Submitted by “Stephan Binner, a well-known KDE and openSUSE developer, has released a set of live CDs featuring the latest development snapshot of KDE 4 (screenshots). Unlike the SLAX-based live CD called KLAX, which he used to develop in order to demonstrate new KDE releases, his ‘KDE Four Live’ images are based on openSUSE. After a large, uncompressed live DVD released earlier in the week, a set of smaller live CDs (compressed with Squashfs) is now also available for download. Don’t expect trouble-free computing with these early KDE 4 snapshots, but as demonstration tools designed to give KDE users an early taste of things to come, they aren’t too bad. The first alpha build of KDE 4 is scheduled for release early next week.”
The icons look a bit odd, I almost like the crystal icons better than those.
See this screenshot of the Dolphin, the new default file-manager: http://arstechnica.com/news.media/dolphin4_oxygen-1.jpg
from the review of the same at Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070405-afirst-look-at-dolphi…
I’m no fan of the icons either. They’re low contrast, and have no borders, making them quite fuzzy and difficult to distinguish from one another. The colour-palette is also quite limited, people forget that colour can be used to help distinguish icons (e.g. the home icon might be mainly red, next to green movement icons and blue+white view icons, making it easy to pick it out from a quick glance)
And no emblems, GNOME have had emblems for years and sadly looks like KDE4 won’t have them.
No reason to think KDE 4.0 won’t have them, Strigi is already in and Nepomuk is coming soon, so the whole infrastructure is there already. It’ll be very easy to add it.
And how search engines are related to icon emblems? In this case I mean.
They aren’t just indexers, Strigi is a plugin-based storage system (and xmlindexer is used to feed it). Nepomuk can store meta-data in it, and provides a easy API to store and retrieve meta-data. Like labels. So the Dolphin dev’s just need to use the API, then overlay the emblems (and KDE already overlays icons over icons, for example to show the contents of a folder, so that’s there already as well). Just connecting the parts. Maybe not like 10 minutes work, but no weeks either.
One thing is to have the infractucsture and other to have the plans or will to do it and till now none of them have been show.
1 week, and nepomuk will be part of KDEbase. No reason to be so negative.
I can’t wait. It look nice.
Hardly a revoultion though (not neccessarily a bad thing)
the difference between 3.5.x and this is negligible. What happened to all those promises of a new paradigm?
i think this is mostly a case of testing the background code. as in the stuff that will push the data onto the gui.
the new gui will come at a later date, when they have the needed data sources in place to read from.
It is called getting the core technology hammered out before interface changes are added so if the desktop crashes developers know what layer is calling it.
We don’t want KDE 4 to be a house of cards on a shaky foundation now do we
The end-user visible changes will come later as I understand it.
True, the current snapshot looks pretty much like KDE 3.5 series. However, don’t be fooled:
– The current KDE snapshot already makes use of Qt 4.3, the latest toolkit version from trolltech [http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt]. It is obviously much more powerful than Qt3 and it’s also lighter on resources. You can search in OSNews for more details on this.
– A lot of backend technologies are already being merged. The latest SVN revisions show that Strigi [http://strigi.sourceforge.net/], Solid [http://solid.kde.org/], Phonon [http://phonon.kde.org/], and Oxygen [http://www.oxygen-icons.org/] are under heavy development and the commits are very frequent.
– I suspect Konqueror will see major changes in the next 6 months that precede the KDE 4.0 release. Now that file managing has been assigned to Dolphin [http://enzosworld.gmxhome.de/], Konqueror will hopefully be a lot lighter, cleaner, and friendlier.
Also, it’s been said already that the first release of KDE 4 will probably not ship all the new planned features (they probably mean Plasma and some kind of XGL/AIGLX integration here). In my opinion, that decision makes sense, since it allows developers to observe how users react to the new technologies already integrated, get some feedback, fix some bugs, and incrementally implement the remaining features in a well-thought, carefully planned way.
What this basically means is that the first release of KDE4, KDE 4.0, will not be feature complete.
