Although I haven't written a single line of code for KDE4, I am still part of it and call it "my KDE" So I should start eat my own dog food. Did so. Are going to let you know how it comes across to me.
Huge disclaimer. My video sub-system is pretty shitty. No composite, virtually no effects in KDE. So I cannot say anything about effects. Also, I am part of KDE and therefore biased towards it. Nothing wrong with being biased as long as one makes it very clear from the start.
1. General Impressions
1.1. Beauty
It
is beautiful. Oxygen is probably the most elegant style available to KDE yet. I am still fiddling with colour schemes. Don't like these grayish/blueish colours. Want something warm like (subdued) red, ochre, light brown. I will probably end up designing my own colour scheme like I did for KDE 3.5.
I have got one complaint with Oxygen - and I don't seem to be the only one. The contrast between an active window and a non-active one is far too low. The window frame should change it's colour when switching from one state to the other.
The icons are awesome. I love them!
1.2. Performance
A KDE4 sessions starts up significantly faster than my old 3.5.8 ones. So do most applications - or so it seems to me. Using apps is a different kettle of fish. I don't see much of a difference. Some people reported scrolling issues. Not here.
2. Desktop
I am sure Plasma has lots to offer. It seems to me, most is still hiding under the hood. Most of the applications/plasmoids to expose its capabilities are still missing, I guess. We probably have to wait for 4.1. The analogue clock is great. The scrolling newsticker is, well, scrolling and therefore intrusive. I don't use it. Where are the others? Probably still in the pipe. We'll see.
2.1. The Panel
It's just another plasmoid - only it looks pretty ugly in its blackness. Honestly, it's a pretty minimalistic panel with little to configure. Not just its colour. I am used to aggregate windows of the same program into one entry. Makes things much easier from my point of view. Not here yet. I like the panel to be on the left hand side, vertically. Not possible yet. Alright, let's wait for 4.1. Meanwhile the existing panel
is usable - just not what I prefer.
2.2. Background pictures (Wallpapers)
Who has wall papers on the top of his desk? Well, just an aside. I tried to provide my own picture. This worked for the session. Next session surprised me with a white background. Applying it again did work until the next session.
This seems to be a general problem. I configured system notifications
not to play any sound . Worked for the session I was in. Next session, all that noisy stuff was back.
2.3. Application launcher
This one is very different from the traditional menu. I am undecided about it, but it's growing on me. So I leave it there for the time being although I could switch back to the old menu.
2.4. Highly Advanced Searching
People give it different names. Doesn't really matter what we call it, it is about this: It indexes everything and builds a database of as much metadata as it can collect. We should be able to look for a "picture sent by Uncle Joe in an email" and get a short list of objects. Doesn't work yet - or I am blind. Guess it also has to wait for 4.1.0.
3. Phonon
This is the audio middleware that is supposed to use whatever backend is available. Seems to work fabulously here. Out of the box. Audio is just playing without any fiddling.
4. Editors
Alright, kwrite is there and working fine for texts and scripts. Where, the heck, is kate? That is what I need for writing software. I am not too happy with Integrated Development Environments (IDE) like kdevelop. Neither do I like emacs. Kate is exactly what I need. Not there. Damn!
5. Multimedia
5.1. Audio
It's working fine. People keep telling me that amarok is the most advanced and sophisticated audio player in the world. Fine with me. It certainly works here. Nonetheless, I have to admit, it overwhelmes me with features I don't need. I feel lost in it sometimes. All I want to do is go to a folder and play the music in it. Or parts of it. The other audio player, juk, isn't it for me either. Weird way to present (parts) of my music to me. How do I find my other music? How do I play one album?
I mourn noatun. Yes, I know. It was a very thin wrapper around arts - and arts is gone. So noatun isn't possible any more. Still, a simple audio player that let me play the (partial) content of a folder is missing badly. In book at least.
5.2. Video
Kaffeine isn't working properly yet. I don't know why but will try to find out. KMPlayer, though, does its job fine. DVDs, images of DVDs on my harddisk, video clips - they are all playing.
6. Educational Software
Absolutely amazing! Especially kstars (desktop planetarium), marble (desktop globe) and kalzium (periodic table). Downloading additional data went though like a breeze. Any user can do it without knowing where the data is or where it has to go to. Just select the data you want and in it comes.
The kdeedu people really outdid themselves to deliver highly polished and functional applications. Thank you, folks!
I keep hearing that a physics emulator is heading our way for 4.1. Great! This is especially interesting for our schools here in Namibia. Most of them do not have the means to conduct real experiments in chemistry or physics. While I think
real experiments (boom, bang, crash) are still the best thing to teach science at schools, a good emulator is far better than nothing.
7. Games
What I have said about kdeedu is also true for the games in KDE 4. The look is stunning. Everything moves smoothly and naturally. Very polished. Very much improved.
I do have one complaint, though. I like to play kmahjongg for the simple reason that it takes ages to set up a real mahjongg game. Trying to play it in KDE 4, i gave each of the available tile sets a try. They all seem to be designed to make it as hard as possible to distinguish between the different tiles. Same for the decks for the card games. Sigh. I am somewhat impaired eyesight-wise. Not enough to switch to some black-and-white theme. Still, these new tile sets and card decks make it hard for me to play. (maybe this has been done intentionally so I get more productive.)
8. Konqueror
I am sure, it is less intimidating for users than the old one since the number of toolbar entries is down to less than two handfuls. It works. In some cases, definitely better than the old one. It has some rough edges, though.
I used to open new windows without starting a new process. If I do that now, kwallet usually doesn't work. So I am back to starting a new konqueror for each window.
The flash plugin crashes it. :-(
Sometimes, I cannot type in forms. No cursor. Nothing. Closing Konqueror and starting it again, usually cures it.
9. PIM
Nota bene: Kdepim has not been released with KDE 4.0.0 (but will be with 4.1). So I am talking about the old kdepim.
Kmail is the only PIM application I use constantly. That's why I am talking about it exclusively. Initially I couldn't start it at all. Meawhile I can in konsole but not from krunner. It still tells me it can't launch it but does it anyway. That's just an annoyance. Fine.
I copied all kmail stuff from ~/.kde3.5 to ~/.kde4.0. Works mostly. The From: data in my identity was lost but easy to type in again. I haven't had any problems with it since then.
10. Koffice
Again: Koffice hasn't been released for KDE 4 yet. So I am talking about the old koffice.
The only application from koffice I use frequently, is kspread to write my invoices for my customers. So this is all about kspread.
It works great except that cell formatting is lost in all my old invoices. Jeek! This is bad. None of them display correctly. While this is more than an annoyance or inconvenience, it can be overcome easily. I have edited my invoice template. All future invoices are going to be right again. The old ones are still sitting on my harddisk as PDFs.
11. Conclusion
I haven't covered everything (yet). Just those areas important to me. All negatives, I have discovered so far, are annoyances and inconveniences - no show stoppers yet (although the flash plugin thing
is bad).
I will keep my 3.5.8 version around in case, I need to go back. For the time being, I stick to KDE 4.0.0 to see whether I can live with it until 4.1 comes out.
Another conclusion is that I need a better video card that enables composite.
And yet another one is that I have to port iwy (
http://www.SysEx.com.na/iwy-1.0.tar.bz2), my fractals generator, to KDE 4.
In the spirit of KDE 4: Be free!
Uwe
