Submitted by The KDE team has released KDE 4.3. This release comes packed with improvements and bug fixes – in fact, over the last six months, 10000 bugs were squashed, 2000 feature requests handled, and 63000 changes were checked in by 700 people. We’ve already talked about this new release in quite some detail last week, but let’s take a look at the most important new features anyway.
The Plasma desktop shell comes with a new default theme called Air, which looks a lot less heavy than the previous Oxygen theme. Plasma has also been improved performance-wise, and it takes up less memory. The folder view widget now has a feature which allows you to drill down into folders without having to open Dolphin.
The SystemSettings tool can now employ the tree view again (KDE 3 people, rejoice!), and it also has been improved performance-wise. Dolphin received some love as well, such as small previews of files within a folder, and its configuration panel has been improved.
This is just a selection. KDE 4.3 comes packed with changes and improvements, so have a look around the release announcement to see if there’s anything of your fancy. Distributions will pick this new release up soon enough.
“Great” really describe this release. It is now so polished that nobody can claim anymore that the desktop experience is weaker than 3.5. It may be different, but different in the right direction.
With all GSoC project going well, 4.4 will be an even better release, but KDE 4.3 is KDE4 (4.2 was to in my opinion). KDE4 is not Current version +1 anymore, it is now, we are living in and every new version is just a step forward to the long term goals and vision of KDE.
Polished my ass. I still encounter the same bugginess, misfeatures and slowness as before. I still don’t know why resizing windows and doing simple things like browsing files should be painfully slow and require pegging the CPU. KDE 3.5 flies on the same machine. Bugs have been filed, but who cares at this point. I’m not using the latest high speed graphics card on a quad core machine, so apparently users like me don’t count.
See this comment to Thom’s review, it is a known bug http://www.osnews.com/permalink?375523
That does explain slow redraws during exposures and other similar behavior. And I’m sorry, I don’t buy the window resizing excuse. I can smoothly and quickly resize KDE 3.5 app windows. There are no missing frames. The entire window is clearly updated for a number of steps and very quickly. Relayout is instantaneous. Not so with Qt 4, which seems to take forever to do relayout. And even if X does send too many resize messages because there is no throttling, that’s no excuse. I have a fast computer. There’s no reason why relayout and redraw should take so very long. Every other OS can handle resizing just fine…it’s smooth and relayout is instantaneous (with the exception of a few poorly written apps).
I’m tired of the excuses. Qt4 and GTK+ are just plain slow and there’s no getting around that. And to top it off, while KDE 3.5 and to some extent GTK+ apps have been getting faster on my machine as my X drivers and server improve, Qt 4 has gone considerably slower. That just doesn’t make sense. Somebody is screwing up.
ATI driver have a problem with 4.3. Who is responsible is yet to be clear. About other resizing bug, as I said in that post, “normal” resizing protocol is time based, not direct. KDE3 and Gnome2 use(d) an hack to have pixel per pixel resize. It is not part of X protocol and is inofficial, but Qt 4.6 will support that walk around protocol. So it is not really Qt/KDE problem, but it is just how resize should behave on Linux, even if it look slow.
Part of software engineering is getting a desired out of sometimes suboptimal components. Sounds like they should have implemented the hack and the correct way to do it and used the build system to check if the proper way was supported.
It does not involve the build system, just the windows manager (WM) running the application, but yes, both can live together.
http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009/06/10/smooth-and-solid-resizin… (Gnome implement the hack, Kwin3 did too)
Your machine wouldn’t have Intel graphics by any chance would it?
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_q309_flake…
On my test machine, KDE 4.3 is faster than any previous version of KDE (including KDE 3 series) and faster than GNOME.
Edited 2009-08-05 02:35 UTC
I have ATI Radeon Mobility X300 (r300) with 64 MB of video memory. It’s really pretty performant…except when it comes to Qt4. Of course Windows flies, but that’s to be expected since they actually know how to write a performant graphics system.
fglrx has dropped support for this chipset, and it never worked well with KDE4 for older versions. KDE4 exposes some aspects of the graphics driver that no other software does.
New open source drivers for ATI chipsets might be available in a few months, by all reports.
I’m using the Open Source drivers and, like I said, they work great for everything but KDE4 and Qt4.
And, like I said, KDE4 and Qt4 expose functionality is graphics drivers that no other software does.
Since earlier open source drivers for ATI were reverse engineered (as opposed to designed from OEM specifications), no doubt there are shortcomings in those drivers. Wait for the new drivers to come out (which won’t be long now), the ones that have been designed after the specifications were made available.
I’m sorry, the drivers provide enough features to implement things as simple as drawing lines, rectangles and images. I can understand transparency and such requiring more advanced functionality (although it works fine with Compiz and kompmgr), but that does not in any way explain 2d performance, which is pretty well-optimized at this point.
It is a little more complicated than that.
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/09/on-kde4-performance.html
On some systems. KDE4 absolutely flies, and always has.
On other systems, the graphics drivers and xorg stack just aren’t up to it.
Hopefully, this is getting better now.
He mentions XRender, which is accelerated fine on my system. x11perf -aa10text gives me upwards of 900,000 anti-aliased chars per second. I use shadows and translucency with kompmgr and there is little slowdown except with very large windows (which also happens in Windows XP, so the hardware just isn’t up to the task). And the funny thing is, Plasma is actually one of the few components in KDE4 that’s fast for me. It’s the regular old-skool stuff like Dolphin or even dialog windows (!!!) that are slow to redraw and resize. What special feature of the video card could they possibly be using? No, it is as he said: Qt4 has some major performance issues and doesn’t make proper use of X, even when X does properly accelerate operations.
So KDE4’s poor rendering performance is actually due to multiple issues, beyond just the xrender one that Lemur is always spinning as not being KDE’s fault, according to asiego himself? That’s most insteresting to know.
Excuse me?
KDE4 doesn’t have poor rendering performance.
KDE4 just calls the graphics layers to render stuff.
Excuse me? I’ll take that to mean that my original summation was spot on and that you do not have anything to counter it.
Edited 2009-08-05 04:26 UTC
Excuse me?
In order to create “desktop effects” animations, KDE4 renders and re-renders the same windows, menus and other desktop artefacts perhaps hundreds of times (slightly differently each time). This is what is meant when it is said that “KDE4 exposes the graphics layers”. It is not KDE that is slow, it is just KDE that is generating a high demand on graphics performance. Other desktops typically render the artefact just once.
If the effects bother you, just turn them off.
That doesn’t mean the graphics layer is slow. Misuse of the graphics layer can produce very slow performance, even if the underlying graphics layer is really fast. If you do ten thousand 4×4 trapezoid operations to render a window instead of using higher-level mechanism, it will be slow no matter what OS you are using. Obviously that’s a ridiculous case, but it illustrates that you can use a fast system inefficiently to get slow performance. Qt4 must be doing this.
Qt4 has updated at least twice since that post was written.
Are you sure that your issue isn’t actually a manifestation of a desktop effect?
There is a setting in the Desktop effects (which is enabled by default on most distributions that I have seen) where the Windows are supposed to “smoothly” fade in and out as they are opened and closed. This effect actually means that some period of time is deliberately allocated to creating the effect whenever a windows is created or destroyed. On some cards, the high-transparency renders at the initial part of this fade-in effect are simply not visible. That makes it seem as if the window is taking a long time to appear.
Try turning this effect off. (There may be other desktop effects that are also making things appear slow). Windows should appear instantly if your garphics card is working properly (after all, GPUs can render fairly complex scenes at 50fps or more).
With no desktop effects I get the redraw and resizing issues. Desktop effects are almost too slow to use, so I only occasionally use XRender-based desktop effects (which at least yields decent performance in moving windows and updating their contents…such as scrolling in Firefox).
Which simply illustrates one of the poor design decisions at the foundation of KDE4.
Yes, Lemur, you’ve been spinning that as an excuse for months or years. But at the end of the day, users don’t care about excuses. They care about having something that works.
Edited 2009-08-05 03:55 UTC
Works for me. Works for a lot of systems.
The gaphics drivers and xorg stack are improving by leaps and bounds even as I type this. If it doesn’t work for you right now, very soon hopefully it will.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzQyOQ
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzQyNg
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzQyNA
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzQyMg
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzQxOA
When it does work, KDE4 is the best and fastest desktop available right now.
Edited 2009-08-05 04:03 UTC
I guess aseigo also has a reality distortion field and you have been fully infiltrated. Seriously…I’m not the only one who has complained about the performance of KDE4. I’m glad some people are having a fast KDE4 experience…at least someone is and that’s great. A lot of us aren’t and it’s not getting better.
I have the latest and fastest version of what is probably open source software’s best supported family of video chip sets: Intel GMA X4500. KDE4 is a dog here, with or without desktop effects. And as you say, it’s not getting perceptibly better.
