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Jan
17
Editorial: KDE 4.0, A Call for Perspective
Filed Under Editorial, kde, kde4 | 37 Comments
KDE 4.0 was released last week and all hell seemed to break loose. What I view as a solid first step in a very positive reaction was met with some applause, but generally scorn and complaints. I think some perspective is needed, and I humbly offer to try and provide some. I’d like to take issue with some things I see that are just plain wrong.
KDE 4 is Vista. Vista is an operating system. KDE 4 is a desktop environment. Right off the bat, on a basic level, this is wrong. If you only look at the DE aspects of Vista, it still doesn’t stand up. People complain about Kickoff, the new (possibly temporary) menu in KDE 4. Have you used the monstrosity that Vista provides? Plus, if you do not like Kickoff, you can drag the old style launcher to the taskbar and be happy. Vista offers nothing of the sort. KDE 4 runs very well on modest hardware. Vista is painful on modest to good hardware. I had a hardware failure on my main machine yesterday. It runs Linux. I’m stuck writing this from Vista on a 64 bit processor (AMD 3200+) with 3 gigs of RAM and it is unbearably slow. My desktop effects consist of some translucency and some crummy 3-D window switcher. With KDE 4 there are a lot more useful effects this early in. KDE 4 = Free Software. Vista = closed source. Complaints people have with KDE 4 are already being addressed. Some have been fixed. Get that kind of action from Microsoft. The Promised Land, KDE 4.1, is rumored to be released in about six months. The Promised Land for Vista, SP1, is still unreleased a year into its life (and the reports of the beta are less than glowing.) Maybe it kind of looks like Vista with the use of black, but that is about it.
KDE 4 is Gnome. This is usually meant as a swipe at Gnome as well as KDE, based in the belief that the Lords of Gnome sit in their ivory towers deciding how the peons can use their computers. The great Nautilus-Spatial-View Wars of 2004 saw a lot of bickering on this front. Since a lot of configurability that KDE is famous for just wasn’t ready for the 4.0 release people are assuming that it is just gone forever. It is coming; you can relax or file bug reports. If the configurability you are used to isn’t there in 4.1, then I’ll be right there with you. I believe the developers when they say it is coming. It isn’t like there is a lack of options in KDE 4; I’ve even read complaints that there are still too many. It is just that the most visible ones, like in the taskbar, just aren’t there yet. That is right in your face immediately.
This also feeds into the Holy War that Gnome and KDE are locked in. We have choices. Some people like Gnome, some KDE. There are plenty of other choices as well. Fans of gerbils can use XFCE. Enlightenment is cool. FVWM Crystal works nicely. Blackbox, Openbox or Fluxbox. Why so much energy is devoted to Gnome people attacking KDE people and vice versa confuses me, other than people love to have an enemy. In the words of convicted wife-beater Rodney King, “Can’t we all just get along?†When the negativity impacts development (my 10 things I hate about KDE 4 RC2 article was accused of stopping development for hours, weirdly) then things are getting out of hand. Some thicker skins might be in order as well.
KDE 4 is lacking in cowbell. The “needs more cowbell†joke stopped being funny about three days after you heard a co-worker say it for the first time. That was years ago! Enough already.
It was a mistake to release KDE 4.0. This has already been addressed nicely here, here and here. For the “tl;dr†crowd, the release has to get out into the real world and take a beating. I’m sure the complaints so far have been useful in some sense and will influence direction. This is a complicated issue that has been covered in more detail by people smarter than me; I just wanted to address it. I’m surprised to even see this, since “Release early, release often†is such an ingrained part of Open Source. Imagine if Duke Nukem Forever was Open Source and followed this philosophy.
“My experience with KDE 4 is the One True Experience†There are so many odd combinations of hardware, distributions and preferences that everything becomes equally valid. The experience you have with KDE 4, for you, will set your ideas into stone. I’ve read there were numerous problems with the Kubuntu packages. People who used those are naturally going to be unhappy with 4.0 for good reason. OpenSUSE has done an outstanding job with their packages. I’ve used them and have a positive feeling about 4.0. Nvidia cards perform well with the proprietary driver and KWin’s composite. I’ve read ATI doesn’t work that well. For the ATI owners, composite will be horrible. Some people love Kickoff. Some people hate it more than anything else in the world, apparently. Who is right? People passionately hate Dolphin, others love it. Most people, for these reasons, are going to have very different experiences with KDE 4. If we could just cut each other some slack and recognize the validity of each person’s opinion I think the overall atmosphere will improve.
