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No matter what the developers intended this to be, there will be detractors who are only concerned with what they wanted it to be, that their vision (and there are thousands) wasn't met. Here's hoping the developers aren't easily discouraged and go on to turn it into a great series, I think you already have to be a pretty thick hide to develop free-software.

Meh. There's always detractors. I remember KDE 2.0.0, and GNOME 2.0.0... Any big release with lot's of zeros is the same. The apps that shipped are quite good-- and the foundations for a bright future are there. The 3rd party apps are on their way, kdePIM is on the way, Plasma is 'hyper active', and 4.1 is on the way. Given the feeling in the pit of my stomach with RC 1, KDE 4.0.0 is great. I think the the potential of KDE 4 will begin to manifest in in far more dramatic ways throughout the whole KDE ecosystem by the time KDE 4.1 ships.

They could have sat on it for another 6 months without the situation in the broader KDE ecosystem being much better... And a release bring new eyes, voices, and hands...

I doubt you'll find many posts that heralded KDE *4.0* as the second coming. Instead people were almost certainly talking about KDE4 if only for the fact that it's shorter to type.

Nevertheless this is not splitting hairs. Anyone who went through the KDE 1->2 rewrite or Gnome 1->2 or OSX, or most incarnations of Windows should know that there's a big difference between the first release and the possibilities the new architecture opens up in the future.

In fact as the vast majority of KDE4 articles up to about 3 months ago talked about the architecture instead of the apps even you could have realized that noone promised world peace and cookies for the 4.0 launch party. =P

One need not look any further than the comments under this story about KDE 4.0.0. Just scanning the first 8 comments I can't help but notice these:

http://www.osnews.com/permalink?295321

http://www.osnews.com/permalink?295331

It's amusing, however, to see others now backpedaling on the claims. KDE4 is just another major restructuring of a popular DE. No more and no less. The claims are now migrating from 4.0, which people are beginning to realize is not really a walk-on-water release... to 4.1. I expect to be equally unimpressed then.

I'll take compatibility with popular real world file formats, codecs, and web sites (many of the sites my customers need in in their business are still IE only) over desktop pizazz any day. The "miracles" which the KDE devs have performed have little to no relevance to my users.

One need not look any further than the comments under this story about KDE 4.0.0. Just scanning the first 8 comments I can't help but notice these

Comments on OSNews != developers, but people still feel that something significant is happening regardless. Go figure.

The claims are now migrating from 4.0, which people are beginning to realize is not really a walk-on-water release... to 4.1. I expect to be equally unimpressed then.

You can smell the palpable fear in the air..... ;-) The opposite of love is indifference. Go read up on how open source projects are developed as well, because this has been explained umpteen times. What are you going say when .5 or .6 is released, because this isn't really going to be all that far away?

I'll take compatibility with popular real world file formats, codecs, and web sites (many of the sites my customers need in in their business are still IE only) over desktop pizazz any day.

You might want to ask how those 'real world' file formats, codecs and IE-only web sites got there in the first place. If that's all that's propping up the software that you're using then, well, I would be worried.

The "miracles" which the KDE devs have performed have little to no relevance to my users.

It's not worth getting heated about then, is it? Reverse psychology ;-).

Go away then, because certainly between five and ten years from now, and quite probably less, if you're not using KDE on your Linux/Unix systems then you're going to be way behind.

Edited 2008-01-12 08:50 UTC

Please remember to try 4.1 since this is the solid foundation of KDE4 not the whole house yet.

Yeah, in your 'Year of Linux' dreams.

Edited 2008-01-11 13:16 UTC

I know I shouldn't feed the troll, but "uglyness" aside (something absolutely subjetive): please point me to the smiliarities between KDE 4.0 and WinXP. I'm currently at work looking at my XP desktop trying to figure out what the hell went so wrong with your eyes. Please, enlighten me.

Anyway, kongrats to all KDE developers, I'm going to give it a spin ASAP, I'm really excited about KDE4

Edit: typo

Edited 2008-01-11 13:29 UTC

Although I don't really care for the looks, "ugly" is not the word that I would use.

More screenshots here:

http://tinyurl.com/2qd6tn

Note the music player, home folder display, and new stylized Konqi center screen.

Edited 2008-01-11 23:50 UTC

Although I don't really care for the looks, "ugly" is not the word that I would use.

More screenshots here:

http://tinyurl.com/2qd6tn

:-). There's an awful lot of scared people around for some reason.

Actually, I think you are taking my comments too negatively. There seem to be a lot of defensive KDE fans around for some reason. ;-)

Responding to your last 2 posts, of course KDE devs and KDE fans are two different things. And of course only some of the fans make claims out of proportion to reality, like "This is the day Vista died", above. The fact is that some of them *do* have a bit of cajoling coming to them and I intend to do my part to see that they get it... in a good natured way, of course.

