The important thing IS... Amarok is coming to Windows

And KOffice, and maybe I could kick out that monster called OpenOffice, and use it as office suite. And KDevelop, an IDE for a zillion languages which does not use Java. And Kopete, and, and...

It's beautiful, it's colorful, it's big and bright and all things nice...

And I just don't like the way it looks.

But that's just me.

I guess if you have it up on some huge wide-screen LCD it's the cat's pajamas. But on my  12" laptop it looks like an arcade puzzle game. The performance improvements are great, but the presentation doesn't do it for me.

So now I have to figure out if I have the patience to start hacking big time to get it to be something I would like, or just stick with Xfce. Hmmmmm....

I'm with mouser on this one. In my opinion, it looks like a boring grey Windows XP theme mixed with the ugly HUGE icons from Vista.

EDIT: Just realized how old this thread is. 

Wow, where'd they get those huge icons at in that article?! I like the Vista UI, but this 4.1 version has both stability and some extremely convenient shortcuts. (And this coming from someone who's used Gnome and xfce to date.)

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40 hz: Did you try 4.0? Do your think this new version is an improvement over it? Do you think 4.0 was usable? How about 4.1?

Tried 4.0 and thought I would never use KDE again.

Tried 4.1 and was very impressed by the improvements across the board.

I always liked the degree of control KDE afforded the end-user. I am of the school that believes you should be able to change, tweak, and tune every aspect of your desktop. Not that you should necessarily, but Linux is supposed to be all about choice right?

But I still can't get my head around the visual presentation. I don't really know what it is about the appearance of the new KDE that bothers me so much. It reminds me of Adobe AIR or the Enlightenment desktop. Everybody I know loves the look of both. I don't. And I very much dislike widgets in any way shape or form.

It probably has more to do with my individual sense of aesthetics and work style than anything rational. If you buy into NLP, my preferred representational system is auditory rather than visual. I guess that comes from my being a trained musician - and not having the world's greatest eyesight.

So anytime I'm commenting on visual design issues, just take it with a grain of salt! My sister, who owns a design agency, certainly does.

In the long run I'm sure KDE will turn out to be a winner. So much so that I'll probably keep an installation of it on a swappable hard drive just so I can keep on top of it.

Thanks a lot for your opinion, 40hz
I can't wait to test kde 4.1

My pleasure. Always happy to share my misunderstandings and lack of expertise!

You might want to take a look at these articles (pro):

http://www.linux.com/feature/142661

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/features/article.php/3761781/KDE+4.1+Review:+The+Rocky+Road+of+the+New+KDE.htm

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080729-kde-4-1-delivers-a-next-gen-desktop-linux-experience.html

And this one (con):

http://www.deviceguru.com/2008/07/31/kde-410-disappoints/

A friend pointed me to this link for an easy way to install it if you're running Ubuntu.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/How-To-Install-KDE-4-1-On-Ubuntu-8-04-91034.shtml

Can't vouch for it since I did it the hard way, like always. But friend said it worked perfectly for her. Please note she did it immediately after a clean installation from CD. Your mileage may vary if you're installing on top of an existing copy (i.e. not recommended).

Luck

40hz: Thanks a lot for the links!
I read the "con" review, and from what I understand, the problem was that the reviewer didn't make a clean install, just updated 4.0, or something like that. Good thing I haven't installed 4.0 on my ubuntu machine, I hope I won't have problems installing

jgpaiva: no, it doesn't resize when you add items, but it does add a scrollbar automatically. Even better, you can add links to any folder and filter their view within the [desktop] folder. Pretty cool.