Things haven’t been perfect. It is too bad that KDEPIM wasn’t ready. From what I have seen and read, it will be worth the wait. Distros have had some trouble with packaging. Things are nowhere nearly as bad as you may read, either. Before my hardware failure, I had been using 4.0 as my main desktop for weeks. I’m starting to prefer it, warts and all.
Here is my somewhat lousy analogy for KDE 4. You’ve lived in a house (KDE 3) for years. You have everything set the way you want it to, have gotten used to the oddities of it and love it. Some major parts of it have fallen into disrepair (arts) and it is time to move. You decide to build a new house from the ground up (KDE 4). It reaches a point where you can move into it, or stay in the old one for a few more months. You decide to move. The old house had cable. The neighborhood for the new on is being wired for cable, but it isn’t available just yet. Is your old house better because it had cable? Is the new one a failure because cable isn’t ready yet? The new house has a different thermostat that is quite different from the old one, and you can’t set it the same way you could the old. The builder promises that in a couple of months you will have three thermostats to choose from that are a lot better than the old one, but at least the current one works. The builder also says that if you do move in, he’ll listen to things you don’t like and give you the opportunity to change things, instead of just giving you something set in stone. He even promises to continue to improve the house for years to come. You can either live in the old house for a while longer and watch the progress of the new one and stay comfortable; or jump into the new one and get used to it. Odds are you aren’t going to complain that you shouldn’t even have built a new house. Particularly because it is free and built at no cost to you. It could be worse; you could be in the luxury prison down the street, where the prisoners complain that the old one, while bad, was much better than the new one.
The KDE Release Event is today. I had hoped to go, but the complete lack of free flights complicated it. Congratulations again to everyone involved. You have a lot to be proud of, and a lot more work ahead.
Jan
11
KDE 4.0 Released Today! Visual Guide Now Available.
Filed Under kde, kde4, quick links | 6 Comments
KDE 4.0 is out as of today. Click here for the official announcement. A separate announcement with info on packages for different distributions is here. OpenSUSE had the updated packages available when I checked at midnight last night–great job yet again by the packagers (or packager?).
A wll written and helpful Visual Guide to KDE 4.0 is available here. It has plenty of screenshots and information.
A post on Aaron Seigo’s blog is very interesting, and gives you more of an idea on why you should be excited about the KDE 4 series. Click here for that. If anything, it should give you an appreciation for what the devs are going through and the hard work they put in. All for something we get for free.
This is a big step forward, and the first of many big steps for KDE. Congratulations to all of the developers and to everyone involved!
Using KDE 4.0 yet? If so, leave a comment with your experience.
Update! The following link, and Emergency FAQ, has been posted and is helpful:
http://software-libre.rudd-o.com/KDE_4.0.0_emergency_FAQÂ
Jan
10
A Look Back at KDE 4 RC2++ and A Look Forward to 4.0
Filed Under Editorial, kde, kde4 | 7 Comments
I’ve complained and cheered about KDE 4 RC2 from openSUSE. I’ve updated to the latest openSUSE packages since writing those articles, and things have moved in a very positive direction. I’ve been able to use it as my main desktop without issues for about a week now. I’d like to commend openSUSE for the outstanding job they have done with KDE 4. Using one-click install, it couldn’t be easier to get it going. With YAST it is very easy to keep it updated. With the release imminent, I thought I would take one last look at what openSUSE terms KDE 4 RC2++. I’ll warn you, the list may be odd, these are just things I have come across in daily usage. I promise no rhyme or reason!
Fixes to my complaints:
-It is no longer crashy and inconsistent. I haven’t had a crash in days. Behavior now works as expected, consistently. Improvement was quick and dramatic.
-Right click in Dolphin now works correctly.
-Right click on the taskbar does give options, albeit limited. There is still no option to change the bar size, but changing my resolution has made this less of an issue. I don’t even mind the transparent strip across the top of it now that I am used to it.
-Blurry fonts are no longer blurry fonts.
General Improvements:
-Responsive. The overall speed of the desktop has improved with the latest updates. Everything feels very close to normal.
-Pager is in the taskbar. I think this will give people a level of comfort. I’m preferring to use Ctrl + F8 and Alt + Tab to move around. Old people will like seeing the familiar four box grid.
-Digital Clock is configurable. At some point for me it wasn’t. It now acts exactly as I would expect it to. You can choose your timezone, font, whether to display a 24 hour format, show the date, basically, anything a configuration junkie would want. It looks nice, too. Now maybe the Clock Nazis can chill.
