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KDE4: It hurt, but did it work?
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Comments (46)
26 earlier comments in the full thread.
I'm in the process of installing Mint's KDE desktop version, and it struck me when looking at the KDE desktop that Visually the design elements seem to say stop, don't go there.
I've actually liked KDE 4.x implementations in Pardus. It works well and I think people make a lot of fuss about, well... not much. To me it's all a matter of personal taste.
Lets see, I tried KDE 4 at 4.0 it was awful and I removed it, sorry folks it should never have been released in that state not even as a .0 release it left a very bad impression.
Tried it again at 4.3.3, more usable but dolphin crashed on a very regular basis, plus various unexplained 100% cpu usage would occur even with the desktop candy turned off so i removed it yet again, it had improved but I still really didnt consider it release quality or usable, as a developer i crave stability nothing worse than losing work because of a desktop crash even if its only 10 mins worth of work.
And now the good news, im running KDE 4.4 with all desktop loveliness turned on and its rock solid, the feature level and available apps are certainly enough for me that I dont have to have KDE 3.5 around any longer, Kde4.4 is now my regular desktop, im also suprised at how snappy and responsive it is although this could be down to the distro (PCLinuxOS 2010 Beta 2).
In short KDE 4.4 should of been the 4.0 release and the devs should of waited or at least stuck an Alpha or Beta tag to 4.0.
As for the way Kde 4 does things in the usability field it took me all of an afternoon to get used to things and re-learn how to configure stuff and you know i think at least on this score the kde developers got it right I feel the whole experience is a lot smoother, I know its just a feeling and their is nothing i can really pin down but kde4 seems to make my dual screen desktop setup seem very natural where as in kde 3.5 and even more so in windows the dual screen setup never felt right.
Awaiting KDE 4.5 with glee :)
Tried it again at 4.3.3, more usable but dolphin crashed on a very regular basis, plus various unexplained 100% cpu usage would occur even with the desktop candy turned off so i removed it yet again, it had improved but I still really didnt consider it release quality or usable, as a developer i crave stability nothing worse than losing work because of a desktop crash even if its only 10 mins worth of work.
And now the good news, im running KDE 4.4 with all desktop loveliness turned on and its rock solid, the feature level and available apps are certainly enough for me that I dont have to have KDE 3.5 around any longer, Kde4.4 is now my regular desktop, im also suprised at how snappy and responsive it is although this could be down to the distro (PCLinuxOS 2010 Beta 2).
In short KDE 4.4 should of been the 4.0 release and the devs should of waited or at least stuck an Alpha or Beta tag to 4.0.
As for the way Kde 4 does things in the usability field it took me all of an afternoon to get used to things and re-learn how to configure stuff and you know i think at least on this score the kde developers got it right I feel the whole experience is a lot smoother, I know its just a feeling and their is nothing i can really pin down but kde4 seems to make my dual screen desktop setup seem very natural where as in kde 3.5 and even more so in windows the dual screen setup never felt right.
Awaiting KDE 4.5 with glee :)
Koriel --
How much oomph does your hardware have?
I have an OK desktop, 3-core phenom and 4 Gig memory, but a very pedestrian nvidia card (I don't do 3d gaming, care more about 2D for video).
If I can shake my distrust of KDE developers, I might be tempted to try 4.5, maybe even 4.4.
OTOH, I don't have that many annoyances with XFCE...
How much oomph does your hardware have?
I have an OK desktop, 3-core phenom and 4 Gig memory, but a very pedestrian nvidia card (I don't do 3d gaming, care more about 2D for video).
If I can shake my distrust of KDE developers, I might be tempted to try 4.5, maybe even 4.4.
OTOH, I don't have that many annoyances with XFCE...
Caitlyn, welcome back. Hope it was fun.
@Bob: Read the comments of this week's DistroWatch Weekly, comment #49, and you'll get an idea of what I've been doing in my "free" time.
I've learned a new definition of insanity: developing a Linux distro.
I've learned a new definition of insanity: developing a Linux distro.
> I've learned a new definition of insanity
Twice I've picked up Linux from Scratch, and put it right back down! I just don't have the chutspa.
Without even reading the comments yet, let me tell you that I Am Impressed.
Edit: Yep, impressed. Under the hood, indeed.
Unix in Hebrew, counting the seconds since 4,000 BC. :^)
Anyway, enough thread hijacking. Welcome back.
Twice I've picked up Linux from Scratch, and put it right back down! I just don't have the chutspa.
Without even reading the comments yet, let me tell you that I Am Impressed.
Edit: Yep, impressed. Under the hood, indeed.
Unix in Hebrew, counting the seconds since 4,000 BC. :^)
Anyway, enough thread hijacking. Welcome back.
I suspect more people could do what I did with that hdate-applet package than give themselves credit. It took no more than a knowledge of shell scripting, a basic understanding of a configure file, and security of knowing that I couldn't actually break anything by tinkering. :)
Back to the topic at hand...
