KDE 4.0 might be absolutely incredible.
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tracyanne Feb 25, 2008 7:09 PM EDT |
But I loath the new menu system. That menu system is one of the reasons (Yast is the other) why I so thoroughly dislike SuSE. There is a good chance, if I can't go back to the current KDE 3 style menu system, that I'll change ro GNOME. For all the goodies that KDE 4.0 has the new Menu system is the fly in the ointment that makes it unusable for me. |
| tuxtom Feb 25, 2008 7:25 PM EDT |
As much as I love KDE3, I really see KDE4 as nothing more than a Vista knock-off (Asbestos suit donned). It annoyed me. You can already get plenty-O glassy icon sets and superkaramba if you feel the need for desktop trinkets in KDE3. Wish the team would have worked on more bugs and better apps than try to emulate Vista. |
| herzeleid Feb 25, 2008 7:45 PM EDT |
The point of kde4 was a refactoring of the core code to make it more manageable and provide a better baseline for future enhancement. The fact that it might remind you of vista is probably coincidental. Did vista finally get multiple desktops or something? BTW when I saw vista, my first impression was "what a lame knockoff of linux". |
| Abe Feb 25, 2008 8:18 PM EDT |
Quoting:I really see KDE4 as nothing more than a Vista knock-off (Asbestos suit donned). It annoyed me. Quoting:For all the goodies that KDE 4.0 has the new Menu system is the fly in the ointment that makes it unusable for me. When it is all done and complete, it is going to be fantastic enough to make you forget the issue with the menu and the too much of the eye candy. There are two other menus coming. One is Tasty, which is a perfect combination (in my opinion) of the old and the new menus. There is another one which I forgot the name of. Just give it time and keep using KDE3 for now. |
| tuxtom Feb 25, 2008 9:05 PM EDT |
Well, I'm all about improving the architecture for future enhancement. KDE3 does have its warts. And herzeleid, I too thought Vista looked a lot like a Linux/Mac combo knockoff when I first saw it. But KDE4 seems to have adopted Vista's aesthetics too much almost, IMHO. The menu is similar...the glass is similar. Vista is not a bad looking OS as far as eye candy goes. I got an el cheapo Vista laptop a couple months back and was able to tweak it back to a Win2K look and menu without too much effort, and of course spent a great deal of time disabling the massive feature overhead enabled on startup (I always do that to XP, too). To be hosest, though, I never boot that partition except to help my (end user) president over the phone once or twice. He won't let me re-image his shiny new laptop with XP. Sorry folks, I don't get paid enough to mentor some end users into Linux...and execs are the worst. If you are willing to volunteer shoot me an email!!! |
| salparadise Feb 26, 2008 4:22 AM EDT |
Glad to hear someone else hates that slab menu. It's horrible and not at all an improvement.
Menu's - in the grand old cascade tradition, work perfectly and are more or less instantly understandable. This new method is unnecessarily complex and fiddly - breaking the basics of design in the process. KDE4 does look like it really really wants to be Vista/Aero. A brief flirtation with KDE4 on Kubuntu recently left me most disappointed. Maybe some of what I expected to be there will be present in 4.1. But on first use it appears to have gone as far down the "options hidden from the user" route as it was down the "dozens of options available everywhere you looked" route before. Some bits of KDE, like the right click "move to" and "copy to" options aren't just useful, they're fundamental. It's a shame that dolphin doesn't do this. I kind of agreed with the sentiment that Linus came out with about "the gnome disease of treating users like idiots" (though it's not just a gnome thing, it's a "the way things are going generally" thing). Dumbing down the UI in the hope more people will switch to it is a miserable way of thinking. By all means make it easy but please, some of us don't want our Linux desktop to become like some sort of Fisher-Price My First Computer experience. |
| jezuch Feb 26, 2008 7:36 AM EDT |
Quoting:Dumbing down the UI in the hope more people will switch to it is a miserable way of thinking. I don't think KDE4 did that. Many of the core applications were rewritten from scratch (or almost-scratch), like the panel, and it's not the case of "losing features" but rather "systematically copying features from the old to the new". At least I seem to remember Aaron Seigo saying that it's only temporary. |
| tuxtom Feb 26, 2008 9:13 AM EDT |
