4.1 was a massive jump over the original release and hopefully 4.2 is a massive leap over that.

KDE 4.x has been improving with each point release. I firmly believe that KDE 4.3 will truly be something to reckon with. :-) The old adage "good things come to those who wait" comes to mind when considering the trials and tribulations of KDE 4 testers. Hang in there guys...the payoff will be worth it!

[QUOTE]This is a worse experience than traditional k-menu.[/QUOTE]

True, but in true KDE spirit you can change it if you do not like it. If you ask me, Lancelot ( http://lancelot.fomentgroup.org/main ) should be the default KDE4 start menu. The current is just.. well.. not so good IMHO.

Yeah I know, it will always improve! I know. But it doesn't stabilize for long. (incidently, kde 3 is mostly stabilized... nice)

By comparison...the latest gnome is ALSO the one to get. The difference here is that kde currently progresses far more between releases than gnome.

KDE4 is not only innovating much faster than GNOME, and already is more powerful than GNOME, it has also opened up a considerable performance gap over GNOME on the same hardware.

Wrong...Seeing as gtk uses cairo and cairo uses xrender then it also uses the gpu to "render" the desktop.

While that is true, the real "secret" is that KE4 is the only desktop for Linux that utilises the GPU to render the desktop. As long as the system has a GPU and driver for Linux that is working, KDE4 is far and away the fastest desktop available for Linux, beating out even the "lightweight" desktops for speed.

KDE4 is not only innovating much faster than GNOME, and already is more powerful than GNOME, it has also opened up a considerable performance gap over GNOME on the same hardware.

the widgets are drawn using cairo, so they are accelerated if a particular cairo function is supported by xrender. In case you don't know most xrender functions use the 3d engine of a gpu to draw.

And yes It can be slower, but I haven't really noticed unless trying to resize a composited window

Interestingly, the FSF are pushing for 100% free distributions and demand the removal of GLX, which would result in GNU/Linux being perceived as notably slower, a move which could only hurt its adoption. Still, Stallman knows best.

Can you set it up to give you the application and window list menus for a mouse-click in the root window (what you control in KDE3 by ControlCenter > Desktop > Behavior > Mouse Button Actions)?

I never was able to find any way of getting them in Mandriva's edition of KDE 4.1.3, which for me is a show-stopper.

This is the first time I've not been able to get application menus by clicking in the root window since at least OL(V)WM on SPARC2's back in the early Nineties. KDE3 had the best scheme I had found in more than fifteen years, and then they seem to be gone entirely in 4.1.

What gives?

"Interestingly, the FSF are pushing for 100% free distributions and demand the removal of GLX, which would result in GNU/Linux being perceived as notably slower, a move which could only hurt its adoption. Still, Stallman knows best.

Using (opengl) compositing DOES NOT make things faster. It only makes things prettier and smoother making it appear faster.

[QUOTE]This is a worse experience than traditional k-menu.[/QUOTE]

True, but in true KDE spirit you can change it if you do not like it. If you ask me, Lancelot ( http://lancelot.fomentgroup.org/main ) should be the default KDE4 start menu. The current is just.. well.. not so good IMHO.

When 4.0 came out, the hype was "this is the release". When it was completely unusable, people started saying... "just wait for 4.1, it will be the one"...

3 different searches engines or inserting this time an artificial intelligent auto-completion form. Each release the same old story.

Oxygen is one of the worst UI's around. I sincerely wanted it to be replaced, but KDE-dev is a parliament - not an enterprise pushing for market share.

And no, I won't even try 4.2.

Perhaps things will change when the majority of distros just drop KDE off as their default desktop.

I might not like all the design decisions in KDE 4, but my god, I'm so happy that they at least have the guts to be different and try something new.

GNOME could learn a great deal from them.

I should correct both you and lemur2.

Using (opengl) compositing DOES NOT make things faster. It only makes things prettier and smoother making it appear faster.