Other desktops do just fine, however. (With or without desktop effects.)
Edited 2009-08-05 04:36 UTC
Lots of problems with Intel graphics just recently, huge performance regressions:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzIyMA
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_q309_flake…
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_intel_sha…
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_904_intel…
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_graphics_q…
Intel’s Linux graphics drivers haven’t recovered from these regressions as yet.
It certainly has not affected my OpenArena performance. In fact, it’s better than ever with the recent changes. My chipset gets KMS, DRI2, UXA and sparkles under Gnome and XFce. And the wretched KDE4 performance is certainly not new. It goes all the way back to KDE 4.0, over a year and a half ago. And remember that we are not just talking poor 3D performance. 2D lags as well. (!)
Let’s do an overview. On NVidia, considered to be the fastest graphics and best proprietary driver support in Linux, KDE4 is a dog. On Radeon, KDE4 is a dog regardless of whether OSS or proprietary drivers are used. KDE4 is a dog on Intel, the shining jewel of OSS hardware support.
So tell me… what specific video card model… what exact kernel version… what specific version of Xorg… does one need in order to see KDE4 performing acceptably? On what magic combination of hardware and software does KDE4 not suck? If one cannot still purchase the proper KDE4 compatible card new, I suppose there is always Ebay.
Edited 2009-08-05 12:08 UTC
I have a bunch of different graphics cards (GF 6200, 6800 and 8800 as well as a netbook with a crappy intel chip) and I’ve never had any performance issues with KDE4, even with the graphical effects on.
Wow, I’m agreeing 100% with Steve. What’s next, me buying an iPhone?
Seriously now – you are indeed quite right. Every time I reviewed (or just tried and not reviewed) KDE4, performance has been absolutely terrible, both 2D as well as 3D. I’ve used it on an Ati card and an NVIDIA card; a Pentium 4 2.8Ghz HT chip and an AMD Phenom X4 4×2.2Ghz; 2GB of RAM and 4GB of RAM – every time, KWin performance has been an abysmal failure, and every time, the driver is blamed, with the reasoning that they don’t want to change their code to work well with graphics drivers – the chip makers should just change their code.
It seems like to me the KDE guys need to take a look at the power distribution in their relationship with the driver makers. Hint: it’s not skewed in your favour, KDE.
Edited 2009-08-05 12:56 UTC
So KDE should sit back and not innovate like the other Desktop Environments and provide work arounds?
People complain about Linux Desktop Environments not innovating and when KDE does, people moan about like it’s all KDE’s fault. I’m gob smacked by the assumptions made here about Kwin’s speed.
KDE4/Qt4 shows how bad the Linux driver stack is, it shows XOrg bugs when you use it’s features not utilized before (ARGB). I’m sure things will improve with Qt 4.6 but to suggest that other Desktop Environments don’t have such problems, well yes they do. I’ve seen countless complaints about Compiz with the NVIDIA driver and there will be until they fix it proper, rather than provide work arounds.
People have reported that KDE4.3 has improved Desktop Effects performance, since Kwin now handles the KDE Colour Scheme for the window shadow/glow effects. As a added note, you should upgrade to Qt 4.5.2( if you haven’t already) which fixes some performance and cache issues.
Plasma Desktop is entirely SVG themed and no other Desktop Environment has done this. You don’t need Composite for translucency on Widgets thanks to the great tech that is QGraphicsView. Just wait until Qt gets OpenGL(it’s currently a experimental backend).
Edited 2009-08-05 13:30 UTC
Users don’t really care about “innovations”. (That’s a rather overused and misused PR and marketing term.) And they don’t care about excuses. They care about having something that works and is usable. To the extent that KDE devs want to see KDE4 used, they need to address KDE4’s problems, regardless of the cause, instead of falling back on Microsoft-like appeals to the ‘I’ word.
No, I think people should just turn off Desktop Effects( or turn off “Show Window contents while resizing”) and stop moaning then, it’s not like it’s a ‘needed’ feature to use KDE.
KDE4.3 does work just fine unless the distributions add their dirty buggy patches or experimental network manager which crashes plasma (Yes Kubuntu).
Edited 2009-08-05 13:42 UTC
I think you’ve missed the threads under this story where KDE4’s poor *2D* performance has been discussed. Turning off desktop effects does not correct the most serious issues.
Which for the most part is shitty graphics drivers not accelerating it proper. I have very smooth 2D performance on my 7800GTX, which is old in GPU terms.
Guess what? The Nouveau driver has much better 2D performance than the Xorg one. Get the picture yet?
However Gnome, XFce, LXDE, you-name-it, work just fine and do not exhibit these problems. Blame it on other parts of the stack if you want. Lemur2 has made a career out of that. But only KDE4 has the (clearly) observable problems. And at the end of the day, that’s what matters to users.
Edited 2009-08-05 13:59 UTC
So you’re making the assumption that other Desktop Environments work smoother based on what exactly?
They have better 2D redraw performance because of what? You think the drivers are optimally performing their function?
It’s a known fact that the Linux graphics stack is pretty poor, that’s why toolkits such as GTK+ work around graphics bugs or don’t even touch Xorg features. The NVIDIA driver issue I’ve pointed to in my previous post is a prime example, look at the Intel drivers and ATI ones, poor across the board. Intel even have their own acceleration method now, how many acceleration methods are their now that still don’t give ideal rendering performance?, XAA, EXA.
Edited 2009-08-05 14:14 UTC
Assumption? It’s certainly no assumption. It’s extensive practical experience. Linux (with various DE’s and WM’s) has been my own sole desktop OS since 1997. I administer 80+ users’ Linux desktops, and have for over 5 years. I’m not making theoretical predictions. I’m reporting solid, observable fact.
However, now that you mention it… your arguments all seem to be theoretical.
Edited 2009-08-05 14:30 UTC
All you have done is give examples of Desktop Environments not have such issues. Yes great analysis and in-depth benchmarking and review.
You make assumptions that it’s slow so it must be the Desktop Environment and your only proof is that the other Desktops Environments are smoother?
Where is your proof?, your own experience mean nothing when making such harsh statements against KDE/Qt.
“However, now that you mention it… your arguments all seem to be theoretical.”
Really? I guess all of those complaints about the NVIDIA 17X.x series driver being so slow and then NVIDIA actually fixing it were theoretical.
2D performance is still a issue to people in Linux, and the Desktop Environments adding workarounds and hacks is more proof if you need it.
Edited 2009-08-05 14:59 UTC
Side by side comparisons on a variety of hardware over the last year and a half? What KDE4 does or does not expose from other layers is *irrelevant* to users. It is the behavior that KDE4 *exhibits* relative to other desktops that is relevant.
Honestly, your “defenses” are becoming too bizarre to waste time on. Good day to you.
Edited 2009-08-05 14:56 UTC
That is a true enough observation in and of itself.
However, exactly where, on some systems, the slowness is occurring is entirely relevant when it comes to the task of fixing the problem.
OK. So we’re making progress. Let’s summarize the points on which we seem to agree:
1. KDE4 performance is broken on most systems.
2. The KDE devs are unable to fix it and are at the mercy of other teams over which they have no control.
3. Nobody knows how long it might take to get fixed… if ever. But it has already been years.
4. Other desktops do not do things in such a way as to exhibit the problems, and perform quite well on most systems.
OK fine, let’s stagnate the Desktop development because XOrg and driver manufacturers can’t fix bugs or get their act together.
You’re in a dream world if you think 2D performance has been or is ideal. KDE don’t like to plaster over cracks like Compiz and GNOME do, it’s not there way(you don’t like, go use something else). While Compiz was getting all of the attention, KDE integrating AIGLX compositing in to KDE4/KWin ‘properly’, not XGL which is dead and only Novell use it in OpenSUSE.
I’m pretty sure you’ll be eating your words in the future, just like the KDE4 haters. This proved beyond doubt that they don’t love or take note of KDE as much as they claimed.
Just look at some of the comments here as if the developers spend more time on looks than fixing bugs or features. The same people don’t even work on artwork, Nuno is not a programmer and has mostly made the KDE4 plasma look and icons(and a few other people)
People make the assumption on the looks, like it’s the only thing that’s been worked on, only fools would even come up with such comments. This goes for bug fixing as well, they make the assumption that because their bug was not fixed, other bugs were not to and they spent the time on doing nice looking Widgets instead.
Just to let you know, the people who do these nice Widgets are not the same people who work on core KDE bugs.
Edited 2009-08-05 16:14 UTC
Man, you need etiquette. You don’t have to use animal name to make sure your message go through.
Or may in some place dog is similar to slow, or have graphic problem?
yes, in colloqial English dog can be similar to slow (“it’s a dog” or “dog-slow” are common expressions). Welcome to the internet, that wonderful place where everyone uses the same language and those who use it as a second language tend to miss out on stuff like idioms and sarcasm. Great place.
