KDE 4.1 delivers a next-gen desktop Linux experience

before I left for work. I'll be testing it and KDE 4 (4.1 final) later today. Should be interesting.

I hope 4.1 lives up to this review. That would make everybody's pain worthwhile.

I upgraded the Alpha 2 release, 666 packages to update yesterday. KDE 4.1, with the exception of just a couple of items, is much faster, much more stable and even a little prettier. It's a huge advancement over the 4.0 series and I am upgrading my work laptop, home laptop and my fiance's workstation and her nephew's to 2009.0 when it comes final. Great job, Mandriva. The only problem I am noting is that Firefox and associated browsers crash a lot. The battery function (kpowersave) actually seems to work correctly for the most part, although standby mode still has some issues. My screen constantly blinked between dark and light before the updates.

I installed it this morning. Strangest thing is that smbmount won't work, says it doesn't exist! Not had a chance to fix it yet as had to get back to work. The brief play I had it seemed dog slow compared to alpha 2, so I am wondering whether there's something funky with the install.

On Firefox crashing issue, I only find that playing Flash movies. The latest update seems to have improved it, but it's still not right. I believe it's something to do with interraction with Pulse.

About Firefox crashing a lot... we're experiencing it the same way on 2008.1

I downloaded FF from the web, it works perfectly...which is what I did in 2008.1 to get FF3, so I wouldn't have noticed it. I have personally found that the updates improved the speed a lot...a whole lot. I am impressed with it.

I'll take a loot at smbmount if/when I have a chance today.

On the FF crash issue. It happens to me very occasionally, about once or twice a month, I use about 30 to 40 tabs at a time. My partner, who never shuts her machine off, she runs it 24/7, and has FF open all that time (it's her main desktop), has FF lock up or crash about 3 or 4 times a week (she usually has about 13 tabs open). At the moment we're both running FF2.x

I have FF3.0 installed and have been experimenting with it, but most of my favourite addons don't yet work in FF3.x so I don't use it.

I haven't been able to test Mandriva 2009.0 Beta 1 yet, the first download had problems and it wouldn't run, According to the FF download manager my latest attempt has finished, so I'll try that shortly.

This time it worked, it booted and installed. I'll get to try it out this evening

Arch has had KDE 4.1 since Monday and it works pretty good so far.