reviews of kde 4.1

staple · 2008-07-23 15:37:12

convert those of us that are hesitant

ozar · 2008-07-23 16:19:12

lol... I've been trying most of the different builds coming out (svn, beta, RC, and official releases) ever since 4.0 was first released back in January and while it's fun to play around with for a few hours, I simply can no longer stick with it for longer than that.

That bothers me too, because for 8 years I felt extremely comfortable in KDE and it was Gnome that I couldn't stick with for more than a few hours, or days at a time. Over the last few months, Gnome has started to feel very comfortable and usable, at least to me.

Still, I'm exceedingly glad that it's available for those that do like it as it is now, and do hope that it becomes something that appeals to me again in near future.

signor_rossi · 2008-07-23 16:47:36

No need to convert anybody, kde-3.5.9 runs rock-solid and does everything you want.
Seriously, today I checked again if passing from 3.5.9 to kdemod-4.1RC1 could be viable for me, and atm it seems it is. In previous versions kwin crashed a lot, this doesn't so far and plasma hasn't crashed on me so far too, thumbs up. Then I have found a (very) basic kpowersave replacement, powerdevil (will soon improve) and also a knetworkmanager replacement, netcfg2 in conjunction with archassistant, both things I really needed. Let's see how things progress in the following days...

Bye, signorRossi.

Last edited by signor_rossi (2008-07-23 16:47:59)

staple · 2008-07-23 17:33:08

im not using kde-3.5.9, im using gnome

ozar · 2008-07-23 17:45:36

Yeah, there's no doubt that KDE 3.5.9 works great, and I've even read that 3.5.10 is due out some time next month.

The problem in sticking with 3.5.x is the fact that its future seems somewhat bleak at best unless the KDE team comes out and says they'll continue developing it for years to come, or unless someone forks the 3.5.x series. It just seems to me that the future of the official KDE desktop is now firmly implanted with the 4.x series, not with the 3.5.x series.

Either way, I'm with staple on this one, and would like to have some good reasons to switch to KDE 4.1, but from my own personal observations and experience with it, there aren't any, at least yet.

Here's hoping for the best!

dhave · 2008-07-23 18:03:55

staple wrote:

convert those of us that are hesitant

With tanis's packages for KDE4.1rc1+, you can install KDE4.1 in parallel to and without risk to an existing KDE3.5 installation. (You do need to use a dedicated user, but that's not a big deal in most cases.)

So KDE4.1 runs like another in your selection of DEs and WMs. This way you can play to your heart's content and still go home to KDE3.5, Gnome, XFCE, fluxbox, wmii, ratpoison or CLI at the end of the day.

KDE4.1 is worth trying mainly because it's the way that KDE development is going. Plus, if you like to play with new toys, you'll probably enjoy the experience.

I'm sort of liking the widget and plasmoid stuff, and have even sampled some of the snazzy windows effects. The differences are not only cosmetic; they're functional, as well. But I don't know that I've seen anything that sets KDE4.1 so far apart from its predecessor as to make KDE3.5 obsolete. The experience is really like installing yet another desktop environment or window manager that you can choose if you like.

TecnoVM64 · 2008-07-23 22:13:17

Well I tried it and it amazing, I really love that DE, but I'll wait for the final release of 4.1, there are still some nasty bugs and things that bother me, but I'm really looking forward to it.

jealma · 2008-07-24 10:10:07

Well, for hesitators, I've always been a great fan of KDE3 and used it since I ran to Linux and dumped Windows on each and every computer I own. I've tried many development snapshots and releases from KDE4, for example Kubuntu-kde4, OpenSuse 11.0's kde4 and some svn-version with stuff. I never got used to the widgets, the fact that stuff was a lot less configurable than kde3.5.9 is (KDE3's configurability is one of the reasons I stick with it; I want to be able to fine-tune and edit every single setting out there), the icons and menu's looked ugly and so on. I really liked the new look of KDE4, but somehow the icons seemed to be seperated by a lot of whitespace in between, which makes the interface very ugly.

Recently however, I put arch on a testbox (I already use arch for my desktop's and laptop) to play with kdemod4 (kdemod3 is my default). I had to say I was very very very impressed with the way things have improved over KDE4.0 and over the testreleases that I saw and tested earlier. I found kdemod4 to be at least as snappy, maybe even snappier than kdemod3, something I had never expected. All applications I tested worked fluently and without crashes. Dolphin has improved a lot since I tried it and I think it has become a worthy file manager to use alongside Konqueror (which is still my favourite due to tabs). The KDE games work great and are aesthetically pleasing. Network browsing, web browsing, mailing and stuff, mostly everything worked great.