Have you tried EXA?
http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/ATIRadeon
I wouldn’t be complaining like this if I hadn’t already spent time tweaking my drivers. EXA is now the default for the Radeon driver and I’ve been using it for years. I’ve even tweaked it further by changing the FBTexPercent option in xorg.conf, which actually improves 2d performance significantly, at the cost of 3d performance (which I don’t really care about most of the time).
Again, KDE 3.5.10 and to a lesser extent GTK+ apps are all responsive and quickly drawn. It’s only Qt4 and KDE4 apps that make me feel like I’m using drivers from 3 years ago.
It is available for X300 since years, the speed is even getting fine for compiz, but not yet perfect for KDE. They both get better, so it may work fine soon.
Yep. Yet another chipset falls into a hole between fglrx and the open source drivers.
ATI is junk I’m afraid. Use Intel or nVidia if you can. At least ‘most’ things will actually work OK. You end up falling into holes where either fglrx supports what you need but doesn’t support your chips set, or the open source drivers support your chipset but not the features you need to get things working.
Edited 2009-08-05 21:41 UTC
As I posted before, most things *do* work okay…except KDE4/Qt4. I mean, 3d performance is pretty good, 2d is excellent for everything but KDE4. Compiz flies. kompmgr really flies. And that’s using the open source drivers. I never experience crashes or odd slowdowns (again, except for KDE4).
KDE 4 exposes quite a bit of functionality within X and chipset drivers that other software doesn’t. Try KDE 4 with Intel or nVidia and you’ll see that the only variable is the graphics drivers. You might get some issues with nVidia but at least they have a habit of updating their drivers and not leaving some chipsets in the lurch.
Personally, I don’t know how you haven’t seen other issues other than with KDE 4, especially with an integrated chipset (IGP). Accelerated video (Xv) for one thing is extremely bad with ATI and totally non-existant for IGPs.
I use textured video, but Xv was never problematic for me.
Quite frankly I find that very, very difficult to believe.
Well, I’m just telling you how it works for me. Textured video uses very little CPU and I can even have it run in a transparent window with no apparent performance reduction (there probably is an actual performance reduction, but it’s not noticeable). Plain old Xv also uses very little CPU, but doesn’t work well with compositing (for obvious reasons). Perhaps you think I have a different graphics card than I actually have? FWIW, lspci reports:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M22 [Mobility Radeon X300]
I have a ATI Technologies Inc RV370 5B60 [Radeon X300 (PCIE)] and everything worked fine here in KDE 4.2 and now KDE 4.3. The proprietary driver from ATI of course no longer supports my hardware ; so I use the radeon open source driver with all the bling (read: compositing) enabled ; so not all ATI cards are affected or useless and it most definitely is not a KDE issue as it works for me.
I have a graphics card on one machine that is described by lshw as follows:
I have Kubuntu Karmic Alpha 3 installed, and just recently that was updated to KDE 4.3.
Even though the radeon open source driver for this card does not yet support compositing and 3D harware acceleration, it does support 2D.
KDE4 works better than it ever has before on this hardware. Better than any other desktop ever has, even Windows XP with a driver from ATI is not as snappy.
Bellisimo … and it can only get better once compositing works.
It flies.
Oh, and Firefox 3.5 on this hardware with this driver is incredibly fast as well.
Edited 2009-08-07 09:38 UTC
QT4 over engineered their rendering engines. They did it to get all the fancy effects like AA, composing, etc. Unfortunately they tanked their performance for CAD type applications and pretty much tossed any hope of running remote display/remote terminal applications.
It’s a shame and probably all this stuff needs to be ripped out, refactored and dramatically simplified, like the whole rest of QT.
So true.
NX client connected to kde4 is unbearably slow compared to kde3 on the same network link. And it gets even worse with “raster” rendering enabled.
Over engineered – well, yes, that’s one way of looking at it. You could also say they developed a rendering engine capable of using the latest hardware acceleration features available. Those features (still) don’t work properly on linux (no problem on win and mac, btw) so now it’s up to the X.org devs and driver developers to fix their software.
KDE isn’t an operating system, you know. We build upon what is provided by the platform – and if the platform provides a sucky infrastructure, our performance suffers. And in the interest of moving forward, we refuse to work around bugs in the lower stack – we’d rather see them fixed. Sorry for that but we believe progress needs a strong platform. And those features we’re gonna need in the future won’t be done properly i we don’t put some pressure on those working on it.
Why not meet halfway by implementing some “cheap hack” to speed it up, one that can be pulled when the underlying infrastructure improves? It could be part of the regression testing with each build/release cycle to run without the hack and with the hack to check for the performance levels.
That would in fact be one way.
Though experience shows that once a hack is in it takes pretty long to get it removed –> look at the hacks in KDE 3.
Especially if people denied there was a bug at all in the beginning. They would simply say that the hack “fixed” the bug and the bug was in your application so no need to change anything in their code.
“As long as it ‘works’ there is no reason to change it.” (not a quote! rather a way of thinking)
True. There are still “hacks” in code I’ve written from about 8 years ago in our applications. And I knew I would get that comment.
On the other hand, while I appreciate and respect the “do the right thing” attitude, I also think that the user should not suffer if something can be done about it. And I use the word “suffer” lightly as I think we have all become somewhat spoiled by advancements in UI software.
Well, it depends on where your focus lies, then. Our focus lies more in advancing Free Software than making the current users happy. There, I’ve said it.
It might come as a surprise, and we do care about our current users (of course) but we’re aiming for the 95% ppl NOT using KDE… If we accept that we have to carry al kinds of legacy hacks to keep things reasonably working on the current platform we’ll never get there. We’d be stranded, like Gnome, in incremental improvements FOR EVER.
If you wanna play with the big boys, you gotta have BALLS.
Hmm, that might be a slogan for KDE. KDE – we have BALLS.
Or would that give the wrong impression?
😉
Again, that is great, but there has to be balance in your approach, or you risk losing users… on the other hand this IS open source so that isn’t as big a deal as with closed source, paid for software.
Of course there should be balance. But don’t you think with all the focus on polishing and bringing back 3.x features for the 4.3 release we do so bad in that area?
And yes, users are, in some ways, less important than developers – even though it is a balance. We need users to support us, maybe become developers. But if developers walk away it hurts right away.
The 4.0 release lost us a lot of users – but gained a heap of new developers – in effect allowing us to do what we’re doing now (developing like crazy). These new devs take a while to get acquainted with the code, procedure and ppl – so at first they contribute little patches or work on stuff which takes a long time to get to a release. But after a while, productivity goes up, and the result is, in a very real sense, 4.3! 4.4 is gonna be even better in this regard, there is so much stuff post phoned because it was almost, but not completely ready yet.
Yeah, people who would have wanted KDE devs to keep on polising 3.x series based on a dead toolkit ad infinitum should have, to quote the immortal words of Ulrich Drepper, paid someone.
Do you, by any chance, use Kubuntu? Which distribution do you use?
On Fedora KDE 4.3 is rock stable, fast, beautiful – dunno where your “bugginess and misfeatures” come from. Oh, and if you don’t like one feature or another, that does not make it a misfeature – others may appreaciate it…
Resizing windows is slow due to lagging graphics drivers. I’ve tested it on various combinations (nVidia blog, ATI blob and free, Intel), and in principle the desktop is fast. Bad drivers (or badly setup drivers) cause this kind of delay in resizing windows.
Please file bugs for those drivers, so we can all have fast graphics at some point.
So why can I resize Qt3, GTK+, Motif, etc. applications with little to no delay, even with a compositing manager running, on the same machine with the same driver settings, but Qt4 apps can’t handle it?
I should file a bug, to be sure, but the problem is not the graphics drivers and it’s time the KDE4 folks stop pinning the problem on the graphics drivers and instead own up to the fact that their software is SLOW.
Qt4 uses XRender much more aggressively. Funny though how NVIDIA fixed the very bad 2D performance with Qt/KDE4 in the 180.x series, people said exactly the same thing.
While I’m at it, NVIDIA fixed OpenGL crashes which affected Plasma and memory leaks in their driver. Have a guess who got blamed for that too?
It’s time you jumping to conclusions you are not qualified to make. Do some research — dive into some code, from kwin down to the X11 driver and then come back with a thorough analysis. You then will have helped a lot of people get informed and will have gained some respect. But right now, you’re just spouting nonsense.
I don’t need to look into the code and do a thorough reductionist analysis when the behavior is crystal clear: everything but Qt4 is slow on my system. If *everything* was slow, sure, blame the drivers. However, I find it very hard to believe it is just the drivers’ fault if only one toolkit ever seems to have a problem. And if it is the drivers’ fault, it’s because the toolkit is making use of edge cases which the other toolkits can clearly get by without using and Qt4 should do the same. Again, don’t need to look at code to know the correct answer here.
