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Review @ Ars + some screenies
http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2007/09/04/testdriving-kd...

LiveCD should be updated soon
http://home.kde.org/~binner/kde-four-live/

Edited 2007-09-06 17:52 UTC

http://vizzzion.org/stuff/screenshots/kde-4.0-beta2/

Edited 2007-09-06 18:28

Yeah ! Looks very nice !!!

I tried to download the OpenSUSE-based beta1 live CD but it didn't work on any of my 2 PCs (the CD could not boot) . I prefer Knoppix-based live CDs, more used to a Debian-based distro ;-).

I could however try beta 1 with a special Mepis KDE live CD. I hope there will be another Mepis release for KDE beta 2 ;-). I can't wait to try this release :-D.

I think you're wrong: any increase in spit, polish and artwork has little if anything to do with the complaints from the peanut gallery. That kind of thing takes a long time to prepare, so what you're seeing now has been worked on for quite a while already.

I don't agree. I've sat in the KDE peanut gallery with my bag ready for quite a while, simply because KDE <= 3 looks like a first year design student was fooling around with a laminator during some party.

I'm already heading for the main auditorim (to carry the analog too far And if what the KDE 4 screenies promise actually materialises, I may well konvert.

p.s. Imagine Native instruments writing software for KDE:
I'm reading the Reaktor Manual in Okular on Kde, trying to get amoraK to talk to the Kore, It's playing throught Kontrol 1 but using KontaKt instead!

I think you may have been making some assumptions about my comment. If you look at the post above where another person linked to the blog, even the oxygen guys get sick of the OMG it looks the same screams..Most posts up until recently have been demonstrations of functionality, the vast majority displaying the default plastik theme. This is one of the first images I have seen straight from the KDE website that show some interface updates.

I, personally, understand how releases work, and I know that the real work goes on behind the scenes, and has been for some time. I remember when the plasma and oxygen websites first went up. i also remember using KDE in previous x.0 versions. Even the major updates have to have some updates looks, the same sort of thing went on with the first couple of 3.x releases, but I dare say 3.5.7 looks like 3.0.

I think at some point you do have to say ok, here pretty pictures...lookie..just to quell the noise from the naysayers, because it's not the supporters that make the biggest ruckus, its the non-believers.

LOL, you can't be serious...

Fans are *always* - as in 80% of the time - the biggest noisemakers. They'll scream at anyone who makes known their own disappointment with an aspect of the party line, accusing them of sabotaging the fandom with their "FUD".

I find the naysayers more insightful; they're the ones who are more willing to call the project or company on its flaws or, if necessary, its unfixed bullshit.

It's for those who don't believe the hype of the moment (iPhone, KDE4, Ron Paul, Ubuntu, Barack Obama, Ajax, Flex, etc.), and are willing to make it known in eloquent, non-confrontational terms, whom I have the greater respect. If I have an admiration for the subject, and they have a detest for it, their detest
1) puzzles me,
2) leads me to ask questions, and
3) tempers me to the point that I simply detest the subject just as much as they do.

They don't inflame my passions, or harden my resolve; they lead me to mentally question the current hype, and I eventually think of it as useless.

Of course, those who express their displeasure with the current hype and then plug their own product (as Thomas from Gaia Widgets did earlier this week in his slam on Flex) irk me.

Everyone - as in 80% of everyone - who is discussing a project is going to be a fan of that project. Usually, it's because it suits their needs, and suits them well. The people you described (including yourself) are discussing the project because they delude themselves into believing it's better than it is, not to have an intelligent discussion of the project. If you have reasons, you can eloquently disagree with the naysayers, or just not care; fanboys are the noisemakers, not the fans.

http://kde-look.org/CONTENT/content-pre1/60475-1.jpg

that one is beautiful, but NOT official or target for 4.0... afaik, of course.

Nice! but I very much doubt KDE will be that clean.

That's the only shot in this thread I like the look of. The style suits me. I dislike styles with no division between the title bar, menu bar and toolbar. This style has them without looking cluttered.