Quoting:Dumbing down the UI in the hope more people will switch to it is a miserable way of thinking. By all means make it easy but please, some of us don't want our Linux desktop to become like some sort of Fisher-Price My First Computer experience.EXACTLY!!!! If someone really needs their hand held that much they should stick with Windows or OS X...well, OS X, OK? Right now that paradigm is taking a wonderful OS and trying to clone it into something that is already available. I'm not for Linux World Domination. I don't want clueless end users using Linux. What's the point? To feed out egos? To say 'I told you so? To prove ourselves right for having that smug attitude that it's a superior OS (however true) for so many years? Profit? (Ha) I'm not saying it should remain a 733t OS, but it SHOULD remain a 733t OS if this is what it's becomming. I don't want to support those people. I prefer sharp, innovative, self-motivated people in my community, and I'll be glad to help the new users that fit that bill. But I'm not gonna talk to brick walls...if that's your gig then have at it; masochism is in the dictionary for a reason. I'd be a lot more worried about .NET on the server side than desktop domination. Every battle we think we're gradually winning on the desktop we're gradually losing on the server. |
| Abe Feb 26, 2008 10:41 AM EDT |
Quoting:EXACTLY!!!! If someone really needs their hand held that much they should stick with Windows or OS X...well, OS X, OK? ...Sorry Tuxtom, not OK. Think about what you said and post again. Linux is for all sorts of people. It is very diverse and flexible. You can make it any way you want it to be. It is no longer for one group of people or another. |
| tracyanne Feb 26, 2008 12:22 PM EDT |
Other than the stupid stupid menu system, I think KDE 4 is pretty good. |
| tuxtom Feb 26, 2008 1:17 PM EDT |
Quoting:Sorry Tuxtom, not OK. Think about what you said and post again.I'm entitled to my views and don't need to be a proponent of "Linux desktops for the masses" to express them. I stand with salparadise and Linus Torvalds on the issue of dumbing down to UI to accommodate what amounts to Microsoft's standards for end users. Clearly people have different agendas than me. Without the diversity of our views and efforts Linux would be a very boring place to be, indeed. Then again, I can't thwart the direction Linux desktops are going. I will always work under the hood, but I'd also like to enjoy a mainstream desktop that wasn't "dumbed down". One that didn't require many hours of configuration and searching for arcane features and settings to get it to a point that an experienced user might want it. If you will allow me to be more encompassing about it, I might suggest that the developers should consider different "modes" for desktop sessions, much like some distro installers do (i.e. - default, expert, beginner, etc.). Modes that would offer different contexts of help, menus and other features. As you said, Abe, "Linux is for all sorts of people", which means not just the lowest common denominator. |
| dinotrac Feb 26, 2008 1:50 PM EDT |
From what I understand, KDE 4 uses less memory and is far snappier than KDE-3. Sounds like a good thing to me.... |
| hkwint Feb 26, 2008 3:46 PM EDT |
Quoting:KDE 4 uses less memory and is far snappier than KDE-3. Add: Less source code so a smaller download, meaning less time to compile (for the few of us who have to, including me if I would go on using Gentoo). Probably no one at this time _really_ saw what KDE4 is; it is a very common mistake a lot of people make. Please be awere: I don't use KDE myself most of the time, the following 'wisdom' comes from a KDE4 presentation held by Adriaan de Groot, another one held by Sebastian Kugler, then there's Aseigo's blog article "Talking bluntly about KDE4" http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/01/talking-bluntly.html and the info Wiki provides about KDE4. It's a common misunderstanding people think Plasma = KDE4 (Kicker and KDesktop are part of Plasma)*. Plasma is the top of the iceberg, a part of it is visible to the end user. 90% of KDE4 is however largely invisible for the user. There' also Oxygen (part of the top of the iceberg), phonon (the cross platform multimedia API) and Solid (the cross platform hardware API). Efforts have been done on accessibility and, believe it or not, usability. The new start menu (I think you are referring to it) is far more usable for people who are clumsy with the mouse. My mother and grandmother have big problems using the 'hierarchy like' start menu; when the mouse is not on the menu, the menu disappears. Also, there's a very small space the cursor has to move over to go from a menu to its submenu. Even I have difficulties using the hierarchy-like menu system, especially when in a hurry. When it comes to usability, it's just of the worst ideas ever; though I assume other people over here disagree. That's fine for me, I understand other people like this Windows-like antique (at least to me) start menu. I hope the usability-team decides to give people the choice, and not only make available what they think is 'usable'. Then there has been this tremendous effort of porting KDE to Qt4 so it can be compiled cross-platform. I didn't yet mention Sonnet: KDE4's multi-language spellcheck, Strigi: A Beagle-esque desktop search deamon (not dependent on Mono), Akonadi: KDE4's PIM-framework, Decibel: KDE4's communication