It should not take noticeable amounts of time to redraw a section of a double-buffered window during an exposure event. I don’t need to look at code to know that that is bad behavior on the part of the toolkit.
Some of the responses you are receiving are indeed bizarre.
Operator: 911. May I help you?
Caller: My table saw just went haywire and cut off my arm!!! I’m losing blood fast!!! Help!!!
Operator: Have you gotten an anatomy book and studied it carefully to see exactly what the problem might be, and why owners of other table saws might not have had their arms cut off?
Edited 2009-08-05 14:49 UTC
But at least you need to listen to people explaining what the problem is instead of dismissing them offhand, and blaming the toolkit. Like it is known that kwin exposes more features of the graphic card than other compositing window managers. This is how bugs are found in the drivers, and actually NVidia acknowledged that the problem is on their side some time ago and they issued a fix – but don’t let that bother you. Just keep harping on how KDE sucks for YOU ignoring other’s comments or requests for more information. You’re at 10% now (of the total number of comments) basically repeating yourself over and over again. Keep up the good work, and you may reach 20%, maybe then you’ll accept that we HEARD YOU THE FIRST TIME, and you can stop wailing…
everything thing but Qt4 is fast on my system.
You can try another variable – the drivers and the graphics chipset – as has been explained quite a few times in this thread and as I’d explained in another post. If it’s KDE 4’s fault then if you vary the graphics driver and the chipset then the issues should remain. They don’t. ATI’s Linux drivers are junk right now if you expect everything to work well.
Either you can’t face up to the fact that ATI’s Linux driver support is pretty useless or you’re labouring on this for reasons that are best known to you.
You still can’t explain to me why performance of every other toolkit and DE is great, only KDE 4 has problems. From my point of view, the variable is the desktop environment, and changing that variable from KDE 3.5 to KDE 4 using the same drivers, same X server on the same hardware results in drastically different performance. I vary the variable again by using GNOME, or XFCE, or Fluxbox or whatever, different compositing managers (besides KWin 4) and performance is still fine. What else am I supposed to believe, other than that KDE 4 does not make efficient use of what is otherwise decent and performant hardware?
Using your argumentation, say:
– Qt works fine on windows
– Qt works fine on mac
– Qt sucks on linux.
It is clearly the fault of linux, not of Qt.
The reason:
No other linux toolkit does anything more complex than paint single pixels by itself.
You can’t do complex gradients and smooth animations and CSS in the toolkit with that. Think iPhone/Mac OS X like effects. Qt wants to allow the developers to do those things, and the X.org architecture promised it was possible. So they re-enginered their toolkit to be ready for the future.
Apple and Microsoft both have also re-architectured their drivers and graphical systems to do this stuff. Gnome, being 10 years behind as usual, has not. The linux graphics stack, also being 10 years behind, can’t handle the cool stuff Qt wants to do – at least not properly.
Now it is Qt’s fault that graphics on your system sucks? Get real…
Gnome, being 10 years behind as usual
I think you mean GTK, but not, you are wrong, GTK is using modern libraries like cairo and clutter, so, your argument is empty.
I was of course way over the top, it’s more like 5 years. And even then some parts of GTK (examples being Cairo and Clutter) are more or less on equal foot with the other toolkits. That doesn’t mean many people don’t describe large parts of GTK as a ‘steaming pile of shit’ and similar things. I haven’t had a close look myself but I guess the vast majority of developers I speak with (both Qt and GTK and independent devs) is probably right.
(ok, the windows toolkit is, afaik, in most area’s, Qt-5 as well. Mac is, from what I understand from ppl who seem to know it, about equal – but different of course.)
That doesn’t mean many people don’t describe large parts of GTK as a ‘steaming pile of shit’ and similar things
And that doesn’t mean that other developers think the contrary and they use it, your bitterness and ignorance towards GTK put in evidense to you and to the project you are representing.
Edited 2009-08-06 15:37 UTC
Are there actually developers who think Gtk+ is equal/comparable to Qt? Any links?
I don’t know but I know of many developers who like to use GTK+.
That’s different from comparing Qt vs GTK in terms of completeness, quality, documentation, consistency etcetera…
I know a lot of GTK coders, and they prefer GTK either because they prefer C, because they like the GNOME community, started out with it etc etc etc. All perfectly valid. And entirely irrelevant if you want to say something about the quality of GTK vs Qt.
Which wasn’t the topic anyway, so let it rest.
Agreed, I was a bit fed up with the heat and some other comments over here. Despite that, I think you’d have a hard time finding serious developers (who dont’ care about the C vs C++ thing) who prefer GTK over Qt.
Sure, a few purists, and we’ve got plenty of those. But that’s always going to be a 1% minority…
Anyway. Who cares what’s better or worse. That wasn’t the topic at all.
Well, now we must return to a previous point of mine. I understand that the advanced stuff (translucency, krunner/plasma stuff, fancy wm effects, etc.) should probably be slow on my system. I accept that part of the argument. Strangely, I find Plasma performance to be pretty decent, though. But that’s not what’s at issue. If cover switch is slow, I’ll just use a less graphics intensive tab switcher, or just opt to use XRender. Fine. The problem is that simple things, like redrawing a double-buffered window after exposure, or smoothly resizing windows without anything fancy in them (e.g., dialog windows), are very slow. Those don’t require fancy gradients or advanced driver features. And those are what I’m complaining about and have been this whole time. And nobody gives me a straight answer as to why simple things that are fast in every other toolkit and DE — and should be fast because they are basic — are dog slow in Qt4 and have been getting slower, not fast, as Qt4 continues to develop.
Because they are done in a completely different way compared to a few years ago. Don’t think I don’t know your issues, I do, I’ve seen it too. The resizing one is being analyzed by some ATI ppl together with KWin and Qt people and they still don’t really know what exactly is going on. It has to do with requesting a new pixmap which involves blanking a pixmap and transferring it from the video memory to ram, which can take over a second on the ATI driver. Something like that. There is a hack around it, which fills the pixmap with random garbage but that looks horrible and has been removed. So we’re back to horrible slow and they still don’t know what to do about it. And it doesn’t happen with other toolkits because they don’t use doublebuffering like Qt does it. Full-window double buffering is very slow, so no toolkit does it. Qt does it very smart, and if the drivers work properly it’s faster than anything out there.
But I have a feeling no amount of details or information will change your mind, will it?
The problem with doing this is that the KDE4 software is not slow.
KDE4 absolutely flies on systems where the graphics stack works properly. Fastest desktop there is.
And how do I get to such a system? What parts? What drivers? I’m genuinely interested.
Frankly, I have no idea.
What I do know is that on some systems KDE4 absolutely flies. Faster than any other desktop.
By no means is this the case for all systems, but it is so for some.
The thing is … this fact alone exonerates KDE4. You can have a situation where fast software is slowed down by something else on a particular system, but you cannot have a case where slow software is made fast on particular systems.
Ergo, KDE4 itself is not slow. If KDE4 itself was slow, it would be slow everywhere.
So…. Lemur2 does not actually *have* a system which performs well with KDE4. He’s certainly never mentioned that before. All this time, he’s only been going on what he’s heard some other people claim.
Edited 2009-08-05 15:02 UTC
Why would you say this?
I have two desktop systems where KDE performs very well, one with ATI graphics and a dual-core AMD64 CPU and the other with legacy nvidia graphics and an Intel Pentium CPU. I have no idea exactly why these particular systems are fine with KDE4, but the fact is they are.
I also have a number of different netbooks with Intel GMA graphics where the performance is (currently) quite mundane (but not utterly unusable, after taking a bit of care in de-selecting certain desktop effects, but making sure to still enable compositing).
Edited 2009-08-05 15:11 UTC
It’s entirely possible for some quirk of a system to allow software that poorly suits the general case to out-perform software that is well-written for the general case. The fact that KDE4 may have, at some point, in time, for some very specific configuration, out-performed all other DE’s (however you’d measure that), does not mean that, in general, KDE4 is never the performance problem.
I’m also assuming that “every other DE” means, say, XFCE, Gnome, maybe XP and Vista, maybe even OS X. If you’re trying to get me to believe that KDE4 out-performed BlackBox (again, however you measure it) on the same hardware, well, I’ll call BS on that particular claim.
I have a year-old laptop with an Nvidia 8400 GS chipset. KDE 4 flies with this setup in all respects except window resizing when wobbly windows are activated. Note that maximize (vertically/horizontally) works fine, arbitrary resizing is … well, too wobbly. But for anything else (desktop grid, expose like window switching, minimize animations, fade-ins/outs, flying dialogue windows) smooth, and fast. Fedora 11, kde 4.3 from kde testing repos.
One thing to note – it matters a lot which distribution you try and WHEN. For example, Mandriva usually finalizes its graphics driver stack (ATI & NVidia proprietary drivers) right before release. Now if you use an alpha version, or you mix & match packages from cooker, don’t expect a smooth sailing.
