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Dec
26
10 Things I Hate About KDE4 RC2+
Filed Under kde4
KDE4 has a lot of hype. It is a significant change, reportedly a big jump forward. There is a lot of new technology and names: Plasma, Oxygen, Phonon, Okular, Solid and more . Depending on what you read, and where you read it, it is either the second coming of the DE Christ, or the first coming of the DE Anti-christ. I decided to live with KDE 4 RC2+ on OpenSuse for an entire month, Dec 11 - Jan 11th (the release date) and record my experiences. I’ll be publishing an article a day about KDE 4 through the release.
The desktop computer I had recently reviewed from Geeks.com (the Pentium 4 Geek kit) served as my test system. It has been solid. The OS is openSUSE 10.3, installed via 1Click. I’m updating RC2 daily. The hardware is reasonably modern, a Pentium 4 based system. I upped the RAM to 3 gigs from 1 gig. I was ready to go. Knowing how you haters are, I figured the best way to start this series is with link bait. I present you with:
10 things I hate about KDE 4 RC2+ (the openSuse flavor) !
10. Crashy and inconsistent. Dragging a widget to the Panel wrecks it, every single time. I get some garbled half-bar, end up having to log out and log back in only to find the widget did not go into the TBR. Key combos, like Cntl + F8 (to show all desktops) work some of the time, other times do things like CLOSE THE WORD PROCESSOR i AM USING WITHOUT WARNING, making me lose everything I have typed. Other times KDE4 will just crash without warning. I will say this, the quantity of crashes keeps diminishing with each update.
9. I’m stuck with a big, fat Panel. One of the first things I typically do when running a new system is resize the taskbar. I like my taskbars like Americans like their female celebrities, super thin. I can’t change the size of the taskbar (or for that matter get widgets to go into it) as far as I can tell. I’m a KDE freak. One of my complaints about the 3 series of KDE is that it lacks configuration options! Getting stuck with a huge Panel with no way to change it creates a small feeling of hostility, like I’m at the mercy of what someone thinks my computer should look like. This brings me to petty point eight:
8. Right clicking on the Panel does nothing. For some reason this makes me nuts. I wouldn’t even mind it if a box appeared telling me “nothing to see here!” Instead, I feel like I am locked out of something. It might not make sense, but do us Linux users make sense?
7. Space wasting translucent strip on top of the Panel. It might look nice, but it gets old very quickly.
6. Get your Dolphin out of my Konqueror, or let me do it. I have no problem with Dolphin. It seems to work well as a basic file browser. I thought I had read that Konqueror would use Dolphin as a file browser, but you could change this. I can’t see how to do it, and now I feel like I am using something neutered. Things that are part of my daily life, right clicking and choosing “Extract here” or the excellent “Move to” or “Copy to” are just gone. I’m hoping it is just an add-on package that isn’t ready or that I have overlooked, because if these things fall out of KDE 4 I see problems.
5. Desktop Icons from KDE 3 sessions get ugly and crazy. This might be a specific Opensuse issue. When I log into KDE 4, all of the desktop icons sit in a big pile in the middle of the desktop. If I spread them out, they get chopped and become ugly half-icons, some showing a translucent box around them. It is simple enough to close them, I don’t need desktop icons anyway, but it is still an annoyance and unpleasant to look at.
4. Right click opens both the file and a dialog in Dolphin. I’m sure this will change upon final release, but man, I really hate this.
3. Why do I want to “Zoom out” and “Zoom in”? I’m given these choices from the little wrench in the upper corner of the screen, but I don’t know why I would want to do that, or what purpose it serves.
2. Blurry fonts. Fonts are blurry in Ocular and KWord, which I am using to write this. I feel like I need glasses.
1. Upcoming Firestorm. This is the real reason I wrote this. It is only recently that I have seen recommendations that people hold off until KDE 4.1 to really use series 4. Unfortunately, the expectations are so high that when people do use it for the first time anger might be the first emotion they feel. That is a shame. I can see countless posts like this all over the internet. I hope people get some sense of perspective about the huge amount of effort that has gone into KDE 4.