NVIDIA 180.22 x86/x86_64 Linux Driver Released

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Njk3OA

This version of the Nvidia binary driver for Linux has the infamous Xrender bug fixed. This will mean that KDE 4.2, when it is released in Linux distributions this year, will finally work as well on nvidia 8000 and 9000 series graphics systems as well as KDE4 has on other systems up to this point.

This driver (since it impacts a good number of systems), along with the considerable improvements in KDE 4.2 itself, will finally reveal to many critics the full (and impressive) power and innovation that KDE4 brings to the desktop.

When 4.0 came out, the hype was "this is the release".

The trouble was, Ubuntu had raised the bar for OSS projects being "ready". The user base for KDE 3.0 was largely hackers. The potential user base for 4.0 included many a clueless noob brought to Linux by Ubuntu. And so, everyone got their underwear in a twist because the major release of KDE still required testing, as if this were an entirely new phenomenon in open source.

While GNOME certainly needs some work, it is nowhere near as badly written as KDE supporters always seem to claim,

KDE is set to eat Gnome's lunch some time during 4.x cycle, but that time obviously isn't here yet. But once 4.x goes stable, it's at a much better position than Gnome will be at that time.

And Gnome has paid all the attention to detail, benefited from the formal real world usability testing, and made all the tough decisions in order to excel in usability.

i tried lancelot in kde 4.2 beta.... and i found it so so...

too much information is displayed...

Firstly, I'm not sure that this "eating their lunch" attitude is particularly constructive or good for open source.

"I should correct both you and lemur2.

Using (opengl) compositing DOES NOT make things faster. It only makes things prettier and smoother making it appear faster.

I think most people aren't complaining about bugs with KDE4 anymore, it's mostly about features and apps.

I use it fulltime and there are still some desktop things that aren't fully there yet. I guess this really shouldn't be too surprising because it was KDE 3.3 or 3.4 that really started to have the polish for that major release.

Excuse me? You really think the default GNOME file open/save dialog box is useable?.

Duly noted.

I recall a while back when Havok Pennington, Miguel, Nate & others were having debates about the future of Gnome. Does stuff like this still get discussed?

I just switched from Gnome to KDE 4.1. I'm not sure where the howls of "It's not ready!" are coming from, because KDE 4 is pretty nice already. There are a handful of incongruities (no disc burning from the desktop, no drag and drop between tabs in Dolphin) but otherwise it's very stable, very usable, and very beautiful. I can't wait for 4.2.

"Excuse me? You really think the default GNOME file open/save dialog box is useable?.

Double standard? Neither Oxygen or KickOff are really usable.

but really, if you are looking this from C/C++ side, Gnome has very little going for it (apart from the license, a matter that I also follow with keen interest - if Nokia is considering easing the GPL stranglehold on S60 Qt, there could be changes for X11 Qt as well, to bolster Maemo Qt development).

KDE is set to eat Gnome's lunch some time during 4.x cycle, but that time obviously isn't here yet. But once 4.x goes stable, it's at a much better position than Gnome will be at that time.

Nokia Qt LGPL switch huge win for cross-platform development

By Ryan Paul

Nokia has announced plans to make the open source Qt toolkit available under GNU's Lesser General Public License (LGPL). This change could significantly boost Qt adoption, redefine the economics of cross-platform programming, and dramatically reshape the landscape of commercial application development on the Linux desktop.

AAAAARGH!

Why do people insist something has bad usability, when they don't like something?

Do you speak for every user? are you a usability expert?

It is alright to say that you don't like it, or that it does not work for you. Just don't hide behind usability.

Usability is about making it usable for the majority. Some won't like it, which is why there are alternatives (contrary to gnome or osx).

The look of the new [KDE] desktop is stunning, and the use of SVG and hardware acceleration gives (IMHO) even something like MacOS a run for its money in terms of appearance and user-friendliness. We look forward with great anticipation to merging KDE4 when it is mature enough (and it's getting there fast), and then watching it just get better and better.