. What is available now is just the tip of the iceberg. I’m sure in the future we’ll see the many different ways that plasma scales, but for now this is it.
What do you use to view the screencast in Windows. Winamp doesn’t play it and ffmpeg doesn’t recognize it …
C:\>ffmpeg -i “kde41.ogg” -b 360k -r 24
-f flv -s 240×320 -acodec mp3 -ac 1 -ar 22050 -ab 56 kde41.flv
ffmpeg version 0.4.9-pre1, build 4751, Copyright (c) 2000-2004 Fabrice Bellard configuration: –enable-memalign-hack –enable-mp3lame –enable-mingw32 –extra-cflags=-I/local/include –extra-ldflags=-L/local/lib –enable-amr_nb built on Mar 29 2005 07:26:02, gcc: 3.2.3 (mingw special
20030504-1)
kde41.ogg: Unknown format
The video is ogg Theora format.
VLC should play it in Windows.
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.html
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html
try with smplayer http://smplayer.sourceforge.net/downloads.php
Thanks. SMPlayer worked.
KDE 4.1 looks really impressing.
I did not see the respected KDE developer resize the panel. I wanted to see whether the icons adjust accordingly. I admit I skipped through the video so I might have missed it.
Anyway, overall it looks good but there is something weird about it. I can’t explain it but at some stages at looks dull and at some it looks good. Let me back my self up:
– The status bars are unbevelled as well as other elements of the UI. See 1:15 (KWrite). They shold be bevelled.
– The push buttons look weird on black background. I think it’s meant to look shiny-sort-of (Vista like) but instead it looks like a web page. Examine 1:03 and you will see what I mean.
– The txt icons on the desktop also look weird. I don’t know how to explain but they lack some type of 3D depth or something…they…hmmm, they are just plain ugly. Compare the Vista icons with yours.
– The font is too small.
– The panel (Start) menu looks the same. I strongly recommend you look at the “Linux-XP” version of the Stat menu and use something like that.
This is not a flame. I am giving you a personal constructive feedback and where I criticize I also try to express my opinion for a solution. Overall, it looks good.
Edited 2008-06-02 10:40 UTC
I have come to actually like the default kde4 start menu.
Thing is, I realized that I never really liked the old one, neither do I like the windows one – at least as a day-to-day method to launch an application.
During all my computer activities, I mostly use only a handful of applications (just like the vast majority of people, I suspect). So I put most of them in the quick launch bar in windows, or drop them unceremoniously on the desktop. For the less often used ones, I often browse to them with a file explorer in windows, or start them from the command line in linux.
I found that both with windows and kde3, I tend to prefer using any method but the start menu to launch an application. I mostly only use the start menu as a directory of installed apps from which I can fish out some application’s icon and copy it as a shortcut elsewhere, anywhere (desktop or quick launch bar).
I just don’t like navigating those gigantic hierarchical application menus. They are unwieldy, offer smallish mouse targets and one mouse mishap (like moving out of the current sub-menu) is enough to take you to a completely different and unexpected location within this vile arborescence.
So, for me at least, the kde4 start menu makes sense: you navigate through application and mark favorites, which then become readily accessible on the first page of the menu. This captures my day-to-day application launching workflow within a single place.
The search function comes in handy as well during those expeditions to locate that thing you just installed.
Edited 2008-06-02 14:04 UTC
For KDE 4 this is probably what you are after:
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/QuickLauncher+Applet?conte…
http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?preview=1&id=78061&file…
A warning about dropping stuff on the desktop … I have repaired quite a few Windows setups where the complaint was … such and such application doesn’t work any more … and the reason was because someone had dropped (moved) an application executable file out of its sub-directory in the “Program Files” area onto the desktop … as opposed to putting a shortcut on the desktop.
For some users who don’t really understand what they are doing … the best policy is to tell them not to use the desktop at all for stuff like that. Then they don’t mess up nearly as often.
i have been using kde4 4.1 opensuse packages.
since the release of 4.0.80, kde4 is my main desktop. this is trully amazing, since i beleive my kde3 desktop with compiz is almost perfect
ever since 4.0.80 was release, a few days ago, i only encountered one major problem : dunno why but plasma once started using all my cpu all the time ( i deleted plasmarc* in home folder and all was ok again ( i have config files from previous svn kde4.1 releases from opensuse ))
kwin is not as smooth as compiz ( which is perfect smooth on my intel card , even with exa accell ( rant: just to show you dont need latest leetest nvidia card to do some eye candy) ), and there are bugs here and there and everywhere ( sidenote : i submited 3 bugs to dolphin, 2 took 1 hour for the devs to fix, the other took a whole day, because i mailed them directly and the message took a day to get approved ))
dolphin is great : really like it
plasma is also very nice, although i really have panels, so i removed mine and have a desktop without panels ( much nicer this way ). i just hope that the desktop toolbox can be auto hidden and they fix the systray.
unfortunatly, some keybindings arent working , but this is beta , right?
i like very much the kde menu (kickoff) but i set it up near the edge of the screen so it changes its orientation ( much much more usefull this way )
i really dont have problems with screen estate, nor with functionallity and etc. i never really used kde 4.0 since i never found it usefull. but kde4.0 and kde4.1 have almost nothing in common. its amazing the changes between them. if they can change this much as to kde4.1 and kde4.2 , then we are in for desktop nirvana.
for kde 4.1 final , i just wish they fix the bugs. i dont really ask for more features.
by the way, although kde 4.0.80 is filled with bugs everywhere, i cant comment on instability, since it never crashed on these days of usage. ( and i have it almost 24 hours online all the time )
i really like the artwork in kde4 and all the work of the kde artists ( not only in kde software but also on the webpages ).
of course, my kde4 desktop looks nothing like the kde4.1 default desktop. fonts, colors, plasma, i like to change things. i am my desktop’s master and not the other way around.
but all important ( since fonts , art , plasma , etc can be all changed and its superficial ) i mostly appreciate the work done on frameworks and libraries. in time, everything can be built and done properly. i hope more developers fall in love with qt and kde framework.
my final though : long live kde , long live gnome, long live enlightenment, long live mac osx and long live vista and xp. why cant we just live happilly together ? why there must be a ring to rule them all ? ( not a nutcase fan of LOTR )
I tried the latest Suse beta Live CD yesterday and KDE with Firefox, OOo and Kmail opened (no Thunderbird on the liveCD) just so eats up 220 MB RAM.
So a current setup can run on 256 MB systems for plain office work without swaping.