I wouldn’t expect Konqueror to get too much lighter (I don’t know how it would anyway as it is just a container) as I don’t think that Dolphin is meant to replace Konqueror as a file manager so much as to provide a dedicated file manager to those who want that. My understanding is that people who like Konqueror the way it is as a file manager and a web browser, like myself, will be able to continue using it as such in KDE 4 and not even have to install Dolphin if we don’t want to.
Dolphin looks great for those who want it, but there are plenty of us who won’t use it. I know that I installed the Qt3 version of Dolphin to check it out and while it is definitely nice, I have never wanted to use it for any other reason than curiosity.
edit: I just want to say that this live-cd looks great and I cannot wait to try it, so lets not go too far down the Dolphin-vs-Konqueror path as that has already been explored satisfactorily on other threads.
Edited 2007-04-24 00:18
thats the nice thing with KDE. rather then having distinct apps, they are all made of kparts. so both dolphin and konqueror use the same file browsing kpart.
isnt there a outlook/evolution like app under kde thats basically the merging of the mail, contacts and calendar kparts? kparts that can all be accessed independently if one wants to?
isnt there a outlook/evolution like app under kde thats basically the merging of the mail, contacts and calendar kparts? kparts that can all be accessed independently if one wants to?
It is called Kontact. And all of its components can be called separately indeed…
Last I heard, little to none of Kontact/KDE PIM has even began to head towards QT4.x…
Should be interesting to see what happens there…
Kontact was mostly created in parallel to Kolab, I’m not sure how many of the KDE folks actually work on it?
There was just a massive Kontact/KDEPIM/KMail hackathon this weekend, setting the stage for moving things into the land of KDE4. Check the planetkde blogs for more info.
I don’t like repeating the old cliche “Qt 4 is lighter and faster than Qt 3” over and over again, when it’s obviously not true. Yes, it is definitely more advanced, but there comes the usual price – the more advanced and complex the software is, the slower it gets. Qt 4 is vastly slower than Qt 3, the difference in some areas (such as window resizing, menus, tab switching, dialog appearing) is almost devastating, on both Linux and Microsoft Windows and in some cases makes it even much slower than GTK+ 2.x (which is really exceptional). Just because Qt 4 is more modular, only the needed parts are loaded in memory, it can draw vector graphics through OpenGL etc. does not make it lighter and faster.
I don’t believe the code is fully optimized yet.
Are you sure you didn’t use a debug version? Was it from a LiveCD or an install? In other words, what are you basing yourself on to say that Qt4 is much slower than Qt3?
“Was it from a LiveCD or an install? In other words, what are you basing yourself on to say that Qt4 is much slower than Qt3?”
I’m basing it on using Qt 4. I haven’t tried KDE 4 at all. The speed difference between Qt 3 and Qt 4 is quite astonishing.
On linux, if you don’t have accelerated Xrender, Qt4 is indeed a bit slower than Qt3. But with hardware accelerated (even with a low end graphics card) it’s much faster.
Like I said, I used Qt 4 on Microsoft Windows, too, and it is slow and CPU hungry there, too.
Which version of QT 4 did you use? It was my understanding that early versions were quite a bit slower than the newer ones. I also think that certain types of code require a rewrite rather than just a port from QT 3 in order to be fast. Were you making QT 4 apps from scratch or porting something?
4.2 (currently 4.2.2), a new GUI made from scratch, no port, but it can be easily seen in Trolltech’s Qt Designer, too. Window resizing is very slow (repainting), opening menus (right-click or combo boxes) eats significantly more CPU cycles than in Qt 3, tab switching is slow (it was instant in Qt 3, but there’s a noticeable delay in Qt 4), some dialogs (even simple ones, with just a couple of text labels) are noticeably slow to appear on the screen (it is a small fraction of a second, but it is noticeable).
Yeah, it ain’t fast either, here, but I figured it was due to debug symbols and stuff… I hope they can fix it (and if Zack has his way, it might for 4.3, he wanted to speed that up quite a bit).
I agree. I think it’s too soon to comment on the performance of the library, considering this is all still under heavy development.
