OSNews

Apple doesn't listen to feedback or care about users comments or ideas so why do it?

Because KDE4 will eventually run on Macs as well :-)

and some remind me of Vista.
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I assume those are the parts you don't like.

Well, I don't like the task bar or the little glass looking thing around what I assume are widgets. It's that glass looking thing around the widgets that reminds me of vista.

"OK, some are better than OK, and some remind me of Vista."

Which parts...Just wondering about the vague comment. It can't be the desktop analogy that you are referring to, so what particularly about Vista.

To me it looks like a less kartoony(giggle) KDE3 with some slick improvements.

1. It's not done yet.
2. It's still fully themeable.

You don't really have a point.

Everything else you say is understandable at this point, but you have be absolutely ignorant of the technical foundations of KDE4 and Plasma to suggest that the UI is going nowhere.

KDE4 has nothing but potential, and I mean that in the most literal sense. Its current state reflects the fact that less than 10% of the overall work has gone into the UI. The above quoted statement is the equivalent of saying that Python is an awful programming language because all my first program does is display "Hello World!".

KDE4 probably won't compete with KDE3 or GNOME2 as a desktop UI for another 6-12 months. But as a desktop development platform, it blows them out of the water today. That's why the UI is going to develop rapidly, with an unprecedented amount of diversity and participation. That's why KDE4 will scale up to media centers and down to smartphones better than any other desktop framework.



That's what this whole KDE4 process was about. They decided that the time was right to abandon their aging codebase derived from KDE2 and undertake a complete rewrite to position KDE for a new era of the free software desktop. It is a complete overhaul, bringing the freshest and most innovative free software technology to market just as the business dynamics in the client space are beginning to shift.

What is means to be a "desktop environment" is changing as the PC and post-PC client takes on new sizes, shapes, and roles. KDE4 is a bold attempt to take the desktop wherever it wants to go over the next decade, and I believe that it's an approach that will pay off decisively.

Just give it time.

Edited 2007-10-30 22:45

I'm sorry. I just had to look up the screenshot in the announcement. Look at it, reread your comment, look at it again.

This can't be serious comment. I mean, back to the 1998? You mean Windows '98? Yeah, sure. Alphablending was a dirty word, back then, as where rounded corners. Big grey-land.

If you would play with Oxygen, the new KDE 4 look, you would quickly discover it is much more colorful as it seems at first sight. Yet very light on the eyes. Personally, I'm really happy with the look. After having been in KDE 4 for a while, I find it unpleasant to come back to KDE 3 - no matter which style I choose - polyester, plastik, domino, baghira, qtcurve - I've gone through all of them since I've been really running KDE 4, and they're not satisfactory compared to Oxygen.

Well, remember everyone yelling KDE 4 wasn't even Alpha yet? It's not like we're running around, hands over our ears, screeming "BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH WE DON'T HEAR YOU!!!"

KDE 4 really needed more people testing it, so we decided to release another beta. Nothing can be really set in stone, KDE 4.0 won't be smashing, but it should be usable. So we won't release until it is.

Dropping features isn't really possible with this release - next one will be more tightly scheduled ;-)

Yes there was... and it was:

http://kde.org/announcements/announce-4.0-platform-rc1.php

"The one thing I still don't think Linux has gotten yet is the "smooth, slick" look that Mac has. "

I'm only vaugly interested but what isn't slick provide an example. Any example.

Linux has 2/3 fully functional desktops and they have all looked smooth/slick for a long time, KDE has always looked "smooth, slick" with defaults, and had a million ways to customize it to your tastes.

As I mentioned, fonts is a good example.

The font used is jagged and raw looking, not as smooth in appearance as Mac fonts are. It detracts from the icons and menu bars, which admittedly look better in KDE 4 than before.

GNOME has the same issue to me; I instantly change the font when I load Ubuntu. While I understand that you can change things and customize easily, for a new user, first impressions are important.

The biggest complaint about KDE I have is that much of both the icons and the UI look very cartoony and not slick.(Admittedly XP looks the same; much like a Fisher-Price toy) I have to admit that KDE 4 has improved that quite a bit.

Edited 2007-10-30 22:42

To what?

It depends.

If I use preloaded fonts, then something like DejaVu Sans Condensed works well.

If I load my own, then a Mac font like Lucidia Grande or another Mac font.

If I use an MS font, then Segoe UI works or sometimes Arial if I use the MSTTCoreFonts package.

I like the fonts... meaning that I do not dislike them.

I wouldn't mind if they changed as long as I could read from them...

Personally I prefer linux fonts over mac OSX.
They look unpolished, they look like they were an after thought. like something was swapped out right at the end.

I also run a pretty customized but extremely simple scheme for fonts on my system. Nothing ever above 12, the bit stream verdana, sizes 8-12 for absolutely everything. Simple elegant. not blurry.

