Sabayon 4: 8 good reasons to not use KDE 4.1 by default
I have to tell you. My development machine is an Intel Q6600, P5K mainboard with 6G of RAM and a NVIDIA card. Not a low-end PC after all.
After this little intro, please read my mindset carefully.
Can KDE 4 compositing effects be slow on that beast? (1) Yes of course, they can. Well, they are. If you are used to OSX, you’d start screaming!
Can KDE 4 compositing effects be slow on the avg(“Joe”) machine? (2) Yes, they can. Sometimes I think that the compositing stuff on Linux is a joke. I myself can’t work with Compiz/whatever, it’s tremendously slow, especially when you just want to watch a YT video or a full HD one off your drive.
Can KDE 4 ease the management of your Digital Camera? (3) Yes, it can (this triggers a funny thing, read below)
Can KDE 4 ease the configuration of your Printers like 3.x did? (4) Of course not! Where the **** is kdeprint? I mean, hey, W*F? Do you really think that newbies can easily find the CUPS Web admin interface? Oh well, that’s integration! Yeah, Digital Cameras management is more important than this.
What about unpacking a simple zip/tar file? (5)
KDE 3.5: 2 clicks
KDE 4: Ark being a hell, close it, open konsole, run unzip/tar/*
What a pain in <complete the sentence…>
Ok, let’s move over, (6) I start KDE4 for the first time, what happened to my DESKTOP as it was since Windows 95! KDE devs answer: “hey dude, 2009 is coming, that’s an old concept”. Ok, so, no more Desktop files as we were all used (even OSX has it, maybe for a good reason?). So, unless you do accept that a horrendous Plasmoid called something like “Directory viewer” (I don’t recall the correct name) can work fine for you even if: (a) it’s slow, (b) uses Plasma which after a few days will start sucking around 30% of your 6G RAM, (c) it’s terrible and not usable, you will end up not having your desktop anymore. Oh also, if you use Dolphin, apart from being barely usable and resource hungry, you will see a nice “?” icon on that dir. Is it making fun of me? Probably so.
What about Kate 4? (7) Nein! You cannot work on large Python files anymore without waiting 5-6 seconds every time you want to open a bracket. Also, on 4.1, filenames usage highlighting (tremendously hard to explain in other words) doesn’t work, you gotta live with it. For me it’s just like using a car with one wheel less.
What about Kate 4 (2!)? (8) My perfectly formatted source code! Being used with Kate 3.5 to clean up every single useless space char from my code. I’m having hard times to do the same on this *new* version, not because of the missing space mark, but because the feature is somehow buggy. Here’s why I started switching to Emacs, very slowly. Kate 3.5 allowed me to work on 60 different files without crossing my mind btw.
So, I am now a happy GNOME user. No memory leaks, speed, comfort, stability and integration. Thank you KDE4 for the total disaster.
I do not give a s*it about this, that and this. I want to use it, not just look and say *wow*.
Waiting for KDE 4.2… sigh!
I have the same oppinion of you.
i use all the graphical env. including KHD4, but i have also KDE 3.51.
KDE 4 is slow, bugged, crash many times, freezes, is difficult to use, difficult to configure, the user may be “search the icon in the desktop… seems a new game: “Search the lost icon, search the lost word to click, ….
it is beatiful, but if configurated….!
in my oppinion is not good for productivity, or for routine user….
More… in KDE 4, no more Kate, neither Konqueror, no more webcam support, printers are more difficult…No more Control Center!
Plasma close unspected, difficult to put icons in the desk, and this is important, since the menus in in KDE 4 are very confused…
Dear Fabio,
pls don’t go to gnome.
I’m sure with Saba will be great with kde 4.1.
I will install on next days kde 4 on saba because I want see why all other saba user hate kde 4.
Sincerly I used for same time at work Suse 11.00 with kde 4 and is was not bed.
Do you remember kde 3.1?? terrible.
Pls don’t worry our sabayoneros community is joined with you and we’re sure that new Sabayon 4.oh will be great also with kde 4
I am telling you now, making gnome the default DE would be the smartest thing this distro could switch to. A lot of us on the irc have been dedicated gnome users and a lot of die-hard KDE users have switched. Change can be bad.. Change can be good. But if support that has been put into making KDE good all these years is finally put towards gnome, there’s many more possibilities of growth. Keep up the good work, bro.
