First of all, congrats to the artists. The AIR theme (of course a work in progress) looks bloody good.
Next I want to express my respect for the coders. I am very happy with the zooming capabilities of plasma - which allows you to create a bunch of desktops (called activities). Very nice considering the room you would need for all the useful plasmoids. There's a blackboard now, the microblog is kick ass, and there is that desktop assistent thing which doesn't make much sense to me... I just would love to be able to connect virtual desktops to activities!
Third - Qt 4.5 rocks. The performance improvements are very noticable, nice work!
Fourth, interesting article on Techrepublic (a nice "ten reasons why Gnome is better than KDE", I'm not even going to link to it). I was surprised with a new uninformed rant/opinionated piece/whatever about KDE 4. I though we were getting past all that.
Arguments were same-old, same-old. Like "KDE developers don't listen to users". Clearly, the plasma developers focussed entirely on fun stuff and didn't do anything in the last 6 months to get plasma on feature parity with KDE 3.5.x. Oh, wait....
Funny to see what he complains about. KDE 4 is like Vista. Hmmm, what about all the complaints about either Gnomification or Macification of KDE? If we simultaniously copy Mac, Gnome and Vista, what does that make us?
Funny to see it's mostly about what KDE does wrong, not about what Gnome does right. What does that say about both projects?
Funny to see how KDE 3.5 these days is used as a prime example of a 'perfect' desktop, a great and usable piece of software. I distinctively remember all the complaints about how cluttered and busy it was, how unprofessional it looked. Now, suddenly, while we are giving more attention to both usability and innovative interface elements, KDE 3.x is the best desktop FOSS has to offer. Hmmmm. He actually complains how cluttered KDE 4 is... Not saying there is nothing to improve, but worse than 3.x?
I think I don't have to talk about his specific points, most are either silly, uninformed, stupid, or a random combination of those. I guess I should just point to this pic wade made...
In the blue screen shot: What are those fugly icons showing your pirated Voyager episodes?
ReplyDeleteSimply amazing!
ReplyDeleteAnd I am so happy about the - apparently silent - work on the windeco buttons. They were the only thing I didn't like about the Oxygen windows decoration. And they have become so much better!
Thank you, artists! You rock!
@kamikazow: what pirated stuff? ;-)
ReplyDelete@mutlu: I agree. There are so many of those small changes going on...
Another very nice, theme, even more restrained than oxygen::air is "platau" which can be found on kde-look.
ReplyDeleteIt really deserves a place in kdeartwork.
Activities still confuses users: too many clicks to add them, too many click to change from one to another, too much confusion between activities and virtual desktops. I should all get much simpler, at least in the default configuration to stimulate the users to use them (I think that only a small part of the users are using activities ATM).
ReplyDelete@maninalift: can't find it... ???
ReplyDeleteSo in your opinion "progress" in KDE is when Pinheiro blatantly copies the Windows 7 peek look?
ReplyDeleteWhat is happening to Nepomuk? Why is this "activity" thing such a pain to actually use? Where are the so called "out of this world" features of KDE4 besides glossy wallpaper, disappearing panels and weather applets?
You claim the techrepublic piece was an uninformed rant, and then you go on to show screenshots of "trunk".
Can you buy/borrow a netbook if you dont already have one, and load the shipping version of KDE4 and then compare GNOME(specifically the ones in Ubuntu and Mint) with whichever best KDE based distro you can come up with? And then make "informed" opinions about how badly KDE4 sucks ass for end user. Even in the UI, the one thing for which you and Seigo keep tooting your horn.
More and more, the KDE team is sounding like General Motors. "My present prduct sucks, but 2 years from now I will have a great product that runs 100 miles on electric charge". Where is the real KDE4? Till then, it looks like all there is to show is Pinheiro's wallpapers and themes.
Oh, and as far as the analogy with "the pic that wade made", it is entirely misplaced. No one would have a problem climbing the "mountain" that KDE4 is to learn new software if it was Everest or K2 they were climbing, but right now it is visible they are climbing a heap of garbage, and hence the complaints
ReplyDelete@diego: You're absolutely right. With the activity-switch plasmoid it is easy to switch but there is a lot of room for improvement. Just look at the horrible checkerboard you seen when you zoom out... Blegh!
ReplyDeleteAll I wish for plasma is to not crash in its entirety just because of a single plasmoid.
ReplyDeleteIs it too dificult to simply remove the offending one?
For sure I know about the activity-switch plasmoid but, for example it's not added by default in the panel (is there room for it?). Moreover if you put it on the desktop you should manually add the plasmoid in every activity. The ZUI isn't really ergonomic ATM.
ReplyDeleteOn the techrepublic article:
ReplyDeletePoint 1:
He (tech republic guy) made a good point about Gnome vs. KDE. I have always found the Gnome menu to be a bit more efficient. Word is that is going out with the coming of Gnome3.
But there are several positions he takes that utterly destroy his argument.
Point 2 (of his article):
(The Dolphin/Nautilus comments) He says Konqueror (STILL A FREAKING PART OF KDE4 people it's easy to switch it back on as your default research before you write an article about something)
is the best file manager ever, then he says nautilus trounces Dolphin by being very simplistic while Dolphin is more lightweight than konqueror....what is he looking for in a file manager exactly because it seems he's just looking for an argument so he can have ten points.
Most of his other arguemnts are...less than par but one thing did make me want to put a brick through my screen.
Point 9:
GNOME DOESN'T USE FIREFOX BY DEFAULT DISTROS DO!!!! In fact if a distro wanted (and many do) they can add firefox and make it default. Why is it kde's fault. Gnome's web browser is epiphany!!!! Konqueror is quite a bit better than epiphany for reasons I don't care to discuss here.
The rest of the article was quite badly written. I started out wanting to at least give this guy the benefit of the doubt but man...that was a bad article.
Jos, thanks for the screenshots they look great, and sorry for semi-taking over the comments section but I felt this had to be aired out.
@ Ahmed G
ReplyDeletegreat rant on your part, but Konqueror better than Epiphany? Please. Give me a break.
Nice article although i cant say i agree with you views. Just want to say in response to some of the comments that as bad and as much of a disappointment as Kde4 may be it and just about every other desktop are still superior to the idiots desktop gnome.
ReplyDelete@I Love
ReplyDeleteCould you backup that argument? I'll back up mine then with some of my experiences.
Konqueror's text rendering seems to be much better than basically any other browser I've used. The text looks crisp. Konqueror (using Kparts) has the ability to open pdf files and text files etc. All in the web browser. It may just be me, but I like that ability. In konqueror it's very easy to change browser identification, again a small feature if you don't like it, but it's something I use every now and then. Web Shortcuts are also a very useful feature.