I’m impressed with KDE 4, this post aside. It has become usable very quickly. It will take months for some of the radical changes to bear fruit. Complaints will be listened to and addressed. Change isn’t easy, and for those of us who love KDE, this is a big change. I had a hard time coming up with ten things I hate about KDE 4. Tomorrow I will give you ten things I love about it, it will be much easier to write.
Comments
38 Responses to “10 Things I Hate About KDE4 RC2+”
I agree with all your points, have noted the very same problems.
This means I will be one of the people waiting for 4.1 or if openSuSE 11.0 arrives give KDE 4.0 a try or downgrade to 3.5.8
I also agree with almost all your points! 8 and 9. Maybe the “backends” ar RC quality, put the interface is at best beta. I’ll be waiting too for openSUSE 11.0. Now I’m using Fedora8, that has an awful KDE and I got used to the 2.20 gnome.
@Eerde and @drem,
Thanks for the comments. I’m glad to hear you agree. I’m looking forward to pointing out the positives I’ve found.
I appreciate the feedback,
Rich
I agree with all your points. I tried the RC2 on Ubuntu and I found it really unstable for a Release Candidate. And I could add the blue KDE logo in the default theme to the list =). It looks really bad on the black panel. I think they should change it to something “cooler”.
Agree with most.
I would also add that the new kmenu, although some good additions, the programs part of it makes you have to click too many times to get to apps that with kde 3.5 would requiere only one click and in a much faster way.
It doesn’t take advantage of the screen, and uses only a minimal portion what makes you have to scroll too much.
I agree with a lot of your points and that’s just the start of things: what exactly is the reasoning behind making dolphin the default? why is it that there isnt an *easier* option to change the default rather than either resorting to changing some obscure, utterly random config file *somewhere* or uninstalling dolphin entirely? for that matter, why is it that you *still* need to go into the kmenu editor to change any of the menu entries no matter how small they are? why isn’t there a way to drag and drop the menu entries where you like with an option to set back to default if you accidentally fubar the menus? come on kde, you’ve done well so far, why not impress us by making things easier to do yet retain the ability to manually configure things for the more advanced of us?
just my two cents
Common!. It’s not the finale realease.
Basically, the time from now till the 11th is being dedicate to resolve bugs!. That’s the point. Any RC is supposed to be crashy and insconsistent. You can complain when it’s tagged as final and continue to be crashy.
It has been said that the panel won’t be in the final realease. It seems very probable for the KDE 4.0 to have a configurable panel, and not that big. Read through the kde’s commit digests.
“Zoom in” and “zoom out” are meant for visually disabled people or very special uses, ie. small screens… If you don’t need it, don’t complain for having it because it’s a big improvement for a big portion of the population.
But, anyway. I you find KDE4 crashy I encourage you report bugs!, join the IRC channels and help all the volunteers that make KDE possible to have a great finale release.
RC’s are *NOT* supposed to be crashy and inconsistent. They’re supposed to be quite stable. A RC should not crash often.
Thanks everyone for commenting.
@Miguel - I don’t mind the new menu, but I can understand what you are saying. One trick is to right click an application you use frequently and set it as a favorite. The old menu is a choice, you can always go back to that.
@Mike - Great points. I hope to see the issues you raise addressed.
@Miguel Branco - Thanks. My compliant about Zoom out and Zoom in is that they are there and at this point there is no explanation what they do. Now that you tell me, they sound very helpful.
@Joao - That point is overlooked frequently. People are calling me an idiot for complaining that an RC2 (!) is crashy. As I mention, it is improving though.
I appreciate everyone’s comments. Thank you.
No, you really shouldn’t have to complain about software being “crashy” when it’s at the RC stage. That’s what beta is for. “Release Candidate” means “we think it might be ready.”
I forgot to mention (and that’s for Miguel) that an old menu alike for KDE4 is on the way, one of the latest KDE’s commit diggest covered the theme.