I haven’t noted a single “change” in history nor any written book of history that didn’t take time to produce a positive effect much less a negative one. KDE 4′s progress has been great over the last several months, but a number of people have changed from KDE to Gnome during the switch since the 3 series namely due to version 4′s instability. Still, the overall schema is being tweaked and continually worked on, and as a result, there are certainly some folks changing from Gnome back to KDE. I hope to be one of them, soon.
I really, really don’t want to use KDE 4 until it has matured substantially. I enjoy using KDE 3.5.10 and I would like to stick with that, so please keep KDE 3.5.10 as an option in SL 4.* releases. Also, please consider adding E17 as an option. Thanks.
Fabio, now this in not my oppinion, but opinions that i saw in sabayon forum, and in sabayonmania.
People want fot KDE 4, Remenber that even in the begion of the 3.5, people claimed for KDE 4.0?
Six months ago?
ahavein mind that for many users, KDE 4 will be the best enviroment…
one possibility is…options in the installer:
KDE 4 default, KDE 3.5.10 possibility for choice, GNOME and E17,and mantain in the entropy repo:
XFCE,Metisse etc…
i made another post some days ago, but the new KDE 4.2 is now more stable….
Saw kde 4 in kubuntu and I’m really disappointed as well. I hope sabayon 4 comes with kde 3.5 as well.
I’ve been using different distro’s in the past few months all sporting various releases of KDE 4 and up to be sure I could base my conclusion of kde on kde and not flaws or discomforts in various distro’s.
I’ve been doing this because the vision the kde devs have about which direction kde should go in the 4.* release apeals to me a lot. I can’t see anything wrong in better hardware support by an integrated back-end nor can I find anything wrong with a better web integration (the hot new stuff thingie) or the use of “plasmoids” in conjunction with the desktop in stead of layered on top of it. However I can very well understand the frustration of all loyal kde users as they expected the same usability and features they were used to in the 3.5.* series. It leads me to think that kde 4 doesn’t so much suck, but the release plan does. Or communication around the release plan. I for one (and i guess i was not alone)expected kde 4.0 to be “the thing”.Just weeks before the release I read on various websites that 4.0 was to be seen as a sort of beta for the 4.2 release. Now we are weeks before the release of 4.2 and again I can not see enough progress that would lead to a desktop experience as the 3.5.* releases. In short , I still stand faithfull to kde because I still have faith in what it could be although I think this is only to be expected in let’s say ( to say something) kde 4.5.*
In my opinion it might have been better to adopt the gnome aproach towards releases: slow and steady and not breaking away from something we all know was great. Please do comment.
About speed : KDE 4.1.3 runs *much* faster than 4.1.[0-2] (on my computer).
well, like others i just use kde 3.5 branch until kde 4 will be in a more stable and usable state … still a kde fan with hope for kde 4 for, well … 2010? … i think is a reasonable target … until then all kde 4 users will be hard working beta testers … living to the edges …
and for all compiz eve candy things … what!? who want that running in a working machine? that is for fun to show you hacker musckle to all girls around you …
;-D
Don’t switch from KDE4 to Gnome…. Switch from KDE4 to Fluxbox.
Seriously, that’s what I did on *buntu. KDE4 sucks compared to KDE 3.5, but that doesn’t make Gnome any more bearable, unfortunately. I think it’s time for people to start showing the love to some lesser-used environments.
I’ve been using KDE on my desktop (at work and home) for the last four years. I work with development and some oracle DBA activities.Kde4 was a cold shower on my enthusiasm. I stick with kde 3, and XFCE, a very light environment. I want my old KDE back!!
now kde 4.2.0 is out … and look very promising …
so, look like my 2010 target hope for a stable kde4 will be already reached in … 2009?
yay!
I really like sabayon 4.1 i am using a asus eeepc 1000h and i works so well all the drivers and everything however i really want to go back to kde 3.5 it is way more simple and better to use and faster fortuntly sabayon is very well made and i am able to use kde 4.1 on my eeepc (1.6 ghz processor 1gb ram) but it would be wicked if 3.5 was available