KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

firewalker · 2010-01-06 18:09:37

Are you satisfied with KDE 4? I believe that KDE 3.5.x is still a better choice for a serious workstation. I am trying KDE for several months in my Laptop and soon I will remove it (waiting for 4.4 version). It offers many eye candies that may attract new users but it lucks the usability of it ancestor.

As far as I am considered it should be labeled as Beta.

My biggest concern is that I will be eventually "forced" to drop Arch (that I really love) because it is becoming more and more difficult to maintain a workstation with Arch and KDE 3.5.x

I don;t want to start a flame war between KDE 4.x and 3.5.x. Consider this post as poll for KDE users opinions and satisfaction level.

flamelab · 2010-01-06 18:48:59

It is excellent here, no complains. Fully customisable, no crashes, full integration, very responsive system (due to nvidia driver).

Last edited by flamelab (2010-01-06 18:51:23)

Mikko777 · 2010-01-06 19:00:19

Well can't remember much about my kde3 days...

So I'll compare to gnome instead and yes compared to that its very usable indeed.
Guess it all depends on how much you like to tweak your settings and so on. I'm pretty happy with the defaults.

Atm im using kde4.4 which seems to bring tiling which seems usefull, strigi with virtuoso which seems fast and im hoping to get working akonadi soon to actually put all PIM+amarok db on external mysql.

But like I said can't really remember what made KDE3 so special =P

toxygen · 2010-01-06 20:23:00

I recently updated to kdemod 4.3. There were no major issues on the update. As far as useability (and I did some reading before updating), there are some [many] things not implemented as they were in kde 3.5 (amarok looks/feels different, playlists are different format). there are bugs (plasma desktop + widgets + activities jumping around, "breeding like rabbits"), but overall it has worked well. minor tweaks here and there will help.

The reason i updated was to get used to the differences. If you're on a machine where you need stability, stick with 3.5 for now (i'm thinking kde 4.4 or 4.5 might be a better time to switch for 3.5 users who want stability). I now it's difficult because more and more apps are moving to kde 4 and support is little to non-existent here, and in chakra, and in kde forums. and you will have to update one day, or switch to something else unfortunately.

but if you go in with eyes open and expecting some things to take time to work perfectly, it's really fun to work with the new kde.

dptkby · 2010-01-06 21:41:53

The problem I have is that KDE 4 is so full of new stuff (backends and whatnot) that on one hand I don't know about a lot of the cool things it can do and on the other hand a lot of the cool features only seem to exist as long texts detailing why you'll eventually want to implement them! Also, most of the documentation is aged, so if anyone has any links to articles about cool stuff that works on KDE 4, right now, please share them!

I guess "potential" is the keyword here.

(Ironically, as I was writing this, Plasma crashed for the first time since I installed KDE 4...)

Last edited by dptkby (2010-01-06 21:43:30)

goran'agar · 2010-01-06 22:00:43

kde 4.3.4 rocks on my eeepc 900 with full compositing enabled (default effects and some more). The only issue for me is that it is a memory hog but nothing problematic (with only 1GB of ram).

Ah, and I can't get rid of hal: if it's not started kded crashes. I suppose we'll have to wait for 4.4 for that.

Hohoho · 2010-01-07 10:02:11

Tried 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, but never really liked it much. It looks great, and feels great at first, and then all those small and annoying bugs come out and it really puts me off.
Window resizing is slow with compositing (NVidia drivers), the plasma desktop has many annoying bugs, redraw issues.
Still feels like a beta to me.
But when its polished I really would consider the switch.

Blue Peppers · 2010-01-07 10:40:20

I really like KDE4.2 and above. I've bounced around, and in the end found gnome too... gnomish? Kde3 wasn't getting updates, and while everyone using arch is meant to love openbox, and I certainly liked it, I wasn't totally happy. I did have major problems with plasma stability in 4.1, hence it's exclusion from the list of releases I liked. But, it was 4.1 that persuaded me to switch to Arch from Ubuntu, so I guess as a catalyst, it's the best.

Gen2ly · 2010-01-07 12:40:55

Found 4.3 to be pretty good. 4.3 came around about the right time for me because before that it had me working a lot of the time just setting things up to behave as I suspected. Got a look at 4.4 and I think that this release will finally begin to entrench KDE as a viable (i.e. workable without too many tweaks) desktop again. Though if you have KDE 3.5 love then you probably should look at PCLinuxOS(?... I think they still use it).

