OSNews

I believe that OpenSUSE decided to keep KDE 4.1 for stability (whatever that means with 4.1) and to backport some stuff from 4.2 to it. You might want to try KDE 4.2 as it is a whole lot better than 4.1. I'm currently tracking it in Sid on my laptop and I am VERY satisfied with it. It is stable, some major problems with desktop plasmoids were fixed and it looks great (I'm using the Elegance Plasma theme with the default Oxygen icons), even for people without compositing-capable hardware.

Sure, it still looks and feels unfinished here and there but the rate that improvements are being delivered is unbelievable. My only complaint is with Amarok 2: Amarok 1.4's UI was nearly perfect and they should have just tried to tune it a bit. The current 2.X alphas and betas look really bad but I am pretty sure that they are trying hard to make it look good as it changes every other week.

I have three main hold outs that prevents me from adopting 4.2 completely on my main desktop:

Localization: I will have to wait until Mandriva or someone else can deliver a good localization for Brazilian Portuguese before I can move my family to it.

k3b: Seriously, this is best burning app ever and it is sad that the early ports to Qt 4.X are not up to the snuff yet.

Konversation: Great IRC client, albeit a bit simpler and less powerful than X-Chat. I heard from one of the developers that the KDE 4 port wasn't exactly a priority until sometime ago but they already have something on SVN (highly unstable though so it's not for the faint of heart). I've been using Quassel in the mean time and I'm loving it. Unfortunately it does not support DCC transfers yet due to its unusual design, but it is on its TO-DO list.

Other than that, it is fine. There are some other Qt3 and/or KDE 3 software that I'm really fond of that may or may not make the cut like Valknut and Apollon but that can be somehow worked around. For most people, the functionality delivered is more than enough.

I don't want to sound like a sales man but I truly believe that the improvements brought by KDE 4.2 should be enough to at least make you give it another chance. Who knows, you might like it! ^_^

Edited 2009-03-12 19:45 UTC

I for one am really liking KDE 4 starting with KDE 4.2. KDE 4.0-4.1 obviously wasn't ready for use as your primary desktop environment.

I'd suggest trying KDE 4.2 if you haven't. Its only going to get better from here.

Nope. You're not the only one. Starting with 4.1, I really started liking KDE4's desktop features, though a lot of the "peripheral" software was lacking. Starting with 4.2, most of the peripheral stuff is up to snuff too.

You didn't try KDE 4.2.1. It is really good, almost as good as KDE 3.5.10
You also didn't try KDE on the best KDE oriented distro which is Mandriva IMHO.
I've got Mandriva 2009.1 RC1 + KDE 4.2.1 and I'm telling you this is truly a happy marriage.
If you still want to use PC-BSD, their latest beta features KDE 4.2.1
FreeBSD 7.1 is excellent and I expect PC-BSD 7.1 to be a great release too.

You took the words right out of my mouth. KDE 4.0, 4.1, and 4.2 have all been crap with a lot of hoopla surrounding them. I'm not a huge 3.x fan, either. But I was a big KDE 1.x and 2.x fan and had hoped that KDE4 would redeem them. Guess not. :-(

Hmm, what exactly did you like about 1.x and 2.x that have degraded in 3.x? Guess not.

I had thought that 3.x was a port of 2.x to qt3 and polishing of 2.x, with almost no redesign. From my 10-year experience with KDE, I still remember the hideous days with 2.x and arts and noatun. What a release for me when we had Juk and then amarok in KDE 3. KDE 4.2, for me, has already surpassed the functionality provided by 3.5 series. And I am thrilled about the possibility of the KDE4 technologies that has still not consolidated into programs at this stage. For example, when can we associate the plasma activities with virtual desktops? and, when can we see our calendars, todos, emails, contacts, whatever, on our desktop without opening each handling application?

I find it a little weird that people are so against KDE4 as i personally find it the best desktop environment I've used to date (including OS X's Aqua and Vista's Aero, BeOS, numerous other open source DEs and all of the other windows shell's of old).

I love KDE4 - but i guess, it just boils down to preference

I think you actually may have hit upon the reason without realising it.

KDE4 probably IS the best current desktop environment. Also, it doesn't include Mono. Therefore, it would be imperative (from one particular point of view) to create an impression that people were against it.

Can you say "astroturfing"?