KDE 4

[Dipper]

I really want to like KDE 4. But I can't. Here's some of the things that just drive me up the wall:

* Documents don't always show inside of folders.
* There is no way to empty the trash
* The menu bar at the bottom cannot be resized or moved. It's just too big for my liking. I have good eyes and therefore don't need such large print or icons.
* The K Menu is way bigger than it needs to be. It requires way too much clicking to navigate and open an application
* There is no menu editor for the K Menu to simplify it
* Customization options are severely limited.
* Lots of stability and performance problems

I know that KDE 4 is an experiment at the moment. For the time being, I'm going to stick to 3.5.

[Nate]

Re: KDE 4

Thanks for the list. It does feel like the fixes are coming awfully slowly. And the problems are beginning to wear on people (namely, you and me). It's great that so much is being fixed behind the scenes and under the hood, but the basic, most obvious annoyances don't seem to be getting much love. Maybe they are, they just haven't been released yet.

* I'm not sure what you mean with #1. I don't think I've had this problem.
* One way to empty the trash is to use Dolphin, and in the location bar along the left-hand side there should (may) be the trash can. Click on it to open the trash folder. Right click somewhere in the trash folder and you will get the option to empty the trash. That's the only way I know how to do it, but it works.
* I agree with your complaint with the taskbar.
* I sort of agree with you concerning the K Menu, but I do really like the Favorites. Stick your most used applications there and you can really get to them faster than the old Start menu. You can also choose to use the old Start menu if you add it as an applet.
* I agree with your complaint about customizing the menu.
* I agree with you about customizing everything else.
* I haven't had much more stability issues in kde4, I feel like I had a fairly equal amount in kde3 also. Though maybe I've lowered my standards for kde4 since it's so new.

Personally, I'm sticking with kde4. I like it a lot. But I sure would like to see some more progress on some of the more glaring issues.

[randcoop]

Re: KDE 4

I agree with the original post. I tried KDE4 for a solid week because I wanted to try to adjust to it. By the end of the week, I couldn't wait to get back to 3.5.8 (now I'm on 3.5.9).

By following some blogs, I was able to eliminate the taskbar completely. But that's not really a satisfactory solution. It was just better than having that huge thing there all the time, hogging my valuable screen space. I used widgets on the desktop for clock display, for menu display (I used the traditional menu instead of the new one).

More complaints that weren't identified in the first post:

The menu doesn't pop up using Alt+F1.
Shortcut keys for applications can't be used (my workaround for this was to install and use xbindkeys, which was fine, but which shouldn't be necessary).
Knetworkmanager icon wasn't available for the taskbar or as a widget.
Recently connected external devices doesn't show the mounted location, only that they exist.

I do believe that KDE4, perhaps by version 4.02, perhaps not until 4.1, be ready for use by KDE lovers and that they'll find it better than KDE 3.5. But 3.5 is actually a fairly high bar to jump and 4 isn't even close to it yet.

[dibl]

Re: KDE 4

I'll be the contrarian.

I'm going to get used to it. That's an attitude, not a forecast.

And it's prolly true that 4.02 will be a little less buggy than 4.01, which in turn is WAY less buggy than the 4.0 that they let out of its cage.

The only new "feature" that really bothers me is the extra clicking needed to navigate the "improved" KMenu. The cure for that is simply to put my frequently-used apps on the panel. Simple.

It's gonna be fine. Eventually .....

[Zerix01]

Re: KDE 4

I like the new menu but I don't like how I can't find some things that are easy to find in KDE 3.5 but the search bar helps with that. They are going to change it again but it still sort of looks like it works the same, check out this article on KDE 4.1 http://polishlinux.org/kde/kde-41-vi...og-rev-777000/

I'm going to get used to it. That's an attitude, not a forecast.

I'm with you on that one, I've been trying to use 4.0.1 most of the time, but OpenGL games, native and through WINE, don't play nice with KDE 4 compositing so I keep switching back to 3.5 to play my games.

[Nomad]

Re: KDE 4

I'm with you on that one, I've been trying to use 4.0.1 most of the time, but OpenGL games, native and through WINE, don't play nice with KDE 4 compositing so I keep switching back to 3.5 to play my games.

At least for me, switching off the Desktop effects does the trick. However, I don't play games, I'm writing a simple OpenGL program, so you might have a different experience.

With Desktop effect on, OpenGL and video players are blinky. With them off, everything is fine.