That’s one of the reasons I asked siride to at least clarify what distro he uses, for it can explain a lot of things. Instead, he is too busy spamming this whole thread with his whining about how QT sucks. I know I’m a bit harsh here, but after a point (lets say when his rants against QT reach 10%+ of all comments in this thread) I call this spamming, especially since he just doesn’t seem to care much about any explanations. Like to the fact that NVidia actually acknowledged that the problem is in their drivers and not QT when we had a similar problems on NVidia cards a while back.
Same experience here. KDE 4.3 RC3, ArchLinux (testing) on ThinkPad X60s (intel 945GM).
I use Gentoo, but I have built my entire X.org from Git master. Every other distro is slow as crap on my system, for reasons that are unclear to me (same driver settings on different distros = different results).
I see. So why are you so adamant that the problem is with QT/kwin? I mean it does work for many of us pretty flawlessly, been smooth on my laptop (dell vostro 1400 with NVidia 8400GM) since 4.1.x. Except for some known problems (window resize) that have a perfectly valid explanation or obvious driver issues…
Anyhow, I wish you had better luck with your system, and stopped being so negative
You’ve got to be f–king kidding me? You’ve kicked off a thread where you blame KDE 4 for being slow, steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that it’s probably a driver/chipset issue and then it transpires that you’re building X from Git and using a distribution where you’re compiling everything.
I like using Gentoo greatly, but can you throw any more variables and opportunities for weird issues into a desktop system?
Okay, so let’s get this straight. I do a straight compile from Git, have been for almost 9 months now, with great performance on every DE other than KDE. The Git versions eventually become the release versions which are now live on Fedora, Ubuntu, etc. (or Gentoo if you use portage). I watch the mailing list traffic and the bug traffic and there is nothing added to the release branches that would result in wildly different performance. Moreover, when I do use the distro-provided drivers in Gentoo, I have little to no difference in performance (as measured with x11perf, for example).
But more to the point, I still experience great performance in everything but KDE 4. So if I was f-ing up my drivers by miscompiling or whatever, you would expect that I would be getting either a non-functional X server or severe performance problems. I have neither. They work and they are fast.
Moreover (again), when I use Fedora or Ubuntu, I see the same slow performance in KDE 4 in exactly the same way using the distro-provided drivers. GNOME, while slower on those platforms than on Gentoo, is still faster than KDE 4. I can obviously no longer test KDE 3.5 there.
So that means my distro is not part of the equation either. Try again.
I am running KDE 4.2 on a GeForce 8600 GTS in an Intel Xeon X3210 @ 2.13GHz with 2GB of RAM. My KDE flies, absolutely flawless. I am currently running the Chakra meta-distro of Arch Linux. Nothing fancy or fast. You could build this system for $400 easy.
Basically, use an Intel chipset and your distro’s drivers or an nVidia chipset with a recent driver. Many nVidia driver updates specifically fix KDE 4 issues, especially with Xrender. Your mileage might vary with ATI, but you’ll be hopping around with the ati, radeonhd and fglrx drivers and stuff like Xv will still be broken or working poorly.
Edited 2009-08-05 22:13 UTC
I *am* using an NVIDIA card (6200, 128MB dedicated RAM) with a recent driver, and KDE 4 is STILL showing BAD performance. Resizing especially is unusable, and various other animations are jittery.
The exact same card with the exact same driver has NO problems with Compiz – which is smooth as butter.
Can’t explain that then. I have a 7300GT (mainly because I knew that it still supported XvMC) and that works pretty well. The 9500GT didn’t work well but does with the latest drivers. Mind you, I suppose when you’re using binary drivers and different combinations of chipsets then mileage varies. The fact is that they will have a tendency to fix things in the most recent chipsets first. I’ve still seen some strange issues with Compiz, mostly related to resizing. It still seems as though nVidia falls back to software rendering on some chipsets for certain things.
The Intel stuff seems to work better than anything else and works pretty well across the board for Compiz and KDE 4, apart from that known cock up that Ubuntu inherited in their recent release that slows everything down.
It’s a complex area, but the common theme is they’re graphics issues regardless of whether some things work OK in Compiz or vice versa.
Edited 2009-08-05 23:02 UTC
Fair enough.
The only thing to note other than that reasonable summary is that the situation is improving daily:
http://www.h-online.com/open/Kernel-Log-X-server-1-7-delayed-Compiz…
… in all parts of the Linux graphics stack.
The releases of distributions due out later this year will hopefully have many of the issues of the graphics stack all sorted.
Coincidentally, and happily, these releases of major Linux distributions will be the first to include KDE 4.3.
Exactly the same thing happened when Compiz/Beryl came about – weird graphical issues that thankfully seem to have lessened. Given that KDE 4 has gone on to another level with stuff like Xrender we’re in a similar process right now. Graphics manufacturers had to go through the same thing with Vista.
I just wish ATI would sort themselves out. That article still doesn’t paint a pretty picture.
It isn’t looking all that rosy for the closed-source fglrx driver from ATI, but the merged radeon/radeonhd/radeon-rewrite open source driver (which is for ATI cards, written against specifications provided by ATI, but which is not from ATI) is coming along quite nicely.
I’m hoping for a 2D/3D capable, reasonable performance, open source drvier for all ATI cards to be available (in the kernel, out of the box) for the Linux distribution releases due in Q3/Q4 this year.
These will be the first major distribution releases which include KDE 4.3.
What driver version are you using? From what I could gather (and mind you, I haven’t reached KDE4 performance zen yet), not all generations of the nVidia driver have been fixed, and the oldest ones might even be doomed to never get officially fixed I’m afraid.
I’m using an old GeForce FX 5700 here (not the most up-to-date hardware out there, but should be more than enough for running KDE4) with the 173.14.18 drivers (I think nothing above it really supports my card). Seems like there’s a new revision of this driver and I might try it soon, but so far performance is pretty choppy.
Anyway, some time ago I decided to give the nouveau drivers a go (http://nouveau.freedesktop.org) since I was getting desperate about the bad performance of KDE4. Much to my surprise the 2D performance was *greatly* improved (resizing and scrolling suddenly became really smooth), but at the expense of completely dropping 3D acceleration and some 2D features (like being able to view webcam streams in Skype, for some reason). I can live without 3D acceleration (it’s been ages since I’ve played any games), but Skype video is a must, so I had to go back to the closed-source drivers, but I’ll keep an eye on the open-source one, seems like they are doing things right.
You see, Thom, if you are using Nvidia and driver version 1008 with Kernel 2.6.29 with Xorg 7.2.1.3 then you might get good 3D effects with KDE 4.2.99.5. But that combination gives really dicey 2D. So you might be better off with Radeon. But only of you have something between an HD2400 and an HD2475. (But not the HD2450, because that will give you a black screen after the KDE4 splash is done.) If you decide on that, you’ll need to compile an Xorg nightly that’s after July 27. (And you’ll have to use a development kernel to get 3D support. The DRM changed.) Make sure and use the final 4.3 release for that, because there was a patch that went in right before to keep KDE from frying your LCD on monitors that don’t follow spec properly.
Intel X3300 was working pretty well last week with Xorg 7.1.2.3 and driver version 6666 with kernel 2.6.30 (but not 2.6.29). But then something changed after I rebooted and everything locks up if you try to scroll any text, and I’m still trying to track down what it was. I’ll let you know if I find out.
Lemur says that he has two Nvidias that really fly with KDE4.3, but also says that Nvidia cards perform very poorly with KDE 4.3 because the driver is proprietary and so doesn’t support Xrender. He also says that he has no idea what hardware or software to recommend, except that you should definitely use KDE4, because it rocks.
I wish I could give you more definite advice. Especially as KDE4 is really worth using these days as it has matured into such a rock solid desktop platform.
For now, you may want to run XFce, or LXDE, or Gnome, which should all work well with whatever software and hardware you have now. But be advised that they are not nearly as Innovative. So if you use them, you’re probably destroying the future of Linux graphics.
HTH,
Steve
I saw a post on a forum somewhere that said that
“Ho, ho, ho, it is to laugh”. – Daffy Duck (I think).
Your sarcastic post finally begins to focus on the correct problem areas, so that much at least is a welcome improvement.
Seriously, it looks like Xserver 1.6.3 (rather than Xserver 1.7) will be included in the distribution releases slated for Q3~Q4 this year, at least that will be the case for Ubuntu 9.10.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzQzNA
So for the open source drivers at least, it is looking at least OK, but admittedly not absolutely as good as one would like.
The Intel driver is the critical bit insofar as netbook performance goes.
“Running great” sounds good, but “our few performance problems” doesn’t sound so good. Hopefully at least some of that will be improved within the required timeframe.
