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- matthekc, on 12/02/2008, -1/+36I find this to be much more aesthetically pleasing than KDE 3.5
The technology is supposed to be easier for developers to use.
It is much more portable there is even a windows port in development.
I am impressed and I do intend to try kde 4 at some point in time when it seems as stable as current gnome. - jernejovc, on 12/02/2008, -5/+34No simple answer to this. The best thing you can do is to install it and try using it yourself for some time. You will probably need a few days of use to discover everything new and different. After that you will know what are the reasons that matter to you. Oh and BTW when you are trying KDE don't do it on *buntu. It is a very gnome centric distro so their KDE packages are not very good. Try it with distros like openSUSE, Mandriva and even Fedora which do a much better job with packaging KDE.
- SteveMax, on 12/02/2008, -1/+24@Frayed_Knot, you don't need to switch, use it under a liveUSB or something like that.
@dualscreenman, Ubuntu just is too Gnome-centric. Most functionality is added to the Gnome part, and then it leaves the Kubuntu team to patch it up there. Sometimes that is impossible in the timeframe, and you get (for example) no Bluetooth.
I know you work very hard to keep feature parity with the Gnome port, but you have 3 or 4 regulars versus some dozens on ("G")Ubuntu or OpenSuse. I'll admit to not testing the latest Kubuntu, but I always saw a bad default theme (fixable, but first impression's a bitch), some questionable software choices (Koffice/Openoffice, Konqueror/Firefox, Dolphin/Konqueror.... Again, fixable, but again first impression), and an overall feel of unpolishness. The fact that Adept removed all deb's from my girlfriend's computer when she installed Xchat (possibly was on 6.10, not sure though; and right after a clean install) doesn't help too. - dualscreenman, on 12/02/2008, -9/+31I will copy/paste what I have said before:
We would very much appreciate it if you didn't insult our packages without giving examples of why they are bad. While there are some unfortunate issues with Kubuntu Intrepid, (flaky NetworkManager, bluetooth doesn't work) the Kubuntu team stands behind our KDE packages, which *are* good even if the software above or below it in the stack is of questionable quality
Back in the day of KDE 4.0.x we did have a lot less people working on the releases. I remember when nixternal spent half a week after release getting packages ready to throw out the door. If I remember correctly they were quite flawed as packages due to the understandable circumstances and he ended up uploading a lot of fixes to those packages in a short time, eheh. (I think he uploaded kdebase-workspace a total of 17 times...) But now we have a team of 3 or 4 regulars packaging our KDE releases with improved QA.I mean, if you absolutely need bluetooth then by all means, Intrepid sucks. But if you just want to try KDE 4.1 Kubuntu is a solid choice for that. If you would like to claim otherwise, you had better have the bug reports to back the claim up. ;-) (And they better not be upstream bugs either ;D, though it would be understandable for you to confuse them) - Frayed_Knot, on 12/02/2008, -1/+21I've been running Ubuntu (Gnome) for the last six months. What are some good reasons to switch to KDE?
- Irco, on 12/02/2008, -3/+22so you determine how usable it is, by how "it seems"?
I've been using it since 4.0 as main desktop and it's amazing how much ground they cover for every release, it is incredibly usable and rather impressive how they keep it pretty and add usability. - Skaidon, on 12/02/2008, -5/+22Very exciting stuff :).
- Codename, on 12/03/2008, -1/+17I'm going to have to admit KDE 4.0 was not all that great, 4.1 was fantastic, now 4.2 looks even better.
- AboveandBeyond, on 12/02/2008, -3/+16Century of The Linux?
- HonoredMule, on 12/03/2008, -0/+13Proper Samba support is one good reason to switch. If you often need access to samba shares and have been pissed off in Gnome by the inability to visit smb:// urls in file open dialogs or have applications which you need to interact with samba shares which won't, KDE is worth a try.