Well, I DO agree with parent it’s a bad sign…
Nobody has accelerated Xrender. Only r200 of all the cards have accelerated Xrender. For every one else, are we just screwed?
The latest NVIDIA drivers have XRender enabled by default.
In XGL XRender is accelerated through glitz (Cairo backend). AFAIR, it was, along accelerated compositing, other big feature of XGL. Also experimental Glucose patch(es) should allow for this with AIGLX.
The XGL/AIXGL/compositing stuff (the kwin-compositing branch) is supposed to be merged now, though they might delay it until next monday. Also Nepomuk will go in soon (eg during the week, or also next monday). No idea when the new style will go in, but I hope before the first alpha.
Solid, phonon and strigi are in, but still have to be put to use by the applications – that’ll take some months still, I think.
Then some basic things, like the font-dialogs, the ‘add a symbol’ dialog, the color selection dialog etc are being redesigned with more usability in mind. Some of these changes are already in, others are being developed still.
But in some area’s like PIM there aren’t enough contributors currently. Unless some ppl step up and help out, PIM won’t be very impressive in KDE 4
…I take that you bought a copy of Vista Ultimate and are needing to justify the $400 dollars you spent?
The entire HIG along-side it’s Gnome cousin just lack style and intuitive layout.
But then again, I’m waiting for an option where one can have Floating vertical menus that tear off and retain their last location; and all auto-hide if I hold the control double-click on an icon.
I’m sorry but even OS X sucks by disavowing its Openstep heritage where I have never been more productive when that UI design was developed by Keith Ohlfs.
Windowmaker doesn’t come close.
I am not sure what this has to do with KDE, but wouldn’t GNUstep serve your needs better? WindowMaker is just a window manager after all. (And I know GNUstep is just a framework etc. but if you use WindowMaker, GWorkspace.app, GNUMail.app, etc together you have a pretty nice NeXT-like desktop and Etoile looks cool although it is not there yet) Personally I switch back and forth between KDE and a GNUstep based desktop depending on my mood.
Now back to KDE4
…..
I use GNUstep. The UI behavior is what I miss from Openstep that neither GNUstep [mainly due to its lack of maturity as a complete DE] nor Gnome or KDE possess.
My primary DE for Debian Linux is KDE 3.5.6.
Criticizing it for not capitalizing on being a more intuitive and efficient environment isn’t to take away from what it offers. Since KDE prides itself on customizing itself to death [GNOME thinks it does] it would be nice if it had an option to customize how the menuing system works, other than the boring Mac OS of old layout.
Edited 2007-04-25 00:46
Pronouns do not take apostrophes in the possessive sense. “Hers,” “theirs,” and “its” are possessive, while “it’s” means “it is”. For example: “Its cousin lacked its attributes: it’s just hard to use.”
I really hope they change this toolbar behavior:
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=802&slide=1…
It was bad enough in KDE 3.x.
What’s wrong with the toolbars in 3.x?
And as for the screenshot, that’s obviously not going to stay that way. Seriously, it’s as if you guys have never seen alpha code before…
I think we can see some stuff starting to look nice and some things that are different. I guess at this point in time most changes are under the hood and we hav eto wait until plasma. I find the blue weird with the way oxygen uses black icons (I actually like the black icons) with the blue background.
Edit: I think the difference is when application start using the underlaying technologies (Amarok, Koffice, etc)
Edited 2007-04-24 03:16
What is the deal with ‘search’ now it seems like this is one of the most important areas they are focused on right now? If I need to find a file on my Linux workstation or my laptop I use the CLI I do not need to one of these cpu absorbing X-windows searches.
I guess they are trying to get it like Windows I do not understand or maybe I am not grasping the mentality of this move (tunnel vision).
KDE is a nice desktop manager, I go back and forth between them but mostly use Gnome for my work place and sometimes KDE for home.
If I need to find a file on my Linux workstation or my laptop I use the CLI I do not need to one of these cpu absorbing X-windows searches.
Well, first, Strigi (nor any of the other indexers/search engines) is not an X-windows technology, it can be used from the commandline as well.