Edited 2009-08-06 05:50 UTC
No clue there as to why – my only problem is resizing (I wouldn’t call it unusable though). No jittery animations here (except when I connect my 40″ LCD TV
Try KDE on windows. The first app is a bit slow due to having to load all the KDE libs and to have to start dbus and such services. But after that, it’s pretty good.
And on my system at home and on this laptop KDE is very fast. This laptop is a sony Vaio VGN-TZ31XN – 1.2 ghz dualcore proc, GMA950 grapics and 2 gb ram and 4200 rpm drive. In other words, nothing special.
Home system is dualcore 2 ghz Athlon 64 with 3 gb ram and Nvidia Geforce 6600 videocard. Again, far from special. Works perfectly fine, graphical effects are completely smooth. Ok, granted, since 2 days (X.org upgrade) X.org consistently uses 30-50% CPU. But this is arch linux, a new version will be here soon and I can handle this for a few days.
I think that will be fixed on Qt 4.6
Take a look at http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009/06/10/smooth-and-solid-resizin…
I’m with you I have used KDE from the early alphas when the only way to get was to compile it your self all the way to 3.5.10 now I just have no use for it, like Vista it requires too much of my system I use my computer to get things done while I do want it to look good I don’t want it to spend the bulk of it’s time doing that instead of doing what I want it to. It just seems like we are adding things to the system just because we can not because it helps us get things done.
Psst! Don’t argue with the fanatic fanbois! They love they plaything and will shred everybody who tell them things they don’t want to recognize.
“and 63000 changes were checked in by 700 people” Wow! So many changes by so many people. Sounds fantastic?! Not really, it sound like a patchwork where one FIX from the one person interferes with another FIX from another person which results in three new bugs. So they FIX two old bugs and create three new bugs.
“10000 bugs were squashed” … but hey! In this way they can fix 15.000 bugs in their next release.
Great!
KDE4 was the reason for me to switch to Mac OS X after using Linux (and only Linux) for 8 years. And KDE 3.x was really great for its time.
Edited 2009-08-06 10:37 UTC
Maybe they just forgot to enable it, but I’ve seen a video of the new KDE4.3, and the window decorations (for windows, not plasma applets) still look as awful as they did before. Where’s the new theme?
There is no new theme, only Plasma got one. KWin decoration got the ability to have real transparency in theme, old timer like Crystal and new theme should so appear and use that feature. The current one is not really nice, your right.
You have misunderstood. “Window manager components follow plasma theming”, it doesn’t mean window borders are themed in Plasma style. That’d be crap anyways. It is the compositing effects’ parts that change with the current Plasma theme. But it seems to be very small changes. I’ve only noticed the text labels in Cover Flow and the Cube.
I myself am not a fan of the layout customizing tool that’s currently in use at least in Amarok and Kopete (since KDE 4.3). It’s very complicated and uncomfortable to use.
Edited 2009-08-05 04:58 UTC
Let me correct that for you – … window decorations (for windows, not plasma applets) still look beautiful as they did before.
You see, it’s a matter of taste. You’re talking about the oxygen widget style + window decorations, both of which I found very polished. The windeco is configurable (see how I rearranged the buttons), and it blends in smoothly with the color of the window backgroun (see unfocused windows) The widgets are finally the right size (I saw someone claiming they are oversized – wtf? just take a look, how are those buttons/drop-down menus/toolbar buttons oversized?) and clear, crisp, and readable:
http://picasaweb.google.com/CsabaMolnar/Computer#536639413732211094…
You can also adjust the contrast in Appearance/Colors to make it sharper if you wish.
Saying they look awful is nothing but arrogance – you can say you don’t like them, I’m fine with that, but at least you can allow for the possibility that quite a few of us like it. In fact, this is the first style I don’t really feel the need to change immediately, the first time that the defaults look great. Still, if you prefer GNOME style oversized widgets plastic is available along with a number of other styles (probably sculpture being the next best thing to oxygen).
Of course, this is a matter of taste. That said, a glance at your screenshot makes me feel like I was staring at rock slabs. Everything is so… gray. A bit depressing. I know that other DE are using grays (OS X, GNOME), but they use color gradients, which is more appealing to the eyes.
That said, the screenshots accompanying the press release look good.
Anyway, my pet peeve against KDE has always been the lack of general polish. That’s a bit hard to describe… When I use it, I just feel that everything was patched together instead of being designed. I believe that’s how many people feel. I know that KDE doesn’t benefit from the same financial/workforce support as GNOME, I am persuaded that KDE framework is definitely superior to the one found in GNOME, I love Qt… yet it doesn’t matter much when you just want to use your system.
On another note, when can we expect KDE 4.3 binaries for Debian? I want to give it a try. Unfortunately, Kubuntu is quite buggy, while Fedora’s policies are getting in my way (even RPM Fusion don’t have all packages I’d like).
Edited 2009-08-05 19:22 UTC
I don’t think general polish is an issue anymore, not at least since 4.2.x, especially of course 4.2.4. However, if you’re into desktop widgets, there are too many crapware on kde-look directly hooked into gethotnewstuff that it can easily give that impression. You can ignore them, or just use some of the basic, well tested widgets, or alternatively, google widgets…
About the colors – well, I have a black dell vostro 1400 (with lots of blue leds) so I was thinking of something that integrates well with the hardware
Hence my background’s black, the plasma theme is black (I mixed here a little), and the color theme’s name is gentle grey (I’m sure you wouldn’t have guessed 
Another reason that you see gray is that I allowed fade inactive windows in desktop effects, so they grey out slightly if not focused. Basically I like my black & white desktop because it makes colors even more outsdanding (icons, notifications, important stuff).
As to your last question – see, that’s the ONLY thing kubuntu has for it: the package management. I wrote a very long post a while ago about comparing KDE distroes, and the only ones available seem to be RPM based. Now with KpackageKit + presto plugin RPM on Fedora is not bad, not bad at all. They also have stable packages, but ZERO usable configuration tools, and the KDE menu is just horrible (like you can find settings in three different submenus with NO apparent logic).
That leaves you with OpenSuse or Mandriva. OpenSUSE has readily available KDE 4.3 packages, but if you’re coming from a Debian background, you’ll absolutely hate its package management. It’s sloooooooooow. Disfunctional. Plus you need to add KDE:Factory repositories, which would be OK if it was a one-time-act, but actually you constantly have to keep an eye on it because the next update may lend you alpha kode from kde 4.4 branch.
Now Mandriva – I know it’s RPM based, but even without presto urpmi (their RPM backand) was fast, snappy, seemed lightweight, and had all the features I needed. GUI is well designed, commandline is dead easy. Problem is, Mandriva usually lags behind with updates. The result is polish actually – it is the most polished KDE implementation I’ve seen, but for now, this means that the only way to try out KDE is to download their 2010 Alpha2. Usually they take great care to make Cooker (their development branch) reasonably stable, but I’d be careful with this release (they just integrated a new kernel shortly before the release). Plus they have a tendency to release usable 3rd party drivers (ATI & NVidia) right before the release.
If you try KDE4.3 and like it, on the long term I’d recommend Mandriva, seems to be the most KDE-dedicated distro, with very good package management considering it’s RPM. For short term, OpenSuse might be good if you just want to play around, unlike Kubuntu, they do seem to do some testing before releasing an update. And sorry to say, but I don’t know any DEB based distroes with decen KDE support. But recently, with PackageKit (that works on fedora very well) + presto plugin I don’t think there is reason to favour DEBs over RPM. I don’t see real difference between performance/features, except with OpenSuSE.
EDIT–> Forgot to mention Pardus, I’ve never tried it, and I’m planning to go back to Mandriva for good when their next release hits RC status, but the general opinion seems to be that it’s flawless. Might worth a try.
Edited 2009-08-05 20:29 UTC
I guess I’ll see about the general polish once I try this new release. Last time I used KDE (4.1), it was a complete disaster. KDE has been my DE of choice until GNOME started giving me a better user experience. Must be around 2005? It always had that amateur feeling to me. Mind you, it’s not necessarily a bad thing: it’s a reminder of being a product of the community (as corporate investment on their project is minimal compared to GNOME). I suppose that tastes can change with time.
As for my preference for Debian, it’s nothing against the RPM system. I’ve used Fedora for a few years and yum did the job for me. Debian just got tons of packages and doesn’t get too anal about patents, or potential legal issues when a package is free software. It’s quite easy to get packages for software outside the main repositories, too. Unfortunately, I fear it might be even more difficult to get the software I’m looking for in smaller distros!
That said, it looks like KDE 4.3 packages are already in Debian unstable; with a little bit of luck, they could be promoted to squeeze/testing soon…
BTW you’re not entirely right on the corporate involvement thing. The % of KDE which is developed for money is lower than GNOME, but due to the larger size of KDE the actual numbers are very close.
I didn’t see this mentioned anywhere else, so I thought I’d mention it here, since it involves a feature I think is really cool.
