The critics are wrong: KDE 4 doesn't need a fork (ars technica)

KDE 4.0 was really frustrating. It barely deserved the "beta" tag (slow, crashed, full of
problems... more alfa than beta IMHO), but KDE 4.1 is much much better and I've finally
replaced my KDE 3+Beryl with it.

Apart from the stability issues that will be solved along the way, i believe its the main look
& feel that is most disappointing...

I like *part* of the Oxygen icons... dislike the filesystem ones... but that can be solved
with themes. 

well the main *skin* of KDE4 is disappointing, it could have been more striking if adopeted a
more *Liquid* L&F... but the plasma stuff is simply superb...

I don't like Dolphin, it should have been a WWW navigator instead, with *part* of Mozilla
extras adopteded( rejoin efforts)... Konqueror  a superior file manager, would have been even
more superior with the features now in Dolphin...

Plasma, Phonon, solid, other... are simply superior, KDE has everything to succeed if it
detaches its applications & desktop of cumbersome dependencies, they are good enough to stand
by themselfs... and focus on the desktop itself, Plasma for a real 3D environment with Z
movement... and let L&F to the users.

Then complaints will stop for sure.

(how nice if parts of the underlying base of KDE 4 could be made part of a common Desktop
methaphor!!... no wonder some voices are restless!...)  

     

I am a little amazed at this guy's focus on the desktop (the actual place where wallpaper and
such go traditionally).  I rarely use my desktop because that would mean closing windows or
using an out of band desktop icon to get to it; but that's just me.  Although, I notice that
many windows users always used maximized windows, it seems like accessing the desktop would be
a pain for them too? Perhaps with plasmoids I might fine the desktop useful eventually?  But
why all this fuss over the desktop?  KDE is about application integration with frameworks, not
the desktop.

I haven't used KDE 4.x, so beware, off the top of my head the plasmoid thing sounds cool, but
not the major improvement that I might hope for, such as perhaps taking plasmoid like ideas to
the application level where it would be more powerful.  But also a project centered desktop
would be a major win.  A complete flexible hierarchical plasmoidal project/window/session
manager, is what we really need!

A more project focused desktop/window/session manager would allow me to organize all the
applications/files for a project together into a project session.  I would be able to work
with several projects at once and depending on which project had focus the entire desktop
session would morph to the layout of that project!

A project session would be saved into one file (a project file) and would be start/stop-able
without having to login and out.  A project session would make use of already existing
paradigms.  It would be configured so that all the associated windows were grouped inside
another window (MDI?), or if preferred, the project would add itself to the list of desktop
windows (perhaps now labeled projects?) when it is active (opened).  Add plasmoids to the
picture and have a project specific plasmoid enabled desktop inside the project session
window/desktop.

Allow me to not only have session enabled projects that save their state continuously and
safely (the way Firefox does) for easy recovery after crashes, but also allow me to save the
state at any point in time as a separate project which I can then return to later if I want
to.  In the mean time I could continue to move forward with the project without fear of losing
the previous state!

And when I say session based, I mean fully session based, with the ability to save everything!
Save file statuses (and contents), window statuses, application statuses (especially terminal
statuses), connection statuses...  Allow me to email a project file home and open the project
session at home!

That is where the desktop paradigm should move, the desktop should at least be able to deal
with a project!  But that's not all, let's move on to windows and applications, another area
where a technological framework such as KDE (or even QT) could be providing better
integration.

Applications widgets could be built with a more flexible layout mechanism that is easily user
configurable.  I should be able to move around every pane or widget from any application to
anywhere.  I should be able to unhook an email message list pane from my email client and hook
it onto the desktop like a plasmoid.  But, I should also be able to simply hook a terminal
pane inside of any other application, perhaps my email client?

Why keep applications so isolated from each other at the GUI layer?  Depending on my current
workflow I should be able to configure one window with exactly the panes that I need laid out
the way I prefer, and if I need one button from one other application along with those panes,
I should also be able to create a new pane with a place to drop that button in my window.
This is the kind of integration that we should expect from our desktop frameworks!

Please don't take this as a criticism of KDE, it is not!  I am simply venting my frustrations
at what I see as a lack of completion of a lot of very good ideas that Linux/KDE (and other
desktops) have had. None of this is revolutionary, I am just carrying normal ideas that we use
every day to their logical conclusion...

-A patient and hopeful longtime Linux KDE user. :)

KDE 4 is badly broken but broken software can eventually be fixed.  The real problem is that
KDE 4 is headed in the wrong direction.

Other than Windows 2.0, I can't think of another desktop in the last 25 years - Xerox, Lisp
Machine, Sun, Mac, Windows, or Linux - that came anywhere close to being as annoying as KDE 4.

KDE seems to have been overrun by Vista-loving "usability" nuts.  I just wish they would have
started a new project instead of trashing our wonderful KDE.

I hear the complaints here that I hear everywhere.  "It's new and different."  "It's not like
the old version."  "It doesn't work like I have been trained to work."

This is why 3.x is still around.  It's called weaning.

As though KDE 3 were the optimal, intuitive UI, and didn't have its own operational problems.

Make people think that they're thinking, and they'll love you.  Make people really think, and
they'll hate you.  Nobody wants to learn -- learning is for other people.  There is a common
social conception that applies very well to the desktop -- the apex of development is reached
when no further learning is required.

It's a shame that every single discussion on this topic descends into a war of words.

Aaron Seigo has taken his blog http://aseigo.blogspot.com/ offline in the past month,
something I followed quite closely and enjoyed for the preview of incoming features. I've been
trying to find out his reason for doing this without any luck, but I would not be surprised if
the "hand waving" wore him down/out.