Second, not everybody has enough knowledge to use commandline tools efficiently enough to find what they are looking for.
Third, using a search engine enables one to search in content and metadata, without requiring different tools for different file/data formats.
Fourth, spending some CPU time now and then is usually way more efficient than throwing all system resources at a search operation whenever one needs a new query, i.e. keeping an index up to date enables the search engine to perfom the search without looking through all data yet another time.
Fifth, getting all matches from a single source means the source can also add ranking information to indicate how good each result matches the query.
KDE 4 is no where near finished, and people insist on making half-arse distributions with checkouts of the unstable code?
This does nothing but undermine the development of KDE 4. People will look at it an go ‘it looks horrid and broken’ because – IT IS.
Can’t people just wait till it’s finished?
Look what it did for E17…..waitaminute…
Can’t people just wait till it’s finished?
No, we can’t. Release early, release often. That’s the name of the game in community OSS development. We need to keep the excitement up, we need to seek out users to get feedback, and we need to court developers. Alpha and preview releases are the way to do this. If we never release an alpha, we’ll never RTM.
I wouldn’t worry too much about people’s perceptions. If someone is up on KDE development enough to take this LiveDVD for a spin or to check out the screenshots, then they would be very unlikely to be put off. Newbies won’t experience KDE4 until it is the default on their distro of choice. Those users will just wait till it’s finished.
It look very uninspirining, but as far as I know the majority of work being done on KDE4 is under the hood and not on the surface. Sometime around fall we might start seeing some polish, but hardly earlier than that.
I can’t wait to see FreeBSD KDE 4.0 port!
It won’t be a port, just a compile, KDE runs natively on most, if not all modern Unixes. There are a few ppl working hard to make sure it does.
FreeBSD KDE team will make binary for FreeBSD and you can build it from the FreeBSD ports as well.
I surrender. the GODDAMN windows 9x like bar will be there forever, in the centuries and as UGLY as ever…
I so hoped we could get rid of it with KDE 4 (sigh)
The oxygen style is still in definition, so yes plastik is still there. As it was noted elsewhere, work has been focused on the foundation. Without good foundation you can’t have a good house, euh, I mean software.
I know it’s not KDE/Qt, but Gimmie is the way I would like to see these things going:
http://beatnik.infogami.com/Gimmie
It really is the kind of intuitive paradigm that enables you to quickly get at what you need most.
Since both of my comments regarding my personal experience with Qt 4 and its speed were voted down. I’d like to ask the anonymous person who did it (if he/she has the guts to stand up and confess) exactly which of the 3 official OSNews rules did my posts break to qualify for moderating them down:
1. Comment that includes personal attacks/offensive language
2. Comment that is off-topic
3. Comment that is spam or includes advertisements
May I add that abusing the “minus” button for any other reason (like disagreeing with the person, because he says something that I don’t like, like criticizing my favourite piece of software) is strictly forbidden here…
You had a good point, I didn’t notice you got modded down (you where on 1 when I read your posts) but I modded you up just to keep your posts there 😉
Yes, I’ve seen this before, and I’ve had it to me on my old user name several times. OSNEWs crew refused to address these issues. The easiest way is to publically see who mods a person up or down for each and every single post (completely open). For those abusing the system, they are suspended from being able to post. Simple.
Dave
edit: And yes, I modded you up to atone for others sins.
Edited 2007-04-24 10:03
ah yes, it’s good to see the modding idiots are back in tow. My comment is that bad that you mod it down but can’t even reply to it? Cowards.
Dave
Complaining about moderation is off-topic. Do like I do: just take it with a smile and wait for more sensible people to mod you up. Considering that your post is at +4 right now, it also appears as it was also useless.
I’ve modded your complain down, as well as those who responded to it. Mods, please mod my comment down as well (I would do it myself if I could).
The modding system is not perfect, but none ever is.
The screen shots really don’t show anything different. Still a kitchen sink full of dishes. Hopefully they’ll address that like they’ve said they would and if they separate the browser from the file manager, I might consider using it.