Now I'm not saying epiphany is BAD, I'm saying as an application konqueror is for me, much nicer. The one area where epiphany might have an upper hand is rendering, because epiphany is using the same rendering engine as firefox it seems to support overall a few more webpages than konqueror. This is rarely ever an issue. But in the few times it's come up I have opted to use firefox for those pages. Konqueror has another problem in that flash doesn't work that well right now. However, epiphany is currently in the process of switching to webkit. At which point I think the webpage compatibility of konqueror and epiphany will be about the same. In which case I see konqueror wining out as being the *better application.
In my brief, analysis above I tried as much as possible to outline some of the features I liked in konqueror (whether these are present in epiphany or not is moot to me as I PREFER the konqueror implementation). They are just a few of the many things I like about konqueror. Now would you please tell me why you find epiphany to be "superior"?
I'd be interested to hear this since I've never really heard the benefits of using epiphany. Even when I was a gnome user I used either firefox or galeon.
@Greg
ReplyDeleteThen we all seem to be living in a world of idiots, Greg, unfortunately for you.
Have you seen the Distrowatch top 5 distros within the last year or so?
One KDE4 based distro. And even that one has decided not to release its next version until November, thanks to the Plasma team and all its bickering about backporting :)
So, please continue to live in your "Tower of Babel" while the "idiots" run away with Linux on the desktop and on netbooks.
@Ahmed G
ReplyDeleteI was hoping you wouldn't go there. But now you are asking for it.
Point 1: I need a browser not a swiss army knife. I dont care if Konqueror can walk on water or turn water into wine. I want it to display webpages, plain and simple. And I think that was the thinking that led to Dolphin being made into a compact file manager as opposed to cramming gazillion features into Konqueror.
I have used Konqueror extensively on Arch and Kubuntu within the past year. The sheer ugliness of the UI thanks to KDE4 aside, as you say it has issues with flash. Not only that in my experience even rendering regular pages is a pain on Konq. I remember the time getting gmail to work on Konq used to require hacks.
Point 2: Don't compare Konqueror with other webkit browsers. Konq is not another webkit browser. Please check Chrome and Safari4 (on windows and mac resp)to know what I am talking about. They are miles ahead of anything Konq can hope to achieve. So, saying that "if Epiphany implements webkit, it will be just another webkit browser like Konq" is not even worth a reply. And forgive my asking, but is Konq even based no wbkit yet? I heard them talking about it several years ago, but I thought they decided to stay in the 18th century with KHTML even as Webkit browsers like Safari and Chrome are trailblazing as far as speed is concerned today.
Since you are ending your argument with "I prefer Konqueror", I don't think any amount of features that I enumerate will convince you, but Epiphany on Ubuntu renders pages without a fault and with speed. I cannot say the same about Konq on Kubuntu.
I think you never hear benefits of using Epiphany because it has a much more popular GTK cousin in Firefox. That in no way means Konq is better than Epiphany.
You are taking Techrepublic's quote about browsers, then asserting that Konqueror is a better "application". Are you even sure what it is you want to convey?
@I Love: Can you stop your uninformed and idiotic rants, please? Go ahead and use Xfce or GNOME if you don't like KDE, but stop comsuming our time.
ReplyDelete@I Love
ReplyDeleteI'm "asking for it"? Asking for what? An "informed" discussion? Since when is that a bad thing?
Konqueror isn't a "webkit browser" yet but there is a webkit kpart for it. So yes you can CHOOSE that if you want.
As it turns out I want konqueror to have features so that if I want to use them I can, I don't want some guy or gal working on gnome to decide what I want to use. Plain and simple, but that is actually an argument that runs deeper and in the end is a matter of tastes.
Point 2:
I didn't compare konqueror with other webkit browsers...I said when epiphany moves to webkit it would have similar rendering to konqueror. The assumption I made there is that you have the webkit kpart setup, and that by the time gnome moves to webkit epiphany and konqueror's webkit support will have matured.
I took Wallen's comment about browsers in that he was comparing Firefox to Konqueror, as opposed to Konqueror vs. Epiphany. In an article discussing GnomeVSKDE if your going to be discussing web browsers you should use the default web browsers from each project. Not a third party web browser and then konqueror. I'm glad you got that last point off your chest as it was stuck in your throat from your other comment.
You say konqueror's UI is bad, yet you say nothing more about this. Most of your points that seem almost like you would back them up don't get any more meat to them and come across as just off handed comments.
I am very disappointed in the quality of your points. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt in hopes that you would actually discuss epiphany in depth. If you notice I abstained from commenting much on the negatives of epiphany in my comment and focused on my views of konqueror. You spent a great deal of your post on why konqueror sucks, not on why epiphany is better. That style seems to mirror that of Wallen's. A lot about why the "other" side stinks and very little about why "your" side is better. It's very off putting. I want kde to stand on it's own merits not on someone else's faults.
Now I have a feeling you might respond with "but you said you preferred konqueror's way so I don't see a point in listing epiphanies features". Well that would be wrong. The point of this wasn't for us to change each others ways, but to enlighten each other as to what the other browser held. For whatever reason you took an acidic tone as opposed to a wanting to have discussion on the merits of the various browsers. That's a shame.
Too much of your post was devoted to attacking mine as opposed to making your points about the two browsers. That too is a shame. In any case this argument with you has grown old very fast. I'll take hint from the others here and ignore your future posts unless the contain worthy analysis, as opposed to off handed remarks and acidic tones.
On a slightly different note, I'm glad gnome took the hint from kde4 and moved try to do gnome3 again as a response. It's good to see kde leading the way forward. I hear they are even looking for the own implementation of activities.
What I don't get is the annoying cluttered look of the desktops you showed. I wouldn't want this mess of plasmoids to appear for all the money in the world - and I have been using KDE since the first versions and wanted to like KDE4. All the plasmoids you display on these garish desktop images belong into proper windows instead of cluttering the desktop beyond hope...
ReplyDeleteThe worst bit and sore thumb amongst these things though is the cashew. While it is oh so important (at least the plasma developers say so) that it can't be disabled then comes the point where you have to interact with it and the whole mess explodes: The menus open behind any normal windows that happen to be close to the cashew and you can't interact with them. What sense does a useless widget make which if called upon displays it's menus behind everything else? None whatsoever!
What sense is there to have the background shine through your top level windows? Again, none whatsoever but enforced nonetheless because the plasmoids have an UI which is an abomination to interact with!
The whole concept of the plasmoids is one big mess as it makes the desktop very hard to configure properly and you never get really what you want because certain things are not in the interest of the self serving and egocentric views of the plasma developers (like disabling the cashew completely)
To the person that syai i made a copy of window 7/vista I havent looked at windows 7 so its hrader for me to copy.
ReplyDeleteAny way so far kde plasma had 3 difrent defoult themes and gess what they were all radicaly diferent, and still people like you managed to call all 3 of them vista copyes. Wich is prety interesting. O but in the end it makes sence couse vista patented black icons and transparency sory right... its a copy...
Quite the typical anser from the person that craetes nothing. "nothing special any one could do it, its a copy" reality check my friend in a art world every one copies from every one, what I have done as infuences from windows world mac world alot of web 2.0 and even a bit of gnome.