I'm also concerned that the frustration being levelled at the kde team is unfair - they didn't
push it on anyone, if the premature inclusion of the software in a distribution is anyone's
fault, it is that distribution's.

It would also appear people are looking for kde 4 as the endpoint - imo it should also be seen
as an enabler. It is infrastructure on which you can more easily build the desktop you want.

Personally, I've thoroughly enjoyed watching the desktop mature from 4.0 through til now
(4.0.84 in debian experimental, that's right, debian aren't including it in their next
release, the sign of a sensible distribution?), with major improvements at each minor version
update. Now yakuake is finally running in it, my ratio of production time spent on kde3 vs 4
is finally tipping in 4's favour :)

Much has been said and done about all this. Some complain about plasma or
dolphin duplicating functionality available in other places (hint:
Dolphin's folderview is used both in Konqi AND Plasma, no duplication
there). Others complain about lack of functionality (hint: KDE 4.1 won't be
the last release). Others say KDE 4.0 should never have been released.
Wait. Didn't we discuss that one before? Maybe my blog should be re-posted:
http://nowwhatthe.blogspot.com...8_01_01_archive.html

Please read, think about it. Of course, there are more blogs about the
topic, some saying things better than I ever could ;-)

I've been a died-in-the-wool KDE user for a long time.  Now I'm trying to make myself like
GNOME.  I suspect that KDE's days may be numbered.

Its licensing has always been an issue.  It isn't the default desktop for any of the prominent
distributions.  C++ has its place, and it may be the best language for writing OSS desktop
applications, but it understandably scares a lot of people.  And I think that there are two
other factors at work here too, which I haven't seen mentioned before.

First, let's pretend that you could, in some way, measure how well defined an OSS project's
goals are and how strictly managed it is.  I think that the average of those two metrics would
give a good indication of a project's long-term prospects.  (I'm not taking into account
developer resources, which I think is a mostly orthogonal issue.)  Some projects, where the
goals are open-ended, need strict leadership.  (Languages are a good example of this; consider
Perl 6 versus Python 3000.)  Some can get a way with a relative free-for-all, like the Linux
kernel.  (It's a Unix work-alike and there's a "Unix way".)  As we're seeing with KDE4,
though, the desktop GUI is still an area of active experimentation, but the KDE project's
leadership structure is highly democratic.

(I don't know much about how GNOME is governed, but I think that in this regard it is to the
project's benefit to have the inferior toolkit.  It may keep the developers from being too
creative.)
 
Second, consider the release schedules of successful OSS projects: release early, release
often, and keep the regressions to a minimum.  Proprietary software releases are much fewer
and farther between, with large differences between them.  But KDE is an open-source project
atop what is developed like proprietary software.  4.0 seems to be the worst of both worlds,
exacerbating the problem by combining the Qt3 -> Qt4 transition with other major changes.

Wow, people certainly get emotional about stuff like this. I'm not a KDE user, I've tried it
very briefly on and off over the years but to me it tries to do too much, my ideal desktop
contains one big fat icon which starts a terminal.

Obviously the developers have put a lot of work into this, and it sounds like they are playing
around with some new concepts, some that people will probably either love or hate, only time
will tell.

The problem here is quite simply releasing alpha software with a new major number. I do
understand one of the arguments for doing this, get it out there for testing. The trouble is
that people do have expectations for new major versions of software. It's no good saying that
KDE 4.0 is not KDE 4, that an unreleased KDE 4.5 is somehow KDE 4 therefore don't complain
about KDE 4 being buggy. You are dealing with the media and users, they have expectations of
software releases. It also doesn't work trying to justify KDE 4 by comparing it's release
cycle to that of KDE 3 or KDE 2. Your users have a subconscious experience of the release
cycles of many different software packages, KDE does not fit their model. This doesn't mean
your model is "wrong", but if something doesn't fit into someones world model they will bitch,
as you have seen.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to KDE 5. Remember; one big fat icon in the middle of the screen
that launches a terminal, it can be semi-transparent if you really want it to be...

Z

What I don't understand is, if KDE 4.0 was such a piece of crap, then why did they release it
as KDE 4.0? Why couldn't they have released it as KDE 3.99 or KDE 4.0 alpha?

It seems pointless to release an x.0 product and then say "It's not finished." x.0 implies
fiished (though likely will be somewhat buggy until x.1").  Doing that is just inviting
criticism. I mean isn't that what Microsoft does?

I have just up(?)graded to KDE4.1 from testing of slackware-current.

Just spent two days getting KDE to almost do what I want and when I want.

Dolphin is so slow I can't even believe it.  Konqueror is almost instant  in comparison when
accessed from the start menu.  Working on something in KDE has now been transformed into a
slow and frustrating exercise in futility.

The kickoff start menu is awkward and slow to navigate.  It takes more than blue colours and
fancy visual effects to gain my loyalty.

The panel is a mess.  Have to try many times to get a widget to stay when I install it to the
panel.  Most times it is gone at reboot.

Kwallet just barely works and only some of the time and since the help for kwallet is missing
so have fun.
Kwallet asks for info for kmail when you leave the GUI???

Kedit is gone and I miss it greatly.  I used Kedit almost exclusively for text.

Crashes when you check the e-mail with kmail.
Crashes when akregator gets feeds.  Can't make akregator start with a full screen and since
all the other settings I try won't stick why do I bother?

Maybe it is time for me to explore xfce so can get comfortable with it and use it as my
primary GUI.