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KDE 4 review

epborden

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Saturday, January 12th 2008, 10:37pm

KDE 4 review

I am sorry my fellow gentlemen and ladies, but I must say that KDE 4 looks quite beautiful. From what I have seen, the new taskbar and overall OS theme is gorgeous. A sleek and modern art design that in my opinion is absent from the selection of GUI's at our disposal in this day and age. With KDE 4 you have a nice looking desktop right out of the box, so to speak. With other GUI's you must add components to achieve the same refined detail that is present in KDE 4, imo.

I have compared the latest version of Gnome with KDE 4, and as I see it, my eyes are immediately more satisfied with the look and feel of the hard work that the generous development team at KDE have given me, and the rest of us linux users.

I must also reference Vista because one could consider that it looks much more sleek over its older Windows siblings. However Vista, in my humble opinion, does little to satisfy the user in GUI usability. KDE 4 (again, in my opinion) looks more like a GUI that I would like to use as a long time computer user since it appears to be simplistic, yet usable without the daunting task of cruising through a mile of menus and icons like Vista.

I believe that once the KDE 4 team releases greater versions of this GUI (enhancing usability and feel over time), that it will finally show an amazing step forward by the linux community to push linux into the mainstream. It has always arguably been a question of when linux would trump the great Windows in its market share of the computer system, but as I have stated thus far, I believe that the KDE 4 teams vision will be met with great success and that we (as linux users) will have another milestone in our campaign thanks to this team.

On the topic of usability, and everyone having gripes over KDE 4, that is because it is the first release. Everyone should know that with any new project, even when it meets its first release date, it is probably going to be prone to problems. It is a trial and error process that is fixed/patched/updated over time. KDE 4 team said they have a vision, and my greatest assumption that I will presume is correct, is that this is part of the vision. Problems a part of a vision, what good could that be? It's good because it provides feedback, to make something even better. It is great that so many people have gripes over usability, but look at how far things have come over the years?

Besides, can YOU make a KDE 4? I can't. Maybe some of you can. If you can, help make KDE better.

So, as many people have stepped forward to strengthen the resolve that is Linux today, thank you KDE for a beautiful looking GUI and I cannot wait for the future!

grissiom_lxy

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Sunday, January 13th 2008, 1:42am

Yes, good post~~;)and I cannot wait for the future too!

Woeforce

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Sunday, January 13th 2008, 1:58am

RE: KDE 4 review

Agreed. KDE 4.0 is awesome! Additionally KDE4s future is vary promising. Particularly with Plasma, I like the idea of leaving the desktop the way it is or tearing the whole thing apart and constructing a different desktop. I hope some more cool Plasmoids are made to facilitate that idea. Also Dolphin is cool; it is clean and fun to use. Along with Phanon, we should see some more nice media applicaions becuse of it-on that subject, I am looking forward to a released version of Dragon-player. :P The revised KWin not only makes things look cool but is useful too, for example the 'Present Windows' and 'Taskbar Thumbnailes' effects. Those and many other areas of KDE are looking good. Awesome job KDE!

grissiom_lxy

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Sunday, January 13th 2008, 2:41am

Yes, you mentioned the Dolphin, I think the good thing that the new Dolphin missing is "open as root" and "edit as root" option in the right-click menu. It's very useful to a non-root user. And for the KWin, the transparent feature dragged my computer's legs(ATI card with fglrx installed)... But the transparent works very fine in KDE 3.5.8. And also, I have the "Unclutter Windows" button in KDE 3.5.8's task bar, it can arrange the windows for me but doesn't appear in KDE 4... I hope these features could came back soon. In my eyes, KDE 4 is a very promising baby now,wish it have a good luck!!

Woeforce

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Sunday, January 13th 2008, 5:54am

Quoted

Originally posted by grissiom_lxy
Yes, you mentioned the Dolphin, I think the good thing that the new Dolphin missing is "open as root" and "edit as root" option in the right-click menu. It's very useful to a non-root user. And for the KWin, the transparent feature dragged my computer's legs(ATI card with fglrx installed)... But the transparent works very fine in KDE 3.5.8. And also, I have the "Unclutter Windows" button in KDE 3.5.8's task bar, it can arrange the windows for me but doesn't appear in KDE 4... I hope these features could came back soon. In my eyes, KDE 4 is a very promising baby now,wish it have a good luck!!

Hmm... the "open as root" and "edit as root" options are definitely useful but perhaps a more comprehensive solution would be to just ask to do something as root once you have been denied to do it under the current user accont (kinda like when opening a package manager or something like it), right now when I do something I do not have permition to do it evedently opens an "Accsess Denied" diolog, perhaps adding the ablity to do this action there? In any case this does not just have to be in Dolphin, it could be implemented anywhere. What do you think?

grissiom_lxy

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Sunday, January 13th 2008, 8:31am

Quoted

Originally posted by Woeforce
Hmm... the "open as root" and "edit as root" options are definitely useful but perhaps a more comprehensive solution would be to just ask to do something as root once you have been denied to do it under the current user accont (kinda like when opening a package manager or something like it), right now when I do something I do not have permition to do it evedently opens an "Accsess Denied" diolog, perhaps adding the ablity to do this action there? In any case this does not just have to be in Dolphin, it could be implemented anywhere. What do you think?


Ah, I see. Your idea is to add an "interface" on it? Ah, this method may be better~~ But the solution may influence other apps like Kwrite, etc. For example, when I want to save xorg.conf after I edit it, there will rise the permission problem.

cheexer

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Wednesday, January 16th 2008, 4:57am

RE: KDE 4 review

I installed KDE 4.0 via opensuse and was horrified. What were these people thinking ?

Once they drop support for KDE 3.5, I'll move on to Gnome.

Woeforce

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Monday, January 28th 2008, 12:20am

Yeah, an "interface" but this is no more an interface than the open/edit as root buttons however what I failed to mention is that I think what we need is an interface for the Sudo command. This is not new though, such things do exist like KDEsu. But an implementation that for one makes full use of the sudo command meaning doing operations on any user not just the root, graphically and also can be used by-is well integrated with many applications. One way I see that working is to allow the option of doing a given operation under a privileged user once that permission has been denied under the current user, this is-of course for convenience, as the open/edit as root have been but does not necessarily have to just be opening and editing. Additionally where doing operations under a different user makes since a 'just do this through Sudo' option could be added, one area where I think that could be added is in K-runner where running a program under a different user would be useful.

enatefox

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Sunday, February 3rd 2008, 8:35am

so i hate the new k

I saw the 'crashed app' feature among others and thought I was good to go. I got the latest Gutsy with 4 preinstalled, loaded it in the virtual machine and an Emeril-style BAM I was disappointed.

It looks like a kids version of a decent desktop geared towards the inexperienced.

Case in point:
My fiance knows next to little about Linux and I've got her handling dual-screen apps, command line, etc. because she wants to accomplish some task. If she wants the minimalist experience, she can run firefox and be done. If she wants a weather applet, full customized profile, find a program she has the GUI accessibility of 3.5 to guide her. With 4 the features are gone/hiding from intuition.

I've been using Linux long enough to know where and what I want. I simply need access to under the hood and it looks like 4 is everything in the other direction.


All that I ask is that 3.5 is still developed when 4 comes and goes.