Last edited by Gen2ly (2010-01-07 12:41:44)

Skripka · 2010-01-07 15:23:24

Vanilla KDE4 works great here. I keep reading reports of instability and crashes and this that and the other problem with it...and I don;t see it, especially now with the 4.3 series.

mrunion · 2010-01-07 15:33:41

I have been a Gnome user for many years. I tried to like Openbox, but there just wasn't enough "glitter" for me. I tried KDE before and didn't like it. But since KDE 4.x, I have liked it alot. I used it for a few weeks and then went back to Gnome to try out something with Compiz. But I think KDE 4.4 might finally see me switch over to KDE.

tomd123 · 2010-01-07 15:58:02

I have been using kde 4 + compiz for 4 months straight now and I feel like kde4 has really shaped up to be a really well rounded distro. There are still some corners here and there but every kde release seems to smooth it out even more.

sva_h4cky0 · 2010-01-08 14:28:55

KDE(mod) 4.3.4 run very well here.
My only complain is some stuff sometimes broken atm, for example bluetooth and knetworkmanager.
But overall, KDE SC is rock, i'm waiting for KDE SC 4.4

brazzmonkey · 2010-01-08 14:42:52

I still use KDE 3 at work (on an LTS Ubuntu), because KDE 4 still lacks a few useful features. Most of them are on their way, though. So I guess I'll switch somewhere near the 4.5 milestone.
KDE 4 is what I use for personal stuff.

ozar · 2010-01-08 14:48:48

KDE4 has finally gotten to where I can stick with it on a full-time basis, although it does still have some bugs here and there. I just wish it hadn't taken so long to get to this level. What's it been, about 2 years now?

Anyway, I used to be an avid KDE fan, so I'm glad that it's finally becoming usable again.

Tyriel · 2010-01-08 15:57:35

Personally I am extremely happy with 4.3 and really appreciate its direction. To me 3.x was heading in the wrong direction with applications being more like a swiss army knife instead of feature rich specialised tools which they are now.

General things I noticed is that it seems faster, more responsive and has a much smaller memory footprint when compared to 3.x. I guess it has a lot to do with all the legacy code they removed and the more modularized structure of the applications.

Really looking forward to 4.4 next month which should improve performance once again with the use of Qt4.6

soloport · 2010-01-08 19:56:54

Very happy with KDE 4.3. [pulls voting lever]

grassmonk · 2010-01-08 21:40:19

I've been using KDE4 since 4.2.0, and for me it's only gotten better with each new release. The only thing that I miss about KDE 3.5 is the window condition setup in KHotkeys. I liked being able to, e.g. press my calculator keyboard button and have it start KCalc if it wasn't already started, or switch to the existing window if it was already open.

Snakeye · 2010-01-10 05:02:09

Using kde 4.3.4 - Only problem is Dolphin likes to crash occassionally, not a show stopper. Seen this on my Aspire one too.

Dead Code · 2010-01-10 05:30:48

i am using kde 4.3.x at home and kde 3.5.x at work and i dont see any difference in terms of usability. i would recommend you to give a try

ozar · 2010-01-10 05:38:19

Snakeye wrote:

Using kde 4.3.4 - Only problem is Dolphin likes to crash occassionally, not a show stopper. Seen this on my Aspire one too.

Those periodic crashes stopped after disabling Nepomuk on my machines. Just something to try if you haven't done so already.

Snakeye · 2010-01-10 06:11:34

Thanks for the heads up, nepomuk disabled.

flamelab · 2010-01-10 06:12:34

FYI, Nepomuk is much (much) better in KDE 4.4.

ozar · 2010-01-10 16:36:15

flamelab wrote:

FYI, Nepomuk is much (much) better in KDE 4.4.

Glad to hear that... I'm going to wait for it to hit 'Extra', but looking forward to it.

spupy · 2010-01-10 18:04:32

flamelab wrote:

FYI, Nepomuk is much (much) better in KDE 4.4.

Does it do simple locate-like search from Dolphin? I used KDEmod for 1 week in december, but the search in dolphin never worked. I want to search my files without all the fancy metadata.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-01-06 18:09:37

KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#2 2010-01-06 18:48:59

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#3 2010-01-06 19:00:19

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#4 2010-01-06 20:23:00

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#5 2010-01-06 21:41:53

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#6 2010-01-06 22:00:43

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#7 2010-01-07 10:02:11

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#8 2010-01-07 10:40:20

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#9 2010-01-07 12:40:55

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#10 2010-01-07 15:23:24

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#11 2010-01-07 15:33:41

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#12 2010-01-07 15:58:02

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#13 2010-01-08 14:28:55

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#14 2010-01-08 14:42:52

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#15 2010-01-08 14:48:48

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#16 2010-01-08 15:57:35

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#17 2010-01-08 19:56:54

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#18 2010-01-08 21:40:19

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#19 2010-01-10 05:02:09

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#20 2010-01-10 05:30:48

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#21 2010-01-10 05:38:19

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#22 2010-01-10 06:11:34

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#23 2010-01-10 06:12:34

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#24 2010-01-10 16:36:15

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

#25 2010-01-10 18:04:32

Re: KDE 4 usability. Users Opinions.

Board footer