framework, Flake: Koffice2's shape programming library, Kross: The new cross-scripting environment of KDE4, KSVG2 (name says it all), Nepomuk: KDE4's semantic / social network system, and Soprano: KDE4's resource description system. So after all this efforts, it seems a bit weird to say KDE4 might be incredible but the menu system is bad. It is - formally speaking - a valid complaint of course, but it's sometimes a bid sad to see KDE4 is judged on its appearance; that's the point I'm trying to make. However, most KDE applications haven't been ported to KDE4 yet. This is one of the reasons KDE4 had to be released though users might still find it a bit disappointing and concluded it was not ready to release: Those developing apps for KDE needed a 'stable'/non-moving KDE4 release to port there apps to. When those apps are ported from KDE3 to KDE4 and from Qt3 to Qt4, it still doesn't mean you can 'see' KDE4. That's because those apps will mainly use the KDE3 technologies ported 'linear' to KDE4. However, KDE4's abilities can be seen as a 'superset' of the abilities of KDE3. So only when those apps are ported, and they use abilities found in KDE4 but not in KDE3, the end user will see what KDE4 is capable of. That's the reason KDE4 can probably only be seen when it's 'used'. At this moment, mainly the 'KDE3-subset of KDE4' is used. Quoting:Wish the team would have worked on more bugs and better apps than try to emulate Vista. I really hope, after my efforts of trying to explain KDE4, you understand that's a faulty remark. There's a KDE4 team, and KDE4 is a 'platform', not an application, though it provides a few. Then there are KDE-apps, some of theme heavily tied in the KDE-platform, other very loose and actually not even part of the KDE project. However, most of those app developers are not part of the KDE4 team. Those app developers needed a KDE4 platform (meaning not KDE3.99 or KDE4-RC8) to make their apps better. I guess that's what happens with Linux-distro's that include all KDE stuff precompiled and installed: Users don't see the difference between kdebase+kdelibs, KDE and KDE+KDE-apps. When you had to compile them all yourself I'm almost sure you'd have noticed these are 'distinct entities', and respective supersets of each other. But not everybody has these abnormality I seem to have liking to looki at GCC / emerge output, and it's great if all KDE stuff just works anyway, without having to wonder about the relations of the KDE 'building blocks'. *A lot of Vista-users/lovers had the same complaints when people told how Vista was only new eye-candy. |
| tracyanne Feb 26, 2008 3:54 PM EDT |
Quoting:So after all this efforts, it seems a bit weird to say KDE4 might be incredible but the menu system is bad. It is - formally speaking - a valid complaint of course, but it's sometimes a bid sad to see KDE4 is judged on its appearance; that's the point I'm trying to make. No I'm judging it on usability. The new Menu is for me terribly clunky and it flows badly, so badly I believe that I can't work with it, which is one of the reasons I thoroughly dislike SuSE. |
| tracyanne Feb 26, 2008 3:56 PM EDT |
I actually dislike the new KDE menu for exactly the same reason I dislike the Windows XP default menu, it doesn't flow properly. |
| hkwint Feb 26, 2008 4:03 PM EDT |
OK, I understand. Well, I suggest don't blame it on KDE4, blame it on their usability team. |
| tuxtom Feb 26, 2008 4:05 PM EDT |
For the life of me I can't see why they would have even messed with the menu in the first place when there are so many other important things to work on. KDE3's menu was clean, efficient, very usable and really had little to improve upon. I suppose it's human nature to follow trends and hop on the fad wagon, which makes me proud to resemble a primate. |
| tracyanne Feb 26, 2008 5:11 PM EDT |
Quoting:Well, I suggest don't blame it on KDE4, blame it on their usability team. I don't have a problem with that suggestion. However it still makes KDE 4 less than optimal (to coin a phrase) as far as I'm concerned. |
| Abe Feb 26, 2008 8:26 PM EDT |
Quoting:I actually dislike the new KDE menu for exactly the same reason I dislike the Windows XP default menu, it doesn't flow properly.I said it before and I say it again, you really haven't tried the "TASTY MENU" I have been talking about. It is the one that comes with Linuxmint not the one you are referring to in Suse, Mandrake, or PCLinuxOS. Tasty is the same as the menu we all are used to except, it opens the secondary menus inside its frame. You really have to have a look at first. You can find it here [url=http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Tasty Menu?content=41866]http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Tasty Menu?content=...[/url] Install it, test it and then let me know. |
| salparadise Feb 26, 2008 8:35 PM EDT |
The Mint menu is no better (or wasn't last time I used Mint) - you actually have to click on the menu to get it to close after selecting whichever option you want. This is hopelessly stupid.
