KDE 4.0.0! First Experience

[Brad Opferman]

My first experience with KDE4 was very pleasant, but it left me 
disappointed. First I was tinkering around with the bottom tool bar, 
which ended up forcing the clock to the far left next to the K menu. I 
could not find any options or configurations in my brief examination of 
the new system to correct this problem. Next, I encountered a problem of 
when I minimized windows, the wouldn't show up in the bottom bar, rather 
I would have to Alt-tab to access them. Next I was moving icons around 
on the desktop and somehow grabbed the wallpaper and started moving it 
around the screen. The orientation and alignment of the background was 
corrected with logging out and then in again. I encountered these 
problems which will be deterring me from using KDE4 until there are 
further updates.

Another thing that I found quite irritating was the fact that I could 
not drag on the desktop to select multiple icons, it would select 
nothing. I found multiple icons highlighted with a hover of the mouse, 
which is quite annoying. I also had some problems auto aligning icons on 
the desktop, they would have gaps and the grid feature didn't seem to 
snap objects to it.

Some notable features that impressed me were the fantastic layout of the 
new system. It is quite user friendly and elegantly designed. The 
wallpapers are all quite colorful and well designed. Oxygen (I believe) 
provides some amazing new features and makes a very pleasant experience.

My final thoughts on KDE4 are that it has been clearly planned out but 
still has some kinks to work out before it is ready for mainstream use. 
The problems I encountered really frustrated me. I will stick with KDE3 
until there are more bug fixes.