Then I saw the option to enable desktop effects. I activated them and the moment I clicked the apply-button, I was sold to KDE4. The minimize and maximize effects ran very smooth (nvidia 7800gt series with nvidia binary driver 173.14.09) and most stuff worked very good. The alt-tab options were very pleasing, one can choose between a box view, cover flow-like view, windows-like view etcetera. In addition to that, there is that option that shows all four workspaces on your screen and you can move applications from one workspace to another and click to go to them. Those effects were so smooth and quick; combined with accessing them via sweet spots (top-left corner and top-right corner of my desktop), it is a truly amazing help in navigating and managing a desktop. Even greater was the fact that I could run a video, for example with mplayer, and that the video kept running and you could watch it while using the alt-tab and workspaces-views. You could even move the mplayer-window to another desktop and it kept displaying the video, truly wonderful.

There were still a few problems though. Resizing windows was shaky and didn't happen the way it should. I've read about it and the problem seems to be with Nvidia's binary driver. I hope for Nvidia's sake that their next driver release fixes the problem, or I'll switch to another graphics card that does work. On my desktop, the KickOff-menu wouldn't remember the setting that I didn't want to switch tabs on hovering over, Amarok didn't work yet and I think the KickOff-menu isn't updated when you install a new application, at least untill you logout and login again. I'm sure those issues are already known and resolved by now, and they were not a big deal in the first place. I've checked KDE4's release date and it is july the 29th. Still 5 days of waiting, but as soon as it's out, I'm going to use it on my second workstation. If all looks usable and good after a few weeks and there are no issues that hinder me, I will certainly switch my main workstation to KDE4, as well as my laptop.

Last edited by jealma (2008-07-24 10:16:18)

Cypher · 2008-07-25 00:15:38

just one word:

speed, speed and speed.

only start kdm4 and feels like drive a ferrary,

kleverness · 2008-07-25 21:36:04

Take a look at this and I'm sure you'll be convinced
http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.1/

Gullible Jones · 2008-07-25 23:27:03

Review? Alright...

KDE 4.1 is like a freight train. It's huge and it takes forever to start up, but once it gets going it's actually pretty fast. On the other hand, it eats up surprisingly little memory, only around 250 MB for the desktop with a few windows open.

Oh, and the plasmoids are pretty cool.

Granted, I probably wouldn't use it as my standard desktop; it takes up a lot of HDD space, and in spite of its surprising lightness it feels a bit less responsive than Gnome or KDE3 - for instance, in Konqueror there's a slight but noticable delay between my typing a letter and it appearing on the screen. It certainly doesn't suck though.

ozar · 2008-07-26 03:41:08

Gullible Jones wrote:

Review?It's huge and it takes forever to start up, but once it gets going it's actually pretty fast.

Did someone say... oink?

Yeah, KDE 4.1 is definitely on the porky side, alright. I just did a fresh install from the testing repo with KDE 4.1 only, and it's already bigger than my "Gnome with OpenOffice" install, and I haven't even installed KOffice, K3b, or lots of other apps that I usually run, as of yet. I'm not looking forward to seeing it grow any bigger, either.

For some reason, KDE 4.1 doesn't see my USB printer that is detected and works just fine under Gnome. Overall, it still seems quite buggy to me, but maybe it'll get much better before the official release later this month. It would be nice if they could whittle the size down a bit, too.

Either way, it's looking like I'll have to wait until at least 4.2 comes out before it might begin to work as a full replacement for KDE 3.5.9, at least for me.

Hope it works out really well for the rest of you, though!

ora · 2008-07-26 10:53:23

Gullible Jones wrote:

Review? Alright...
KDE 4.1 is like a freight train. It's huge and it takes forever to start up, but once it gets going it's actually pretty fast. On the other hand, it eats up surprisingly little memory, only around 250 MB for the desktop with a few windows open.
Oh, and the plasmoids are pretty cool.
Granted, I probably wouldn't use it as my standard desktop; it takes up a lot of HDD space, and in spite of its surprising lightness it feels a bit less responsive than Gnome or KDE3 - for instance, in Konqueror there's a slight but noticable delay between my typing a letter and it appearing on the screen. It certainly doesn't suck though.

You're wrong, kde4 cost 30%~40% less memory compared to kde3(due to qt4 improvements), you can find serveral benchmarks to realize the performance and resource consume improvements.
on my laptop with 256mb laptop, kde4 runs pretty faster than kde3.
and on Asus' Eee pc, someone has done some comparison to show that kde4 is smaller, faster.
and even kde3 cost less memory than gnome
please refer:
http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/ (very detailed kde3/gnome/xfce/window maker comparison)
http://translate.google.com/translate?h … %26hs%3Drd (kde3 vs kde4)

quetzyg · 2008-07-26 14:14:20

Some years have passed, since I used KDE. Yesterday, I installed the packages from the [testing] repo, just to see how things are right now.