There was/is nothing wrong with the normal (kde3/gnome) cascading menu style - these new menus are NOT improvements they are the result of people who should know better fiddling unnecessarily.
Too many cooks spoil the broth. |
| tuxtom Feb 26, 2008 8:41 PM EDT |
I just spent some time in a KDE4 session in Kubuntu. For the life of me I couldn't get any settings to stick (icon size, etc.) and could not get to the panel config for anything. It has a long way to go. In comparison, I booted up a Vista partition on a laptop...took a while to load up but was much more useable once it did. I'm not trying to prop up Vista by any means, but it is the direct competition KDE seems to be shooting at to a degree. I haven't followed the KDE4 project closely, but it will be interesting to see how they fare in the coming months. I don't see it being ready for prime time in the near future. Perhaps it is the Kubuntu beta packages that are whacked. In any event I'm sticking with 3 for now. |
| herzeleid Feb 26, 2008 8:56 PM EDT |
Quoting: I just spent some time in a KDE4 session in Kubuntu. For the life of me I couldn't get any settings to stick (icon size, etc.) and could not get to the panel config for anything. It has a long way to go. In comparison, I booted up a Vista partition on a laptop...took a while to load up but was much more useable once it did.Well let's see... in one corner, we have ms windows vista, the flagship OS of the wealthiest software company in the world, costing billions, and years in the making. In the other corner, we have an alpha testing release of a desktop environment. hmm, which one might be more likely to have a few rough edges? The kde developers have mentioned that kde4 is not a polished kde3 but is rather an entirely new project. They have also mentioned that kde4 is nowhere near the functionality of kde3. It's full of bugs, lots of things are not yet functional, and many apps and utilities are missing. Give it time, and judge the whole package when it's ready. |
| tuxtom Feb 26, 2008 9:51 PM EDT |
Quoting:Give it time, and judge the whole package when it's ready.I wasn't trying to be unreasonable with the Vista comparison. It was really just a reality check, as Vista gets such a bad rap. It's only the third time I've booted it, BTW. There has been so much hoopla about KDE4 that I installed it to check it out (per kubuntu.org). I haven't really dug into the development status, which I assumed was alpha or beta, but shockingly it's officially released as a stable version and has even had a maintenance release. They really need to throttle back on the PR for this, man. It's not ready. |
| herzeleid Feb 26, 2008 10:41 PM EDT |
> There has been so much hoopla about KDE4 It's a tad early for the hoopla I'm afraid... I think it may have been a trick to get more testers involved. I've been running it on and off during the past couple of weeks and it is making rapid progress, so maybe they do know what they're doing. A few weeks ago it wouldn't even start up, the session would crash immediately and boot me back out to the login screen. last week I could start a session, but quake 3 arena wouldn't run and the panel disappeared after a few minutes. This week I was able to play quake 3 arena (no sound yet, maybe an artswrapper-type command is needed) and nothing crashed. I do see progress, so I'm looking forward to 4.1 (which probably should have been called 4.0) |
| tuxtom Feb 26, 2008 11:01 PM EDT |
Quoting:...so maybe they do know what they're doing.Oh, they certainly know what they're doing. I appreciate all their work over all these years. I think the PR machine just got a little ahead of itself on this major version. Quoting:I think it may have been a trick to get more testers involved.Silly Rabbit, Trix are for kids. I think there is clearly enough serious investment in KDE that they don't need to resort to tricks for testing. SuSe, PCLOS,Mandriva,Kubuntu, ad infinitum. |
| jacog Feb 26, 2008 11:31 PM EDT |
Actually tuxtom - correction, it was indeed released as 4.0 in order to get more people involved in testing. How do I know, I hear you ask... Well, I kindly refer you to an interview on the Linux Action Show with Aaron Seigo where he pretty much says that very thing: http://www.linuxactionshow.com/?p=159 |
| tuxtom Feb 26, 2008 11:45 PM EDT |
My erroneous assumption, jacog. Thanks for the information. I have to admit though, I'm glad they're not manufacturing aircraft with that Q/A approach!!! |
| tracyanne Feb 27, 2008 12:50 AM EDT |
