Sneak Preview For Coming KDE SC 4.5 249
omlx writes "KDE SC 4.5 is in feature freeze right now. Therefore, I decided to share some early screenshots with you. In general there are no major changes; it's all about polishing and fixing bugs. There are a lot of under-the-hood changes in libs, which as end users we cannot see. KDE SC will be released in August 2010." Note: you can also try out a beta of the release now, if you'd like.
Re:KDE (Score:3, Interesting)
Aesthetics (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:KDE (Score:3, Interesting)
If you don't know what to develop then break something and fix it. Desktop environments are done. There is no more work needed apart from "polish and bug fixes".
Re:KDE (Score:2, Interesting)
Exactly right. The only KDE I can still stand to use is KDE 3.5 and I pretty much don't even use that anymore. And then you have GNOME in all its GTK crippled, Mono infected crappiness. As far as I'm concerned Linux has ceased to be a viable desktop. I had hopes for it for so long... all dashed. Macports FTW.
It would appear Android is about the only viable avenue left for Linux world domination in anything beyond servers and developer tools.
One wonders the dynamic within in the KDE team that allowed them to delude themselves in to thinking the track they took with KDE 4 wasn't completely broken. As nearly as I can tell their only way to stay viable is to flush KDE 4, start over with KDE 3.5 as the base, and revoke checkin privledges for whomever architected KDE 4.
Re:KDE (Score:1, Interesting)
If the main issue MANY people have is that KDE4.x isn't KDE 3.5, why hasn't the KDE team made a KDE3.5 theme that does what you said? I expect theres ALOT of demand for it, why hasn't it happened, is it even possible? I don't think its reasonably possible at this rate for KDE4.x to satisfy KDE3.5ers. I'm in that boat myself, even though its rather painful to hold my place with 3.5 in Debian and Gentoo...
Re:YUCK (Score:3, Interesting)
so they can make a clean break from Windows to Gnome
I don't really think that's possible right now. Win7 set a pretty high standard for usability, and the independent-packages model can't seem to keep up with them. For example, how do you set up a laptop with Linux to remember the external screens it was connected to, their resolutions and main screen status? It's automatic on 7, and the initial setup is literally 3-4 mouse clicks.
Linux may be fine for servers, but Xorg needs to die before I touch it again.
Re:no kde here (Score:3, Interesting)
so geeks dislike kde. my time to leave /., I guess.
Is this implying geeks should love KDE? If so, why?
Re:I try every new KDE4 release, but... (Score:1, Interesting)
The bitterness about 4.0 comes up in every single goddamned KDE thread.
And that's exactly why it was such a terrible release strategy.
You can let go.
I know that I can, but it still tainted the entire KDE4 project IMO. This isn't helped by the fact that a lot of KDE4 devs continue to insist that it was the correct way to launch KDE4.
Get out of my way! (Score:3, Interesting)
Why do I need to care about activities? Why are my aplication not showing up in the tray? Why my desktop icons have windows around them? What's with modern KDE getting in the way of my applications?
Re:YUCK (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to mention X and Freetype still have horrid antialiasing and general font issues. I realise there are patent problems involved, but ugly is ugly.
Re:KDE (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of people flocked to KDE after Gnome 1.4->2.0 switch.
Now that KDE is also breaking things left and right in the search for their mythical holy grail, many of those same people don't know where to switch.
Me, I was fine with Gnome 2.x, but then I saw the screenshots of the mess that will be "Gnome Shell" in v3, and figured that I don't want to wait for that rug to be pulled from under me. So XFCE it is, for now, and hopefully for a while.
Re:KDE (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:KDE (Score:2, Interesting)
KDE4 ruined it for me. (Score:5, Interesting)
I ran Linux on the desktop for many years - full-time since 2003/4. I've actually - possibly temporarily, possibly permanently - moved to Windows, namely Windows 7.
I used to love KDE. Everything worked nicely, everything felt well-placed. The system made sense. KDE3.5 was pretty much my ideal desktop - I may have become used to different things since then, but at the time - it felt perfect. It was quick, nimble, stable, reliable, packed with decent features. But my main appeal... Amarok. It didn't start out this way, but Amarok 1.4 was a damned good player.
What happened? KDE4 was buggy. It was lacking. It was cosmetically challenged. As the releases went on, things did improve - but I still find I have less features and less usability now than I did in 2007. Even now(at least when I checked a couple of months ago) - why can't I set the clock from the taskbar to sync with an nntp server? How hard can they make it for me to mess with multiple monitors? Why make it so hard for me to put some files on my desktop? Having to manually deactivate all the sounds apart from the one or two I actually _want_?
It is still _my_ desktop, right?
