After staring at my beautifully anti-aliased Red Hat desktop for the past few weeks, I immediately noticed the aliased fonts in KDE. After being spoiled with anti-aliased fonts in GNOME and Windows XP for awhile now, it seems like a regression in visual fidelity to have aliased fonts. Also, because of the lack of a variety of high quality, free fonts, the default choice of Helvetica is a shame. Not that Helvetica isn't a high quality font, it's just I'm used to having the option of at least being able to apply my favorite font Arial to the desktop out of the box. Though KDE can't legally include fonts like Microsoft's Arial, there is a utility called Font Installer in the KDE Control Center that makes it ridiculously simple to import your favorite fonts.
Figure 3: Aliased Helvetica
Icons
The new "Crystal" icon theme that ships with KDE 3.1 RC2 is quite attractive. Looking at the Icons section in the Control Center, "Crystal" is an "Icon Theme by Everaldo and Tackat." The version is 0.6. As I was browsing KDE-Look.org the other day, I noticed version 0.8 of the Crystal icon theme is now available. I downloaded the file, went into the KDE Control Center, chose Icons, then Install New Theme, pointed the dialog to the file I just downloaded, and the new icons were immediately available! Nice touch.
I think Crystal 0.8 is nicer than 0.6 so I will comment on the newer version. The Crystal icons to me are a mix between XP's liberal use of gradients and OS X's use of photo-realism. Though they are reminiscent of icons already present in other operating systems, I have to say their original flavor helps to give KDE it's own distinct look and feel. Well done Crystal Artists Staff, keep up the good work.
Though the Crystal icon theme is going great lengths to improve KDE's aesthetic appeal, there are still are annoying inconsistencies. For example, there has always been one icon that aggravates me the most: 
. It's the old hammer and wrench utility icon, and it's still there! I was only able to spot it in one of Konquerer's menus, but I really wish it would disappear off the face of this earth. The Crystal icons have a wrench image which makes a great replacement.
There are other areas in KDE where the ongoing transition between old and new icons is obvious. I imagine it takes time to create so many icons, but once Crystal covers all bases, KDE will truly become one of the best looking desktops out there.
Another problem I had with the icons is that they appear to have jagged edges. It's odd because in a recent screenshot the icons look nice and rounded like the ones in the splash screen shot above -- mine don't look like that (see Figure 3). I'm not sure what the cause of this is, but I'm sure it will be worked out once KDE 3.1 final comes out. Also, I'd like to see the most recent Crystal icon theme ship with KDE 3.1, which is likely to happen.
Another icon that bothers me is the Konquerer throbber. You know. That little thing in the top right corner that animates when a page is loading. Well, I have to be honest, Konquerer's throbber is butt ugly, and it's still there. It's not so much the graphic that bothers me, it's the black background. If the background blended better with the color of the window that surrounds it, I think it could look much better. Right now it just looks like a dark abyss with a 3D flower floating inside of it: 
.
I know I'm being picky, but once these and other similar inconsistencies are eliminated, KDE will be gorgeous.