Quoting:I said it before and I say it again, you really haven't tried the "TASTY MENU" I have been talking about. It is the one that comes with Linuxmint not the one you are referring to in Suse, Mandrake, or PCLinuxOS. Actually I have, I just thought it was the one in Suse, Mandrake, or PCLinuxOS, just set up a bit differently, I didn't like it. The things is if the idea of the new menu is to make it easier for people who have difficulties navigating a mouse, then it should have been part of the Accessibility features, not the default menu system. |
| Abe Feb 27, 2008 6:36 AM EDT |
Quoting:I just thought it was the one in Suse, Mandrake, or PCLinuxOS, just set up a bit differently, I didn't like it. I too hated the way it is implemented in those distros. Quoting:not the default menu system. things are in flux still and there are multiple new menu schemes that are being explored by multiple groups. What I see happening eventually is users will be able to select one out of available two. The winner menu will be determined by users eventually. Quoting:This is hopelessly stupid. There was/is nothing wrong with the normal (kde3/gnome) cascading menu style - these new menus are NOT improvements they are the result of people who should know better fiddling unnecessarily. Too many cooks spoil the broth. The issue is not whether there is or isn't something wrong, it is a case of research and development to eventually select the most favorite and popular. If this is how you think of Open Source development process, then I am sorry to say that you are missing the main point of FOSS. |
| tuxtom Feb 27, 2008 8:22 AM EDT |
Quoting:The issue is not whether there is or isn't something wrong, it is a case of research and development to eventually select the most favorite and popular.Based on this thread I'd say the R&D is complete on that menu. |
| Abe Feb 27, 2008 10:21 AM EDT |
Quoting:Based on this thread I'd say the R&D is complete on that menu. I disagree. The posters in this thread don't represent the standard normal users. On the contrary, I think the R&D process just started. |
| azerthoth Feb 27, 2008 10:32 AM EDT |
Abe, yes you have made your positive opinion on this topic well known. However, I have looked at it and poked and prodded it so when I give my opinion it is as valid as yours, and anyone else who has actually spent some time with it. So to say that there is nothing you can say to me that will convince me that it is not a steaming pile would be an accurate assessment. I'm happy you like it, good on ya. However I am not sure what you would call a normal user if not the folks posting in this thread, other than most people posting to this thread have tried it and hold a different opinion of it from yours. To each their own opinion, and we then descend into the old adage about what else opinions are like. |
| Abe Feb 27, 2008 11:07 AM EDT |
Quoting:To each their own opinion, and we then descend into the old adage about what else opinions are like. @Azerthoth, I appreciate your point, OTOH, it seems to me that most people who didn't like it are the ones who tried and tested the implementation of Tasty in distros other than Linuxmint. i.e. Suse, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, etc... Linuxmint implementation, although it's still in development, is different and unique in its reconfigurability. That is what I was trying to get across and to make sure we are referring to the same implementation out of many. Like you said, to each his/her own, and I leave it to the future to see how it will develop. |
| tracyanne Feb 27, 2008 11:21 AM EDT |
I posted a similar comment to the one that started this thread on the Mnadriva Forums and every response echoed my assessment. |
| tuxtom Feb 27, 2008 11:22 AM EDT |
Quoting:That is what I was trying to get across and to make sure we are referring to the same implementation out of many.Hey Abe, I haven't tried Mint for a while now because they appeared to go with Gnome by default in their later release(s). If their Tasty menu is as good as you say it is I surely hope they contribute their work back to the KDE R&D process, as it is badly needed. I like Mint's philosophy, it just wasn't working for what I needed when I installed a KDE version some time ago. I've been smoking the Kubuntu brand for a while now and haven't been experimenting with other recent desktop distro releases. |
| tracyanne Feb 27, 2008 12:02 PM EDT |
