Q: how is plasma different?

[Billie Walsh]

R C Mitchell wrote:
> On Tuesday 16 December 2008 02:28:52 Nigel Ridley wrote:
>
>   
>> http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Plasma/FAQ
>>     
>
> Wherein one may find:
>
>   
>> What is wrong with the current desktop technology?
>>
>> Today's desktops are static. Typically they are tied to a folder in which
>> one can find icons (application launchers), or user-placed documents and
>> folders. Along with pictures and images as backgrounds, the current desktop
>> doesn't go any further, or work for the user. Plasma takes a different
>> approach, engaging the user by creating a dynamic and highly customizable
>> environment.
>>     
>
> Which prompts me to ask:
>
> "Who are you?  And what have you done with the real KDE team?"
>
> As it has clearly been taken over by alien marketing wonks talking marketing 
> gibberish and not answering their own question.
>
> I like KDE 3.5 a lot.  It does everything I need it to do, and I don't see any 
> pressing need for customising different desktops.  My desktop contains the 
> things that I'm working with and when I've finished with them I put them away 
> (but maybe that's a woman thing.)
>
> I don't like KDE 4.  I don't like all that black, which is oppressively macho, 
> and although I finally worked out how to change my background I can't seem to 
> vary the atmosphere very much.  I don't like plasmoids because they clutter 
> up my desktop, which it seems to me is what plasma is trying to avoid.  I 
> like to see my essential information (time, date, moon phase (= state of the 
> tide), local weather with temperature, pressure and (absolutely essential) 
> wind speed and direction, tucked away in a small corner where I can see them 
> clearly and succinctly at a glance.
>
> It's possible, of course, that I may learn to love KDE 4 and its successors 
> given time.  I'm planning to keep trying, out of harm's way on my spare HDD, 
> but meanwhile it looks like if I want to progress with Ubuntu then I may have 
> to resort to Gnome, which I also dislike although not as much as I do KDE 4 
> (An acceptable replacement for Epiphany would be a good start.)
>
> Meanwhile, I'm a reasonable kind of girl and open to persuasion by reasoned 
> argument rather than a marketing pitch.  Are any of you man enough to accept 
> the challenge?
>
> Rosie
>
>
>   

I can think of no good persuasive argument against anything you said. I 
have to agree with everything. The only excuse for KDE4.x I can come up 
with is that one of the devs bought a new computer and was blown away 
with all the eye candy. SO, they are trying to make KDE as much like 
Vista desktop as possible.

I also have KDE4.x [ 64 bit vs. 386 on this drive ] on a separate hard 
drive. I find it to be slower in a lot of ways. When opening a window, 
or drop down, I see this "box" full of hash for a couple seconds before 
anything intelligible shows. Kind of like an old TV that's losing 
horizontal sync. Anything where your moving an object [ moving a card in 
Patience for instance ] within a window is also slower than 3.5.x. It's 
like it takes way to much processor power to write to the screen. [ 3.6 
intel dual core processor. ]

I have absolutely NO need for eye candy. If that was what I wanted I 
would use Vista because, honestly, they have have KDE4.x beat all the 
H___ in that respect. I just want a stable, good OS, that I can use 
without a lot of fuss and bother. I'll try out KDE 4.2 when it's 
released and probably won't seriously consider a complete move to KDE 
4.x until at least Kubuntu 9.10. I still like KDE X.x better than Gnome.

-- 
Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.