As to who is ahead and who is behind... it depends on one's perspective. *If* KDE4 turns out to be less of a usability nightmare than KDE3, then I would say that KDE4 is taking steps to catch up with Gnome in that area, which happens to be important to me since I support 60-70 mostly nontechnical users.

As far as technical infrastructure goes, a lot of people feel that KDE4 is ahead and I don't disagree.

As far as being scared... why would I be? I'm not married to Gnome. I just think it's a better desktop for my users today. "Worst" case would be that another DE became a better choice for them and I ended up gradually migrating them to it. It wouldn't be the first time. And I get paid by the hour. ;-) Some of these users have been with me long enough that they would remember using their KDE 1 and 2 desktops... before Gnome pulled ahead of them in the things that matter in that environment. And I certainly remember being quite pleased with my own pre-1.0 KDE desktop. Then agains, coming from AnotherLevel (remember that?) how could I *not* have been pleased?

BTW, as I write this you have posted 7 times (and counting) in this thread "defending" KDE from the slightest criticisms. Not exactly a sign of confidence. ;-)

Edited 2008-01-12 09:30 UTC

Unlike XP's apearance, one can easily customize KDE to there indavidual preferences without glueing in a bunch of third party flakeware.

Go KDE Go.. (Mandriva, any chance of seeing this in 2008.1 or maybe a 2008.2?)

There are actually plenty of themes for Windows XP. You can change it to silver, green, black, you can put gradients, etc... You find everything on the Internet. There are even guys who created a Vista skin for XP

I personally like this Black Luna theme: http://www.istartedsomething.com/20061029/royale-noir/

There are actually plenty of themes for Windows XP. You can change it to silver, green, black, you can put gradients, etc... You find everything on the Internet.

Not unless you patch that uxtheme DLL, which is beyond the means of the vast majority of users.

It doesn't look alive like XP. This one has pretty horrible colours and UI overall. Shows that there is still has a lot of work to be done on the surface. Probably more in common with OS/2 Warp 4 UI than XP.

The successor to Plastik might not have been fully implemented yet.

Totally agree

I sure hope their theming capabilities are quite extensive, because that looks hilariously bad in regards to graphical design.

Edited 2008-01-11 14:24 UTC

Well, I fully agree.

The worst thing in KDE has always been (and, given the screenshots, IS) how fonts are used.

Man, it's horrible!

A propos fonts... I like the taskbar clock, the way it screams LOOK AT MEEEEYYY! in your face.

--edit: And if KDE insists on such mongohuge text runs, they better make sure that they use some better proportioned fonts with rounded edges. A la Calibri from Microsoft.

Edited 2008-01-11 15:42 UTC

First, the whole font thing really depends a lot on what you are used to. Mac users find Win fonts ugly, Win users find Mac fonts fuzzy.

Second, fonts are mostly a X.org thing, not a KDE thing.

Do you mean how fonts are rendered or do you mean the default font choices?

I prefer KDE font rendering to GNOME or even Windows. Granted I am just a home user and not a professional, so maybe that has something to do with it.

The worst thing in KDE has always been (and, given the screenshots, IS) how fonts are used.

You do realise, of course, that fontconfig is responsible for fonts and this is used by both KDE and Gnome?

I very much dislike the theme in those pictures (lots of sleek and clean surfaces, and then suddenly huge difference in contrast in totally illogical places) but I don't know if that's the default theme. Though, it's not that much of a problem as the theme can be changed, and distros will most likely also choose something other than the default theme.

http://etotheipiplusone.com/kde4daily/docs/758759-initial.png

That screenshot would probably look better if you turned on composite.

In your first screenshot: http://etotheipiplusone.com/kde4-svn-03-01-07.png

What are you using to display the system statistics? That is one thing I could not figure out how to do in the 3.5 series. (I'm pretty new). Is that something that is KDE4 specific? Can it also show a histograph of network activity?

It's a much improved version of ksysguard, and yes, it can show pretty much any statistic about your system you want.

Note: i386 for the 4.0 release so far. I'm sure amd64 will soon follow.

Do you know how to do a parallel installation of kde 4.0 and kde 3.5 on debian, like it is possible under kubuntu?

When I try to install kde4.0, aptitude wants to remove k3b and most of kde3.5, which isn't what I want.

The Gentoo devs are not going to put it in the Portage tree until it hits 4.1. This has been discussed on the forums. Anyway if you want to try it, install layman and use the svn repository. I've been using on a Dell Latitude 820 and it's working great. There are some bumps, but nothing crashing. It's more like some apps are missing that a heavy KDE user looks for.

By the way Aaron already said that 4.0 was just the framework for 4.1, although I think it is quite usable.
Thanks to the whole KDE team!

The Gentoo devs are not going to put it in the Portage tree until it hits 4.1.