As we talk about free software done in the community by VOLUNTEERS I don’t get the point of discussing if this is beta or RC or crashier or more inestable or… than… See, I translate KDE into my language and I read literally THOUSANDS of line of code.(Seriously). What I’ve seen so far is a HUGE amount of new (and most of the time small nice) feature all through the desktop!. Especially in Kword, Krita and Kopete. In Kword, take it as an example, typing mistakes like DOuble caps or multiple spaces will be corrected immediately. So, It frustrates me to see entries like this one pointing out the worst of KDE4 as KDE boys are doing a huge huge work.
My biggest complaint is that the RC feels like an alpha from the user interface side of things. It took me quite a while to figure out what each UI element was attempting to do and it feels way to much time has been spent on glitter and next to nothing on polish, which is really what makes a UI stand out. See Apple as an example.
hmmm….
I was very much under the impression that the KDE team had made public the fact that the 4.0 release is a developers release and that the first “consumer” release will really be 4.1. 4.0 is a complete rewrite of the DE.
I think these remarks would be more constructive posted on the KDE bugzilla then in a public slagging off of the KDE developers work.
You really can’t figure out how to get the panel dialog in KDE 3.5.x?
Right click an empty section of the panel. Select “Configure Panel…”.
Its the “Size” option at the bottom of the dialog.
Or,
Open the “Control Center”. Select “Desktop” -> “Panels”.
Its the “Size” option at the bottom of the dialog.
I would like to point out that almost ALL of these issues are being worked on, in fact most have been dealt with in SVN already. RC2 was dated almost 2 days after it was released, plasma is still not done but I am confident that the panel and icon issues will be fixed by release. In fact, the plasma maintainer has stated VARIOUS times that the panel is NOT the final panel.
There for, please shut up, all you’re doing by complaining in your blog is SLOWING DOWN the process of fixing the issues because developers have the then deal with telling people the EXACT same things they’ve been saying for the past month..
So please, quit complaining.
Well, every good thing making needs time. KDE4 is just scratching the surface of possibilities. In this stage we can see more the platform instead of the final desktop (which will be marvelous). Many graphical item are still in progress. New ideas are appearing all the time. And the pressure from the public is huge. This all show us what important became the KDE project. But in the end mos of us will be happy with KDE4
Great article. I’m looking for the next.
I’m just an excited punter waiting to try and use KDE4 and can’t see why Stephen is getting so cross at this blog. I’m sure that everyone is working flat out and doing their best, but that doesn’t mean that articles like this are insulting in some way. It seems to me an honest blog that in no way is demeaning to the KDE team.
I’m sure that KDE4 will be great, not perfect, and will just get better and better with time.
Why do Linux users always get so het up at each other….
So far I think KDE4 is coming along nicely, but you’re right that there are still a lot of strangeness there
“Zoom out” I find useful when I accidentally drag a plasmoid underneath the panel. As far as I have found, the only way of reaching it again is to zoom out. The plasmoid stays where it is, while the panel is moved away from it, allowing you to drag
I can’t see how zoom in/out can help with accessibility, since all I’m able to do is make it smaller, not bigger. And I don’t think anyone has the handicap of only being able to see smaller text
I agree with the most of what you said but we should not forget that KDE 4 is still not released. I was also told that the taskbar is only entative and that it will be quite different by the time KDE 4 is released.
I can’t understand the complaints about the new menu because I personally find it very usable and there is the “Favourites” tab. It only needs a bit of polishing and a few eye-candies. But for those who don’t like the new menu, the old fashion KDE 3+ menu is available as a plasmoid, not sure if one has to install the Plasma extra-gear to get it but I have tried it already. The only problem is that one can’t drag and drop it into the present panel like the author wrote.
KDE 4 will be the most innovative and beautiful desktop in the Linux/Unix world and I am sure that it will leave the other proprietary competitors behind in maximum 1 year’s time. All we have to do is support the devs, show our appreciation for their hard work, dedication and effort and exercise a little patience
The problem with blogs like these are that developers see them, and their moralle goes down…they have no motivation.