-Composite effects work nearly flawlessly on my setup (Nvidia 8400 GS). I’m liking the effects more and more. Compiz has always felt like a second class citizen with KDE, this helps to overcome that. The effects are smooth and feel natural. I hope there is a webpage with the keystrokes and tips for using it once 4.0 releases. If not, I’ll make one.
Small things I like:
-The new splash screen and logout screen are beautiful. Nice touches. Pic of logout screen below:
-I like the new default wallpaper. It fits the darker theme but isn’t too dark. There is already a lot of whining about the choice, like it won’t take five seconds to change it.
-Being able to right click the title bar and choose the window opacity. That is slick, and helpful.
-Marble is cool. what is marble, you ask? It looks like GoogleEarth, but uses no hardware acceleration, so it is small and lightweight. More info here.
-Oxygen Cursor Theme- I’m using the White Cursor Theme, it looks nice but is not obnoxious. More info here.
-Deal or No Deal- until they get sued, the game Deal or No Deal from playground, I believe, is a nice little time waster.
Bigger things I like:
Okular- Great interface and it works very well. I love being able to uncheck the “Obey DRM limitations” box. Clever. It is fast. The toolbar is clean, with options to junk it up as much as I’d like. I love that it can handle multiple formats. It is consistent with the rest of kde 4 and fits in well.
KPlayer- I’ve never liked KPlayer, for no good reason. I like the updated interface. Unfortunately there isn’t an openSUSE package for Dragonplayer (formerly Codeine) at the moment. I may actually start using KPlayer.
Kdegames - The games are cleaned up and consistent looking. They look fantastic in SVG. Excellent job here.
KDEPIM- Ridicule me, remind me it is alpha, I don’t care. I really like it and it doesn’t even crash all that much. I cannot wait until it is finished. Pictured is KOrganizer:
Consistency- It has been hard to write this without using the word consistent fifty times. Everything just goes together nicely. I normally wouldn’t care too much about this, but the more I use the desktop the nicer it seems. KDE 4 apps have a KDE 4 identity. That is a good thing.
I could go on and on, but the release is tomorrow and I’d rather write about it.
Final Thoughts:
Once again, I have to applaud openSUSE’s KDE 4 packaging team. Outstanding job. My hat goes off the the KDE developers, the progress in the last few weeks has been incredible, and this release is shaping up to be phenomenal. We are stepping into the future tomorrow, and making a big jump. I respect the courage and hard work that has gone into KDE 4.0 and I cannot wait to install the release tomorrow.
I hope the negativity–that I contributed to–settles down once people use KDE 4. Install it and stick with it for a week. You may not like it at first, you may love it at first but give it a chance. Use it for a week before you start bitching. I think, like me, you will be pleasantly surprised. It is better than you have read. I look forward to KDE 4.1, and can’t wait to see how this grows and changes, but 4.0 will be my desktop of choice. Now that I am used to using it daily, I prefer it to anything else. It isn’t as if 3.5 is going away, or there are a lack of other choices if it isn’t for you. I predict the community will rally around this release. Complainers will still complain and further progress will be made. The bottom line: The future begins tomorrow. I’m excited.
Jan
2
10 Things I Love about KDE 4 RC2+
Filed Under 10 things, kde, kde4 | 26 Comments
My previous article, 10 things I hate about KDE 4 RC2, got a lot of unexpected attention. At Digg I was called a “damn fool”, “dumbass” (for some reason that guy thought I believed RC referred to Plasma) (?!) and an “idiot”. I apparently hurt developer feelings. The point of the article was to imitate complaints I expect to see if some things do not change. Had I read this post, I may not have even written it. I stand by my complaints about Release Candidate 2 (the openSUSE version), overall they were mainly minor. I will revisit that post once the release goes gold. I promised to follow up with 10 things I love about KDE 4 RC2+, so here goes.
10 things I love about KDE4 RC2+ (openSUSE flavor):
10. Oxygen Icons - Someone mentioned in a comment somewhere that I I could take the time to complain, but not take the time to mention how nice the Oxygen Icons look. Here you are! They do look nice. They aren’t cartoonish, they don’t look like Fisher-Price designed them (sup, XP). They look attractive and modern. I definitely prefer them to Tango, and it isn’t like Tango is bad. They present a nice face as the default icon set. A lot of work and thought has been put into them, and it shows. Great job, Oxygen-Icon team!
9. Look and Feel - Huge improvement here. The environment looks modern, subtly flashy (which couldn’t have been easy to pull off) and clean. I like the use of blacks throughout. I’m glad to see bright blue off of my screen. Little things like “Alt + F2″ are improved. First, it looks great. The Plasma box that opens is sharp looking. The added functionality, putting “application, location or search term” together is nice. The button to show system activity is helpful. A small area, but indicative of the work done. There is a consistency using it that I have not seen in an operating system (more on this below). It is a lot more attractive than Vista, to my eye. It looks fantastic and feels fast, and I’m using openSUSE’s somewhat dated packages. The more I use it, the more I like it.