Mouse gesture support in KDE 4.3 is really good. It’s so accurate I can map it so that I write my name (Jack) on the screen in cursive and it recognises it okay no matter what the size. Hopefully my mentioning it will be useful to someone!
Mouse gestures are assigned using System Settings -> Input Actions. One of the more useful bindings is from a mouse gesture to a D-Bus call. I had real problems making this work because the D-Bus explorer doesn’t make it obvious how to actually call the D-Bus function of your choice. To help illustrate I have an example of it here:
Remote application: org.kde.amarok
Remote object: /Player
Function: org.freedesktop.MediaPlayer.Pause
Anyway have a go and tell me what you reckon, I’d be really interested to see what you guys think about mouse gestures, I really loved them since I saw them in Opera even though I’m a CLI freak. Cheers!
=) My openSuSE is now updating.
The good:
* They finally focused in stability.
* The overal speed feels better.
The bad:
* Oxygen theme, matter of taste of course.
* The air circles in plasma theme, distracting.
* Round borders in context menu, due to the Oxygen theme.
* The font in the calendar is to huge.
* Some plasmoid still make plasma crash, sandboxing anyone?
* Dolphin is slow some times.
* No pdf previews in icons, like images do.
* To much focus in eye candy, but productivity apps. like mail and browser still lack behind.
* No way to search for content, something like tracker.
* The side bar in Okular, no way to deactivate it (but maybe im wrong).
* Digikam takes to much memory (80 megas w/o any picture), and it uses marble as a dependency still when many of us don’t have any use for it, pluggins anyone?
* Many of the plasmoids are useless, just a few of them have a real porpose.
* KWin still is buggy and gets slow some times, driver issued? don’t know, compiz has no problems.
* Separators in panels? not intuitive at all, could be a lot better.
Hopely all this points will be fixed, some are minors and some are not that minors.
Edited 2009-08-05 01:22 UTC
Have you taken a look at http://nepomuk.semanticdesktop.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main1/ I have not used it much but it may fill your need.
Nepomuk is a semantic oriented search, and what understand it won’t be ready till 4.4, strigi was supposed to be the tracker of KDE, I don’t know if exists ot what gui doesn it has.
Both strigi and Nepomuk are enabled by default since 4.1, you can use alt+f2, dolphin search box or nepomuk KIO to use them, a “nice GUI” will exist if someone take time to write one.
Isn’t Krunner (alt+F2) the GUI?
Dolphin’s search and also the menu search box also use strigi (and hence present alternative GUIs) don’t they?
BTW, here is a hint: remove the default KDE menu from the panel, and instead add the Lancelot Menu plasmoid. Configure the Lancelot Menu plasmoid to present the “categories” (select from: applications, places, documents and contacts) as separate panel icons. The improvement is amazing.
* No pdf previews in icons, like images do.
->It is disabled by default to preserve ressources, but you can check the checkbox if you want, it will “just work”
* No way to search for content, something like tracker.
->Strigi
0Digikam is not part of KDE, Gwenview is
Hmmm, I like it, and they’re not that strong, but I guess you have a point there.
Yes, it is one of the area’s where the oxygen team still wants to improve a bit. They just haven’t gotten there yet.
In the Kontact calendar app or in the clock calendar? The clock one is SVG so it can be resized 😉
You can’t (easily) sandbox C++ widgets… The python, javascript etc widgets ARE sandboxed.
Same here, I’m sure the dolphin devs would appreciate it if you could figure out WHEN exactly that happens, esp if you did some profiling so they could fix it.
configurable.
You can’t tell FOSS developers what to do. Still, I think it’s not that bad – the artwork team does their thing, others don’t do that much graphics. Our theme engine stuff (like in plasma) just allows a few ppl to do a lot of eyecandy 😉
Nepomuk is there, has been for a while. Should work just fine.
Not sure if it can be deactivated entirely, but it can be collapsed.
I believe marble can be optional, not sure if packagers could take care of that or not.
Yep. If you have ideas…
KWin has far les hacks and workarounds for driver/X.org issues. We believe bugs should be fixed, not worked around.
Agreed. If you have a suggestion on how to do it properly I’m sure the plasma devs would be very interested in a concrete proposal. This isn’t easy stuff you know!
Agreed.
@Hiev
No pdf previews in icons, like images do.
That’s strange..i have pdf previews. Open dolphin and select Settings->Configure Dolphin->General->Previews and check “Postscript, PDF and DVI files”. You probably what to increase the “Maximum File Size” too.
The side bar in Okular, no way to deactivate it (but maybe im wrong).
Settings->Show Navigation Panel
Many of the plasmoids are useless, just a few of them have a real porpose.
That’s not a plasmoid issue. Some people like widgets and some people don’t. I don’t like them and only use the “System Monitor” plasmoid sometimes.
Separators in panels? not intuitive at all, could be a lot better.
System Settings->Appearance->Style->Configure and unckeck “Draw toolbar item separators”
Overall i think kde 4.3 is not a huge improvement over kde 4.2.4. Some things were fixed, some usability was added but some things got worse. For example, on my system kde 4.3 takes more time to load (time between the splash screen and the desktop). Maybe it’s a packaging issue and not a kde issue.
Separators in panels? not intuitive at all, could be a lot better.
I meant “spacers” and not “separators”, my misstake.
Im no talking about the Okular navigation bar, but the options bar (“Content”, “Thumbnails”, “Review”, etc).
Thx. for the other tips.
That is exactly what this hides. The side bar with “Content”, “Thmbnails”, “Review” in it. You can also press F7.
Dolphin now has search field that does just that.
my first comment ever
This week, i read article about the lack of distribution that fully implement the greatness of KDE. Then, that OpenSUSE issue.
To some level, i agree. Being KDE fans since Beta 4 (on Redhat 5.1), i’ve been having difficulties to find the implementation of KDE 4 that have a good “feel”. Maybe this is why, many people still complaining about KDE 4.
Then..why you, the the good guys from KDE camp, don’t try to build your own distribution. If you can bring this great product, im sure designing a new distribution is an achievable task.
Don’t start from ground up.Take Ubuntu (i know, there is Kubuntu, but there are tons of Ubuntu with Gnome variant out there. So, its ok), or whatever you like.
Wrap the KDE 4 around it. Since you are the one that fully understand KDE potential, im sure you can implement it the right way.
And, please don’t use any GTK based app,but only if you really have to.
Make it real.OpenSUSE community might even at your door right now
Problem with that is that it is a. far too much work and b. not our thing. Many KDE dev’s do work on distro stuff, btw, like Kubuntu and OpenSuse.
if they do work on kubuntu, they need to do more – kubuntu is the worst KDE distro i’ve ever used, and not improving.
The issue is that just keeping up with all the changes in the FOSS/linux software stack is a lot of work, and improving things is another hunk. They’re just too much short on ppl and without commitment from Canonical (which invests 99% in Gnome despite having 30% KDE users) it’s not gonna improve.
So why not work with Mandriva – they really seem to be focused on KDE (not that they have a bad GNOME implementation – actually I’ve read shining reviews of Mandriva from GNOME users as well). I think I read somewhere that KDE is looking for a “shocase” distribution – if that’s true, you need to find one that already has a good “baseline”. As far as I know (and I have tested the big four – Kubuntu/OpenSuse/Mandriva/Fedora – Mandriva is by far the most polished of all, and they seem to help out with other parts of the KDE software stack (like porting K3B to QT4).
Aaah, Mandriva. Personally, I like what they do, altough they don’t ship KDE vanilla (very very far from it, but the same goes for Suse) and their tools are GTK based. Problem is that Mandriva isn’t one of the big boys, and has proven to be a bit unstable (as a company) in the past. And their software infrastructure simply can’t hold the candle to the top-three (suse, debian/Ubuntu and Red Hat).
But I wouldn’t be against it – it would just take some ppl to push it forward.
I don’t know what you mean by the infrastructure. As a user of both for some time (11.1 & 2009 spring) respectively in my experience Mandriva’s infrastructure seemed to be better. I had constant timeouts with OpenSuse’s mirrors (and I tried a dozen in the area – SE Asia btw), and urpmi seemed far more snappier than zypper.
Also, I think with the past few releases they are getting their focus back. It’s true they have been unstable in the past as a company, but if you believe in KDE, if you believe that it can deliver on its promises – isn’t Mandriva the best choice? Their size works in your favour, just think about it. If you want to get SuSE doing something, you have to deal with Novell plus all the internal politics of the project. Mandriva still has a good name in the linux market, and recently it had some really positive review. All it needs is a little nag in the right direction (and being smaller than the big three probably means that it could be more responsive).
Assuming you are a KDE developer, why try nudging the big ones, when it’s far easier to get things done when you have to deal with fewer people, and with a project that seems to be already focusing on KDE with a recognizable brand name.
True, you make a few good points.