Edited 2007-04-24 07:46
There now is a seperate filemanager (NOT browser, it won’t embed any other views like pdf or stuff, use konqi for that). And they are busy cleaning up interfaces, though you won’t see much of that in the screenshots…
The developers have their reasons for this major rewrite I’m sure they didn’t get together and say wow I need to waste my time and money. Thats why I’m certain qt 4 offers somethings qt 3 doesn’t, the art will be better, and the underlying technologies brought forth now will have an impact we can’t see yet. Even if the code is just nicer to look at that will help the developers do their work faster.
If you don’t like the toolbar get some buddies together and request another option. If the people at kde like anything its custom stuff and gizmos.
They should make the K menu button wider, because it becomes ridiculously small and hard to click with the mouse pointer if you reduce the size of the KDE panel.
I’m mainly concerned here about the user experience of the “point & click” type of newbie users — myself, I prefer to use a keyboard shortcut to bring the K menu up and then use the cursor keys to navigate the menu. Also, some distros default to using the wider KBFX menu button and it looks much better, IMO, than the native K menu button.
I can’t remember how, it has been a while since I used kde but you can change that. A google search may light the way!
Edited 2007-04-24 08:23
If you leave the button in the corner, how could you possibly miss it?
I just push the mouse a little too much left and down and the pointer will inevitably be in the right corner (no pun intended).
You don’t have to hit the button in the middle so I can’t see the problem…
I already said that I use a keyboard shortcut to bring the K menu up. But for newbies a wider K menu button would be much more attractive.
Take a look at these two screenshots. First, there’s the tiny K menu button at the bottom left corner:
http://img388.imageshack.us/my.php?image=kmenuol2.png
Then the same panel size, but with the KBFX menu button:
http://img394.imageshack.us/my.php?image=kbfxwm4.png
Open the two screenshots in different browser tabs and switch a couple of times to and fro between them. The latter screenshot (with KBFX) looks much better, doesn’t it? So why not make the default K menu button more appealing?
Ok, I thought when you said it was hard to click you meant it was easy to miss, which is not the case.
If we are discussing which looks better, I’ll of course agree with you that the second one is nicer.
If only because I like the symbol on it 😉
Seriously though, its width to height ratio is a little too big for my taste, it looks like 4:1 or 5:1.
I’d rather have the golden ratio (roughly 1.6:1).
Let us, however, get back to discussing usability:
Most people won’t even give the damn button a look because they are used to Windows which means they are probably not looking for a specific symbol but just clicking the corner (symbols changed throughout different Windows versions).
We could consider the purpose of this button, as well:
It is meant to provide me with a list of options.
Not the options that I use frequently, because those have their own buttons in the taskbar, but those that I use less frequently. It does therefore not make much sense to use more space for the start button than for any other button, given that it already has the advantage of being in the corner.
This btw. makes me wonder why the clock is in the lower right corner – you don’t click it all that much. From a usability point of view it would be smart to make the buttons in the corners squares and the rest something like 1.5:1 or 2:1 width to height ratio because the lower screen border helps you hit them.
So my main point is this:
If the start button is too small then the others – which should be used at least as frequently – are too small as well and the whole taskbar should be bigger. Or the buttons should have a 2:1 ratio and not be squares.
edit: spelling
Edited 2007-04-24 22:18 UTC
Take it as an offence as you wish, but – as a long time linux and kde user – I’m sick and tired of seeing that at every review and presentation the kde screencaps look so freaking lame that it hurts my eyes. It’s like these guys just didn’t want to promote kde at all. Really, it’s not fellas like me that they’d need to convince, but exactly that audience who takes time to go over all those screnshots and get a bunch of lame caps. All they end up with is usually something along what’s the buzz, nothing to see here. If the intention is to just show that it’s capable of starting and running, two caps would suffice. The rest is junk.
You’re right, there IS nothing to see, and the screenshots are useless, but ppl are asking for it all the time – so they get what they asked for, no matter how boring it is…
What I don’t understand is why can’t some of the caps be a bit…I dunno…prettier?