8. Konqueror improvements - The over cluttered-looking Konqueror loved and bitched about endlessly is gone. We now have a snazzy looking default Konqueror, with helpful links on the opening page, seven icons on the bar by default. As I complained about before, some of the functionality I am used to is not there, more likely than not due to openSUSE providing an outdated kde-konqueror-addons package. It looks damn good. It has been solid as a web browser. I look forward to the release version. The recent Dolphin/Konqueror controversy is positive in a sense, showing the love and fanatical devotion we have for the swiss army knife on steroids that Konqueror is.
7. Koffice2 is amazing - This will get its own article, but Koffice2 looks and behaves beautifully. It fits in very nicely with the very attractive default desktop. I am looking forward to spending a lot of time with Koffice2. Excellent job here, developers. I already prefer it to OpenOffice. Much more about this topic soon.
6. Doing away with the desktop-is-file-manager idea - This is a bold step. It may feel odd at first, particularly for those of you addicted to stuffing your desktop full of icons. I like that it is a push in a new direction. The payoff might not show up entirely with the release of 4.0, but I expect to see big things here. Change is good.
5. Kickoff - Hold up, haters. It isn’t Kickoff itself that I love as much as the idea that it is there by default. It reminds me of the story (that I hope is true) of the French government doing away with phone books years ago to force people to use the internet. With the upcoming Raptor, Lancelot and other ideas moving forward, this choice again helps push us to the future. The more I use Kickoff the more I like it. I don’t find it to be the spawn of satan that a lot of you do. The familiar menu is still available if you prefer to kick it old school.
4. Composite effects - nicely done. Kwin’s Composite effects look great. Modern, not too much going on. I like that they are there but do not get up in your face. Tasteful default choices yet again. This area will be getting its own article soon. I want to spend more time with it and become more knowledgeable than I am. I like that “Ctrl + F8″ shows me my desktops. “Alt + Tab” is an attractive switcher. “Ctrl + F10″ show me all of my windows. This hands down beats Vista. It will be interesting to see how it will interact with Compiz-Fusion. Overall, I really like this and will have more to say very soon. Excellent job again, Developers.
3. Gwenview - Poorly named Gwenview is now cleaned up, as stated here, and now only gives you the image and a basic toolbar when opening an image. (Click link for nice screenshots) Images opened from Gwenview you get many more choices. This shows the level of detail and thought that went into creating KDE 4. It also brings me to my next point:
2. Consistency - I love this. It doesn’t jump right out at first, but settled in slowly for me. KTorrent looks like a KDE 4 app, because it is. KMail fits in perfectly. The games have been updated and look in place. I can’t imagine the work that went into achieving this, but it was time well spent. Going back to other desktops really magnifies the lack of consistency in them. The consistency is outstanding in KDE 4.
1. Guts, courage and balls - To me, this is the biggest thing about KDE 4. Frankly, I was surprised to read that developers were “hurt” and “disillusioned” by my “10 things I hate” post. I’m sorry to hear that they have been beaten down by criticism. A _really_big_thing_ is happening here. A move to the future has been committed to and the first step is close to being achieved. KDE 4 is better than Vista. KDE 4 improves upon the outstanding 3 series. There will be more improvements down the road, but honestly things are in good shape as of my dated RC2 system. I commend the developers for the outstanding work done. I can’t wait to see the results of the final weeks of bug killing and squashing. From what I read, development is at a frantic pace. You guys have done something tremendous for which you should be proud.
The fact that the KDE team has pulled this off is inspiring. My stupid little top ten lists do not do justice to this accomplishment. Trying to narrow things I love to ten was not easy. I decided to focus on what was immediate. The big-picture changes are just too big to be dropped into a little list. Phonon, Solid, Decibal and all of the other big technologies didn’t even get on the list. They need their own articles to get the attention they deserve. The changes are so big and so interesting that it is easy to become overwhelmed trying to write about them. If that is true, imagine coding them!
So, to close, I apologize to anyone I offended with my first article. I meant in no way to take away from the work that has been done. I can’t wait to install the final release. I can’t wait to see the firestorm of controversy that will erupt on that day. We Linux users are passionate, and this passion, while seeming destructive at times, is the fuel that drives the improvements. The future is very bright for KDE. The future is now. Thanks again for all of the work put into a system that I can use for free.