Wen I designed raptor Well I did it all by myself playing with paper and mocks, and thinking about the stuf I knew in linux world....you know what most people had to say..... Mac copy / vista copy. but yeah some people can only feel about themselfs if they think the rest of the people out there are as uncreative as they are.
@ Pinheiro
ReplyDeleteSorry about accusing you without basis.
/sarcasm
Check this out :)
http://www.tgdaily.com/slideshows/index.php?s=200810301&p=4
too much coincidence?
As far as KDE/Plasma having 4 different themes and all that stuff you are talking about
What is so radically different about the grey Oxygen window decorations and themes and the Silver/Brushed Metal/Graphite OSX look?
What is so different about the Plasma bottom panel (4.2) from the default Vista Panel. And now that Windows 7 has a translucent bottom panel, KDE4.3's new theme has that too....too much coincidence.
I am sure you have never seen any of these, and worked in complete isolation to develop your "creative work".
You are doing great work. That too for free. But looks like KDE4 is making great "progress" in wallpapers and themes and nothing else.
dont worry kde4-devs, the only people that says that kde4 su*ks is th gnome(a.k.a ubuntu people) people, they install kubuntu and the nvidia drivers works wrong with kde4 and then quickly post that kde4 "fails" :-)
ReplyDeleteonly visit forums with reviews of kde4 and a lot of bad thing are not kde4 related. plasma crash=kubuntu system, driver bugs=nvidia+xorg, plasma dont load. remember when test kde4.0-betaX and plasma crash but no every time.
an original theme like "human"???, on every screehshot of gnome(a.k.a ubuntu) only see a copy os osX, so where is the original human theme??, made a green theme ??, but google have a green so sucks, maybe a brown theme that the people change for a theme like osX or vista an the gnome-users(a.k.a. ubuntu-users) happy :-)
As far as Windows 7 looking like KDE is concerned, it does look similer. even way back in october http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2008/10/first-look-at-windows-7.ars
ReplyDelete@I love,
ReplyDelete"And now that Windows 7 has a translucent bottom panel, KDE4.3's new theme has that too....too much coincidence."
Well, considering that there are quite a few themes that have a translucent bottom panel pre-dating the first Win7 screenshots I'd consider that a moot point (or a cheap shot, take your pick).
And as far as webkit vs khtml goes (or Konqueror vs safari vs Chrome)...in most cases (at least in my experience) it's not the rendering engine that's the problem. It's how well-known the "brand" is. Webkit, Safari, and Chrome (to use just the most obvious examples) are known entities. Konqueror and Khtml are less so. Further, many websites do not check or know what the browser in question is capable of but relies on the UserAgent string.
Something like "Konqueror/4.2; en-US, en) KHTML/4.2.1 (like Gecko)"
would be an unknown entity and unchecked for by most sites. Check the UA to something more familiar and more sites look like intended.
In short, it has nothing to do with the engine but a whole lot do with brand and ineptitude of web-devs.
I would suggest that everyone just ignore I Love's comments going forward. This is not because his/her comments automatically do not have any merit (I have some issues with some facets of the KDE desktop as well); it is because of the tone of his/her comments make it obvious that he/she has no interest in actual constructive dialog. In addition, he/she has undermined many of the intended points, thus destroying the credibility of the arguments presented. This is unfortunate because some of them may very well have been helpful. While people's personal opinions are valid, to simply state them as a definitive proposition is not helpful. Especially when they are stated in an abusive and caustic manner.
ReplyDeleteTo I Love: Please learn how to have a constructive discussion. If your personal interactions with individuals are done in the same manner as your blog comments I would highly suggest that you seek some anger management or other psychological help as it will lead to much better personal interactions and, in turn, a better life. Either way, please stop posting until you can have a constructive conversation. If you can do that, I would be interested to hear your views.
hahaha! gnome is not only for ubuntu users. what is the default desktop environment of fedora, red hat and opensuse? im not against kde or gnome. back at home, and in my work i am using gnome. i am thinking of trying kde4.2 because i've been reading good articles on the internet about kde4.2
ReplyDeletei just want to point out that gnome users are not just ubuntu users, check distrowatch top distros and their default desktop. if these distros are popular then this "must" means they have bigger number of users. to conclude: gnome users > kde users. but you don't have to be upset and hate gnome just because of this fact.
@Anonymous,
ReplyDelete"what is the default desktop environment of fedora, red hat and opensuse?"
I don't know about Fedora/Red Hat since I don't use them, but opensuse doesn't have a default one. Download the install DVD and see for yourself if you don't believe me. You can freely choose between at least the latest gnome and KDE 4.1.3 and with, IIRC, KDE 3 and fluxbox (maybe even lxde) given as options. They even phrase it (paraphrased) "We don't give any recommendations which one you should use." Which, if you ask me, is the way it should be.
I just would love to be able to connect virtual desktops to activities!
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. I don't need separate activities and workspaces. Why on earth are they even distinguishable as separate things? Virtual Desktops/Workspaces should be one in the same with "activities."
Fix that and KDE 4 is on the right track.
@Jonas,
ReplyDeleteJust talking about default themes. I do realize I can go to KDE-look and turn my desktop to resemble Windows/Mac, but I am not talking about that kind of customization. Nor am I one to complain about a default theme. After all, it takes a few seconds to change it, and then everyone is happy.
It just seems too much of a coincidence that KDE4.2 came with a panel very similar to Vista's and now 4.3 will have one very similar to Windows 7. Again, I repeat, it might very well be that Pinheiro has not seen Windows 7 and is using current design trends to come up with these, just that the coincidences are so much, that I am not able to accept that.
As far as your second point, as end users, we are looking for something that "Just Works" (tm). I realize it might be the fault of inept web devs or of branding, however, from a Just Works (tm) point of view I dont see Konq even comparing to Epiphany. Now you may say this is because Epiphany uses Firefox's engine and Firefox is more popular. Agreed, but for an end user, if unlike Ahmed G, one is not looking for a browser to perform all sundry tasks such as file management etc, Epiphany works better than Konq any day.
@Anonymous
The fact that I am making comparisons with Ubuntu does not make me a "ubuntu-person" I have used KDE trunk in Arch before 4.2 was released. I still use Kubuntu to keep abreast of the latest in KDE4.3.
Whatever your views may be about the age old GNOME vs KDE argument, which is about personal taste for large part, you are stretching it if you say Ubuntu is looking like some other OS in its default avatar. However, the resemblance between KDE4 and the new Microsoft OSs is more clear to see.
I would even be OK with KDE resembling any other OS in design, if the internals that were promised before 4.0 was released were coming along fine. But I dont see the semantic nepomuk integration yet, I don't see usable ZUI implementation, I don't see KOffice2 beating OpenOffice, Most significant changes from one release of KDE4 to the next seem to be system tray beautification, hidden panels, ultra cool web 2.0 inspired wallpapers and themes and so on.