The default KDE screenshots are, to most, complicated and HIDEOUS (something that is not KDE)
Seriously, I’ve used KDE for a long time (though I’m taking a bit if a vacation in Ubuntu atm) – but the screenshots we always get of KDE are, more often than not, UGLY.
I hope when Plasma is worked in, everyone opts for a slightly more attractive appearance.
First, the screenshots are taken at a low resolution, thus the apps look busier than they are on a more decent res. Second, plastik or plastique isn’t a very clean style. It has quite a few borders, lines etc by default. And it’s pretty compact, looking more crowded than most Gnome themes which take more space with larger buttons etc (I like that more, btw). Last, the apps aren’t finised, and still have exess buttons etc.
1. The task bar is too thick.
2. The icons on the task bar are not descriptive of their function.
3. why is ‘storage devices’ under ‘applications’?
4. why is there a menu ‘applications’? everything is an application.
5. what is the meaning of the menu ‘development’? development of what? photos? music?
6. what the heck is ‘edutainment’?
7. why KIconEdit has so large palettes?
8. why the file manager is hidden in 3 menu layers?
9. what utilities does the ‘utilities’ menu contain? every program is a utility. Why is there a special menu entry?
10. what is the function of the program ‘linux-dolphin’? it’s not easy to understand. Is it a file manager? Perhaps. Then why does it say ‘network’?
11. why the ‘run command’ window is so butt-ugly?
And these things are visible only by looking at the screenshots. Don’t let me get to using the damn thing.
Linux UIs have a lot way to go…
1. This is KDE and not Linux … KDE also runs on BSDs and other Unices, and KDE4 will run on Windows and OSX as well.
2. This is still alpha quality software, a lot in KDE has happened and is happening under the hood. First consolidate the framework and create a rock solid platform … then worry about the “cosmetics”.
3. No one will force you to use the “damn thing” as you call it. You are the one who might miss out on one of the best Desktops out there.
Yeah ok…so it is used by other Unixy operating systems…so? my criticism is still valid, and buried at -5 will not help improve things.
This whole situation with -5 just shows how intolerable people are when someone criticizes their work.
And no reply of my post actually contains any counter arguments.
Your post is OT, you’re dissecting screenshots of a development release in a thread for an article about a development release without having tried the development release in question or even acknowledging the fact that the UI is temporary.
The bulk of your comments are subjective and representative of your personal opinion, which doesn’t make them invalid criticisms, it simply means they’re not necessarily valid to anyone but you. Of course, everyone’s entitled to their opinion, any you shouldn’t have been modded down for that, but opinions should be on topic or relevant to the discussion, so you may have been modded down for that.
It’s about as relevant and insightful as posts from people that dismiss Ubuntu’s merits because it has a brown background.
Frankly, I don’t even understand why screenshots were posted, but that’s besides the point.
As it’s already been mentioned, this is alpha code with a temporary UI. Never mind that it’s KDE, and not Linux…
it should include future artwork this would help people get feel how it will look. I think that would help clear things up.
KDE is not linux guy’s thing, ok? It is compiled and used by so many os.
You took the extreme by using tone that disregard kde developers. Remember they provide this for free. Please respect them. What do you think if you do this for free, and someone told you “Will you ever get it?”. S/he doesn’t even pay you for your work.
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I expected a much nicer look and feel. It feels almost like the 3.5 series…
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/802/8.gif
I hope the work harder on the aesthetics before release.
> It feels almost like the 3.5 series…
that’s because you chose a screenshot which shows everything that hasn’t yet been changed out and nothing which has been. so yes, if you pick the parts that haven’t been worked on yet you’re right: it looks a lot like 3.x.
you may have noticed we haven’t even hit the alphas yet. there’s a reason for that.
I hope these screenshots dont represent the near final look and feel for KDE 4.0.
The icons are nice and so is the new filemanager, but thats about it. Everything else looks far too simular to KDE 3.5.
I understand there is alot of work going on with porting KDElibs to QT4 but overall looks leave a lasting impression. IMHO, KDE 4.0 doesnt look so exciting.