The infrastructure stuff I was talking about was about software. Yast is years ahead of many competing tools, esp for enterprise stuff. The availability of the opensuse build service and suse studio tells you something about what their underlying infrastructure can do. Novell and the other big boys also have much more resources to make a difference, Mandriva is much less capable of employing a bunch of people or sponsoring a lot of money to get something done. And Mandriva, while their desktop is KDE based, is more of a ‘best of breed’ distro than a pure KDE distro.
Still, as you said, it could be a more flexible company and very friendly towards us. I would however have no idea how to push it more – there aren’t many KDE mandriva developers, and to change that things like like good and very up-to-date KDE (development) packages would be needed. A page like this: http://en.opensuse.org/KDE would make a big difference. Latest trunk snapshots, development packages, a simple 2-click installation for all -dev packages for all software on your system, such things make a big difference for developers.
Yeah, I forgot about Suse Studio and their build service – in that regard, they are really outstanding when it comes to enterprise solutions. My perspective is more from the point of view of your run-of-the-mill user. I understand, however, that KDE needs to target both, and in fact for at least now, it needs to focus more on the enterprise, since that’s where it seems to be lagging behind a little bit.
Would be nice though if there were some talks about how to improve cooperation between the KDE project and supportive distroes. You mentioned Mandriva’s tools being GTK for instance… I don’t know much about programming, but I was wondering how much it would take to port it to QT, or if there was a willingness with some help on the part of Mandriva’s developers to do so. Not that I have a problem with their present UI – it doesn’t look too GTKish to really bother me, but it would still be a nice touch. Same goes for their notification system. I’d start with contacting them about future tighter cooperation, and see what parts of the desktop you can work together to improve…
Don’t forget we’re basically just a bunch of volunteers. Mandriva isn’t as open as OpenSuse, (k)Ubuntu and Fedora so it is true that it would probably need some help from the KDE community at large to get cooperation going. However, unless some individual developers are interested, there is little hope of this happening…
This train of thought does however raise an interesting issue. I don’t think everyone in our community (that is, the KDE community) is aware of our (market) power. KDE is, depending on the metric you use, the largest or the second largest free software community (eg linux kernel is bigger but that’s it). We mean a lot, and if we want something, others often go through a lot of trouble to get it to us.
Maybe this is worth a blog 😉
Thanks!
I think this is already another messy attempt to emulate the upcoming release of Microsoft Windows 7. Everything Microsfot does, KDE tries to do in subtle ways. Even the panel/taskbar now looks the same glossy translucid blue-greenish. It will be a mess running GTK apps. Majority of KDE apps did not even catch up with the horrid 4 series. And Oxygene theme defies the intelligence of any human being – flat and watery user interface along with tinier-than-mouse-pointer buttons… and I hate the confusing mind-boggling default K menu.
Edited 2009-08-05 01:34 UTC
KDE 4.3 is released now. Windows 7 isn’t.
KDE 4 started its design before Vista was released.
If your suggestion that KDE 4 and Windows 7 are clones has any truth then I think you may be terribly confused as to which one is emulating which.
As to which is “messy” … I’d personally give that crown to Windows 7, given the decisions made on UAC, whereas KDE 4.3 integrates very nicely with PolicyKit.
http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.3/
“The KDE Application Development Framework introduces a PolicyKit wrapper making it easy for developers who want their application to perform privileged actions in a secure, consistent and easy way. Provided are an authorization manager and an authentication agent, and an easy library for developers to use.”
Well… considering what’s been passing for “releases” in the KDE world the last couple of years, I’m not sure that distinction is very meaningful. Windows 7 prereleases have been around for a while now. And while I’m certainly no fan of Microsoft, I do at least give them credit for having higher QA standards for release than KDE4 has seen. Even for Vista.
What has that got to do with which is emulating which?
How can anyone conclude that the one which was started design earlier, and is released earlier, is an emulation of the Jhonny-yet-to-get-here?
“higher QA standards”? Windows? Surely you jest. All that I need to say to debunk that notion is “UAC, privelege escalation and MS internal applets”. There are many other things that I could choose to say about that, but that one will suffice to illustrate the point.
Edited 2009-08-05 03:49 UTC
And surprising enough, Windows 7 RC is more stable and faster than KDE4.
But not before Vista was designed
Nope.
Debatable. Aero didn’t appear in Vista design until late in the game (as MS was initially primarily concerned about things like DRM and WinFS, some of which still haven’t appeared).
KDE isn’t a complete OS it is just a desktop. It is the rough equivalent of Aero.
Oh, BTW … are you saying that Windows 7 is the same design as Vista? Are you quite sure you want to say that?
Edited 2009-08-05 03:51 UTC
In my own experience, it is
Aero was demoed by MS in 2003. It didn’t have transparencies and stuff, but it was there. I believe in 2004 I was playing with Aero on Longhorn 4074.
WinFS was scrapped and replaced with Windows Search.
Aero is a theme and a set of UI guidelines. KDE is akin to the userland of Windows.
Yes. Windows 7 is based on Vista’s technologies. What is wrong with that?
Just because Vista has a bad reputation it doesn’t mean that the technologies in it are bad.
Aero was just a weak copy of what Mac OS X first introduced in 2000, and KWin follows Compiz and Mac in that regard. MS hasn’t introduced anything useful with Aero yet so what is there to copy in the first place?
Same goes for the rest of Win vista and 7 – there is pretty much nothing unique in there that we could copy – actually, we have introduced things during 4.0 development which then showed up a short wile later in windows Vista builds… Can’t find the example, it’s on aseigo’s blog somewhere. Everyone copies.
But we can do things they can never copy – like the social desktop stuff, get-hot-new-stuff, and our architecture (esp plasma) is years ahead of anything MS can even dream of.
And about the vague liking of the KDE 4.3 look with vista or win7 or any other OS out there – I know the ppl working on the look, and Nuno certainly hasn’t used either win7 or vista, it’s his own work. Then again, KDE has windows, icons and buttons – I’d say we’re all still copying the Xerox interface.
Hmmmmm, and this would be after Microsoft went through a six/seven year alpha and beta cycle with Vista before they got to 7?
You people crack me up.
It is fantastic to see that the KDE project has such a tremendous pool of commits, and that major progress is being made.
All in all, it really was time for a “major announcement” on KDE, because lately I felt like every time KDE wagged its tail, OSNews reported it. All subversions, all betas, etc. etc.
March 3, 2009: 4.2.1
April 2, 2009: 4.2.2
May 8, 2009: 4.2.3
May 13, 2009: 4.3.0 Beta 1
June 11, 2009: 4.3.0 Beta 2
July 23, 2009: 4.3.0 RC1
July 27, 2009: 4.3.0 “shaping up”
I have Ubuntu/Kubuntu 9.04 installed on my desktop system at home. It is a 7 year old desktop with a P4 2.26 with 768MB of RAM and a nVidia Ti4200 64MB and Kubuntu’s KDE 4.2 works fine on it. I usually boot into GNOME because it is more polished at the moment compared to KDE (at least on Canonical’s systems). Performance wise GNOME is a little snappier than KDE (LXDE is by far the quickest as it should be), but I don’t seem to be having the same problems with KDE that others are reporting, although I did have them with both 4.0 and 4.1 so maybe I’m just lucky this go around.
Admittedly I just use Linux as a hobby OS and not for any serious work for which I use my Dell laptop running Vista. Of course my serious work is primarily Public Relations (word processing) and light web design (think Word Press and Joomla). I do use a lot of cross-platform open source software though, such as Audacity, Firefox, Open-Office and others. I’m waiting for KDE for Windows to improve a little more so that I can start playing with it more on my hobby box. It just seems like too much hassle at the moment when there is more I can learn about CSS, Javascript, and PHP.
It is better, but, however, Stripes was the KDE4 worst mistake.
Agree..i suggest to drop the stripe.
Yeah, i know, we can easily make it gone. At least, make the clean design the default one, and the stripe as optional.
Today UI design is toward simplicity, transparent and soft gradient. KDE 4 did it, so why adding stripe?
If it is use to tell user which windows is active, you can do it by soften the tittle bar font color for example.
You can never please all. The stripes are added because so many people complained about the lack of a clear sign for the active window. OpenSuse actually colors the whole window decoration blue (no matter how horrible it looks). Yes, in terms of clean design, no stripes would be best. Even the thin line separating the window and the decoration could be removed – and the early mockups by Nuno show it that way.
But, even ignoring the complaints by users (and we don’t like to ignore those), there are real usability issues with such a lack of visible signs for the active window.
So it became an option to have Stripes on the window decoration, which has been enabled by default. Feel free to tick the box next to ‘show stripes next to title’ in the windowmanagement config screen.
What “Stripe”?
from a comment above I gathered it points to the lines next to the title in the window decoration Oxygen.
Finally! Now that 4.4 is close to release, 2010 = the year of linux