KIO slaves actually work, while Gnome's non-physical filesystem access only occasionally works by using terrible hacks (usually by manually or implicitly mounting everything into the physical filesystem, and in the implicit case, direct links still don't work).
Don't jump straight to KDE 4.0 though. 4.0 is currently so incomplete that I'd even say Gnome is better overall. Like counterplex says, it'll probably be good by 4.4 or 4.5, and then it'll be something to get excited about. - shadowman99, on 12/02/2008, -3/+16I installed Fedora 10 last week, I've been flipping back and forth from Gnome to KDE. I've been a Gnome user since RedHat replaced Enlightenment with Gnome way back.
I like KDE, I could even see myself switching. I've been getting quite frustrated at the Gnome philosophy of hiding functions from the user the create the appearance of simplicity. It's very Microsoft. KDE also is better looking in many ways than Gnome.
I find myself still liking nautilus for file management better than Dolphin. They're 99% the same, but there's something intangible about Dolphin that's still putting me off.
Also when I turn on Emerald I get a window frame around my KDE bar. Very annoying. No such problems if I use Metacity themes. I would prefer Emerald. - Irco, on 12/02/2008, -1/+14kde is doing some serious advances, I've been using it since 4.0 and people complain that they are going for flashy rather than usable,
until they try it. I use it on opensuse cause it lets me have gnome installed and I can simply choose what I feel like using everytime I login. The last couple months I've found myself using kde only. - lendrick, on 12/03/2008, -1/+13In general, back when I switched, it's because Gnome's UI development was being dominated by a "human interface" group, whose sole purpose, it seemed, was to completely remove all of the advanced options. Having lost my ability to customize my experience, I jumped ship. KDE has always been about customization, although it's true that 4.x is taking a while to get to be functionally equivalent to the later 3.x series. Gnome is a lot like MacOS in that if you don't like the way it works out of the box, you're out of luck.
- grungegbunny, on 12/02/2008, -6/+17KDE.. Keeping GNOME on its toes.
- TheWindBlows, on 12/03/2008, -0/+11Nothing is ever "complete". Though yes KDE 4.2 is planned for user consumption.
- hungryduck, on 12/03/2008, -1/+11Yes! I think that 4.2 is going to be stable and complete!
I don't get their version system. I've tried and people explained it to me with the best of their ability. "KDE 4.0 is only KDE 4.0! It's not KDE 4"
I get it it a bit I guess, but STABLE releases should be STABLE. Don't get me wrong, I love KDE. I don't think they're being smart with the confusing ass releases though. - chuzwuzza, on 12/03/2008, -0/+9Maybe I read the article wrong, or maybe you didn't read it at all, but this seems to be a new feature as of 4.2 now.
"Users who prefer the conventional desktop icon paradigm can get equivalent functionality in KDE 4.2 by setting the Desktop Activity Type to "Folder View" in KDE's Desktop Settings configuration dialog." - Tsiolkovsky, on 12/04/2008, -0/+9Without 4.0 released we would't have what KDE 4.2 is so fast. That is the whole point of releasing 4.0. So that the developers got a signal that now is the time to get serious about porting applications to KDE 4 series. And remember, in open source we doit the "Release early, release often" way. Hiding releases would be bad in the long run.
- antdude, on 12/03/2008, -0/+9I see what you did there.
- filldeviant, on 12/03/2008, -2/+11Wow, it's actually kind of... pretty. Hah.
- westyvw, on 12/03/2008, -1/+10At least for me, KDE is faster. The KIO slaves are awesome and the contextual menu's are WAY ahead of Gnome. Configuration options abound, and some people dont like that, but I would rather have the power to change it then the simplicity of Gnome. Oh and some of my favorite things are the way KDE windowing works: lots of mouse clicking action that does all sorts of cool stuff.
