Linked by suka on Thu 25th Aug 2011 22:19 UTC
"After years of focusing on further improving KDE4 two weeks ago the developers of the free desktop announced the next big step for their project: KDE Frameworks 5.0. But as long-time developer - and Plasma team leader - Aaron Seigo points out in an interview with derStandard.at/web, the source-incompatible changes shall be held to a minimum. Also calls Frameworks 5.0 only the "first step", new Applications and Workspace releases are to follow later, Seigo goes on to talk about the chances in the mobile market with Plasma Active and further areas of collaboration with the other big free desktop: GNOME."
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RE[5]: You can throw stones at me, but...
by TemporalBeing on Fri 26th Aug 2011 14:32
in reply to "RE[4]: You can throw stones at me, but..."
Member since:2007-08-22
That makes the environment quite usable but it raises a question why developing a panel, a couple of applets and still not very good menu and desktop search system, has to take so much time and CPU power.
That is simply the nature of trying to track all information on the system - from the meta data to file names etc as you have to index, decode, etc all that information at least the first time.
Then again, you can also turn that indexing functionality off and not bother with it.
And why do I have to invest a better part of an hour or two to get it to what should be a default state for most users.
KDE 4 - especially KDE 4.6 - is very usable right out of the box. I use it on both Kubuntu 11.04 and Gentoo installations, on systems that are several years old and even keep quite a few of the effects turned on. The laptop I'm writing this from now (vintage 2008) has nearly all effects turned on; my systems at home not so much but still quite a few effects (they're considerably older - vintage 2003 and 2005).
Now I really like Plasma. I've never had much use for virtual desktops, but Activities make sense to me - I've got 4 going now.
Compared to using KDE3, KDE4 is a very different experience that really takes on a different mindset of working if you want to really get the use out of it. But, as of 4.5 or 4.6, if you really just want something like KDE3, then just turn off the indexing, set your desktop workspace to the Desktop folder, and you're good to go - virtual desktops and all.
RE[6]: You can throw stones at me, but...
by lemur2 on Fri 26th Aug 2011 15:00
in reply to "RE[5]: You can throw stones at me, but..."
Member since:2007-02-17
Compared to using KDE3, KDE4 is a very different experience that really takes on a different mindset of working if you want to really get the use out of it. But, as of 4.5 or 4.6, if you really just want something like KDE3, then just turn off the indexing, set your desktop workspace to the Desktop folder, and you're good to go - virtual desktops and all.
One caveat ... in KDE4, everything on the desktop (panels, icons, little applets, menus, links folder views, the taskbar, even the wallpaper) ... everything is a "widget".
The default behaviour of virtual desktops is that all virtual desktops shown the same configuration of widgets. So, if you want to have different wallpaper on different desktops, as you could have with KDE3, then in KDE4 you need to set one setting to its non-default state.
Right click on the desktop pager icon, then select "Pager Settings". Click on the "Virtual desktops" tab. Check the box "Different widgets for each desktop".
This non-default setting will allow you to have different wallpaper on different Virtual Desktops. In fact, if you like "icons on the desktop", you can set the desktop layout to folder view, and you can also now make each desktop folder view use a different folder. This way you can have a completely different set of icons, shortcuts, links and files on each virtual desktop.
This is a very simple way to start getting into the power of KDE4 "activities" without changing much at all of the way you have used desktops until now.
Edited 2011-08-26 15:03 UTC
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KDE4 (I have version 4.6 installed) is still heavy on resources. I have a rather new laptop which can run KDE at a reasonable speed (still Compiz offers a smoother experience) but I don't use KDE in my daily work simply because I like the laptop to run cool and quiet.
Besides, OP (protomank) didn't question the usefulness of lower level abstraction layers (APIs) - these generally work well and are only a concern to developers anyway.
What he said is that Plasma is an overkill and doesn't really add much value, yet it takes valuable resources (of both developers and users). I couldn't agree more - every time I attempt using KDE4 I end up disabling 90% of effects and more obnoxious features and themes. That makes the environment quite usable but it raises a question why developing a panel, a couple of applets and still not very good menu and desktop search system, has to take so much time and CPU power. And why do I have to invest a better part of an hour or two to get it to what should be a default state for most users.
At the end of the day the only thing I want to do on my PC is running my applications and accessing my data. A desktop should make these tasks easy but other than that it should stay in the background as much as possible. The last thing I want is a desktop-star, continuously taking my attention from productive work to its bells and whistles.