Author Topic: KDE 4 out, and my, it looks gorgeous! (Read 25087 times)

Lashiec · « **on:** January 21, 2008, 03:25 PM »

Oh, look, those Linux guys are receiving yet another update of that impressive-looking KDE desktop thing, and we, poor Windows and Mac OS X users are still trapped with our yesteryear interfaces and operating systems. But fear not, for the KDE guys come to the rescue!

OK, let's get serious, this is an update I've been dribbling about since I saw the first beta, not only for its looks, but also for the metaphor change, and a development in the works which makes another inroad in proprietary operating systems by the use of OSS. I'm going through the Ars Technica review now, and although the first version have some rough points that will be fixed in a future 4.1 version (hmmm, that reminds me of a certain operating system...), it seems these people have a winner in their hands. Take that, GNOME! :P

The best of all is that, thanks to the use of Qt4, versions of KDE for Windows and Mac OS X will be available in the future. I don't know how well would they integrate with the rest of the environment, but I'm eager to find it.

Announcement

KDE 4 out, and my, it looks gorgeous!

The announcement only mentions the most important changes, but some of the possibilities that the new desktop implies are impressive, as for example, the ability to transform Amarok into a modular player, just like foobar2000, using Plasmoids, that's what the individual elements in the Plasma desktop are called. Now, the only one thing we need is a stable Linux distribution to try it with some more time :)

EDIT: Typos, eaten words, etc.

wreckedcarzz · « **Reply #1 on:** January 21, 2008, 03:28 PM »

versions of KDE for Windows and Mac OS X will be available in the future.
-Lashiec (January 21, 2008, 03:25 PM)

I love the KDE desktop environment! It is so interactive and has so many little cool things you can do with it. And the customization is just amazing. Hope it hits Windows (and Vista) soon!

jgpaiva · « **Reply #2 on:** January 21, 2008, 04:04 PM »

QT4!!! Portable!!! Cross-Platform!!!

*jgpaiva* cheers with hopes on a bright new future!

Ok, now seriously:
This is very good news, and i hope i'll be able to test KDE4 on windows very soon (as currently, a look at their page really gives the impression that it's something very unstable)

This is a very good step for the linux people too, if they get more windows people to use kde, linux might get even more users (since the biggest problem is always the interface leap).

jgpaiva · « **Reply #3 on:** January 21, 2008, 04:49 PM »

Ok, i have now read the whole article and i'm very happy with what i read. The term "cross-platform" and its synonyms kept appearing, and i think that's a huge step towards tomorrow's technologies.
Even though it sure isn't a polished project, the ideas look very inovative and interesting, let's now hope people will love it as much as the reviewer did

This is a very well written article, and next time i see an article by Ars Technica, i'll be sure to read it. Thanks lashiec!!

mouser · « **Reply #4 on:** January 21, 2008, 08:10 PM »

Sounds like good news.. but.. hate to be the rotten egg in the box.. but.. those screenshots look ugly to me.. maybe i just like my displays packed tight and full of details.. all that whitespace looks yuck.

wreckedcarzz · « **Reply #5 on:** January 21, 2008, 08:12 PM »

While that is a valid point, some "iCandy" never hurts. You can probably adjust the views and settings to show whatever you want afterwards anyways.

Darwin · « **Reply #6 on:** January 21, 2008, 11:04 PM »

+1 for the screenshots not really having the WOW factor (for me) - looks like clunky verison of OS X.

jgpaiva · « **Reply #7 on:** January 22, 2008, 04:11 AM »

What i think is really interesting about this, isn't the look of the thing. You can use themes to make it look exactly like what you like. There even are a few mac osx imitations, and i'm sure that if the windows project gets off the ground, they'll make a win98 theme to show people how while using the same graphic elements, they can have better technology. (at least, i hope they do).

Just take a look at the article, and you'll see the main point of the thing isn't the looks but the inner works.

Something i forgot to mention previously: the file manager still sucks, when compared to the windows alternatives

Darwin · « **Reply #8 on:** January 22, 2008, 07:24 AM »

Just take a look at the article, and you'll see the main point of the thing isn't the looks but the inner works.
-jgpaiva (January 22, 2008, 04:11 AM)

Oh come on, João, do you honeslty expect me to go beyond judging a book by its cover?! Darwin slinks off to do as directed...

Armando · « **Reply #9 on:** January 24, 2008, 09:57 AM »

KDE on Windows and Mac OS X :

http://arstechnica.c...ac-os-x-support.html

tranglos · « **Reply #10 on:** January 24, 2008, 01:15 PM »

Sounds like good news.. but.. hate to be the rotten egg in the box.. but.. those screenshots look ugly to me.. maybe i just like my displays packed tight and full of details.. all that whitespace looks yuck.
-mouser (January 21, 2008, 08:10 PM)

With you all the way. And for some reason this seems to be typical of many open-source, cross-platform GUIs.

I remember when first installed Red Hat, back in the times when 800x600 was the typical home/desktop resolution, the windowing environment looked just like that. This made some applications almost unusable. Netscape's Options dialog box was so tall it didn't fit on the screen vertically, so that OK/Cancel buttons were off-screen. And at the same time everything on the dialog was oversized and there was plenty of wasted white space.

Back then I thought the developers must have been working on high-end systems with some obscenely high resolution and never thought about scaling issues. WordPerfect (then by Corel, and free on Linux!) was pretty much the same.

FireFox is the only app of the kind which manages to avoid this, perhaps because it truly gets a lot of cross-platform use, so such issues would have been caught and corrected early on. Although even in FF some dialogs are kind of space-y.

(I am aware that whitespace enhances readability, but those dialogs were just elephantine.)