I also like the icons (what the shot was actually intended to show: http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Crystal+Project?content=60475 ) and I have to wonder again why Everaldo wasn't included in the process for creating KDE4's new icons.

So luckily KDE is configurable. Unfortunately, while the icons are nice, it really is the style that draws me to it, and that remains only a mockup

and I have to wonder again why Everaldo wasn't included in the process for creating KDE4's new icons.

Have you ever seen, that Everaldo published SVG-files?
Crystal-SVG he have created as SVG and exported as .PNG, .GIF and so on. And he have only published the pixiel-graphics not the source (the vector graphic).
And Everaldo have never be published its vector graphics.

And KDE 4 makes heavily use of SVG.

Edited 2007-09-09 04:30

That's a good point, and one I had overlooked. Thanks.

Now THAT is a thing of beauty!!! I still am not convinced that the official theme has a lot going for it as it still lacks contrast everywhere, but we got a winner with this one, IMHO.

Just judging from pictures, KDE 4 really looks promising. "Vista" users will feel comfortable. :-)

No, honestly. KDE 4 continues a good design line, which is important because people usually judge software values from image impressions - and this leads their decisions.

The image http://www.nuno-icons.com/images/estilo/image219.png reminds me a bit of the XFCE 4 panel. And http://www.nuno-icons.com/images/estilo/rect2955.png shows something similar to the Mac OS X panel... Intended?

When i48n improves quality (e. g. overall language selection, no exceptions for error message texts), KDE 4 based distros will improve Linux's usage share in Germany.

The pictures looks promising indeed. But as many already have said those are not a part of KDE4 and currently it's unknown if there actually is such a theme or if they're just mockups.

The pictures I posted from Nuno are mockups indeed, but they are made by the Oxygen ppl for the coders on the style and windowdecoration, to show them how the theme must look. So it's not 'just mockups', it's how the final theme will look (at least, it's what they are aiming at right now, it might change of course).

It looks nice, but having the main menu not in a corner.. yuck! The only way I could imagine using this is to fall back to keyboard shortcuts, and then I'd not really need a button at all.

From just looking at it, it really just seems like a theme for showing off, without much thoughts put into actual usability. I think that's very unfortunate.

It's probably easy to change, but when I think back at all the bashing Gnome gets for it's two menubars (something very easy to change) or Kde3 for it's somehow cluttered interface (at least partly easy to change) I already fear the flame and bashfests. And that only for some "Aaaww, how cute!" shouts when initially showing off...

I have to admit it is really slick looking. Of course in these colour schemes, it looks like Vista and OSX thrown together. (ducks )

ahahahaa.. i love this comment.

see, kde was *criticized* in the past for having *too many colours* and *too much interface detail* and now you come along complaining about *not enough* and furthermore go on to say that it's always been that way.

people do see things differently, it's just fun to see how much.

anyways ... the low tones are purposeful, and here's why:

think of a painting and its frame. there was a time (elizabethan was the peak, iirc? been a long time since i studied art history, so i'm probably wrong on that one =/ ) when frames were rediculously ornate. they were seen as pieces of art unto themselves. and man did they look sweet on their own.

but then you put a painting inside of them and the two would fight for visual attention and the viewer could not truly appreciate either one. a shame.

following came a period of extremely austere frames in response to this problem (well, that's a gross oversimplification and i'm sure the art majors are rolling their eyes right now . the pendulum swung back a ways after some time to find a balance point.

what does this have to do with user interfaces?

the shared bits are the painting frames: menus, window title bars, stock widgets, desktop components ...

the applications and customized widgets (plasma stuff there mostly) are the paintings. we want them to ZING! but unless the framing objects are quiet enough it just becomes over the top and turns people off.

not wanting to sacrifice application brilliance (see amarok, dolphin, pixie4, etc) we consciously opted to tone down on the frames and aim for an elegant but recede-out approach. we're still finding the balance, but i think it will work out well after a few more iterations.

