Filed under: Design, OS Updates, Features, Linux, Open Source
KDE 4: Beauty only gets you so far
by Kristin Shoemaker Jan 15th 2008
We've been playing with KDE 4 for the past few days. Actually, there was very little playful about it. We're nothing if not honest. We struggled. We even used phrases that would make a sailor blush.We do, now, have a (mostly) working install of KDE 4 on Xubuntu. And we stand by what we said with our first impressions. KDE 4 is fast, and does have the potential to be a powerful and utilitarian desktop.
However, it's just not there yet.
A few of the major issues we encountered we have since solved.
Updates can be made to a system that doesn't have a root account using gksu and Synaptic, or via the console. It seems there is a problem with calling kdesu. The other solution, of course, is to give root a password. This was a bit disappointing, but it certainly wasn't a deal breaker.
The other major problem we had was either PEBKAC (problem exists between keyboard and chair) or a packaging issue. We were unable, for a while, to create folders and documents by right clicking in the Dolphin file manager. For whatever reason, the issue was solved with a reinstall of KDE 4 on Xubuntu.
KDE 4 is undeniably pretty. There have been many reviewers gushing about how pretty it is. We don't disagree, even with everything set to defaults, it's beautiful. As we used it more, we started to wonder. Are the aesthetics more important than giving users an expected or configurable interface?
The prime example of this is the Kickoff menu. We thought it would take some getting used to, at first. We thought using it for a day or two would probably make us fairly comfortable with how it functions. We thought within four days, it would be quite familiar.
It's not. The tabs we've gotten used to, for the most part. We've gotten used to them changing the menu above as we mouse over them. So we mouse over Applications, and we get the main menu. We click on Multimedia, and it takes us to the submenu. We select our program, it loads, and we're done.
The problem is, next time we mouse on the Applications tab, it opens the multimedia submenu. We haven't yet found a way to change this. It only takes a second to back out to the main menu (by clicking the arrow), but it's an annoyance solely because it's not what we'd logically expect to be there. We'd expect the applications tab to bring up the main applications menu, consistently.
Another annoyance is the panel itself. Is there no way to customize the panel short of editing configuration files? We've yet to find it. We can't drag it anywhere. We can only show or hide tooltips. Can we move the icons we put on it? It sure doesn't look that way.
Widgets, which we suspected would be a nuisance, are really handled quite nicely. Plasma widgets beat the pants off of SuperKaramba widgets in terms of memory use and we expect there will be some truly unique, useful ones soon. Widgets are nice, but they're really just shiny objects. They certainly don't break KDE 4, but they don't exactly make it, either.
It would seem, then, that KDE lost sight of what made KDE strong in first place. While it's true looks are very important to a desktop, function should be king. If our icons aren't in the panel where we expect to find them, it's an inconvenience. If we can't move them easily to where we expect to find them, that's an even bigger inconvenience.
KDE 4 has a lot of potential. It also has a lot of wrinkles to iron out, and we don't just mean the occasional Plasma crash. We can't help but feel something very precious was taken away from the KDE users in this release. We traded an easily configurable interface that we could make function how we thought was best for something exceedingly pretty, but very inflexible.
KDE 4 is undeniably pretty. There have been many reviewers gushing about how pretty it is. We don't disagree, even with everything set to defaults, it's beautiful. As we used it more, we started to wonder. Are the aesthetics more important than giving users an expected or configurable interface?
The prime example of this is the Kickoff menu. We thought it would take some getting used to, at first. We thought using it for a day or two would probably make us fairly comfortable with how it functions. We thought within four days, it would be quite familiar.
It's not. The tabs we've gotten used to, for the most part. We've gotten used to them changing the menu above as we mouse over them. So we mouse over Applications, and we get the main menu. We click on Multimedia, and it takes us to the submenu. We select our program, it loads, and we're done.
The problem is, next time we mouse on the Applications tab, it opens the multimedia submenu. We haven't yet found a way to change this. It only takes a second to back out to the main menu (by clicking the arrow), but it's an annoyance solely because it's not what we'd logically expect to be there. We'd expect the applications tab to bring up the main applications menu, consistently.
Another annoyance is the panel itself. Is there no way to customize the panel short of editing configuration files? We've yet to find it. We can't drag it anywhere. We can only show or hide tooltips. Can we move the icons we put on it? It sure doesn't look that way.