@dualscreenman: Let me say I respect your hard work. I suppose I should try Kubuntu again. In the past I always found Ubuntu more stable by simply adding KDE afterwards rather then Kubuntu. But maybe thats changed. - noisymime, on 12/03/2008, -1/+9Not mentioned in the article, but multiscreen support has improved a lot in 4.2 vs 4.1. You still can't get a panel spanning screens (Infact it can be an adventure just getting a panel on the 2nd screen), but you can do things like dragging a maximised window across screens.
- Irco, on 12/03/2008, -1/+9use gnome, fluxbox, xfce or any of the other environments ? if you don't like any of them either, you can always help improve kde. what's there not to like?
I am not saying is perfect but I'd hope you understand the beauty of open source software. - shadywasabi, on 12/03/2008, -0/+7Dugg for Vi emulation in Kate.
- solarwind24, on 12/03/2008, -0/+7I've been using KDE 4 SVN for a long time. There's something new every day.
- SteveMax, on 12/03/2008, -1/+8abbathdoom, what Gnome apps (as in "comes in default Gnome install") compete and top off Kate, Amarok, k3b, konqueror, kdevelop, koffice (ok, it's an add-on, but you can compare it to the abiword/etc "suite")?
- gedit has absolutely NOTHING on Kate, it's a notepad-like editor with very few features.
- Rhythmbox really looks like a feature-incomplete alpha when compared to amarok, which is possibly the best audio manager out there for any OS.
- Brasero looks OK, but still doesn't offer all k3b functionality.
- Epiphany and Nautilus together don't offer half of the konqueror's capabilities. Browsing kioslaves seamlessly is fantastic, and something Gnome never had.
- kdevelop is a great IDE, almost enough for me to drop emacs. Gnome offers nothing.
- koffice, dare I say, is even better than OpenOffice. It's faster, I found it to be more compatible with external (read: Microsoft) documents, and doesn't bog down your system. The Gnome office isn't integrated, doesn't share features, has a lot of variance between the best and the worse programs, has no presentation software... It's just not comparable.
Now, am I missing something obvious? Have these Gnome apps evolved so much that someone can "take the gnome apps over kde any day"?
Notice that not every Gtk app is a Gnome app (Firefox, Gimp, Pidgin etc aren't Gnome apps), nor every Qt app is a KDE app (Opera, Google Earth, Skype etc aren't KDE apps). - noisymime, on 12/03/2008, -0/+7You can on the KDE 4.2 beta. Multiscreen stuff has come a long way since 4.1
- SteveMax, on 12/03/2008, -0/+7You can have KDE 3.5 and 4.x installed side-by-side. Actually, I have both on this very machine, under Gentoo; some users prefer 3.5, some prefer 4.1, some prefer other DEs/WMs, and everyone can have it their way. Same thing on my OpenSuse home system. The KDE team was very careful and made the new version use different sonames, paths and variables.
The fact that your Kubuntu install doesn't allow you to install 3.5 and 4.1 side by side is an error by the Kubuntu team, not by KDE. Try a KDE-centric or DE-agnostic distro such as OpenSuse, in 11.0 you can choose Gnome, KDE3, KDE4 and/or other WMs/DEs even from the installer. - HonoredMule, on 12/03/2008, -1/+8It is, but only because they (KDE and MS) share a philosophy of providing a whole desktop environment instead of an idiot-friendly slice of one with very poor multi/background tasking usability. This applies not only to the user interface as seen by the average user, but also the supported I/O and UI complexity and customizeability, APIs, libraries, HIG, etc. with which developers are faced.
- stuffradio, on 12/03/2008, -0/+7Different environments suit different users. I like things in both packages so I "dual boot" with GNOME and KDE. Sometimes I might want to use KDE so I boot in to that, and other times I boot in to GNOME.
- 9umber9ine, on 12/03/2008, -1/+8You better install Ubuntu first and then add Kubuntu from it than install Kubuntu per se.
KDE in my opinion works best in openSuSE since they're the staunch supporters from a very long time. Mandriva comes next. They're the best choice if you want to use KDE4.