Armando · « **Reply #11 on:** January 24, 2008, 01:42 PM »

GUIs are so customizable that IMHO it's not a real problem. But true, they (the developpers) should be a bit more attentive to details... I personally find that Ubuntu has a nice default GUI (Gnome), and so does Mandriva and a couple other distributions.

Gothi[c] · « **Reply #12 on:** January 24, 2008, 01:59 PM »

With you all the way. And for some reason this seems to be typical of many open-source, cross-platform GUIs.

This seems typical of many people to judge a package by it's wrapping

I definitively agree that the screens look like absolute crap. My main beef with it is that everything is too friggin' big (I love Armando's "elephantile" description hehe) . I understand some people have wall-sized monitors, but i like everything small, and like mouser said, detailed.

But it should be noted that KDE is VERY customizable. Even more so than Gnome. And it is quite easy to do so. It is actually exciting that this new version will give us even more settings to tweak and customize, as any software-addict be it an open-source hater or not, should definitively love!

tranglos · « **Reply #13 on:** January 25, 2008, 11:17 PM »

With you all the way. And for some reason this seems to be typical of many open-source, cross-platform GUIs.

This seems typical of many people to judge a package by it's wrapping
-Gothi[c] (January 24, 2008, 01:59 PM)

That's the only way I know of telling good software, has there ever ben another?

But seriously, this oversizedness and tendency to leave large pools of blankness is everywhere in apps that have originated on Linux. It's wherever you look, check out the screenshot of Nvu, the Gecko-based, cross-platform HTML editor:

http://images.linspi...ManagerInSidebar.jpg

And anyway, what is the world coming to? First you could run Windows on a Mac, now it's KDE on Windows, pretty soon men and women will be, I don't know, living in the same *houses* or something!

But it should be noted that KDE is VERY customizable. Even more so than Gnome. And it is quite easy to do so.
-Gothi[c] (January 24, 2008, 01:59 PM)

Easy as in easy, or easy as in "as soon as you have mastered editing sendmail config in vi"? (*gdr*)

f0dder · « **Reply #14 on:** January 26, 2008, 07:00 AM »

But seriously, this oversizedness and tendency to leave large pools of blankness is everywhere in apps that have originated on Linux. It's wherever you look, check out the screenshot of Nvu, the Gecko-based, cross-platform HTML editor:

http://images.linspi...ManagerInSidebar.jpg
-tranglos (January 25, 2008, 11:17 PM)

Oh gawd, that image makes my eyes bleed. So...much...wasted...space >_<

Seems typical of graphical linux apps. So much blank space, oversized buttons and borders, etc. Ugh.

Gothi[c] · « **Reply #15 on:** January 26, 2008, 07:46 AM »

Easy as in easy, or easy as in "as soon as you have mastered editing sendmail config in vi"? (*gdr*)

Easy as in there's a gui tool to customize every aspect of the look of KDE. So you never have to edit config files.

However I did notice this is not quite yet the case in KDE4. I recently gave it a shot and it seems you can't resize the taskbar like you could in KDE3.x?

Maybe they'll put that in later, unless I missed something...

jgpaiva · « **Reply #16 on:** January 26, 2008, 07:58 AM »

From what i understood from the review, the taskbar was removed, and replaced with a Plasma widget. The problem is that it's incomplete and not working correctly

Lashiec · « **Reply #17 on:** January 26, 2008, 09:21 AM »

As with Windows Vista (and every other piece of software as lately, it seems), wait for SP1 ;)

roady · « **Reply #18 on:** January 26, 2008, 10:57 AM »

Something i forgot to mention previously: the file manager still sucks, when compared to the windows alternatives
-jgpaiva (January 22, 2008, 04:11 AM)

Which filemanager do you mean?
I mostly use Krusader,and for me,it's the best free alternative to mr Ghisler's Total Commander.....

Armando · « **Reply #19 on:** January 26, 2008, 11:21 AM »

Krusader
-roady (January 26, 2008, 10:57 AM)

Looks nice. I'll have to try it at some point. Thanks for the pointer!

jgpaiva · « **Reply #20 on:** January 26, 2008, 01:36 PM »

I was talking about dolphin, the one tested in the review.

Krusader looks very good, i just gave it a go, and i might get used to it.
I prefer a dual-pane file explorer, opposed to a norton commander file explorer, though. Still, on my computer (which has gnome and not kde), krusader's keyboard navigation failed way too many times for my tastes (sometimes the arrows or the enter key wouldn't change the selection or open the selected folders, and similar things).

Lashiec · « **Reply #21 on:** January 28, 2008, 05:30 PM »

OK, I suppose it can go here

Surprise, surprise, guess who snagged Trolltech? HINT: It's not a company from Norway.

f0dder · « **Reply #22 on:** January 28, 2008, 06:20 PM »

But it's geographically pretty close, Finland.

zridling · « **Reply #23 on:** January 30, 2008, 12:12 AM »

Gothi[c] is right — you can customize both KDE and Gnome until your fingers bleed. What I really love about them is that you can keep an old UI if you like it. Used to XP and want to stick with it across versions? No problem! Want it to look like Vista? No problem, just start tweaking. The problem most users would run into with these two desktop environments is that you can absolutely change every single little part of the interface and it can be exhausting. So most folks look for themes, similar to how Opera allows you to change its look on the fly.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #24 on:** January 30, 2008, 03:21 PM »

Sorry if this has already been mentioned but KDE 4 for Windows is available in beta form here: http://windows.kde.org/

Currently it doesn't replace Explorer as the Windows GUI but presumably when the project reaches a stable release version it will do.

There are a few articles about it on ZDNET - here is one that I read which shows a little how the beta version works:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=1185