Maybe this is all a result of Steven J Vaugn Nichols and his rant about forking KDE3 which is making KDE devs bend over backwards to satisfy his ilk, but that leaves little to show for all the promising "out of this world" features promised before 4.0 was released.
Yes KDE can now run on any OS, but on the OS on which it was undisputed leader with KDE3, there are only 2 of the top 10 on Distrowatch that default to KDE4.
@Anonymous: Uh... OpenSuSE uses KDE by default. SLED uses GNOME, but that's SLED, not OpenSuSE.
ReplyDeleteI use KDE for quite some time now - some 12 years -, but still stick to 3.5. Ok, that's what I'm used to is one reason, another is resources. My ancient Acer Travelmate 4100 with Pentium Mobile 2GHz, ATI X700 graphics and 1GB DDR2 RAM isn't fast enough for KDE, don't get me started on my Thinkpad X31 and it's certainly not made for my EEE 901.
ReplyDeleteI had not much luck with Kubuntu with KDE 4.2 on my iMac, NVidia :-(
Oh, and I rarely use Konq as a webbrowser :-)
My glasses are a blatant ripoff of Windows 7's panel. Because they're..you know...transparent.
ReplyDelete@Raul
ReplyDeleteBut your glasses don't end up on my computer's desktop, so I guess it is OK if they suck like Windows 7 :)
When did distrowatch become the is all, be all of what the most popular distro is? Furthermore Fedora maybe a "GNOME" distro but there are a LOT of kde users on Fedora. Ubuntu is the brandname. Many people will use "kde/kubuntu" and still say they are on Ubuntu so that maybe a mixed marketing issue, but none the less Ubuntu has become the defacto "New User" distro. After Fedora we have Debian which has kde and gnome. People certainly aren't using debian for it's awesome DE tweaks. So they would just as easily install Debian and use kde.
ReplyDeleteAfter that we have Mandriva, PCLinuxOs and Mepis. If you want to argue those are gnome strongholds do so at your own peril. So of the top ten distros 4 are "Gnome centered" 3 are kde centered and 3 are largely agnostic. So even by those FLAWED standards you haven't made much of a point except that Gnome distros are generating more page hits. Now let's do something else. Let's look at commits for gnome and kde shall we?
http://commit-digest.org/issues/2009-02-15/
http://blogs.gnome.org/commitdigest/2009/02/15/issue-19/
For the Feburary 15,
kde:3301
gnome:2186
that's one of the higher numbers on gnome's commit digest. But even that says very little about anything. But I think it says more than distrowatches rankings as it is a nice guesstimate as to how active the developers were for that week. Still it's not that great. We can trade these useless statistics all day long, we won't get anywhere. Use what you like. If you want to discuss merits of the technology than do so. If you want a high level cross DE discussion as many kde/gnome developers are having (see new theming support/QMetaObject/Gobject-introspection etc.) that is great. But if you want to come and discuss "which one has more hits on distrowatch" this is the wrong place.
On final word on distrowatch is this : distrowatch is a DISTRO site. Not really a DE site. So what your comparing is not even close to a measure of kde.
This is not an invitation to a statistical fight, I just wanted to point out blatant errors in people assumptions about distrowatch, and yes the commit-digest statistics don't say much either that's the point.
KDE vs. GNOME fights get very old very fast. I am all up for a good FRIENDLY competition between kde and gnome. But what we have been witness to here is not friendly, nor productive it's useless slinging of opinions that gets people no where fast. Instead of gnome people coming here to insult "kde 4" why don't you go show kde people how this is really supposed to be done. In the open-source world code speaks louder than words and so far I'm seeing a greater volume of changes and improvments on the kde side than the gnome side, I came to kde from gnome after the release of kde 4.0. Why? Because I UNDERSTOOD what kde 4.0 was! It was the kde team saying here! We have established the basis of the frameworks so we can all start working of the 4.x series of kde. If you would watch the kde 4.0 keynote address that Aaron did such a good job with you'll understand this better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UneGtZlehTU
@Ahmed G
ReplyDelete1.True, distrowatch is indicator of nothing. However the default DE chosen by popular distros says something. And you forget, Debian and PCLOS are still in 3.5.10 in their latest release from this month. It talks volumes about confidence in the suitability of 4 series for end user.
2. True commits are higher in KDE. But what does that say, if you are comparing a buggy DE platform trying to find its feet having many commits with another that is mature over several years? It says nothing.
3. I also started using 4.0 for the first time a year ago after using GNOME before that. I did so because of Aaron's presentation too. However, it has been 15 months since then, and there is no sign of the Pillars coming into their own. Instead each new release brings new wallpapers, new themes, UI goodies, and nothing much else. Where is usable ZUI? Where are the Nepomuk delivered yumminess?
As always I love the KDE 4.2+ eye candy, usability wise its still a drag. Darn I miss the old KDE 3++. I moved to enlightenment (E16) and Fluxbox and have never looked back ever since KDE4.0 was released.
ReplyDeleteEnlightenment17 has even better, lightweight and is functional usability wise too. Can't wait for E17's release.
Good bye KDE, you deceived me. Once upon a time I was your devout follower.
@Anonymous: Oh shut up and give KDE4 a proper go :)
ReplyDeleteKDE4 is looking and feeling better and better by the day, I was running 4.2 whilst it was still in development, now I'm hoping Kubuntu Jaunty will have the KDE4.3 development repo :)
@I Love: You are just plan stupid, because othwerise you would know the difference between translucent widgets and translucent windows.
ReplyDelete@blueget
ReplyDeleteWith due respect sir, and despite your language, I am talking about the bottom panel, and the general overuse of "translucence" which seems to be eerily similar to a certain OS from redmond. I would like to assure you I am not confusing widgets and windows, but thank you for pointing out the difference.
To the ones that might wana know.
ReplyDeleteWen I created air was couse of popular demand for a new defoult that was transaparent.
it was over 5-6 months ago.
(I still like oxygen beter, yeah I love black) But not all people do.
If I recal correctly at the time it was windows 7 that was acused of copying kde, and quite onestly I find that as absurd as saying that we copy windows vista/7.
I find the inuendo that we Oxygen on propose copy windows 7, ignorant, evil, disreptfull, and pure FUD.
@Pinheiro.
ReplyDeleteCorrection. I am not insinuating that Oxygen copied Windows 7.
I am insinuating that Oxygen from 4.2 copied Vista, and that Air in 4.3 is copying Windows 7.
And it is not evil, ignorant or FUD. It can easily be seen with two screenshots side by side.
Outch, lots of comments.
ReplyDeleteI agree, the plasma theme rocks... but is it possible to make a Qt theme looking the same?
When I mean possible, I mean "technically possible" :)
Dudes, I know it is infuriating, but you really have to stop feeding stupid and incompetent trolls like I Love. I tried to make it clear in an earlier post that his/her comments were not welcome unless they were given in a constructive manner but this person is obviously not interested in actual constructive dialog; instead they are only interested in caustic speech and distraction. While I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt, by reading of the more recent comments and arguments put forward by I Love I am forced to come to the conclusion that this individual is simply stupid, and their postings are not worth reading, let alone responding to. There is really no point arguing with someone that is that stupid, all that happens is that they drag you down to their level.