For speedy KDE experience try MEPIS, highly recommended, although it won't provide KDE4 until it's really really stable like KDE3.
As for my light system, I'd stick it to XFCE or probably Gnome if I really have to. - stuffradio, on 12/03/2008, -0/+6Hence the quotes?
- inactive, on 12/03/2008, -2/+8Very exiting stuff indeed. I have been using GNOME and KDE quite frequently (I run GNOME on Ubuntu 8.10 and KDE on openSUSE 11.0 and Fedora Core 10), and I have to say, they are pretty much equal, but this may change my mind. KDE 4.2 looks much more usable and tested than GNOME 2.2.4 (That release was crap), but, I will have to see for myself, desktop environments are an... 'acquired taste'.
- nurriz, on 12/03/2008, -0/+6It certainly looks good.
- counterplex, on 12/03/2008, -0/+6No need to switch - just try it out to see if you like it:
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
That should install KDE3. You can add KDE4 support by following the instructions here:
http://www.kubuntu.org/news/kde-4.1
In my opinion, however, KDE4 is definitely an interesting experiment but it's not at the point where it's as usable as KDE3 is. Perhaps by 4.4 or 4.5 I'll give it a whirl again. YMMV - sloppychris, on 12/03/2008, -3/+9I don't see what's so great about Konqueror.
- noisymime, on 12/03/2008, -0/+6@fritzek
Yes, transfer of maximised windows does 'snap' when you drag them across monitors. I was previously using KDE 4.1 which definitely does *not* have this ability however I'm now using Ubuntu 8.10 with the Project Neon nightly KDE snapshots and it has been fixed.
There's no longer any need to mess around with minimising/restore etc, it 'just works'. I can't comment on the KDE3 series I'm afraid as I dumped that a loooong time ago. - inactive, on 12/03/2008, -11/+16did the ***** ever get addressed?
- RobotBuddha, on 12/03/2008, -0/+5Why is the plasmoid inadequate?
- Peterix, on 12/03/2008, -0/+5Yeah. Right. Whatever.
I solved that 'problem' by buying a bigger screen.
And win 98 can't do this without major hacking and looking butt ugly: http://media.arstechnica.com/news.media/screen.png - ommadawn, on 12/03/2008, -1/+6I'ts a good, fast browser.
- nash2925, on 12/02/2008, -7/+12I hope, someday Linux will rule the Windows and make this world as a free world
- Frayed_Knot, on 12/02/2008, -3/+8Thanks, but I think that's asking a lot; to switch to a new distro just so I can try a new desktop environment.
- csarak, on 12/02/2008, -0/+4I believe you can just look in Synaptic for the package kubuntu-desktop and install that, then log out and change your session to KDE. This won't get you all of the KDE programs though, which some might say are essential to the experience. If you just wanted to try out the feel of it, though, it would be a good place to start.
- Sammi84, on 12/03/2008, -0/+4Yeah I haven't tried KDE 4 yet either, as reviews have stated that it hasn't been "ready" yet. At least when compared to KDE 3.5 and Gnome.
Who knows, maybe reviews will give a thumbs up to 4.2, maybe not. But I'll wait patiently for a "ready" version. I'll definitely try it. Hopefully it'll be as good as it promises to be, and I'll end up using it full time. - counterplex, on 12/03/2008, -1/+5That's for me to decide, no? The widgets can coexist with the rest of it or they can go to a separate layer a la Dashboard from OSX.
- stuffradio, on 12/03/2008, -1/+5That new little toolbar in the bottom right is looking sexy :)
- kleverness, on 12/03/2008, -1/+5The announcement has more info: http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-4.2-beta ...
- silfiriel, on 12/02/2008, -2/+6from what I've seen trying out the openSUSE under KDE it looks better then Gnome and faster. Also there are some tools more user-friendly then in Ubuntu.
maybe there's a way to replace the gnome enviroment in Ubuntu with KDE, google it maybe you'll find something.
I googled it and here's something for help
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-673574 ... -
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