First I had some minor issues with the panel, because it didn't save the way I arrange the widgets (even with the widget locking option enabled). A logout, and login was enough to rearrange the panel in some other way, other than the one I left it. Since I didn't want to loose much time with it, I just deleted all the kde/qt configuration directories/files from my home dir, restarted KDE, reconfigured all, and it seems to be fine now.

Now, the only problem that I have is with the "Add Widgets" dialog, when downloading new plasmoids. They are marked as already downloaded/installed, but I cannot see them in the list. Hence, I cannot add them to the desktop/panel.

Other than that, I find KDE 4.1 really nice

I hope that the final 4.1 version has that plasmoid thing fixed.

Edit:
I almost forgot! From time to time, running applications from the "Application Launcher Menu" doesn't work. I click on some icon and it just doesn't load the app. Running from the "Run Command" dialog (ALT+F2) works, though.

Last edited by quetzyg (2008-07-26 14:20:42)

Gullible Jones · 2008-07-26 14:55:59

ora wrote:

Gullible Jones wrote:
Review? Alright...
KDE 4.1 is like a freight train. It's huge and it takes forever to start up, but once it gets going it's actually pretty fast. On the other hand, it eats up surprisingly little memory, only around 250 MB for the desktop with a few windows open.
Oh, and the plasmoids are pretty cool.
Granted, I probably wouldn't use it as my standard desktop; it takes up a lot of HDD space, and in spite of its surprising lightness it feels a bit less responsive than Gnome or KDE3 - for instance, in Konqueror there's a slight but noticable delay between my typing a letter and it appearing on the screen. It certainly doesn't suck though.
You're wrong, kde4 cost 30%~40% less memory compared to kde3(due to qt4 improvements), you can find serveral benchmarks to realize the performance and resource consume improvements.
on my laptop with 256mb laptop, kde4 runs pretty faster than kde3.
and on Asus' Eee pc, someone has done some comparison to show that kde4 is smaller, faster.
and even kde3 cost less memory than gnome
please refer:
http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/ (very detailed kde3/gnome/xfce/window maker comparison)
http://translate.google.com/translate?h … %26hs%3Drd (kde3 vs kde4)

Applications start faster with KDE4. However, there is a definite lack of responsiveness to it, even with compositing effects turned off. KDE used to feel faster than Gnome, now it feels slower.

Ryujin · 2008-07-26 15:17:13

I just upgraded to the KDE4 in testing, and I couldn't be happier. I had to do an nvidia card hack to bypass problems with the nvida drivers, but nothing serious.

KDE4.1 is wonderfull, a vast improvement over KDE4.0! I would highly encourage people to at least give it a try.

Also there has been a lot of talk about features not being availabe, this may be true but I don't see it, KDE4.1 is easier to use and more intuitive, and the improvements from 4.0 to 4.1 prove the underlying power of the new technologies the KDE team has implimented.

I would also like to say that the Arch implimentation of 4.1 knocks the socks off of Ubuntu, Suse and Fedora's, Arch's philosophy again allows for the heaviest of applications to still steep lightly!

piccolotux · 2008-07-26 15:59:07

Kde4 is good, a big step forward, but these are my major concerns:
a) you cannot change the icon of the mimetypes: I have some .doc files and still have a question mark. Hints?
b) amarok2 and k3b are still under heavy development. Well you can use the kde3 counterparts but you have to install all kde3 dependencies (waste of space)
c) Openoffice has a terrible look...didn't find a way out.
Guess we still have to wait 6 months to have a really usable and complete kde4 DE.

ozar · 2008-07-26 17:48:50

ozar wrote:

For some reason, KDE 4.1 doesn't see my USB printer that is detected and works just fine under Gnome. Overall, it still seems quite buggy to me, but maybe it'll get much better before the official release later this month. It would be nice if they could whittle the size down a bit, too.

Just an update on my above-mentioned complaint about KDE 4.1 from earlier...

Turning the printer off at the switch then back on fixed the non-recognition issue, so all is well with the new KDE in that respect.

maschino · 2008-07-26 19:54:13

I'm running KDE4 since yesterday from the testing repo. Sometimes I think it was a bad idea to switch to kde4, but the most time I'm happy with it. Here are some points that I want to point out:

1. Memory usage: Don't know how anyone could say that KDE4 uses less memory than kde3. With KDE3 I was at about 90MB after login without any big applications opened. With KDE4 I'm at about 300. So KDE4 is using more than 300% more RAM than kde3.

2. Features: Applications like Dolphin (I think its a good replacement for Konqueror as a file manager) or Kate are getting better and better. On the other hand I miss configuration possibilities. For instance in Kopete I'm not able to find the configuration of switching tabs at the chat window. I want my old ctrl+tab behaviour back! Kopete is also annoying me, when I get new messages the message window is for a short time at the top (for about half a second) and then it disapears. This sucks big time!