ReplyDeleteAs I have stated before, it is actually really unfortunate that I Love is so stupid, as some of her points are actually valid and dealing with them in a constructive manner could help. However, due to the stupidity (I have using this word repeatedly, and I hesitate to use it at all, but the lack of general intelligence is so apparent in I Love's statements it is hard not to use it) of the presentation of the arguments the points are lost and no benefit is gained.
Please, lets continue with the constructive conversation as it is helpful, but do not feel trolls like I Love until she learns how to converse in a civil and constructive manner.
@Volker: How strange that KDE 4.2 is running fine on my Samsung NC10. With desktop effects enabled and all bells and whistles.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I suggest that everyone listens to the wise Anonymous above.
Wow, looks great.
ReplyDeleteI readed all the comments and I must agree on one of them.
It is that the plasma containers are too dificult to use. That really means that we need to zoom out/in or use the container change-widget. what has bug that it takes all the space from taskbar if placed there, by amount of how many containers you have. It should work more like the virtual desktop widget. Small amount of retancles on the taskbar what you can click. And then do virtualdesktop switch by desktop grid or desktop cube.
And I must say I understand pinheiro totally. These designes does not come up in one day. And if they come to public after competive desktop has released new shots, it does not mean they have done it before and after that everything what gets released is just copying them.
I like the black plasma theme too. But I want it to be transparent too. And I know many who want it be totally transparent like the Air is now. I use Glaze theme for plasma. And I was planning to do own theme, more like Air, when KDE was just released 4.0.1 version. Windows 7 did not even exist then in public.
It is just stupid to blame contributors about stuff what they create for you. If you do not like it, go and buy the competitor or use it. If you can not give constructive critic, then do not give it at all.
I use KDE4 because developers has got something unique and new things, what makes me like it. I was GNOME user before KDE4. I liked the KDE3 but it was bretty "cluttering" by it's UI but KDE4 is now the thing what I hope GNOME would be.
And many my friends have switched from GNOME to KDE and only because KDE4. And even more people have (now over 20) have switched from Windows XP and Windows Vista. I say that is _something_ what makes KDE4 as great.
If you do not like KDE4, just use that what you like. If you do not like the distribution what others are using, then stick with your own. If you do not like Linux OS, then switch to other OS.
We all have freedoms to do. If you do not like the KDE4 plasma themes what are available, do your own.
Normal people does not even see big difference between Windows 7 and KDE4, same way as they dont see that with GNOME or Windows 7. Should we now bash the GNOME that they have copied everything from Windows 7 and KDE4 too? No!
And I am not trying to lock myself to one desktop environment or its current version. I plan ahead and check what I can do to make change. To help people to get better experience with computers. I think that is the thing what matters, not what they use.
@I love
ReplyDeleteBefore you tell that KDE4 copies Windows7 than you have to tell that Windows7 copied KDE4 with the Glassified plasma-theme, which is much older than the first Win7 Screenshots.
Maybe the KDE-devs copied glassified. Or they just copied the glass from their window at home.
Or they just wanted to make their theme transparent, because users wanted it like this.
So who copies who and what?
Think first, write later.
(Glassified URL = http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Glassified?content=81388 note the submitted date)
ReplyDelete@I Love
You are assuming two wrong things:
1. art is somehow unique, that just because MS made something no one else could do it independently on their own.
2. you don't have to like the default theme... just change it to one you like.
there are themes that actually try to copy MS stuff but if you look at AIR and W7 the only real thing they have in common is the use of transparencies... if you think that's copying something then you also have to acuse MS of copying OS X and others... and let's face it what's the point? what do you gain by this "discussion"?
If you like KDE you would realise that this kind of "complaint" will just hurt the artists and has no real usefull content.
And if you only see what's similar to others (in AIR and KDE4) then you will miss out the original and uniqueness of it.
I use both Gnome (Ubuntu) and KDE (Arch Linux) and both have their merits and faults. If I recommend a DE for Windows users I plumb for KDE, for Mac users Gnome. It is quite pointless to start bickering about who is better than who or who is copying who, just be thankful that in Linux WE have a choice on which DE we want to use, imagine being stuck with just one and be unable to customise any part of it.
ReplyDelete@ I Love: You do realize that KDE 3.5 had a white panel with transparency. Does that mean KDE 3.5 ripped off windows 7?
ReplyDelete@ Anonymous
ReplyDeleteBeing thankful for the ability to choose DE is one thing and asking for "a radical departure from existing norms and exploring other avenues like use of Raptor and Lancelot and a move away from the by now universally adopted (by Mac and now Windows) Glassy/Glossy theme" is quiet different. I can be thankful about the choices I am offered, yet not be satisfied by them.
Sadly, KDE4 was going to be that radical departure, but it seems last year's battles over folderview have left people with little energy to implement anything radical anymore.
and @Todd
You have been endowed with a precious little amount of grey matter. Could you please make use of it sometimes?
What part of "default theme" are you not understanding? Is that too technical for your pea brain?
Ah, maybe I should not ask you to use your brain...lest you come up with some crap like Raul Silva about your glasses being transparent.
50+ comments! Whoohoo!
ReplyDeleteWhoever posted the link to the comment, thanks that made my day! Hahaha. I'm still laughing.
In anycase I'm going to shift the topic just a little bit.
The new air theme is I think very nice. I do think we need a some more choice as far as kwin themes and the widget styles. I also think there should be work to get the Plasma theme and the widget style to blend together a bit more. This is normally where I think the distros should come in. Lately the haven't been doing much themeing beyond changing wallpapers so I hope as the distro devs start to get a better grip on kde 4 packages they can really move to improve that aspect.
What aspects of kde 4.3 are you guys excited about? I would have to say the Air theme and "Plasmate".
"Sadly, KDE4 was going to be that radical departure, but it seems last year's battles over folderview have left people with little energy to implement anything radical anymore."
ReplyDeleteNo, what left people with little energy to implement anything radical was the constant demands by users that KDE 4 be brought up to feature parity with KDE 3.5 RIGHT NOW. So plasma devs spent their time doing just that, and were impressively able to replicate 5 years of development to get KDE 3.5 where it is now in just one year, and still found time to add a bunch of new features.
But now that KDE 4's desktop has pretty much all the features of KDE 3.5, people are now complaining that KDE 4 doesn't have anything new or revolutionary. Of course it doesn't, developers were spending all their time getting things from KDE 3.5 implemented. There are only so many hours in a day. Plasma developers listened to what users were demanding and acted on it. But as soon as they finished, people started complaining that they didn't do the exact opposite of what people asked of them earlier. Yeah, plasma devs promised lots of revolutionary stuff, but they had to halt work on most of that to get things from KDE 3.5 working again. Now that most of that is done work on new things has resumed, and it looks like there will be a lot of cool things happening in 4.3.