Not even the unstable tree? I use the unstable tree anyways.. But if it requires me to install layman and all that I think I'll just download some binary distro and try it in a VM. Or wait until it arrives in the portage tree.

part of the point of 4.x is to get rid of the clutter

I want KDE on Windows as well but you misunderstand the KDE project. Its not there to promote free OS's, its to provide a free windowing system. I'm stopped and thought about it but your post doesn't make much sense. Using free software does not lead to using a free OS. Look at firefox and open office. Free applications that don't lead people to use a free OS. Why would you pay for a sound card? Better functionality verses the free one. I can get an 8-bit 16 voice fm card for cheap, but there are now cards that are 32 bit 7.1 digital sound.

I didn't say that ... nor did I imply that.


I'm comfortable saying they do, as a side effect -- not a primary goal, promote alternative OS's. I doubt there's any hard data out there to support either your point of view or mine. It's probably just subjective at this point.


If there is a difference, then I agree with you. But, that's pretty much the opposite of the point that I was trying to make. Right now, the apps you run are completely tied to your OS. If at some point in the future, everything is cross platform, then the OS you choose will be based on criteria like security and speed as opposed to apps like Quicken. I realize we are a long way off. But, the possibilities are cool.

Since KDE is what you "see" when you use a computer (assuming you're a KDE user), it's a bigger step toward being OS agnostic than a single app. You know... it's like people who think AOL is the Internet... to them, it is. Less technical users may one day think their Windowing interface *IS* their OS.

Wouldn't it be cool if you could write your app for KDE and just let KDE take care of all of the underlying differences between OS's?

You mean like here?

http://windows.kde.org/

cheers.

Well, yeah ... more or less. I'm aware of that site. It seems kinda like a bastard child, though. I was envisioning something like a link for the Windows installer right on the Download menu or here http://www.kde.org/download/. If you go to the downloads link, I don't think there is any mention of a Windows version.

I'm not complaining. I'm excited about the possibilities and am simply gazing into the future. Once the Windows version matures, I suppose it will get better placement.

I think you're wrong about this on two fronts... the first being that after using FF and OO.o for a few months on windows I was able to switch my GF to linux because the two apps she spent 90% of her time in were there and functioned exactly the same.

Secondly, direct conversion of users is rarely the top reason I've seen given for windows ports of FOSS projects. Mostly what I've seen people state is that they want to do it to attract more developers to their project. I'd certainly say the at least FF has benefited in this way more than if it were an FOSS OS only project

the first being that after using FF and OO.o for a few months on windows I was able to switch my GF to linux because the two apps she spent 90% of her time in were there and functioned exactly the same.

Would she have taken notice of a free desktop and switched by herself without you needing to do anything? No. Point made.

You switching your girlfriend is a laughable example.

I believe that the goal of the Windows (and Mac) port is NOT to provide a complete KDE4 desktop, but rather to port the development and runtime environments to Windows. So you'll still be using your Windows desktop (start menu, aero, etc). No KWin or Plasma, as these are X11-specific components. You'll be able to run any application written for KDE4, these apps will integrate tightly with each other as they do on *nix, and you'll be able to develop applications based on the KDE4 platform.

The overarching goal is to make KDE4 the premier cross-platform development framework, providing extremely high-level abstractions (e.g. KParts) not found in any other environment. They really don't have any interest in bringing the KDE4 desktop shell to Windows or Mac. If these users like the apps but want the desktop, then they'll have to switch to Linux, BSD, or Solaris. So there's still some incentive to "switch".

You can download an installer at http://windows.kde.org

However, I cannot see why anyone would want to run one desktop environment on top of another one.

Follow the directions here:
http://kubuntu.org/announcements/kde-4.0.php

You don't need Kubuntu, Ubuntu will do fine

Much appreciated +1

https://launchpad.net/~kubuntu-members-kde4/+archive

Appreciated +1

...I still find the grey background of applications dull/dreary

I rather agree, though it's better than the white background they had before. if I get around to using KDE 4, I'll probably be using a different theme, like Polyester ( http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Polyester?content=27968 ) and a different color theme.

Third preview shot at that link is KDE4. Still not liking the colors, but I quite like how he's unified the borders. A scrollbar or header bar inside a scrollpane doesn't mean extra borders like it did in KDE3, which is quite nice. I'll probably be using something more like this: http://img511.imageshack.us/my.php?image=colorkm3.png

That may not be to your taste either, but it's different One could use something different yet again. Of course I do wish the default was a little different somehow, as that's where the first impressions come from. Perhaps some distros will use different defaults.

I like Polyester better than the default KDE4 theme as well

... So use it! [1]
(instead of constantly repeating the same "KDE is ugly" mantra. **)


- Gilboa
[1] http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=27968
** Yeah, I know that you're not the only one... but 60% of the posts here revolve around how ugly KDE looks... And given the fact that KDE is -fully- configurable, this is nothing more then mindless rant.

Edited 2008-01-13 18:26 UTC