This blog offers no constructive ideas, just complaints, Aaron Seigo has mentioned many times that he is tired of these types of blogs and that all they’re doing is hurting the development process. By posting this blog, you cought the attention of developers who could have been coding and fixing the very issues you bring up. And instead of complaining about known publicized issues, you could have reported bugs that are unknown.
You’re wasting everybodies time.
@ Stephen: I do understand your concerns very much and especially the negative impact that the wrong vibes might have on the development process but I don’t think that the developers will allow these things to drag them down or demotivate them. And personally I don’t see the author putting down developers. He gave his reasons for writing what he wrote before he wrote it and he also said that his next article will be about 10 things that he likes about kDE 4. If the 10 things that he criticized are being worked on (as they are) and will be fixed by release then i am sure that very soon he will write an article about 20 or 40 things that he likes about KDE 4. Critisms shouldn’t be always seen as destructive because almost all of them can be used constructively
10, 9, 8, 7, 5 and 3 are all actually plasma related, so this could be joined in just one thing.
7 is actually not a problem if you don’t fullscreen your apps. With resolutions higher than 1024×768 fullscreening in most cases doesn’t make sense. If I was a KDE developer, I would remove the fullscreen button from the window decoration.
Sorry I meant “maximize” not “fullscreen”
I keep my monitor at very high resolution to provide a “big picture” view, but sometimes need to zoom in to read small text (such as on a CSS-controlled web page or in a text-oriented application), or to check pixel alignment during software development.
On Gnome+Compiz, super-2 gives zoom and super-3 gives even greater zoom; super-1 returns to normal. On Windows XP, I bought a Microsoft Comfort 3000 mouse that includes a single zoom level controlled by a thumb-button on the mouse itself (not quite as useful, but that’s the “price” of using Windows).
I approve of KDE 4 including a zoom function as well. It’s very useful.
Thanks for the comments everyone. To Stephen’s points in particular, I thought I made it clear in the writing that this was first in a series, written kind of tongue in cheek. I in no way meant to “demoralize the developers”. I even mentioned I had a hard time coming up with ten things. Part two, Ten things I love about KDE 4 is taking time to write, particularly because there is so much good about it. Frankly, I’m surprised this even got attention. I’m grateful it did. Talk about demoralization–I’ve been called an “asshole”, and “idiot”, “dumbass” and have been openly questioned about why I even bother to write. I can take it, if anything it is funny. Once I get part two up and written it will hopefully become clearer where I am going with this.
Again, thanks for the comments,
Rich
According to http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=152963 on point 6 you can use the Konqueror profiles, to de-dumb down Dolphin. When I tried file-managing in Konqi though with rc1, it was completely broken and crashed.
Things have improved but as one reason I use KDE is the integration of web/file-mangler and io-slaves in Konqi, I found Dolphin as served highly annoying,
Too much hype, too little. Now I have to listen this bullshit that kde 4.0 is for developers.
There will be a lot of disappointmented kde users after this realese.
You have to remember that all of this does get back to the developers, because of all the negative, the devs spent about 2 hours last night arguing when they could have been developing. It isn’t you single handedly that causes these things, but it is the amount of negativity that is a result of the combined articals on the downfalls of KDE4. KDE 4.0 has been known from the beginning to not be the KDE 4 that everyone expected. There will be bugs, inconsistencies, and various other problems. But it’s all being worked on. The hardest part of development has been accomplished, now what’s left is to iron out the bugs, and by the next major (or minor) release, KDE 4 will really shine. It already, in my opinion, is way more innovative than Gnome, and previous kde releases. I beleive this may be the first open source project that realizes that the GUI is important, and that to be successful it must look good as well. That right there is innovation.
And don’t think that because KDE 4 will not be mainly intended for main stream that it isn’t going to be as good as promised. It has already exceeded my expectations. I’m writing this from a Konqueror window. Last weak konqi could barely be used to search google.
