Circles of imperfection

[gruven]

I have now switched over to kde4 completely. Gnome just doesn't "do" it for me, and I have been limping along on it for a while. KDE has always been my desktop of choice, and now, kde4, is coming along very nicely.

When it was released it was extremely buggy and unusable, but with the exception of some programs, almost all of kde is ported to qt4 (granted, the programs that use the qt3 libs still run fine you just need the 3.5 libs installed, which isn't that big of a deal).

I really like qt4. It is smooth, fast, and it just integrates so much better than gtk. I understand that most people resist change, so that is part of the reason for all of the hostility towards kde4, and most of it resulting from buggy software.

Although, if I remember correctly, kde3 wasn't perfect when it came out either, and neither was Gnome2. IMO, Gnome2 is still as unstable as the newest kde4.1.3.

I have decided to go all kde4 now to start turning in bug reports so that I can make my favorite desktop more stable and better to use. I just don't like Gnome.

It has eye candy? I didn't notice. What I did notice though is that fonts look 100% better in kde4 (thanks mostly to qt4) and that matters to me.

[bigtomrodney]

I glad someone outside of the developers is happy enough with it. I keep trying it in hope but I'm dissapointed each time. It will get there. Qt4 is great actually, that's one of my favourite parts. In fact Konqueror (3.x and 4.x) is one of the best-looking-rendering (??) browsers I've seen.

I get the whole KDE3/Amarok1/Gnome2/whatever wasn't perfect when that was released. I just have to disagree with that slant. That was then, this is now and Linux/FOSS is a lot bigger with a bigger following. With deployment on netbooks and more OEMs offering Linux than ever before this is the wrong time to be rolling the dice and risking credibility. KDE's long term reputation and position will fade away with new-to-Linux users being let down by the latest KDE. Putting aside home users like myself, business users can't adopt at this stage for a variety of reasons already mentioned...so why call it a dot-zero release?

The biggest mistake has never been the big changes like plasma or Qt4 or even the fact that it is change. The biggest mistake in my opinion is playing with people's expectations. When I tell someone a software product is version 4.1 they will expect something mature and stable. Neither of those terms apply to KDE4 and that is the real problem.

I have a theory and it's something from my gut. If KDE 3.5.9 was the current stable release and what we know of KDE4 was sitting in SVN and in nightly test builds outside of main repositories we would see a different reaction. When you knowingly run a beta you treat things differently. Instead of dissapointment or uncertainty every word would be praise for the upcoming KDE4 platform. The magic of Plasma. The new Oxygen and Ozone themes. The wonders of Phonon, Akonadi and Decibel. I mean if it's this good now, imagine what it'll be like when it goes final!

[gruven]

I agree with you to an extent. I will have to argue that if KDE4 wouldn't have been released as it was, it wouldn't have come this far. It would be in perpetual beta (can we say google) and it would have taken years to get this far.

I hate to say it, but they are taking a page out of the Microsoft book by having regular users be their "beta testers" so to speak. That isn't necessarily a bad thing though. We will have a much better product because of the course they took.

For a complete rewrite like this, they needed more testers than just the users who build it nightly. Really, there aren't a lot of people that do that.

The release could have been handled better, but I really think they are getting the results they wanted, along with some bad press. But hey, any press is good press, right?

4.1.3 IMO is the first usable release, and should be release 4.0, but seriously, we would still be waiting for it if the users weren't testing it like they have been.

Like I said, the release strategy wasn't perfect, but it worked. A lot of people don't like it simply because it is different, but there are people who don't like it because it is buggy. I run Gentoo ~amd64 (unstable) so I am one that submits bug reports. I like it because it is different, and qt4 is just the best framework out there right now.

I agree usability up until this point has been almost nill, but it is usable now, and I really haven't had any crashes except for other DE's programs (such as firefox, but we know it isn't perfect, and other gtk programs). Kopete doesn't like me, but even in 3.5.9 and 3.5.10 it crashed on me. KDE-PIM programs are great, and I really like the new look (from qt4) even though the functionality has stayed the same. Now, I just wish Koffice would release on qt4, but the qt3 version works fine in KDE4.

A lot of user experiences depend on what distribution is used and the user level of experience with linux and fixing problems too. I am using Gentoo, so I compiled KDE4 from source, and am able to fix most of the problems I have. Most users use precompiled binaries that really can't be changed and are compiled for a generic multi-purpose computer. That could make a difference. Some distributions add weird optimizations to their binaries, and other weird annoyances. I tried KDE4 in Fedora, and for the most part it worked, with a few bugs that aren't present in my Gentoo builds.

Don't take this as arguing, I am just trying to bring out the good and bad points of KDE4. It would also be productive to find out which distro's put out the better builds of KDE4.

[bigtomrodney]

Thanks for that gruven, I think I was a bit heavy on with the criticism. I wouldn't like to be thought of as a hater. I just wanted to give my two cents...or possibly the whole dollar .

I will still try each release of KDE4 and I'm running the nightly builds for Ubuntu. A fair bit of bandwidth is dedicated to it every day

[minthaka]

BigTomrodney did say, what I wanted to. The truth is sharp, but it still remains truth. I would like to see in Mandriva 2009 Spring KDE3 as default option, but also to have a full KDE4 as a metapackage. I prefer stability and usability over the look.