Quoting:I just thought it was the one in Suse, Mandrake, or PCLinuxOS, just set up a bit differently, I didn't like it. The point is, Abe, I didn't like the way it's implemented in Linux Mint either. The flow is wrong. It breaks the natural flow of selecting a menu item. As I see it, it may work well for people with physical difficulties, by making it easier to navigate for them, but it doesn't suite the way the majority of people, who don't have those physical difficulties, interact with a menu system. |
| hkwint Feb 27, 2008 4:28 PM EDT |
Quoting:The things is if the idea of the new menu is to make it easier for people who have difficulties navigating a mouse, then it should have been part of the Accessibility features, not the default menu system. Though a good idea, it would make more sense to make the 'easy for beginners' start menu the default one, as beginners will have more difficulties changing it than 'intermediate / pro' users. Anyway, though some of you might not believe it as it seems you are a - varying from bit to completely - rusted in the way you use and think of the the start menu, there are good reasons to change it. You should read http://web.archive.org/web/20050610031031/http://www.symphon... (darn, that was hard to find) if you want to know more about usability; it all has a reason. However, if you are used to little usability, it doesn't seem to make sense. For example, I never use a file explorer to work with files (no, not even in the console), I always use the CLI to do that. It would be quicker and more efficient to do it in a file explorer, but since I am used to using the CLI and still have to find my way around in file explorers, I still use the CLI. Of course I can understand other people like to point, click and drag when working with files, and that a GUI may provide more usability (though that depends on your view of usability). Oh, darn, I could have made this point a lot easier: Some people are rusted using Windows, and even though Linux may provide them with more usability, they dislike anything they see after using it only once (Nah, this is not as in Windows, I like it more the way it's done in Windows), not willing to _really_ try it out for a month or so and only after that judge it. Of the people who really try Linux for more than a month, a lot of them keep using it as far as I heard. A lot of LXer readers blame Windows users stubbornly staying with an inferior system, but how about Linux users staying stubbornly with an inferior system? Same for a Dvorak layout for the ones being able to type blindly in QWERTY. One day using it is toughest hell, it makes your fingers almost think about suicide. One month means you really get frustrated of everything QWERTY, and judge QWERTY as the biggest crap ever puth forth by mankind (and when it comes to usability that makes sense). Still the world uses QWERTY, though it provides less usability. Why? Because users are completely rusted (apart from network effects creating an effective lock-in). So when trying to judge about usability of a start menu, you should study a group of people who never used a start menu before, making them unbiased, in contrary to 'us', long time users of the old Apple-style (heard that, not sure) start menu. Anyway, here what the guy behind SymphonyOS wrote about the case: "2.Nested menus are evil. A good user interface will eliminate nested menus since humans have a hard time targeting menus in the first place, let alone panning up, then scrubbing to the right or left in a 20 pixel wide corridor." OK, KDE doesn't 't use the SymphonyOS solution, but at least they tried to make an improvement, which is perceived as a deterioration. A lot of good things are thought of as a deterioration at first; and that's especially true for user interfaces I have discovered in practice. All that doesn't mean I'm a huge fan of the new style start menu (that's why I mainly use keyboard shortcuts in fact or type the name of the exec, I never use a start menu at all on Linux, except when shortcuts have broken) or KDE4 (I don't use KDE, Gnome or XFCE, but do use some KDE-apps). I'm just trying to make the point it's not fair to judge this new menu after using it only one day if you have used the old style for almost all your life. |
| Abe Feb 27, 2008 8:05 PM EDT |