Personally, Freetype is admittedly behind OS X's font system, but that's to be expected.

I don't give a rusty f*** whether the AA of on-screen fonts aren't satisfactory (they look right in either platform when configured correctly), but what I do give a rusty f*** about is stuff like XeTeX allowing me to leverage OpenType or TrueType fonts so I can produce publish quality manuscripts, journal articles, novels, etc.

I care that my PDFs are press quality. Whether someone's Xorg config and fontconfig setups are different than the next person's doesn't matter to me.

If I've got them configured correctly Freetype 2.3 gets better with every release and so does OS X's font system.

If you think OS X's fonts are blurry and low quality then you don't understand the Print Industry.

If you think OS X's fonts are blurry and low quality then you don't understand the Print Industry.

I don't work in the print industry and I would guess that most people using Mac's don't work in the print industry. I would also guess that most people in Apples Mac target market don't work in the print industry.

Having got that out the way I really hate fonts on the Mac. And I used Tiger for over a year. The font's don't look clean and crisp. If the print industry likes fonts on the Mac thats fine just don't tell us that because the print industry likes blurry fonts that we have to want them. Apple pandering to a minority without caring about the majority of its users is typical Apple.

"Apple pandering to a minority without caring about the majority of its users is typical Apple."

The minority? 99% of the print industry use Macs... Its hardly a minority of users, since OSX had PDF support throughout its ideal for this sort of work...! And these sort of people demand the best font rendering, so apple provides it - Mac font rendering is supposed to be the closest thing to a printed output - so that designers can easily proof their work.

And finally, I also have a Mac Mini with Tiger and I dont think the Fonts are blurry, I do however think that the FreeType fonts on my Linux box aren't that great... I like the BitStream fonts but they don't have the same sort of "professional" look that most OSX fonts have, plus for some reason distros allways set font size too large, 10 looks rediculous... Never had that problem with any other OS than Linux tbh.

Maybe he's like the majority of the worlds population and don't give a damn about the print industry but cares about how the fonts look on his screen. You know, the fonts he actually reads every single day when using his computer.

Maybe he's like the majority of the worlds population and don't give a damn about the print industry but cares about how the fonts look on his screen. You know, the fonts he actually reads every single day when using his computer.

Windows and Macs have different philosophies on how they render fonts. Microsoft does a lot to make them legible on the screen, but sometimes they look different to what you actually print out which ruins the whole WYSIWYG concept that GUIs are based on. On the other hand, Apple keeps true to the WYSIWYG concept with the caveat that screen fonts don't always look as legible as they could.

Just for the sake of accuracy, Linux isn't responsible for font rendering at that level. The people at FreeType (http://freetype.sourceforge.net/index2.html) are the ones you'd probably want to voice those concerns to.

Just my opinion, just because its skinnable doesn't mean work shouldn't be put in to get it right <first time>... Personally I like GNOME and so won't be switching, I've allways found KDE to be a messy bloated GUI that was a bit too windowsesque for me but I suppose each to their own...!

So, in other words,
you don't use it and will never use it, but you nevertheless took it upon you to come here and tell us that you don't like it and will never like it.

Thanks, we are grateful for your insights.

Sadly you just summed up about half the comments in this thread.

THere are legitimate complaints that occur in these discussions, but by and large, most of the non legit ones are simply people that have nothing better to do than bash a release they will never even touch because they are biased to begin with. Then they act all shocked when their needs are not catered to

KDE's "messy bloated GUI" (as how YOU describe it) is great for getting work done. Gnome has a fantastic interface for non computer people who want to email friends and occasionly surf the web and dont mind opening new applications to do what you can do with a right click in KDE.
Still you can sit back happy and relax knowing that in 10 years gnome will still be looking exactly the same and, if you're really lucky, the devs will have removed even more of that ugly, bloated functionality stuff - just the way you like it!

Seriously, GNOME's GUI organization is much better than KDE. It's clean and simple compare to the complexity of KDE in terms of menu organization and control panel. KDE menu and control panel is more really a lot more complex than it should. They should really learn from GNOME for that.

That said, I do like KDE 4 better for is more modern UI design. But still, it holds me back from switching because of the messy and more than neccessary complexity for menu and control.

They should really learn from GNOME

While certainly true in some areas, in the general case: why? So Gnome people will switch? You claim you might but I bet most Gnome people are happy with Gnome. Seriously, my concern is that they are trying too hard to appeal to Gnome users and I don't like it. I use KDE because it isn't Gnome. If it becomes Gnome, why wouldn't I just use Gnome? At least that way I wouldn't have to deal anymore with the odd app that uses a different toolkit(nvidia-settings, eclipse, etc)

I'll be (very pleasantly) surprised if they attract significant numbers of Gnome users, but in what seem like their attempts to do so they alienate at least some (I count as part of "some") KDE users.

