KDE 4.0.0 Released!

[Yuriy Kozlov]

On Jan 13, 2008 1:04 PM, Joseph Guarino <jguarino at evolutionaryit.com> wrote:
> Hello Yuriy,
>
>   Thanks for the post on KDE 4.  I am very excited about it as I LOVE
> KDE!  Have you been testing it in Hardy Heron (Kubuntu)?  What are you
> thoughts on its current status?  Currently I am using Ubuntu/Kubuntu and
> Xubuntu among many other distros.
>
> Take care,
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Joseph Guarino

I've been testing (well, using) it in Kubuntu Gutsy using packages
that are now in backports.  The general impression is still: "shiny!"

It basically works and is fairly stable, which is impressive given its
state just a couple of weeks ago.  The composite effects work on my
machine, but there are a couple bugs I'm getting that are probably
nVidia's fault: black windows when there are too many windows, and Gtk
windows sometimes disappearing.

Most of the improvements I've seen are visual.  The only applications
I really use consistently are konsole and konqueror, which are
slightly improved.  I haven't really used a lot of the stuff that
probably got more improvements, but I did check out the redone games
and marble, which are pretty cool.  The really interesting PIM related
features got pushed back to 4.1.  I also played around with kword 2.0
a while ago, and I will probably start using it for school once
there's a new snapshot available (on break now).  Application startup
time is noticeably improved.

What I am really missing is the configurability of the panel, which
didn't get done in time for 4.0.  The configurability and applets of
kicker in kde 3.3 (at the time) are probably what most attracted me to
Linux when I first started playing around with it, along with all the
other ways KDE let you tweak it.  A lot of that stuff is missing an UI
in 4.0.0.  Most importantly, the panel right now is missing any
features to sort windows by desktop, display windows only from the
current desktop, or displaying more than one row -- so basically it's
a big waste of space and I can barely have 1/10th as many windows open
and usable as in KDE 3.  Right now I have 14 windows open, and in the
taskbar they're squeezed to just the icons (looks a little OS-Xish).
In the KDE 3 session I was using until a couple of days ago, I had
that many windows on each of 4 desktops, and kicker is great at
dealing with that.  Anyways, this is basically nitpicking since I'm
sure this will be fixed shortly if it hasn't already.

The kickoff menu I'm not crazy about, but it's not really that bad
either.  I'm looking forward to the raptor menu.  The widgets are
neat, but again, they're just eye candy right now.  They are, however,
much improved from superkaramba.

Anyways, I recommend you try it out and see for yourself.  There is a
live CD of Kubuntu gutsy and of OpenSuSE with KDE 4.0, and it's
available in the repos for gutsy and hardy.  Other than the above
about the panel and some missing programs (which you can still use the
KDE 3 versions of) there aren't any major regressions, and it's worth
switching to just for the eye candy.  And, of course, to test and file
bugs and help with development ;)

~ Yuriy