It IS a flame. You didn't read this thread (the colors are indeed wrong, but that's because of a bug. see the mockups for how it SHOULD look). And you compare this look with Win 3.1, which is silly - KDE 4 looks as much as Win 3.1 as Windows 3.1 looks like Mac OS Leopard.

The colors are dull...

And KDE was criticised in the past by an awful lot of people for being too colourful. 'Fisher Price' I believe was a phrase used gleefully by an awful lot of people.

Can you be more specific about these colours, and can you tell us all what it really should look like?

and it looks very poor pretty much like Win 3.1.

Wow. Windows 3.1 eh? Windows 3.1 looked nothing like that.

Very unprofessional.

I hear that word 'professional' used often, and it's a word passed around by 'certain' people that means absolutely nothing. Can you tell us what something 'professional' should look like, and what that actually means?

The colors are dull and it looks very poor pretty much like Win 3.1. Very unprofessional.

So what color should a desktop have? Should everything be green, blue, yellow etc? That would look terrible. Also the new theme is not completely grey but have some colorful propertied like the green scroll bar. I think it's nice. Some stuff still look a bit weird though. Windows 3.1 was mostly white btw.

hahaha hey, you can mod me down all you want

Indeed.

It's also amazing how many people (I'm NOT accusing you BTW) don't appreciate what a well-designed interface actually means.

After 30 mins of heavy testing, I can say it's really broken. First, when you start it, the "app launcher" won't load. Fortunately, you can load a terminal (right-click on the desktop for "run command") and launch applications from there.

I couldn't load any desktop components except some plasmoids. Amarok is broken. Konqueror crash after a few seconds. Dolphin is ok but it keeps showing error messages. Kdevelop is under heavy development. Etc.

This is not something you expect for Beta 2. Maybe you will have more luck building it yourself like the guy at Ars did. Maybe...

But honestly, I wouldn't waste too much time with it. I deserve the pre-alpha or the alpha tag for sure. The libraries might be Beta 2 but the rest is just totally broken.

Better chance with Beta 3? ;-)

The taskbar plasmoids won't load because the openSUSE people don't include the stuff from playground where most of the plasmoids reside nowadays (including the taskbar stuff). The same happens with their packages from the Build Service (upon which the LiveCD is based on). I'm not sure what they have been thinking when they released these packages but it can't have been terribly much. Let's hope the KDE guys move the plasmoids to a place where openSUSE will pick them up.

Nothing major going on with GNOME atm...The GNOME Team plans to continue along the same path, I haven't seen any new plans for major overhauls. Not that there is anything wrong with that, just not a hot topic right now. Go back and fine some news updates when spatial came out, lol GNOME was everywhere.

Hey, I can't help it I write much better release announcements than the gnomes do ;-)

But seriously, they don't have much to show. It's only 6 months the last version came out. Almost no changes in themes and look, and just a few new features. I have an easier job - there is so much new in KDE 4, I have a hard time to pick. Even the beta's, with each just a month of development, are chock-full of new and amazing things. I'm actually not looking forward to the final release article, we will have a hard time writing that. It will never be even 10% complete...

Nice. I've always been a fan of potatoes

Potatoes misspelled with a "C" replacing the "K" for those who didn't get the joke.

Edited 2007-09-07 06:40

Yeah, but it only works for those who knows Cartoffel/Kartoffel is potatoes ... but nice to see the name convention work in opposite direction

Go on then, lets see your attempt.....

If you don't have one, then shut the cakehole :p

This is OS News. An intelligent discussion about operating systems.
Now, if this was OS art news, or OS theming news...
My point is that theming a GUI takes 5% of the time and 95% of the attention, for better or worse.

You must be new around here.


(Sorry.)

Edited 2007-09-07 01:44

The differences between KDE3.x and KDE4 are not simply a differnt theme, it is not Vista hehe

Well, at least they CAN do away with that. The whole color scheme stuff has seen serious work, and it's much more complete now. So apps can request much more colors for specific roles, so they don't have to use their own.