I think how much people like or dislike KDE4 depends on when they first tried it and formed an impression and which distro they used. Some distros (Pardus is my favorite example) do KDE very nicely and some (like Kubuntu) do not. Anything before KDE 4.2.4 was likely to leave the user unhappy regardless of distro.
Back to the topic at hand...
I think how much people like or dislike KDE4 depends on when they first tried it and formed an impression and which distro they used. Some distros (Pardus is my favorite example) do KDE very nicely and some (like Kubuntu) do not. Anything before KDE 4.2.4 was likely to leave the user unhappy regardless of distro.
I love Pardus. But for some reason all the package repos are terribly slow to access from here. So for now I am using Mint-KDE. The desktop setup on that is fine, but it's just not as fast and responsive as Pardus.
@Dinotrac
My hardware isnt special, dual core 4Ghz Athlon 64 with 1 GB of ram running on a pretty bog standard nforce4 based motherboard and an old geforce 6800 graphics card, kde4 runs great im now putting together a multimedia based kde4 machine for my hdtv with the same hardware spec as my dev machine only problem with that is i have a massive flash tearing problem but that isnt kde's fault its adobes.
With your spec dino, which is way better than mine (did i mention im poor, GPL sofware will never make you rich) it will run KDE4 nicely, I dont know if its just me but i would swear kde4 appears to run or at least resopnd faster than kde 3.5 although i cant prove it, its just a feeling maybe they have used a lot of tricks under the hood or maybe PCLinuxOS 2010 has some awesome scheduling.
Im going to be posting some screenshots of my new kde4 desktop soon over at my blog in the next few days
http://www.caledoniacomputers.com/?page_id=550
I am making all my current software projects themeable on Linux for better desktop integration with kde4 and gnome its looking pretty good already on kde4 they still look naff on windows but thats windows for ya.
With your spec dino, which is way better than mine (did i mention im poor, GPL sofware will never make you rich) it will run KDE4 nicely, I dont know if its just me but i would swear kde4 appears to run or at least resopnd faster than kde 3.5 although i cant prove it, its just a feeling maybe they have used a lot of tricks under the hood or maybe PCLinuxOS 2010 has some awesome scheduling.
Im going to be posting some screenshots of my new kde4 desktop soon over at my blog in the next few days
http://www.caledoniacomputers.com/?page_id=550
I am making all my current software projects themeable on Linux for better desktop integration with kde4 and gnome its looking pretty good already on kde4 they still look naff on windows but thats windows for ya.
Hmmm. Qt 4 was supposed to offer notable performance improvements over Qt 3, but early KDE 4, from what I've gleaned, didn't deliver -- maybe because of Compiz, whatever.
BtW -- I run my myth box on a dual core 45 W athlon with 2G of ram, and an nvidia 6200. Works quite nicely.
Full screen flash is a problem on Linux, something that's been known for a looong time. What works for me is to drop the quality setting to low. That determines how much anti-aliasing the flash player does, and you hate to lose it, but 480dpi full motion viewed at the kind of distance we tend to watch TV from looks pretty good. Better still, many digital TVs (not to mention the nvidia driver) throw in a little anit-aliasing of their own, so the loss may not be a problem for you.
BtW -- I run my myth box on a dual core 45 W athlon with 2G of ram, and an nvidia 6200. Works quite nicely.
Full screen flash is a problem on Linux, something that's been known for a looong time. What works for me is to drop the quality setting to low. That determines how much anti-aliasing the flash player does, and you hate to lose it, but 480dpi full motion viewed at the kind of distance we tend to watch TV from looks pretty good. Better still, many digital TVs (not to mention the nvidia driver) throw in a little anit-aliasing of their own, so the loss may not be a problem for you.
Yep, Ive tried all the tricks to get fullscreen flash to run without tearing, including the quality lowering option, running the latest nvidia driver and also tried the Flash 10.1 beta still no joy.
I wrote a program so that I can watch the BBC,ITV,STV, Channel 4 & 5 here in the USA (they are normally geolocation blocked, my program helps to get around the blocking) but it only works with firefox and relies heavily on foxyproxy for url redirection so using something like myth, xbmc or boxee at the moment isnt possible.
Myself and the wife simply cant live without access to british tv, i know sad isnt it, so for the moment we are stuck with flash on windows as it works fine without tearing on that platform all the way upto 1920x1080, why adobe after god knows how many years they have had cant get it working on linux defies all logic.
All i can say is welcome to our new HTML5 overlords and bring it on!
I wrote a program so that I can watch the BBC,ITV,STV, Channel 4 & 5 here in the USA (they are normally geolocation blocked, my program helps to get around the blocking) but it only works with firefox and relies heavily on foxyproxy for url redirection so using something like myth, xbmc or boxee at the moment isnt possible.