As for your other comment, I'll ignore all the gratuitous and pointless insults.
"What part of "default theme" are you not understanding?"
The default KDE 3.5 theme has a light gray panel (like Windows 7) with a slider for setting transparency. It was part of the default theme.
Opensuse, for one, had this transparency enabled by default. Other distros might have as well.
The truth is there are only so many colors that are usable as a default theme. If its white, you say it looks like windows 7. If it is black, you say it looks like vista. If it were blue you would say it looks like XP. What color do you expect them to use, bright pink? (actually the fluffy bunny theme does precisely that)
As for transparency, it includes transparency because it can, they do it to show off the new capabilities of KDE 4 and because it matches the transparent backgrounds of the default desktop widgets. Do you expect them to cripple KDE 4 and not use its full capabilities just to make it look different from Windows?
I see a lot of complaining from you, but I don't see any suggestions about what you want them to do to correct it.
@Todd
ReplyDeleteDude, dont insult yourself and the KDE devs. As I mentioned in the last post, please use a little bit of that processing power that is present in your head and dont talk like a cult fanatic.
Feature parity with 3.5, my ass. Debian Lenny and PCLOS 2009.1 that have been released just in the last month have deemed KDE4 series unfit for inclusion in current release and gone with 3.5. So much for KDE devs working all year to fulfil user expectations. Crap. Which users? Steven J Vaughn Nicols? Linus Torvalds? Those have already jummped ship unable to stand this painful nonsense. Those who are still here are the ones that fell for Seigo's youtube presentation about the new pillars of KDE4 and how that would revolutionize the world. And trust me, there is nothing "new" yet. openSUSE devs worked all year to backport features to plug gaps in KDE4 feature regressions. They got the short end of the stick from Seigo abotu backporting, and this year will release their new version several months after KDE 4.3 release to make sure all the crap is ironed out. Feature parity my ass. Don't get me started on feature parity.
Have you seen the default Ubuntu Theme? Have you seen the default Mint theme? Have you seen the default openSUSE theme for 11.1? How many of them directly look like another operating system in the market. As someone pointed above setting default themes and looks should be a distro's prerogative. The DE on the other hand can be more worried about functional aspects.
But since KDE4 and Plasma teams have squat to show for besides wallpapers, icons, panels, widgets and so on, they keep harping on the same things release after release.
You ask for what needs to be changed? Kickoff needs to be kicked off and replaced with Lancelot/Raptor or better and more thought out paradigms. Semantic Desktop Integration. Zooming interface should be way easier to use than at the moment.
Theming and beautification can be left to distros and to the people at kde-look and they have been doing a great job for years as opposed to Pinheiro spending 5 months copying windows UI.
for me, i just want the UI gets fixed. i hate the clunky, fat, & ugly oxygen theme. i love bespin but it has usability issues. and i hope that the more important parts of KDE are being actively developed in parallel to plasma.
ReplyDeletewow. lots of comments.
ReplyDeleteI see a lot of people saying the ZUI is hard to use. what makes it so hard? what would make it easier? I find myself avoiding it, but I can't really pinpoint what it is that makes me not want to use it... I think a large part is that it has performance issues with my drivers.
@chani (and rest of kwin/plasma team)
ReplyDeleteI also get a gut reaction to not use plasma activities even though I want to.
I think that there needs to be a good discussion about how it is used and how one should be switching between activities effortlessly. Sure, there is the ZUI paradigm, but it has some major issues. Speaking from 4.2.1 experience, when I zoom out, I can immediately see some things that are "rough around the edges"
1. presentation of activities. They are just squished up in the top starting from upper left. There is no nice border, no differentiation to where one ends and the other starts. Additionally, the background used is a generic checkerboard which screams "I'm not finished". Taking some pointers from the KWin Present Windows effect might be useful.
2. Performance when zoomed out is atrocious. It's bad on my intel card, it's bad on my nvidia 6600, on the 7600, and even on a friend's ATI 3450. If it is bad on all of these, I fail to see what cards it might work well with.
Honestly, I see two paths that activities could take. It's possible that there are more options, but these are the ones clear to me.
A: Continue with the idea that activities are arranged on a virtual desktop, with the ability to zoom out/in from one to another. I then suggest that some of my issues above are discussed/addressed.
B: Rethink the ZUI. One possible conceptual model was described by someone on the KWin mailing list. The gist was the folowing: By default, have the present windows grid effect for changing between virtual desktops. This allows for a good conceptual model of how your desktop "is" larger than your screen. Secondly, have the plasma activities change as if they were faces on a virtual cube. It doesn't have to be a cube, but it should be something, anything really, that is different in concept to the desktop plane. Without this differentiation we are forever destined to have confusion from users and developers alike who can't easily figure out why/how activities and desktops are different.
So I wrote this and its ridiculously difficult to proofread in this absurdly tiny google blogger text entry box. I'm sorry in advance for any typos/confusing statements. It's late and I wanted to get my thoughts out there. I really should post a message to the plasma/kwin mailing lists, and in an ideal world I would find the time to hack on the code myself to make it better. Alas, this post will have to do for now.
Guys, just ignore this I love dude, he/she is just a clueless user who know nothing about software development, he/she can only bitch about software appearance.
ReplyDeleteRemember, don't feed the troll :D
Reasons why I don't use KDE 4:
ReplyDelete1.) "Hide menubar" in Konsole just plainly doesn't work. That's a must-have for me. Its not only the GUI configuration: I edited the configuration file, too.
2.) All Plasma Themes I could get my hands on wasted precious screen space with big borders around everything. Same goes for Oxygen. Cleanlooks is buggy. I'm on 1280x1024 and 1280x800 here, people.
3.) I still don't know what's so great about Plasma. AFAICS it's just SuperKaramba ported to Qt4. It's slow and for showing information on the root window I use the much more flexible conky.
4.) Talking about slowness. Blaming performance issues on video card drivers is a poor excuse, IMHO. I tried KDE releases 4.0 to 4.2 and on decent hardware (P4 2.8GHz 1GB RAM with an Intel card and Celeron-M 1.4GHz 512MiB RAM with an ATI) core applications like KMail and Dolphin are slow beyond being useful. When i resize a Dolphin window I can literally watch it redrawing.
5.) The KDE4 version of Akregator is still Alpha.
@Anonoumous
ReplyDelete"1.) "Hide menubar" in Konsole just plainly doesn't work. That's a must-have for me. Its not only the GUI configuration: I edited the configuration file, too."
It just works here (KDE4.2.1, opensuse 11.1)
"2.) All Plasma Themes I could get my hands on wasted precious screen space with big borders around everything. Same goes for Oxygen. Cleanlooks is buggy. I'm on 1280x1024 and 1280x800 here, people."
Oh come on. I use a netbook with a 1024x600 resolution and it doesn't waste my "precious" space. But if you really find that all themes are wasting space with huge borders than feel free to make one that doesn't do that or develop existing ones further.
