KDE 4.1

[p.daniels]

On Tue, 2008-07-29 at 08:42 -0700, Richard S. Crawford wrote:
> I also prod at 4.1 occasionally. I agree that it's gorgeous and fast, and 
> definitely takes the KDE environment in exciting new directions.
> 
> I've stuck with KDE 3.5.x, though, for a couple of reasons. First, I'm lazy. I 
> don't fancy the idea of migrating all of my data from 3.5 to 4.1, and taking 
> the time to set up my desktop the way I like it. 
> 
> Second, I haven't yet seen any "OMGIMUSTHAVEITNOW!" features in 4.1 that would 
> really convince me to migrate. KDE 3.5.x does everything I need, far more 
> successfully than any other desktop environment I've used (not a slam against 
> GNOME or any other environment, just a statement about how my own needs are 
> met). Plus, with Compiz/Fusion/whatever installed I can spend hours just 
> playing with pretty widgets.
> 
> As I understand it, KDE 4 is meant to be a development platform around which a 
> newer, better desktop environment will be built, and not a complete 
> environment itself, so it will take some time before KDE 4.x is as feature 
> complete as 3.5.x is. And since the KDE group will continue development on 
> the 3.5 series for now (3.5.10 is due out later this summer), and since I'm 
> just a programmer or developer, I simply have no need to make the switch for 
> now.

I'll chime in here, I guess. I've been on KDE 4 fulltime on my desktop
since 4.0.0 hit the repositories (I initially tried to install it
alongside KDE 3, but it screwed up my settings and menus so bad that I
just carpet-bombed it and started over). As we've all seen it is kind of
a mixed bag, but for me the positives outweigh the negatives.

Kwin's built-in compositing, while not as full-featured as Compiz
(although that's changing quickly) beats the pants off it in terms of
performance. I tried Compiz on my desktop (Pentium D, 1 GB RAM) and it
wasn't unacceptably slow, but Kwin is noticeably faster. Crashy, though.

KOffice vs. OpenOffice, ditto. So much faster it's ridiculous, but
crashes at the drop of a hat. So far for me, the outstanding application
is Okular, the new document viewer.[1]

But the really exciting stuff is happening in the frameworks like Plasma
and Phonon. Phonon's a cool idea, what they're trying to do is take all
the multimedia backends and make a single API for developers to use.
What this means in practice is that you don't need seventy-eleven
different media plugins for Konqueror, or whole different libraries for
Dragon Player. Phonon will handle it all as long as the backends are in
place.

Again, I'm not a developer, but to me, it's cool getting to watch this
stuff come together in real-time. Yes, sometimes I'm swearing at my
computer, but not nearly as often as I was when 4.0.0 first hit the
street. It's mostly little stuff now like the widgets not always saving
themselves on logout or the the screen always coming up at 1024x800 on
boot. Small price to pay to watch the future happen.

best wishes
p.daniels

1: http://introducingkde4.blogspot.com/2007/12/okular.html