Myself and the wife simply cant live without access to british tv, i know sad isnt it, so for the moment we are stuck with flash on windows as it works fine without tearing on that platform all the way upto 1920x1080, why adobe after god knows how many years they have had cant get it working on linux defies all logic.
All i can say is welcome to our new HTML5 overlords and bring it on!
@Koriel: Can't you simply get british TV from your local cable company? I'm in The Netherlands and I get BBC 1-4 and BBC World/Entertainment.
No cable where i am, and im poor so all i have apart from a lovely family is a 3 Meg DSL from cr@ppy Fairpoint so we make do with online streaming hence the need for Flash.
I did discover something though that Flash doesnt seem to tear under compiz with vsynch enabled but does under kde4_kwin compositing with vsynch enabled so it looks as if either flash is not detecting the kde4 compositing manager or that the kde4 compositing manager has a bug.
Unfortunately flash becomes JerkoVision(tm) under compiz so kinda rules it out as a halfway solution.
For those who like KDE4 i have a simple themeing howto over at my blog http://www.caledoniacomputers.com/?page_id=550
I did discover something though that Flash doesnt seem to tear under compiz with vsynch enabled but does under kde4_kwin compositing with vsynch enabled so it looks as if either flash is not detecting the kde4 compositing manager or that the kde4 compositing manager has a bug.
Unfortunately flash becomes JerkoVision(tm) under compiz so kinda rules it out as a halfway solution.
For those who like KDE4 i have a simple themeing howto over at my blog http://www.caledoniacomputers.com/?page_id=550
And how about downloading them? There are several plugins for Firefox that allow you to download flash videos. Can you make them work with your proxy modifications? Than way you could simply download them and watch them with VLC or any other kind of media player.
Koriel, threatening to derail the thread again, what's your online viewer? My wife does Chinese TV that way, with an application called PP-Live. What a bandwidth hog!
I've noticed that NetFlix streaming player doesn't buffer, very likely so it cannot be intercepted and saved. Damned Silverlight.
Full screen flash works for me, but I'm throwing a 4-core 3GHz Phenom2 at it. Bloat hasn't made that obsolete yet.
I've noticed that NetFlix streaming player doesn't buffer, very likely so it cannot be intercepted and saved. Damned Silverlight.
Full screen flash works for me, but I'm throwing a 4-core 3GHz Phenom2 at it. Bloat hasn't made that obsolete yet.
Quoting:My hardware isnt special, dual core 4Ghz Athlon 64 with 1 GB of ram running on a pretty bog standard nforce4 based motherboard and an old geforce 6800 graphics card... im now putting together a multimedia based kde4 machine for my hdtv with the same hardware spec as my dev machine...
Quoting:No cable where i am, and im poor so all i have apart from a lovely family is a 3 Meg DSL...I wish I was poor like you.
@Bod
I just use firefox+flash, foxyproxy, Tor and my own program SelekTOR which is a front end for Tor that allows you to easily select & monitor exitnodes in whatever country you like by doing this im able to get around the geolocation blocks various media websites impose on their streaming.
It all works very well on Windows but i would like it to all work well on Linux and KDE4 but flash is a major stumbling block.
I can now say im in love with KDE4 after a very very rocky start see my first post, and would like to reduce the number of Windows based machines in my house to 1 (wifes laptop) with the other 3 running PCLinuxOS, Slackware using a KDE4 desktop and XFCE in the case of the Slack server, but flash is stopping me from converting the media PC to Linux and to say the least its seriously beginning to p*ss me off.
I dont like downloading the videos prefer to just stream them so i dont use any additional plugins other than adblock, foxyproxy and flashget
I can now say im in love with KDE4 after a very very rocky start see my first post, and would like to reduce the number of Windows based machines in my house to 1 (wifes laptop) with the other 3 running PCLinuxOS, Slackware using a KDE4 desktop and XFCE in the case of the Slack server, but flash is stopping me from converting the media PC to Linux and to say the least its seriously beginning to p*ss me off.
I dont like downloading the videos prefer to just stream them so i dont use any additional plugins other than adblock, foxyproxy and flashget
> I just use firefox+flash, foxyproxy, Tor and my own program SelekTOR which is a front end for Tor that allows you to easily select & monitor exitnodes in whatever country you like by doing this im able to get around the geolocation blocks various media websites impose on their streaming.
That is just plain cool. Thanks.
That is just plain cool. Thanks.
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I can almost see the scandalous expose sometime in the not-too-distant future, the story of how Microsoft managed to beat off a plucky and energetic band of volunteers...
"It was all misdirection.
First we made nice with one of their rising star developers -- that De Icaza guy. Got him all excited about .Net. He goes and starts that mono project, and we play coy. We make nice in some deals and drop hints about patents.
The whole free software world gets up in arms. It was so money -- you literally could see them frothing at the mouth.
We shake the patent sabre and they froth more.
Meanwhile, we get together a small group of our most loyal developers and have them write the software that will bring home any and all users forever more.
We called it KDE 4..."