I for one am probably stuck with KDE no matter what they do, since at least Konqueror and Dolphin have a directory tree view (personal preferences dictate the presence of one). I'm just not thrilled with the direction I perceive them to be taking, and which you (as a non-KDE user I might add) are advocating.

Example: all that constant harping (not necessarily by you) about all the "ugly" Ksomething application names. Well it's gone to their head, and sensible, descriptive stuff like KHexEdit is being replaced by Okteta. Thanks a lot. One can still see a connection with its function (and it still has a k) but the function is far less obvious. I eagerly await the renaming of kwite to skratchpad

I really can't say it's not for the best in the long run. It may benefit KDE greatly. My concerns have mainly to do with my preferences and likes. That should be obvious, but people sometimes flip out if one doesn't make it clear one is expressing personal opinions

KDE is not complex, it's functional,

and GNOME is too simple that it lacks functionality, GNOME people should learn from KDE.

Edited 2007-10-31 23:23

Just remember though: what is one man's shit, is another man's candy.

Dave

meh, yes, there is an issue with poppler, KOffice needs 0.5.4 and Okular 0.6.x... I guess they will have to fix that sometime, dunno when.

I found it doubtfull that you have a pdf bug with Krita using poppler 0.6.1, because it can't yet build against poppler 0.6.1. So, maybe there is a bug in the build system allowing it do it and then a compilation error, if cmake insist on trying to build, can you contact us at kimageshop@kde.org with the error so that we can at least fix the build ?

Sorry. I consider build breaking to be a bug: at least in the build process when going from 0.6 to 0.6.1 poppler. Glad to know this is a known issue:

I just sent an email with the compilation output.

KOffice will not be released as a part of KDE 4.0, they have their own release schedule. Relax.

The taskbar really isn't anywhere close to the final look, I think. The Oxygen theme on the windows is close to what it should look like, but plasma is still moving fast.

I think people are not used to seeing big changes in betas so they assume it's going to look like that in the final version. Beta is usually bug fixing, testing and not missing icons all over the place, task bar looking fudgy.

I understand your changing this throughout the betas but alot of people dont, so forgive the people saying it dont look good or finished for a beta.

Well, we've tried to communicate this for months: 99% of KDE is in beta, but Plasma and some other parts should be considered more like Alpha. These components are showstoppers for 4.0, and we're working very hard to get them ready.

We call the whole 'beta' because MOST of KDE simply IS beta...

I'm not sure a compliment is a DE - if you believe something may be the most powerful open source desktop, you should feel free to say so!

I also believe that KDE4 is SIGNIFIGANT - It's a leap forward in many ways, and I'm not sure most Osnews readers realize just how great a change this is going to be.

KDE4 - We're waiting with bated breath!

No the user isn't "root" but kdedev. In the case of dolphin "root" refers to the "root directory".

Well, I certainly hope plasma will be usable just like the old KDE 3 was. Kicker had applets too, you know. This time, you can drag'n'drop them to the desktop ;-)

And there are some big differences between Plasma and widgets like the konfabulator ones. To name one, an unified theme (which could probably make you happy). And from KDE 4.1 on, you can use normal KDE/Qt widgets (buttons etc) on and in plasmoids. So it is much more a 'best of both worlds', I think.

I could not have said better.
I'm also starting to look to using gnome, fce or another desktop enviroenment instead of KDE4, but will keep using KDE apps that are very good.
But plasma... man iot's like building your DE over karamba!!

It's temporary artwork. You don't spend 2 weeks working on temporary stuff if you've got better things to do.

Yeah, well - the author doesn't quite get things right. There are several options he misses, and his explanations of font rendering in Mac OS X and Linux (FreeType2) is half wrong.

And his proposed solutions are only better when compared with font rendering on Windows. Besides that he is completely missing the conflict between intelligent (smart) font rendering engines and stupid font rendering engines.

He has some interesting ideas but most of it shows that he doesn't grok fonts very well.

How and which part of the article?

I must agree with the author that fonts look bit dirty rendered under Linux (noticed that even before reading the article). So it's better ALSO compared to existing font rendering in Linux (article certainly isn't favoring Windows font engine).

I read some critics on the article that it will conflict with pixel-precise definitions in HTML (->html could use other technique) and won't work well with glyph caches (which I think is a price we can pay, especially with powerful CPU/GPU's)

I've used it a bit in Kubuntu Gutsy - I believe it's all compiled against KDE3 however.

It's not too bad. Easy to use. Simpler in a lot of ways than Konq. Not nearly as polished (and I never used Konq extensively!)

I've noticed a few bugs causing crashes (many pertaining to using my NTFS partitions and dragging/dropping things between apps). I think I should start helping by filing bug reports.

KDE 4 beta 3 impressed me...and I found it almost unusable!

I might just be lazy and wait until Kubuntu packages are released!!!