Quoting:If their Tasty menu is as good as you say it is I surely hope they contribute their work back to the KDE R&D process, as it is badly needed.@Tuxtom, Although I saw it first on Linuxmint, it is available for the following distros: Ubuntu download(Gutsy i386 (should work on Feisty too)) SUSE download(suse 10.3 rpm) Slackware download(Slack 10.2 package by gohanz) Fedora download(i386 rpm by liviopl) Xandros download(Xandros package by matty323) Ubuntu download(Kubuntu gutsy by Yaccin) Gentoo download(Gentoo ebuild by franzf) other download(ALT linux (i586 and src) ) Mandriva download(Mandriva 2007.1 by Gerardo Bueno) Ubuntu download(kubuntu amd64 package by lnxusr) Debian download(Debian x86-64 bt GameMage) Here is the link if youwant to downloaded: [edited: to correct link below] http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=41866 it is installed as an applet in the task bar and It coexists with the standard KDE menu. Quoting:I posted a similar comment to the one that started this thread on the Mnadriva Forums and every response echoed my assessment.@Tracyanne If you look at the link above, you will notice that it was downloaded 35,675 already and 81% of voters like it. That makes me wonder if they were referring to Mandrake's implementation? If it is easier for people with disabilities, wouldn't that make it easier for average users even more? |
| tracyanne Feb 27, 2008 10:47 PM EDT |
Quoting:If it is easier for people with disabilities, wouldn't that make it easier for average users even more? Not necessarily. For example the magnifying glass tool (KMag on KDE) makes it much easier for visually impaired people to read text on the screen, but it does nothing but get in the way of other users. |
| Abe Feb 28, 2008 8:56 AM EDT |
Quoting:Not necessarily....This comparison is like apples & oranges |
| tracyanne Feb 28, 2008 11:56 AM EDT |
Also true. Making things easier for people with disabilities doesn't necessasrily make things easier for everyone else. A friend of mine has Cerebral Palsy, a pair of crtches and a motorised wheel chair make life much easier for him, such things are a pain in the arse for me. I find the new KDE 4 menu including what you call Tasty to be a pain in the arse also. I find that in this case apples are more suitable for eating at my desk and that the oranges are are dangerous for the life of my keyboard. |
| Abe Feb 28, 2008 12:49 PM EDT |
If you narrow down your scope and focus on the issue at hand, you will see what I mean. We are talking about using a computer and a desktop for computer users sake. :) |
| tracyanne Feb 28, 2008 12:56 PM EDT |
Quoting:If you narrow down your scope and focus on the issue at hand I am, the rest are analogies that illuminate the problem with the new KDE 4 Menu system. |
| theboomboomcars Feb 29, 2008 6:14 AM EDT |
When I first installed Mint, I liked the tasty menu. It looked nice, it was different, etc. But after a few weeks of use it just seemed to cumbersome, so I switched back to the gnome menu. I think it is good that they are trying to make the menu more efficient and easier to use, but the tasty menu is not there yet. |
| Sander_Marechal Feb 29, 2008 2:21 PM EDT |
For me, the problem with all these new menu's is imply too many clicks. Traditional menu's let me open my application in two clicks. One to open the menu and one to open the application. All these new menu's take far more clicks. Also, the new style menus are less "scannable". It's harder to find something if you're not sure where it is. With a traditional menu you can move your mouse around a bit and very quickly flip through all of the menus searching what you're looking for. With the new menus it's far more work because you have to click back-and-forth all the time. |
| hkwint Mar 01, 2008 4:09 AM EDT |
That's true Sander. My biggest problem with the 'old style' menu is it disappears if you accidentally move your pointer / cursor off the menu. One of the biggest problems normally, especially in Windows, is there's far too many things in the menu also, which makes it less scannable. That's probably one of the reasons the one who made SymphonyOS tried to leave out the whole 'nested start menu', all info should be available on the screen immediately. Back then it sounded like a good idea to me - though I might not use it (Ctrl+R + typing app name ore if you don't know the name use CLI solves all menu problems for me), but for some reason SymphonyOS is 'dead' at the moment. Looking for it, I found a nice review which also talks about the consumer (products are adapted to users) vs. customer (users adapt to products) 'problem': http://www.linux.com/articles/114158 last paragraph. This discussion probably touches the KDE start-menu decision: Should we adapt the start menu to 'new' start-menu users, or should 'new' start-menu users adapt to the 'old' but by many preferred Apple nested style start menu? It seems they've chosen the last, and are choosing to look at their users a bit more as consumers instead of customers. |
| Sander_Marechal Mar 01, 2008 7:53 AM EDT |
