KDE4 First impressions

[wysota]

Hello,

since KDE 4.0 was officially released yesterday, I wanted to ask you about your impressions, provided you had a chance to try the official or one of the RC versions. If you haven't done that already, try it for example using a live CD.

Attached is an image of my brand new KDE4 desktop while writing this post.

[marcel]

No impressions, I didn't installed yet. But were you watching Stargate SG-1 ? I see it in Dolphin... The coolest sci-fi ever.

[wysota]

I'm afraid I don't see SG-1 in my Dolphin. But I'm going to be seeing SG Atlantis in my Kaffeine soon

Anyway, back to KDE. My opinion is that "they" were right - it's useless as a desktop right now Looks pretty, but is very unstable and unpredictable. As always there is a "but". KDE 4.0 was released so that we (application developers) are encouraged to write apps dedicated for KDE4. Hopefully when 4.1 comes out, it will be ready as both the desktop and an application platform (which it already is now).

[calhal]

Looks nice. But that's all for now. I really don't have idea why they call it stable release.

[marcel]

Looks nice. But that's all for now. I really don't have idea why they call it stable release.

It is not a stable release. It is the "start of an era".
Take a look at Wysota said.

[wysota]

It is not a stable release. It is the "start of an era".

Nevertheless they do call it stable, even if not explicitly but by version numbering. They should have called it "KDE4 SDK", "KDE4 Platform" or something like that.

[calhal]

I don't know what was wrong with "beta" or "rc" names. They do call it stable. And they'll loose many users because of that. They did exactly the same thing as Microsoft with Vista ( win sux ). What for?

[wysota]

Here is something to read:

http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/01/talking-bluntly.html

[soul_rebel]

I am still waiting, since FreeBSD doesn't have KDE4-Ports and people think it's not that important, since KDE4 isn't ready for widespread use...
But I had a chance to test on a friend's Kubuntu.
Well first of all: it is really fast compared to kde3 on his machine, I mean its a really big difference; the desktop-feeling, moving windows, application start-up all of that.
Than I tried to get those flashy desktop effects going... No chance. KDE said i t detected 3D and OpenGL and it said the effects were turned on... but they just werent. No chance of making them work except switching from OpenGL-Accel to XRender. That worked for about 20seconds (really slow though of course) then something crashed and KNotify kept popping up...
All of that might be related to him having an nVidia-Card though (I always say users of proprietary software get what they deserve ).
Also I noticed quite a few bugs within 10minutes of playing around with just the desktop and default tools like konqueror, dolphin and kwrite.

But I am not really dissapointed. I knew it would be rough in the beginning, and some of the problems i experienced might be related to kubuntu packaging (they always manage to break stable software ).
I also understand that they had to get it out now, so that people will start to adapt to the new platform.
Maybe the devs should have just told the poeple earlier that 4.0 wouldnt be as useable... All of that countdown-media-hype thing just had expectations a little too high for the 4.0 release I think.

[wysota]

Effects in GL mode work fine for me with the recent proprietary nVidia drivers (with "fine" defined as "not crashing", not "perfectly fluent" although I have a not-so-low-end GPU - I expected it to be as fluent as compiz/beryl, but it seems not that fast).

Maybe the devs should have just told the poeple earlier that 4.0 wouldnt be as useable... All of that countdown-media-hype thing just had expectations a little too high for the 4.0 release I think.

They did tell people, but I agree the countdown thing might have only increase their appetite regardless of what they have been told.