"3.) I still don't know what's so great about Plasma. AFAICS it's just SuperKaramba ported to Qt4. It's slow and for showing information on the root window I use the much more flexible conky."
Have you ever used KDE4 more than just a few minutes? If you ever did then you wouldn't say such things. It makes the whole desktop experience much more flexible and leaves so much potential for more.
Look here if you really want to know more:
http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Plasma
"4.) Talking about slowness. Blaming performance issues on video card drivers is a poor excuse, IMHO. I tried KDE releases 4.0 to 4.2 and on decent hardware (P4 2.8GHz 1GB RAM with an Intel card and Celeron-M 1.4GHz 512MiB RAM with an ATI) core applications like KMail and Dolphin are slow beyond being useful. When i resize a Dolphin window I can literally watch it redrawing."
I have an Intel Atom with Intel GMA945 integrated video card and a Intel C2D with Nvidia 7300GS, but don't have a slow performance on my desktop with Qt4.4. It's as fast as every other desktop environment and with Qt4.5 the speed is going faster and faster.
"5.) The KDE4 version of Akregator is still Alpha"
I don't use it, but i think this is FUD.
Ok, this is a nice discussion and all, but let's try to be a bit more friendly.
ReplyDeleteI Love - your comments definately border on plain insults without much constructive content. Todd gave you a few very good points there but you failed to even come close to a reasonable response. Please either go away or play nice. I don't want to but I feel forced to start moderating.
About plasma and general KDE performance - it seems people have very different experiences with both. For me, I can find useful plasmoids. You might look on kde-look.org for new plasmoids, see if there is anything useful. If not, with folderview you can at least improve your usual usage of the desktop (if that's keeping files on it). Or just have a nice Marble globe and forget about the whole thing.
Performance clearly differs for most - again, fine for me but could be better. Qt 4.5 makes a big difference, but there is sure room for improvement. It'll come, we're just at the start of KDE 4.x.
"Dude, dont insult yourself and the KDE devs. As I mentioned in the last post, please use a little bit of that processing power that is present in your head and dont talk like a cult fanatic."
ReplyDeleteAre you psychologically incapable of having a polite, constructive conversation? The only one who had been doing any insulting here is you.
"Debian Lenny and PCLOS 2009.1 that have been released just in the last month have deemed KDE4 series unfit for inclusion in current release and gone with 3.5."
The fact that you were only able to find 2 distributions that did this shows just how many have made the switch. And has it occurred to you that there is more to the KDE desktop environment besides plasma, and not all of it is working perfectly yet? There is no stable K3B, khotkeys is broken, and a number of other miscellaneous issues. Do you have any evidence that plasma factored into these decisions?
"Steven J Vaughn Nicols? Linus Torvalds? Those have already jummped ship unable to stand this painful nonsense."
I don't know about Nicols, but Linus had a problem with KDE 4.0. We are currently on the 4.2 release. Kubuntu was stupid for forcing an unstable x.0 release on users, and KDE 4 got a lot of bad press because of it. 4.0 is not 4.2.
"Those who are still here are the ones that fell for Seigo's youtube presentation about the new pillars of KDE4 and how that would revolutionize the world."
Yes, because it is completely impossible that anyone could have actually tried KDE 4.2 (or earlier) and preferred it over 3.5. Nobody can have legitimate disagreements with your opinion on anything, since you are all-knowing and all-wise and anyone who disagrees with your is automatically an imbecile no matter how well-argued and well-documented their arguments are and no matter how unsupported, poorly argued, and outright fallacious your arguments are.
"And trust me, there is nothing "new" yet."
You just mentioned one thing yourself: folder view. There are many others as well. But I won't list them because you don't really care about whether they exist, you just want to criticize KDE and anyone who likes it for some reason. You have given me absolutely no reason to trust you on anything, quite the contrary in fact.
"openSUSE devs worked all year to backport features to plug gaps in KDE4 feature regressions."
Yes, to backport 4.2 features to 4.1. 4.2 is out now, and is what I am talking about. 4.1 was missing a lot of much-desired features, which is why plasma devs spent so much time implementing them and why opensuse devs spent so much time backporting them from 4.2.
"and this year will release their new version several months after KDE 4.3 release to make sure all the crap is ironed out."
No, they are releasing it shortly after the release of the newest gnome in order to include that, and because they are switching permanently to an 8-month release so they will have more development time. They made no mention of KDE 4.3 being part of their decision. Did you even read their rationale for changing the release date? Of course it is more convenient to just make stuff up when reality does not support your position.
"Don't get me started on feature parity."
You already started. And so far you used the argument from false authority fallacy, non sequitur fallacy, false dichotomy fallacy, post hoc fallacy, equivocation fallacy, hasty generalization fallacy, false cause fallacy, and ad hominem fallacy, and that was only in the most recent post. What you have not provided and any actual features that plasma in KDE 4.2 is missing, nor have you provided any explanation of how you expect plasma devs to correct the problems you see despite many repeated requests to do so.
Very nice!
ReplyDeleteI've tried to mess with a plasma theme. It's quite easy. :-)
One question though. What does colors name mean like:
[Colors:Window]
ForegroundNormal=255,255,255
[General]
shadeSortColumn=true
[WM]
activeBackground=65,142,220
activeForeground=255,255,255
inactiveBackground=157,170,186
inactiveForeground=65,142,220
Can anyone point me to some reference page?
More specific, is it possible to have white text color on the desktop and blach on the panel at the same time?
Thanks!
@karye: I recommend to ask in the #plasma channel, they might know. or the plasma-devel mailinglist...
ReplyDelete@jospoortvliet
ReplyDeletehere you do
I mean "here you _go_"
ReplyDelete@maninalift: thanks. It's a very nice theme!
ReplyDeleteWell, pretty good article and looot of comments. I've kind of red all off them (annoying "I Love" :P ).
ReplyDeleteI'm using Linux since year 2000, and KDE4.x is the first desktop that I'm getting to really like. I was using each available DE at some point of my "Linux life", and in the past few years I settled with KDE 3.x.x. The biggest usability improvement (for me) came with Compiz/Beryl. It was not just eye-candy but really great stuff. Now I congratulate the KDE4 devels to be able to concentrate and implement the really useful stuff from Compiz in their DE.
And for those who say KDE4 is slow ... Before I had KDE3.5.x, SuperKaramba and Compiz ... KDE4 with twice as much plasmoids and it's own 3D uses less than half CPU of what 3.5.x did.
So, I'm for KDE4, and I'm not a new user with eye-candy only desktop (I use command line more than probably most of the commenters here ever did).
And as a conclusion. A DE is a DE. It presents the graphics and tries to organize it in a logical way. It is a combination of art and technology. Both art and technology are very much just a user preference these days. You can have your job done both in KDE and Gnome or in any other DE, it is just the user preference which makes the differences.
I like how KDE4.x looks (even if I hate Vista and I never tried Win7), you may like how Gnome looks, others like how other DE look ... that's the way it is. There is no good or bad, there no beautiful or ugly ... all lies in the eyes of the beholder.
