KDE-Forum.org

I agree with everything you said. I'm a new linux user and the reason I chose KDE was the control I had over things and the way it looked and worked. With KDE4 I have very little control over things like the panel settings, Desktop Application Launcher not to mention the majority of the System Settings. I know that I can set it up to the "Traditional menu" but even that has lost most of it's controls and power.

What I'm afraid of, and I know it will happen, is KDE3 will no longer be supported. If I have my choice between KDE4 and Gnome I'll take Gnome. Sorry about that because I really liked KDE3. I thought the Great Folks at KDE should know so I am writing this. Usually I don't post negative feelings but in this case it's like I'm losing an Old Friend and I hate to see him pass on to the never never land. I think that KDE is making a BIG MISTAKE in trying to make their desktop Simple to use for the Newbie (I can see no other reason for the change). I'm one of them and if I want Simple and Low Power I'll go to Gnome. Your place in the market was total control over the desktop and system.

Please continue to support KDE3 or put back the power into KDE4. I'll hang with KDE3 as long as I can and when your support goes away, so will I. Thanks for listening to my rantings.
Bob Jones

I have used GNOME for ages,and have only just started to use KDE-3.5,in Suse.It will indeed be a shame if 3.5 loses support.I have seen version 4.0 in action,and at the moment it appears "a little shaky?" I agree with you Bob,and may contemplate going back to GNOME,but do not want to do so.Keep support for 3.5,as "I am new here,also"

nez.

I pretty much agree with everything said so far. I like to tweak things to my liking, and make it look how I want it to look, and work how I want it to work. This was one of the things that early into my linux experience drew me to KDE. Now I'm having to step away with a bitter taste in my mouth.

I like things to look good, but I want them to be intuitive as well. Not everything has to be a toy for me to play with. The new Kmenu is neat for a few seconds, but from an everyday-user standpoint, it's traded off practicality to "look interesting."

What happened to plain old icons? I have no reason to tilt an icon and stretch it. Sure, I can see why some people might want that, but what about the people that don't? Do widgets have to be a core part of the desktop environment? It looks good, but I have yet to figure out how to make an icon work the way they do in 3.5.9 (If someone can tell me how to make the icons behave like icons rather than plasmoids, I'd greatly appreciate it). I'd also like to get rid of that stupid halo effect around the icons. Yes, I can "lock the widget" or whatever it says, but should I have to go through that extra step with every icon to get old fashioned icons? How about something in the control center to let you toggle icon behavior from plasmoids to icons (with my luck, that option is available, and I missed it. Someone point it out if I am wrong).

I guess I'm a bit of an old dog not wanting to learn a new trick. I could get used to it, but I can get used to GNOME a lot easier (in fact, it's not that hard). Sure, it lacks the customization options of KDE3, but at least I don't have to pull my hair out at the stupid toys on the desktop. To me, KDE4 looks like something you would use to impress new people to linux, but at the end of the day, I want to get some work done. The desktop should be the launching point for everything I do. It should act like a desktop: something I write on, read on, use a calculator on, et cetera. It shouldn't be a child's bedroom full of neat doodads and gizmos (At least give me an option to get rid of the doodads and gizmos).

OK, ranting over.

I too am an 'old' KDE user both in age and using KDE. The threat I read about with no desktop ICONs has led me in the direction of wondering if the KDE crow has been reading about the success of the windoze vista user interface changes. This sort of forced change will drive a number of us to an alternate desktop and possibly back into the proprietary world. at least one proprietary system has kept a consistent user interface even as they changed underlying OS to BSD. This change is quite likely to send me screaming to an alternate widowing environment if not a different OS. I will give 4.1 a test after release with my preferred distro, and if I find that it no longer is the kind of UI that I like, I will stay with KDE3.5 as long as possible and then change to another desktop. At least with the software I deal with in the professional world, embedded life critical software is designed and written to documented requirements that require srious consideration, validation as requirements and verified implementation before validation in the user environment and distribution. This restriction of KDE flexibility is certainly not the kind of thing that brought me to using it.

KDE4 has still shown a little of it's power. I think u'll able customize much more in next versions but is hard to get such functionality in first versions of KDE4.