Widgets, which we suspected would be a nuisance, are really handled quite nicely. Plasma widgets beat the pants off of SuperKaramba widgets in terms of memory use and we expect there will be some truly unique, useful ones soon. Widgets are nice, but they're really just shiny objects. They certainly don't break KDE 4, but they don't exactly make it, either.
It would seem, then, that KDE lost sight of what made KDE strong in first place. While it's true looks are very important to a desktop, function should be king. If our icons aren't in the panel where we expect to find them, it's an inconvenience. If we can't move them easily to where we expect to find them, that's an even bigger inconvenience.
KDE 4 has a lot of potential. It also has a lot of wrinkles to iron out, and we don't just mean the occasional Plasma crash. We can't help but feel something very precious was taken away from the KDE users in this release. We traded an easily configurable interface that we could make function how we thought was best for something exceedingly pretty, but very inflexible.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
stopsatgreen said 9:29AM on 1-15-2008
This is precisely the reason Canonical have said Kubuntu 8.04 won't have long-term support; because KDE 4 isn't in good enough shape, and KDE 3.5 could well be obsolete in the near future.
Reply
jgs said 10:20AM on 1-15-2008
I can't wait to see PCLinuxOS with either KDE 4.0 or 4.1
Reply
Eric D said 10:52AM on 1-15-2008
I have to agree. I just love KDE 4. It's nice, it's efficient (alt-f2), it's fast...
But it's not stable yet. Some features just don't work on my machines, others crash... I also had Dolphin open editors twice after single-clicking any file.
I'll reconsider after a few updates...
Reply
dermo said 10:59AM on 1-15-2008
One huge gaping defect I noticed was that when you go to "leave", you then select whether you want to logout, restart or shutdown. you select one and then a box pops up in the middle of the screen and asks you whether you want to logout restart or shutdown. eh huh?? Didn't I already answer that question!?!?
Reply
Andrew Min said 4:40PM on 1-15-2008
You do need to remember something. KDE 4.0 isn't a final release. It sounds stupid (I, a KDE fanboy, think it's stupid), but that's what it is. Read more at http://url.fullcirclemagazine.org/ee55ef
Reply
Kristin Shoemaker said 4:47PM on 1-15-2008
Andrew, I actually did keep that in mind going in... But issues with calling what really feels more like a beta release final aside (which is really weird, and I think sort of counter-productive)... It just seems to have lost something along the way.
I was really looking forward to KDE 4, as I'm also a bit of a KDE fangirl... I sort of wish they'd focused less on the look, and more on letting me decide where things should go and how they should behave.
Ian said 10:41PM on 1-15-2008
As the KDE guy at our LUG put it:
"It should be seen as stable in the same way that the 2.6.0 kernel was stable."
Test, and report ye bugs (http://bugs.kde.org)
Reply
Kristin Shoemaker said 6:10AM on 1-16-2008
Bug reports are indeed a good thing... It's how I got to the bottom of the packaging problem that 64 bit Kubuntu had originally. The issues I have mainly aren't exactly bug related... I guess it's a question of priorities, about form over function. KDE 4 has a lot of potential. I will probably use it in the future, but now... they seem to have focused more on look, and less on the function.
I do expect they will make things easier to customize, sooner or later. But the speed increases and prettiness of the desktop alone don't make it quite ready for me to use, even with the understanding it is a work in progress.
hias said 12:21PM on 8-09-2008
All the options will come back. If not in 4.1 then at least in 4.2. I have watched the progress of plasma since a few months and I have to say its unbelievable how fast it evolved. The release had to be done because there were many things which were already in very good shape. Have a look at the games, edu, okular, gwenview ... unfortunately plasma started late in the cycle but if you compare the commits from the last month to the moths before, its two or three times more and its still at that high level. without the release plasma probably wouldn't be at the same state like it is now and would probably not progress that fast.
you also have to keep in mind that there are different groups, which worked on different parts of KDE. So you have the artists that are responsible for the look and trust me, they are by far not that good at coding than at art.
another reason for the release are the distributions and 3rd party software. if you look at the very first kubuntu packages and the latest one, you can see that they are more polished and stable now. much of the crashes happen due to packaging bugs. I used kde4daily and it merely crashed. so you can expect that the distributions gain some experience with KDE4 the next few moths and with 4.1 they are able do deliver very fast a stable KDE4.
Now that 4.0 is out, it also represent the point to start porting apps to KDE4, so with 4.1 in a few moths you will have many KDE4 apps from 3rd parties which you wouldn't have if the release had been delayed to the time 4.1 will come out.
Reply