KDE 4.1 delivers a next-gen desktop Linux experience (ars technica) [LWN.net]

KDE 4.1 delivers a next-gen desktop Linux experience (ars technica)

Posted Jul 31, 2008 7:03 UTC (Thu) by arekm (subscriber, #4846) [Link]

Thanks to that "experience" I'm back at KDE 3.5.9. KDE 4.1 isn't yet ready as a switch from
3.5 it you use many 3.5 features in my private opinion. It may be ready for new users or
people switching from other environments though.

Waiting for KDE 4.2 or even 4.3...

KDE 4.1 delivers a next-gen desktop Linux experience (ars technica)

Posted Aug 1, 2008 3:48 UTC (Fri) by bcebul (guest, #41527) [Link]

Printing does not work. The weather applet is worse than before ie non existent. Multiple
global times are non functional. [I use Gnome's multi weather/global time/calendar as the gold
standard, but KDE 3.5.9 is passable in this regard. ] The imported MacOSX "plasmoids" are too
slow to be useful. Konqueror is missing the search engine search bar. From a user perspective,
I cannot really the the point of 4.1 yet.

KDE 4.1 delivers a next-gen desktop Linux experience (ars technica)

Posted Aug 1, 2008 4:45 UTC (Fri) by reptiler (guest, #53207) [Link]

At first I also missed the search-bar in Konqueror 4, but actually you 
pretty quickly get used to using shortcuts.
"gg: Something" takes me to Google, looking for "Something", fm: takes me 
to FreshMeat and so on.

Sure, it's not as intuitive as just selecting where you want to search 
from a dropdown, and for the "normal user" (whatever specification may 
apply to that kind of user) it might not be the best solution, but I find 
that it's more flexible than the dropdown.

I actually happen to like KDE4, although I am aware of different problems 
and missing stuff.
But hey, KDE has come a long way from KDE 1, which at its time already 
was quite good.
I guess Fedora will probably not stream 4.1 into F9, so I'll have to wait 
a few more months to check it out (or try it in a VM with Rawhide).

So, there may still be problems with KDE (for example I cannot run 
1280x1024, I hope that'll be fixed in 4.1), but it's far from being bad 
software.

KDE 4.1 delivers a next-gen desktop Linux experience (ars technica)

Posted Aug 1, 2008 6:59 UTC (Fri) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link]

Yes, you can just use the shortcuts, they exist since KDE 2.0 :-)
wp is Wikipedia, leo for translations, qt for the Qt docs.

Alex

KDE 4.1 delivers a next-gen desktop Linux experience (ars technica)

Posted Aug 1, 2008 11:46 UTC (Fri) by wstephenson (subscriber, #14795) [Link]

> At first I also missed the search-bar in Konqueror 4, but actually you 
> pretty quickly get used to using shortcuts.

The search-bar is still in Konqueror 4! 

If it's not listed in Settings->Configure Extensions... and disabled (Look 
for 'Search Bar'), then your distro has packaged it separately.  On 
openSUSE the packages is kde4-konqueror-plugins.  HTH

KDE 4.1 delivers a next-gen desktop Linux experience (ars technica)

Posted Aug 3, 2008 13:56 UTC (Sun) by erwbgy (subscriber, #4104) [Link]

Thanks, that was useful. The package is konq-plugins on Fedora 9.

KDE 4.1 delivers a next-gen desktop Linux experience (ars technica)

Posted Aug 3, 2008 13:50 UTC (Sun) by erwbgy (subscriber, #4104) [Link]

I guess Fedora will probably not stream 4.1 into F9, so I'll have to wait a few more months to check it out (or try it in a VM with Rawhide).

I just did:

$ yum --enablerepo=updates-testing groupupdate "KDE (K Desktop Environment)"

on my Fedora 9 host and am now running KDE 4.1.

KDE 4.1 delivers a next-gen desktop Linux experience (ars technica)

Posted Aug 4, 2008 4:58 UTC (Mon) by reptiler (guest, #53207) [Link]

I tried similar, but with the rawhide-repo.
Problem is that I have quite a few packages from the livna-repo installed 
and at least Kino is complaining and thus preventing the update.

Anyway, by playing in the X-config I found a way to run 1280x1024 now, 
but I had to disable RandR for it, which I think isn't the optimal 
solution.