Simply put, KDE4.0

-Out of the box, the Start menu and panel don't work correctly. This seems like the most obvious possible part of the entire OS (short from making sure it boots). It's the first thing users see, and it doesn't work right. Sub-points:
--The new Start menu is useless. It has less functionality coupled with a sorting system that I and virtually everyone I've seen try it hates. (right-click on the Start button for the option to switch back). If you want to ripoff Windows Vista, just rip off Windows Vista already. I shouldn't have to click around so much to get between parts of Start.
--Widgets as a mandatory feature is dumb. When I right-click on the... widget-thing, I can't close it. Why? I'm not using it, so it needs to go away. And I'm not "adding Widgets" to the panel, so why does it say that's what I'm doing?
--No Quick Launch. Seriously. I really can't fathom how you'd miss that one. Even if you were going to skip out on that, at least give us a Show Desktop button, but that's also missing. Even then, if there was a way to add icons to the panel we could still do the work on our own, but the Add Icon bit for the panel is, unless I'm missing something, completely useless and broken. On that note, how can you screw up "Add Icon"?
--I can't figure out how to edit my Start menu without digging into config files. I don't even know how to put into words how mind-bogglingly frustrating and ridiculous that is. I upgraded from KDE3.5 where I had the newest install of Firefox, the upgrade lost my Firefox icons in both Start and Quick Launch, and now the only way I can figure to run Firefox is to open a file browser and go find it.

The only reason I tried out KDE4 is because my Fedora 8 install was having odd problems like not detecting my network card, so I upgraded to 9 and got saddled with a nearly unusable GUI. Then I come to the forums, and the forums are awash with spam. This experience has completely shaken my confidence in KDE and in Fedora for that matter (Fedora shouldn't have saddled up yet with KDE this unready). If the new version doesn't get out soon and actually work, I'm going to be looking for alternatives (to both, if necessary- if I have to use GNOME or whatever I might as well do Ubuntu or something, I primarily use Fedora because of KDE).

Also, all my Desktop icons just disappeared. Great. And I've had to reposition the panel "widgets" twice while typing this because they keep messing up. Maybe if I try locking them, as I've seen someone recommend... Now if only the clock wasn't drawn about 3 pixels off-screen because I went to a Small panel. And why are half the options in the new Kopete backwards? When I'm hiding offline users, there's a filled checkbox beside the phrase "hide offline users"- that's very unintuitive. And no matter how hard I try, I can't make Kopete stop popping up a notification Window that I have to click "ignore" on every time I get a new message. And the Start menu keeps failing to draw itself properly when I make changes. And the default Firefox skin is the ugliest I've seen on several OSs. And why did it re-enable all those useless desktop sounds when I had them turned off before? And...

You can modify the menu via kmenuedit in 4.1 rc1, it is also reachable via a left-click on the menu icon. Unfortunately i don't know if that counts for 4.0.x, too.

Quoted from "RMJ1940"

I agree with everything you said. I'm a new linux user and the reason I chose KDE was the control I had over things and the way it looked and worked. With KDE4 I have very little control over things like the panel settings, Desktop Application Launcher not to mention the majority of the System Settings. I know that I can set it up to the "Traditional menu" but even that has lost most of it's controls and power.

What I'm afraid of, and I know it will happen, is KDE3 will no longer be supported. If I have my choice between KDE4 and Gnome I'll take Gnome. Sorry about that because I really liked KDE3. I thought the Great Folks at KDE should know so I am writing this. Usually I don't post negative feelings but in this case it's like I'm losing an Old Friend and I hate to see him pass on to the never never land. I think that KDE is making a BIG MISTAKE in trying to make their desktop Simple to use for the Newbie (I can see no other reason for the change). I'm one of them and if I want Simple and Low Power I'll go to Gnome. Your place in the market was total control over the desktop and system.

Please continue to support KDE3 or put back the power into KDE4. I'll hang with KDE3 as long as I can and when your support goes away, so will I. Thanks for listening to my rantings.
Bob Jones

Give it time. KDE4 is still in development. I'm more than confident that the options you crave will be available before 3.5 is finally laid to rest.

Quoted from "KSpartan"

Even in Windows Vista users can switch to the old start menu.

You can switch to the old style KMenu in KDE4 as well:
Unlock desktop widgets then right click on the KMenu and select "switch to classic menu style"

Of course i will never use Gnome.

Probably i will install xfce4 or something.

i would support a fork at 3.5.6 if 4 doesn't get with the program soon.

Quoted from "KSpartan"

The worst is the new Kmenu.
At least there should be a choice to select between the old traditional Kmenu and the new one.

Agreed, it's totally crap and I can't imagine what the developers were thinking when they designed it.
The good news is, you can right-click on it and choose the old menu. Slightly cut-down, unfortunately, without the option to show recently-used or most-used items. But still far better than the new mess.