3. The new system configuration: It is like the configuration in windows XP and I don't like it. Want kcontrol back. It was easier to find stuff and it was easier to switch the submenus via treeview. With the new configuration I always have to click the overview button and then choose the next submenu. This is not good usability.

Generally there are many small things that are not as good in kde4 as they were in kde3. But I think at last in KDE 4.2 this will get better.

Greets,
maschino

ozar · 2008-07-27 04:39:58

I've never been a fan of the Gnome desktop environment but have found myself liking it better than any of the KDE4 releases since KDE4 was first released in January of this year.

Earlier tonight, I did another KDE 4.1 install from 'testing' onto a fresh Arch installation, but this time I selected smaller groups of files to install rather than installing the entire 'KDE' group, and I'm much happier with it overall. That's not to say that I'm satisfied with it, though. One thing that bothers me is that KDE 4.1 is still not able to stand on its own. It needs to be propped up with certain kde3 libraries/files if you want things like Koffice, K3b, Konversation, and some other potentially important applications.

Preferring not to do that, I'm going to try to stick with 4.1 as it is, and simply do without those apps at least for a while to allow the developers some time to catch up. If it takes too long, I'll likely be moving back to Gnome on a more permanent basis.

In the interim, I think everyone should try KDE 4.1 for themselves and make up their own minds where it stands against KDE 3.5.9, and other desktop environments. The Arch devs and various other folks have made it easy for us to get a taste of it, so I hope it goes well for all of you.

ashunter · 2008-07-27 08:50:11

I do suggest you try kdemod if you choose kde under arch.The default installation of kde4 contains some apps that you may never use.KDEmod is a modular and tweaked package set of the KDE,and almost every application is in a single package,so you can choose whatever you want,and it only install useful apps by default,so it's smaller,as well as faster because it's been optimized for arch.Check it out:
Installation:http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=50916
Main Page:http://kdemod.ath.cx/
Hope you like it.;)

mips1 · 2008-07-27 10:59:09

I installed kdemod last night on my laptop and so far so good. I must say there is a really big improvement over 4.0.

So far I like it, my desktop will be getting the same treatment as soon as I backed up all my data.

BrigadierFRog · 2008-07-27 14:13:58

Some of you complaining about memory usage should turn off strigi. Probably the biggest memory suck, especially when its indexing. You lose the intelligent instant-searching though that it brings. I don't really use that though so...

big_gie · 2008-07-27 17:04:37

Using KDE 4 since 4.0 (KDEMod). It is REALLY nice. I love dolphin and its simplicity, much like nautilus but prettier.

I had a kernel panic last week, I though it was KDE 4, so I came back to 3.5.9. The cause was the wireless driver, but after using 3.5.9 I felt I could not do what I wanted...

I just feel like there is not enough plasmoids. I miss a hardware monitoring one. If you look at kde-look.org, most of plasmoids seems silly: Tea Cooker (tells you when to do your tea), Timoid (when your pizza will arrive), etc. Some are not compatible with KDE 4.1. But when the dust will settle on KDE 4.1, more people will work on plasmoids so its just a matter of time.

The xrandr frontend does not work perfectly. Also, when login in, the miniature task bar takes ages to appear, while no other works is being done...

And even with those minor problems, I would not go back to 3.5

maschino · 2008-07-27 18:51:41

BrigadierFRog wrote:

Some of you complaining about memory usage should turn off strigi. Probably the biggest memory suck, especially when its indexing. You lose the intelligent instant-searching though that it brings. I don't really use that though so...

I've turned off strigi because when it's on it's running for hours and hours with 100% cpu usage. The last time I booted my computer at 7:00 and when I came back at about 20:00 strigi was running and running.. I don't think that fetching my data takes so much time..

maschino

Arch Linux

#1 2008-07-23 15:37:12

reviews of kde 4.1

#2 2008-07-23 16:19:12

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#3 2008-07-23 16:47:36

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#4 2008-07-23 17:33:08

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#5 2008-07-23 17:45:36

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#6 2008-07-23 18:03:55

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#7 2008-07-23 22:13:17

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#8 2008-07-24 10:10:07

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#9 2008-07-25 00:15:38

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#10 2008-07-25 21:36:04

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#11 2008-07-25 23:27:03

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#12 2008-07-26 03:41:08

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#13 2008-07-26 10:53:23

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#14 2008-07-26 14:14:20

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#15 2008-07-26 14:55:59

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#16 2008-07-26 15:17:13

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#17 2008-07-26 15:59:07

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#18 2008-07-26 17:48:50

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#19 2008-07-26 19:54:13

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#20 2008-07-27 04:39:58

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#21 2008-07-27 08:50:11

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#22 2008-07-27 10:59:09

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#23 2008-07-27 14:13:58

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#24 2008-07-27 17:04:37

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

#25 2008-07-27 18:51:41

Re: reviews of kde 4.1

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