Lets also take a look at OS X, OS X wasn’t quite as polished, and ready in it’s initial release. In my opinion it was worse off than KDE is. Look at what happened, now it can be seen as extremely successful.
The 4.0 release is a good thing. If we were to post pone release again, it would not do any good, because the bugs being reported are being reported by the current set of testers, if KDE gets released it will be opened up to a whole new set of people, and then new bugs can be found, ironed out, and fixed. Don’t discredit that by pouring negativity into the community.
The applications may benefit from having new testers, to boldly seek out new bugs, but the Environment as a whole hasn’t been -rc worthy.
That then becomes a problem, when end-users get hold of it; you only get to make 1 first impression.
The article does a good job of explaining the impression a KDE3 user has when trying out KDE4. What reaction are the developers making when such general points are made in bug reports?
Do you really think it’ll do any good at all, to have an order of magnitude more users, who aren’t regarding themselves as beta-testers, then think about filing the same bug reports? But then actually probably just slink back to an alternative, only to sound off in some unofficial channel somewhere.
Very good points Stephen but like the author said, it wasn’t and isn’t his intention to pour negativities into the community. Fact is that negativities can’t be avoided. I remember how Leopard was tongue lashed shortly before it was released, how negative the critics were (some of which Apple used to improve the final release) and now I only read about how superior Leopard is in comparison to other DEs. KDE4 will be a hit, just wait and see.
@RD - i don’t beleive you’ve tested the latest SVN, as it is definitely ready for a release. The bugs that do occur are because of outstanding bugs in the toolkits mostly, there is still last minute things going in, and I think that in a few days, the tagging of KDE 4.0 will occur at a time which kde4.0 is very stable and very usable.
@Bobby - The author sent me an email explaining some things, I have no hard feelings. I’m just tyring to clarify where kde 4 is at.
@Everyone - If you don’t feel comfortable using the very useable kde 4, then go ahead and fall back to the very usable kde3, kde 4.0 will not be everything that is promised for kde4, but it is definitely in my opinion far more advanced than anything i’ve used so far.
[...] 10 Things I Hate About KDE4 RC2+ [...]
I have used dolphin and it really is annoying to give up on a lot of useful features, including copy to… and move to… wherein my frequently used folders very rarely change (do you know how to control the number of entries that appear?)
Dolphin doesn’t even take advantage of KParts. They dropped the back/forward button, saying it made it look like a web browser, but then we don’t always traverse up n down a single monocot directory tree.
If someone knows how to make konqueror the default file manager, i would like to know.
@Stephen - “@RD - i don’t beleive you’ve tested the latest SVN, as it is definitely ready for a release. The bugs that do occur are because of outstanding bugs in the toolkits mostly, there is still last minute things going in, and I think that in a few days, the tagging of KDE 4.0 will occur at a time which kde4.0 is very stable and very usable.”
Actually I moved onto the SuSE Build service from SVN, giving up on the ‘rc’ stuff for the reasons you mention. But each stint of using KDE4, has me moving back to 3.5 desktop, as I run into too many problems. With SVN you don’t have a “release”, some of the application developers don’t like reports based on the latest SVN. I’ve logged onto KDE4 now, and had Kwallet crashing on startup for some reason. I agree KDE4 got much better over the last few months, but I don’t like the release labelling, and that has increased the blog comments that you object to because of the expectations.
I used KDE 1, 2.0 & 3.0 and the improvements were self-evident, and intuitive to KDE users. 4.0 is the first KDE release that I’ve been concerned about.
There are Annoyances, and the no amount of denial will make them go away. It’s not GNOME or noobs complaining, but core experienced KDE users.
[...] 10 Things I Hate About KDE4 RC2+ [...]
[...] reclamei e aplaudi o KDE 4 RC2 do OpenSuSE. Eu dei update para os últimos pacotes do OpenSuSE desde que [...]
Man!
Your really nailed it. These are exactly the things that are wrong even with kde 4.
11) no tab like windows like fluxbox
and I still can’t do anything with that stupid fat toolbar, wtf?!