Comments on: KDE 4.1.0 disappoints

By: SimianWatchWearer

SimianWatchWearer — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:27:46 +0000

Thanks for being somebody who admits this.

As a long-time KDE user who switched co-workers to Linux/KDE because it was in every way superior to the competing windows build ( it was shinier, it was more configurable, it was easier for us to automate with dcop and it had built-in ways of solving the most common UI requests at work ) – I found myself with a problem.

KDE 3 was better than its competing windows desktop – KDE 4 is not even as good as gnome.

It is a pile of crap, an utter, utter miserable bloody embarrassment, I have my users switched to gnome and KDE 4′s path means that the common distros are enforcing the removal of KDE 3 with NOTHING LEFT TO REPLACE IT. Now people are looking to windows 7 as a favourable upgrade path.

KDE 4 has *fucked* Linux in businesses that had adopted KDE.

By: DeviceGuru

DeviceGuru — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:57:18 +0000

@touclon…

…which is why I switched to gnome and haven’t looked back!

By: tcoulon

tcoulon — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:41:33 +0000

Now is almost one year after the OP, and KDE 4.x (4.2.95 at this point) is still a discovery object for me. OpenSuSE 11.2 is anounced as “KDE 4 only” and it probably means I won’t update.

I don’t care what the KDE devs’ plans were, or what “the future of the desktop” is supposed to be, for me it won’t be KDE 4. Start the first app and then use the Start Menu? I never used that crap. But that’s not important, it’s my personal point of vue. What’s important is that KDE 4 makes it difficult, when not impossible to work as we are used to. The folder view might be an interresting addition to the desktop. As it is I am forced to use it, and that reminds me of other OS in a way I don’t like.

The panel is still much less comfortable to setup and use that it is in 3.x – to me the panel is the center of my computer life, so it’s a real annoyance.

I feel that the devs actually don’t really listen to the users. they are so full of their great design that they rely on time (and the desappearance of KDE 3.x) to kill resistance.

Reminds you of Vista/Windows 7?

By: campamax

campamax — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 14:58:08 +0000

Looking at this discussion from a 3rd person point of view (as a Gnome user), I wonder why so many people (zealots?) in so many fields (not only KDE so) in the Linux community do not want to understand that “usable for some experts that can fix things” don’t mean “usable by the masses”? A distro or a DE, is READY when they can be used by most people, are RC when they can be used only after adequate hacking to fix things, and are BETA when so many things are to be fixed yet that they can be used for testing purposes only and still need a lot of work. Then change these three adjectives as you prefer, but the juice is this.
If so many people on the net say things are not ready on KDE4, I still prefer to think of it to an interesting preview of something very promising that will conquer great attention and use in the (near?) future, but I prefer to stick to something more stable for common use.

Linux on the desktop shall be a contender for Windows only when all the community zealots (Gnome, KDE, freedom of software and so on) all realize that a thing is philosophy (“users should prefer crappy free tools to working non-free ones”, and similar) and a thing is what the average people expect from a PC. Unless the community accept this, GNU/Linux shall remain something for geeks and almost-geeks, even if it actually deserves *MUCH* more attention. Remember: Linux is presumed to hold a very, very few percentage points of the share over the world PCs and PC users, and this percentage is divided among the hundreds and hundreds of distros listed on Distrowatch. Where do we want to go this way? We are doomed to remain hobbyists with a common interest unless something changes. I do not think M$ really fears Linux.

My useless 5 cents.

By: John

John — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 09:28:14 +0000

I for one did not know about folder view until I saw websites that had icons on the desktop or what I call the desktop. I hated desktop view as I wanted it to take the whole desktop and not just be a floating window. I am using OpenSUSE 11.1 and I like what they have done. Of course they grabbed some of the KDE 4.2 changes and implemented these as well. I do not like the start bar and wish that this would have never been changed but others create versions that can be used instead. When I first read what KDE was going to do I liked it because it seemed to make things easier for developers that they could use the KDE code to make writing their software easier. I guess this never happened as a lot of programs that used to work fine are taking forever to make it over to KDE 4. I will continue to use this for the time being since I do not do much work on my home PC as I just use it basically to surf the internet so for me it is working. If I did more work on it then this then I may use some thing else like lxde.

By: InLoveWithLinux

InLoveWithLinux — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 06:36:56 +0000

I believe what I’m reading is what I feared: KDE’s dev team built a product without an understanding of their customers, and worse, they continue to defend it by bashing them. Worse still, many distros seem to be blindly using KDE 4 as their default desktop, and as anyone knows who has any experience at all in SDL and quality assurance, KDE 4 is an embarrassment to Linux, at this point. It’s not due to functionality — it really is slick — but for the very weak coding and deviation from their customer base, who seem to be saying: please give us KDE 3.5 with optional slick new features that are well-tested and debugged, which is very obviously not the case, here. Yes, building a desktop is very complicated, and I deeply admire the KDE team for the effort, but this is the Big Time, and we are not back in 1997, when people expected lots of incomplete and unstable code in Linux. If we’re going to be successful, we need to run this as the commercial folks do — and quite frankly, KDE 4 would have put me out of business, if I dared release code in such an ill state, to my customers.

By: APB

APB — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:51:23 +0000

Guru – shame

Note: Satisfied Arch/KDE users. I do not use Arch, but I know that EFFICIENCY is a factor for people wanting to use it.
Therefore, it is illogical that such a user would tolerate KDE4 if it were truly unusable and mainly inefficient!

So, KDE4 CAN and DOES work for people.

I suggest that this type of user is one who typically is able to apply a degree of effort for themselves.

By: Just an Engineer

Just an Engineer — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:10:32 +0000

Mr. Mowgli made a very important comment:

“I think it would be a Really Good Thing if there were some very clear documentation on the paradigm shifts between KDE 3.x and 4.x and that it was in your face as part of your initial user experience.”

Perhaps the most annoying thing about KDE 4.1 for me has been the difficulty in finding accurate, up-to-date, and readable documentation.

I am told that many programmers do not like to write documentation. However, it is unwise to release any software (especially something as new and different as KDE 4.1) without thoroughly documenting everything. Some simple, well-written tutorials would be especially helpful to new users.

By: will

will — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 09:29:42 +0000

been a kde user for 8 years. never did kde suck so much. gone are the lightweight desktop manager we love, only to be replaced by something no one wants. why change? you dont need change. everything was fine.

the guy taking the ultimate decisions in this project is probably running his project off his vista laptop. that is what they are aiming for yeah? well, it sucks. its bad, ugly, buggy and something no-one wants. the boys at gnome are probably laughing their asses off. never had they to do so little to gain so many fans.

i now hate kde. i couldn’t care less what happens to it. they dont seem to listen to their users. a$$holes.

from now on, i will seriously start considering other options. kde, may you fail (inevitable) and rot in hell.

will

By: Tommy

Tommy — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:43:39 +0000

All that matters in the end of the day is simplicity and usability. KDE4 has succeeded in being more streamlined than KDE3 version but it gives nothing new in the other hand. The same ideas of the desktop that have been true since the first Mac are still there too. I see nothing new or revolutionary in KDE4. It seems to be a nice academic exercise on reinventing the wheel.