"The KDE Community is happy to release the fourth Beta for KDE 4.0. This Beta aimed at further polishing of the KDE codebase and we would love to start receiving feedback from testers. As KDE has largely has been in bugfix mode, this latest Beta aims to encourage testers to have a look at it to help us find and solve the remaining problems and bugs. Besides the stabilization of the codebase, some minor features have been added, including but not limited to much work on Plasma, the KDE 4 desktop shell. Sebastian Kugler notes: 'The improvements have been huge, and plasma is much closer to what it needs to be before the release. I am confident we will be able to finish it and present a very usable plasma to our userbase with KDE 4.0. We will then be able to extend on that and present truly innovative desktop interfaces throughout the KDE 4 lifecycle.'"
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Member since:2006-03-12
"The one thing I still don't think Linux has gotten yet is the "smooth, slick" look that Mac has. "
I'm only vaugly interested but what isn't slick provide an example. Any example.
Linux has 2/3 fully functional desktops and they have all looked smooth/slick for a long time, KDE has always looked "smooth, slick" with defaults, and had a million ways to customize it to your tastes.
Member since:2005-06-29
As I mentioned, fonts is a good example.
The font used is jagged and raw looking, not as smooth in appearance as Mac fonts are. It detracts from the icons and menu bars, which admittedly look better in KDE 4 than before.
GNOME has the same issue to me; I instantly change the font when I load Ubuntu. While I understand that you can change things and customize easily, for a new user, first impressions are important.
The biggest complaint about KDE I have is that much of both the icons and the UI look very cartoony and not slick.(Admittedly XP looks the same; much like a Fisher-Price toy) I have to admit that KDE 4 has improved that quite a bit.
Edited 2007-10-30 22:42
Member since:2006-01-12
Personally I prefer linux fonts over mac OSX.
They look unpolished, they look like they were an after thought. like something was swapped out right at the end.
I also run a pretty customized but extremely simple scheme for fonts on my system. Nothing ever above 12, the bit stream verdana, sizes 8-12 for absolutely everything. Simple elegant. not blurry.
Member since:2005-11-21
Personally, Freetype is admittedly behind OS X's font system, but that's to be expected.
I don't give a rusty f*** whether the AA of on-screen fonts aren't satisfactory (they look right in either platform when configured correctly), but what I do give a rusty f*** about is stuff like XeTeX allowing me to leverage OpenType or TrueType fonts so I can produce publish quality manuscripts, journal articles, novels, etc.
I care that my PDFs are press quality. Whether someone's Xorg config and fontconfig setups are different than the next person's doesn't matter to me.
If I've got them configured correctly Freetype 2.3 gets better with every release and so does OS X's font system.
If you think OS X's fonts are blurry and low quality then you don't understand the Print Industry.
Member since:2007-10-18
Just for the sake of accuracy, Linux isn't responsible for font rendering at that level. The people at FreeType (http://freetype.sourceforge.net/index2.html) are the ones you'd probably want to voice those concerns to.
Member since:
2005-06-29
The one thing I still don't think Linux has gotten yet is the "smooth, slick" look that Mac has.
The fonts for one thing is a detractor. I instantly change the fonts over to give more of that smooth look and feel to it.
There is a lot of potential here, and I don't advocate copying the Mac interface, but it could be an outstanding interface if it were analyzed from a visual UI point of view. GNOME has the same issue; functional, but not smooth.
BTW, I do use and appreciate Linux quite a bit.