Windows Vista’s desktop environment was–for better or worse–a drastic change from XP’s.
I was hoping to see a change as significant in KDE’s own unique way; a change that would go far as to solving KDE’s nutorious usability issues (too many options in nested menus and other hard to find places).
This isn’t what KDE4 will end up looking like. Not even close, I believe.
And has been mentioned, the KDE devs want a solid foundation. I try to keep in mind that at it’s heart kde is a geek’s DE – does that mean new users/less advanced users will have trouble? Not at all, I find it very intuitive whether one comes from windows or not.
If developers are the primary users at the moment, however, their focus is going to be on what they deem “the cool stuff” – all the inner workings, etc.
Don’t worry, as it begins nearing completion, we’ll get some eye candy too
Why do things *need* to *drastically* change between major releases?
I don’t understand … people complain when things don’t change a lot between releases … and people complain when things change too much between releases. I’ve come to realise … that people just want to complain.
😀
Someone killed osdir.. call 911..
I like KDE because I feel like they make good investments in a single, consistent set of baseline pieces on which everything is built. Things like DCOP, moc, and QT are pretty good in my opinion. Those technologies are being replaced by other stuff, but I feel that KDE led the way in this.
Bringing KDE to Windows will be a huge boon to its development. The applications will improve dramatically when developers from both sides of the Win/*Nix divide can contribute. Sure, there might be some windows-specific stuff in there, but it’s a lot easier to take written code and adapt it than it is to come up with new ideas and new code at the same time. And I wouldn’t cry to see a whole-sale OSS replacement for the Windows Shell.
As several people have pointed out already it doesn’t make sense to discuss the looks of these screenshots, as they don’t anywhere near represent what KDE4 will be about in the end. If those who have made remarks about the look and feel would have tried the Live CD, they might have realized that stability and functionality is even worse (again perfectly normal for an alpha release of a major release with major rewrites of the architecture behind).
People who have witnessed the development of KDE 2.0 or Gnome 2.0 will remember that those releases were pretty similar in nature: big modifications of the architecture made it basically impossible even for developers to run the new desktop itself.
If you look at techbase.kde.org you will discover that one of the recommended ways to take part in KDE 4 development is to run the applications from KDE 3 to prevent working on shaky grounds (or no grounds at all).
Yes, most KDE 4 developers are still running KDE 3 to develop on KDE 4 and only these days we are in the process of moving our working environment to KDE 4. Given the instability of the desktop itself UI designers as well as artists only at this point are able to fully rush in to fix the whole mess according to what they had partially developed outside our sources repository before.
So be patient and wait for the first beta releases (and I really mean beta releases opposed to the alpha release that is scheduled for next week). They’ll certainly be closer to what KDE 4 will be like in the end.
You can pretty much compare the situation to a construction site where a house is being built: The basement is pretty much done. Maybe some parts of the old house are even still waiting for the wrecking ball and there are new bricks and scaffold lying all over the place. At this stage as someone who isn’t involved you often have no chance to guess what the final house will look like unless you have seen the detailed plans.
I don’t know why some people are complaining about the default look of KDE when you can custoomize it more than most other DEs available… Look, this is my workspace, KDE 3.5.SVN, which I love and has given me the best time of my life at computers…
http://planet-zuriel.de/tmp/kde3-at-its-best.png
A few things to note:
– YEAH Germany’s handball team rulez!
– the systray is fuller usually, so the newsticker gets downsized..
– I am using Gentoo Linux which also totally rox!
From what I understand, in those KDE4 screenshots, we still see Kdesktop, Kicker andthe KDE core ported to Qt4 which is a great thing. I’m sure they are still porting and cleaning up the whole stuff and also preparing the inner architecture for merging the future and innovative technologies. Plasma is going to replace Kicker, Kdesktop and some other stuff like SuperKaramba, is going to even support Dashboard widgets like in Mac OS X and is going to be a whole lot better than Kdesktop is today, I think the look and feel is going to feel more like a live desktop, and is going to be really beautiful, in every aspect, technology and eye candy.
Edited 2007-04-26 01:19