Amarok... needs little discussion. The crux of it for me is I liked the earlier interface. It made sense. It's now completely different, almost catching up in terms of features, but I hate the layout. All I wanted was a list of albums on the left, double click to add albums to the list of stuff playing on the right. Let me move the buttons. I don't care for lyrics, nor the artwork, nor buying music from whatever place they've added as a default. I just want the damned UI that made much more sense than anything else at the time.
I miss Linux. It's rock-stable for me, easy to keep up to date. It's widely configurable, has pretty decent hardware support these days. I like being able to try a new distro on occasion.
But I'm still stuck on the desktop. KDE3.5 is going nowhere. KDE4 spent years as a beta, rolled out with deceitful version numbers indicating it should be good. Even as of 4.4, whilst much improved over the abomonation that was 4.0, it's feeling buggy and incomplete.
I lost interest in Gnome years ago. KDE offered - to me at least - a better experience. I couldn't go back to Gnome, having decided all those years ago that KDE had much more going for it.
What now? I've got Win7 running. I've installed Firefox, Thunderbird, Foobar2000(brilliant!!) and VLC. I genuinely have less criticism for this than I've had for KDE for a long time now. To the point where I'm actually giving serious thought to paying for it. (Yes, I know that's bad - but it really has only been installed for ~10 days. After all these years without touching anything MS, I had no idea whether I'd even still be able to navigate the OS properly.)
Way to go, KDE. Way to go, Amarok. I spent years singing your praises, converting people(not many, but a good handful) from the mundane. Now I've pretty much lost interest in you for the forseeable future...
Buggy pile of sh** (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm was a time KDE user up to and including version 3.
When KDE4 came out I used it for several months before finally giving up due to severe bugs that made it almost unusable.
Since then I keep trying it under the assumption that they've had time to fix the bugs- but it seems they just keep adding on more unusable features instead of stopping and cleaning up what they've already got.
I'm not a big fan of the gnome desktop, but at least it's stable.
Re:YUCK (Score:4, Interesting)
Or are you a Gnome user that fells a little trollish....
ps I have nothing against gnome users.
Re:I try every new KDE4 release, but... (Score:1, Interesting)
> Nobody forced you to switch to 4.x.
Every major distribution did.
> Either offer some constructive criticism
I did. Let me restate it. YUCK. Give me back 3.5 with Konqueror.
> not like you're forced to update to 4.x, for God's sake.
Had I not been forced to upgrade or downgrade by circumstance I would not have opened my mouth. In that case I would have been happy to see the KDE devs do their thing for as long as they needed to get it to a usable state, and to finally figure out that dropping Konqueror is essentially the end of KDE.
Every KDE application is being worked on for 4.x, so nothing is happening in the 3.x series. The distributions dropped KDE 3.5 (opensuse, you guys are jerks. KDE 3.5 is not included in your new distributions, and the KDE:KDE3 joke does NOT work. It's not even tested as near as I can tell).
> It's really starting to get painful to read.
If you think reading about complaints is painful, you should try having your entire workflow thrown away by people you have never met.
> immature little children
I'm glad you brought up the topic of immature little children. This is exactly how I feel about the KDE developers at this point. Children that played with something VERY important, screwed it up, then blamed everyone but themselves. And adding a few lies here and there to deflect responsibility for their actions, such as "We could not move KDE3 to Qt4" and "We HAD to rewrite everything.".
> if you don't like something, *talk* to them, they will listen
I think it is VERY clear to many of us that no one on the KDE team is listening. I would hate to hear it myself if I received so much feedback that my "baby" was garbage.
> Grow up, kids.
As Bob Dylan wrote, "I've heard deafening noise, and felt transient joys, and I know they're not what they seem". The KDE devs are chasing butterflies while the adults out here are left with a stinking pile of XXX to try to work around.
Re:I try every new KDE4 release, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Because it was correct. It was no different to any other .0 release for any other piece of open source software. Unfortunately, distributors simply have no idea what to put into their distributions other than to compile the latest release and then bitch and moan about it. That's probably why desktop Linux has failed really. They even started compiling up PulseAudio and thought it was a good idea to throw that in which was a far worse decision than including KDE 4.0. Jesus, not even communication with spacecraft has as much latency as PA. Alas, that's why I run OS X with a decent sound subsystem and CoreAudio. I have no desire to do the distributors' jobs for them and compile in a kernel with Open Sound System support.
It's their loss frankly. They're trying to create a cross-platform app in Chrome that is effectively rewritten for each platform. The net effect of that will be what happened to Firefox's ports - the Windows port was the best, followed by OS X and then Linux stuck on as an afterthought. Take a look at Eclipse and SWT as well - Windows port first, everything second. They then have a recreate all the cross-platform glue that Qt already has.
Release early release often. Jesus, how do you think something gets stabilised in the open source world unless it is released? People and distributors then make a decision to use it or not. It's not a difficult concept to understand. Really. You're also going to have to quanitify 'stability'.
Probably because it's more than just a desktop?