Quoting:That's true Sander. My biggest problem with the 'old style' menu is it disappears if you accidentally move your pointer / cursor off the menu. In Gnome the menu stays open if you move your mouse pointer outside the menu. You need to click somewhere outside the menu to hide it again. Works fine! With all the umpteen oodles of configuration settings that KDE has, isn't there a setting that enables the same thing? |
| Abe Mar 01, 2008 9:44 AM EDT |
I guess my persistence is paying off. Tracyanne not only wanted to close the chapter of discussing a new menu, she also went further to close the book. I wasn't being stubborn, I persisted just to keep the discussion going to bring out a better menu than what we have now. I glad others are joining the discussion. Quoting:I think it is good that they are trying to make the menu more efficient and easier to use, but the tasty menu is not there yet.theboomboomcars, I agree, it is not there yet, but with good discussions and feedback, it will get better. Quoting:Also, the new style menus are less "scannable". It's harder to find something if you're not sure where it is. With a traditional menu you can move your mouse around a bit and very quickly flip through all of the menus searching what you're looking for. With the new menus it's far more work because you have to click back-and-forth all the time.Sander I believe what you are talking about is not the implementation Tasty Menu in Linuxmint. Linuxmint implementation has the following features: One click to launch the menu; It stays until you click outside the menu area. you get three panes; Search and Favorites for quick select/launch of an application or group of applications 2nd pane is for application groups, which you only need hover over to display applications and application sub-groups in the third pane. So you don't have to make another click if the application you are looking for is already in the list. However, you do have to click to see a sub-sub-list, which could be made to open another cascading menu. Keep in mind that the menu stays open until you close it by a click on the outside. How many times have I missed on selecting an item in sub-group menu! Many many times and it is annoying like heck. Blame it on old age or physical disability. Another advantage this menu has is the extensive configuration features that makes it very attractive to many. Changing the size of the panes, and other parameters would be great. Making it flexible to remove or park panes would also be good thing. It is a good start. My point is not to force it on everyone, but to encourage the creation of a menu that would be suitable and liked by many users. Every one has different needs, preferences and working environments. One frigid menu will not be good enough. A kick-off menu is very important since it is the entry point, the door, to using the desktop environment. We need a better one than what we have. A flexible menu like Tasty would be a very good starting point. The developers should be given the chance to get it right. They will have this chance when we, as users, give them constructive feedback and criticism. Closing the chapter on them is not the right approach. |
| tracyanne Mar 01, 2008 12:01 PM EDT |
Quoting:In Gnome the menu stays open if you move your mouse pointer outside the menu. You need to click somewhere outside the menu to hide it again. Works fine! With all the umpteen oodles of configuration settings that KDE has, isn't there a setting that enables the same thing? The KDE menu does the same thing, at least it does on my Mandriva installation, and I di nothing to make it do that, so I guess it's a default setting. Quoting:Tracyanne not only wanted to close the chapter of discussing a new menu, she also went further to close the book. Where did I do that? Quoting: The developers should be given the chance to get it right. They will have this chance when we, as users, give them constructive feedback and criticism. Closing the chapter on them is not the right approach. They won't get it right unless people point out the problems with it. So far I've seen nothing in the KickOff or the Tasty Menu system that gives me cause to feel optimistic that they will get it right. These menus are great for people with physical difficulties and that is where it seems to me the thrust of the development is focused, and that's fine, but like crutches, which make it easier for my friend to get around, it doesn't work for me, and I suspect for the majority of people who don't have some physical difficulty. |
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