@patkos:
ReplyDeleteI agree beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Usually performance should not, but people seem to have very mixed experiences in that regard. I had a look at my KDE desktop memory usage yesterday - 1.8 gig just after logging in (had a few apps running but not that much). Yet it works fine on my netbook, which has 1.5 gig and manages with 500 mb. It must be some configuration difference as they run the same OS and package version. Clearly there must be a plasmoid or something wasting memory - huge amounts of it. Plasma also often uses 100% cpu (I have dualcore, it uses one core fully). Another weird thing which doesn't happen (yet) on my netbook. Maybe these differences account for the different experiences people have...
@jos,
ReplyDeleteRegarding the memory issue (desktop vs netbook): the 1.8 gig-using machine may just be caching a lot more than your netbook for some reason. My machine is using around 1.7 gig directly after login too (although with quite a few things running in the background), but 700 megs of those are cached.
Still quite a bit of memory used, but not too bad considering what is always running on my machine.
@jospoortvliet:
ReplyDeleteMaybe. Different experiences on different hardware ... sad it happens. One thing however is certain: KDE4 goes forward. Those who used all versions of KDE4 are aware of the huge differences since the 4.0 release. Back than it was just a promising but badly tested project. All annoyances are getting away, step by step, release by release, it slowly becomes better and better. And yes, I admire the "hole desktop is plasma" idea. Plasma makes KDE4 to be more unified, more elegant and eventually easier to maintain and develop for.
Before, there were separate applications for desktop, for panel, for tray, for anything. Now they all are the same. They ar of course different as entities, but same as base and coding. I'm not a KDE developer, but I'm an IT Engineer and I have sufficient programming knowledge to see what is the intent of the KDE4 project is. And their intent and goal is good, it is logical and it is evolution.
Now, all I (we) have to do is hope they are capable of making it.
And as for the performance problems you mentioned:
- I had high CPU usage by plasma only once, when I installed KDE 4.2.1 from precompiled Mandriva rpms, and the packed Lancelot plasmoid had some issues. Quickly tracked down the problem on bug lists and forums and installed a newer version of Lancelot from 'trunk'. Now it is OK.
- As for general higher cpu usage than before, as I mentioned, I am experiencing the opposite. Less usage of resources.
- On my PC with an NVidia 8600GT, startup memory usage without any applications started is about 300MB and with Opera browser, downloading KTorrent and Kopete and other small stuff, it is usually between 450 and 500MB.
- On my laptop, with onboard Intel video card, where video memory is shared with/from RAM, memory usage is usually 600-700 MB
@patkos: I can only agree. Unfortunately the 1.7 gig was real, without caches :(
ReplyDeleteBut yes, the progress is stunning. Unfortunately it is not progress which impresses people, it is Present Results. And while KDE 4.2.1 is a compelling DE, it has about as many disadvantages as it has advantages over competing solutions (gnome, XFCE but also to a lesser extend Win and Mac).
I don't doubt 4.3 and further releases will remove many disadvantages and improve on the advantages more and faster than competitors can improve their offerings - it's just sad to have to wait ;-)
KDE and GNOME are both great. But, shouldn't the work together for standardization? People wanting to switch to linux are confused because of this war...
ReplyDelete@elyboy: that's what we've been doing for the last few years now. We're even organized our next annual conferences to be at the same time and location. There is room for improvement but generally we cooperate a lot.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the fundamental differences in how we approach certain issues (both social and technical) prevent anything more than cooperation.
Hello.
ReplyDeleteI've seen a lot of trolling here :( .
I'd like to point a thing. "I Love" said some interesting things i agree with, but he/she said it not in the right way.
Konqueror is a great app. But i would like a better KHTML or 'webkit Kpart'. It's the quickest browser on my desktop. Firefox just hangs sometimes and i have to wait ages for it to load.
Yes koffice2 is great in look, but there are too many aspects of it that suck. I use koffice2. I like how it blends with my desktop. I like its amazing speed. But it's different and pretty hard to learn (for me). And kpresenter needs some devel love (backround of slides is really tricky to use :S).
Plasma... Well, that ZUI is unuseful to me for now. When i zoom out i my stomach aches :(. It would be more useful a lot by assigning activities to Virtual Desktops (aka Workspaces), but i don't know what are the plans for it. The plasmoids are very cool. I recommend using few of them on the desktop, that's why i would be very happy seeing the integration thing i said above.
I used GNOME, KDE, lxde and fluxbox. None of them except kde made me feel really home. It's really easy to customize your desktop to your own needs.
Hi admiral0,
ReplyDeleteI am looking forward to webkit coming into Konqueror. You may want to look at rekonq, which is more Dolphin-for-the-web than full blown Konqueror. (and one other whose name I have completely forgotton) :s
I agree with your ZUI statement, it doesn't quite make sense to me why two different methods to add workspaces don't go together...
However I still love KDE, it looks good, it works fantastic on my Aspire One and I'm damned if I'm changing it (unless KDE4.3 comes out)
guys,
ReplyDeleteyou know you can use webkit in Konqi, right? Under View -> View mode, choose webkit. You can enable it by default under file associations, I believe. The webkit KPart isn't very good right now, and I'm not sure how much work goes into it, but it does work already.
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete@I love, I agree, I wanted to remove the last three posts here but after some interface changes at blogspot I haven't figured out how to do that yet ;-)
ReplyDeleteAs soon as I do, the posts will go.
Sorry KDE4 devs, but can you please realize that you made a huge mistake with 4 and go back to 3.5.x. Fortunately, KDE4 forced me to switch to Gnome which i now like better.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with "I Love" on most of his points. I don't think the interface copying or not copying windows is important. Even if it wasn't a copy its still a hunk of plasma vomit eye candy with minimal usability improvements.
The reason people were upset and "demanding" that KDE4 aquire the features of 3.X NOW is because most distros only support the 4 release, otherwise they would probably still use 3.X.
Also, I wish the first developer who said "lets throw 3.X away and make kewl widgets and plasma and stuff" gets kicked in the throat.
Where is this theme... I can't find it anywhere :-( (it isn't on OpenSUSE BS and I can't find it on KDE svn!)
ReplyDelete@luis: you mean the Air theme? It should be part of KDE svn, probably in kdebase/plasma or something... I doubt it's available as a separate theme anywhere.
ReplyDelete:) KdE4 the kids love it
ReplyDeleteI am really enjoying kde4, and actually kind of enjoy seeing all the progress made in giant leaps - but really if you kde4 haters/critics don't like it - well people just don't use it.
ReplyDeleteI personally am very grateful to the kde developers for kde4 as I was entirely bored with gnome, kde 3x was OK and having to play with enlightenment (gee it was fast) to have a bit of fun. Thankyou all.
goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood
ReplyDeleteI just bought the Panasonic 46G10 Plasma. Does it need a break in period to prevent burn in?
ReplyDelete