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**Rog131** · Nov 22, 2009, 10:19 AM

Re: some things that annoy me with KDE4

> Re: Karmic Release Schedule, Plans, KDE 4.3 - Final >> Kubuntu Kde3 Karmic Remix:

Introduction

A remix of Karmic Koala has been created with only KDE3.5 installed, for the convenience of users who are not quite ready to take the jump to KDE4.x.

The main focus of this remix is to keep the mature, stable, and familiar KDE3.5 desktop environment available for easy installation and use. Along the way, various bugs have been fixed, and significant enhancements added...

**GreyGeek** · Nov 22, 2009, 03:48 PM

Re: some things that annoy me with KDE4

Originally posted by W2IBC

I have really been shying away from KDE4 for quite awhile.. as I still prefer KDE 3.5

Rog131 showed you the path. Have fun with that!

Some of the things i have found annoying with KDE4
1. Plasma widgets. IMO its to "vista'ish"

mmm... The KDE dev crew can't be blamed if VISTA decided to copy KDE4. Notice how much like KDE 4.3 that Win7 looks.

I want a desktop not a crap ton of widgets everywhere and god forbid if plasma decides to suddenly crash. (like what happened to me a little bit ago) plasma crashes and im forced into a reboot. well that's so nice, so much for keeping this box running 24/7 with the occasional reboot with a few of the updates.

I must have missed the part where someone put a gun to your head and forced you to install widgets. BTW, I am running KDE 4.3.3 on a 64b Kbuntu 9.10 and I don't have any crashes. Are you sure you md5summed the ISO and then ran the option on the LiveCD to check the CD before you installed it? That's the cause of most of the problems I see on this forum.

i want to get back to the days where i could literally leave this box on 24/7 for days and days.

I used to do that too, but if the box you are using is not a server what's the point, besides wasting electricity? The "uptime wars" have been over for years. My KDE 4.3.3 installation gives me a working desktop within 45 seconds after I push the power button. Why leave a machine on all day or over night just to save 45 seconds of your life? If nothing else use it as a short period of meditation.

im not a fan of having to reboot cause plasma decided to crash. it gets rather annoying knowing in the next 48hours its going to crash again (right in the middle of me reading something or doing something never fails). why cant we just have a DESKTOP like we had in the KDE 3.5 days? nice and simple but looked 100times better then gnome (which is why I do use KDE i believe it dose look better then gnome and everyone I know agrees to that lol)

How do you suppose KDE 3.5 got to be as good as it is? Do ya think KDE 3.4 and 3.3 and 3.2 and 3.1 and 2.x and 1.x and all the betas had something to do with that? You should upgrade to KDE 4.3.3 ASAP. If you are and are still having problems I'd recheck the ISO you downloaded and the CD you created.

So is this plasma really necessary?

Yes, for me and many others. Apparently not for you.

how about just making a nice simple desktop (like KDE 3.5) and if you want all them dumb widgets you can apt-get install them. i dont know about you but I like simple I like to log in and KNOW its going to work yet still be nice looking. and I will say I had better response time with KDE 3.5 then i do with KDE4, 4 just seems "bloated" and slower, yet 3.5 seemed alot slimmer and faster did we take a step backwards?

If you don't like them don't use them. How difficult is that to learn and do? Every widget has a settings dialog that appears on the boarder when you hover a mouse over them. There is an "X" on that dialog. Click it. It's gone.

You don't know what "bloat" means. There is NO bloat in KDE 4.3.3 precisely because Trolltech took the step of avoiding bloat (carrying along legacy technology for "compatibility" purposes) by building the Qt4 widget set brand new from the ground up. EVERYTHING in the Qt4 API is there for a purpose. Not every member of the Qt4 API gets installed in every app built using Qt4 or is part of the KDE4.x desktop. When a programmer builds an app she or he decides what functionality their app will have and based on that chooses which components of the Qt4 API they will "include" in their application. If you look at the source code for KDE4 and Qt4 apps you will see something like

...
#include <QApplication>
#include <QSqlDatabase>
#include <QSqlError>
#include <QMessageBox>
#include <QDir>
...

Those are just a SMALL sample of what could be installed. Here is the complete list of all the classes for Qt 4.6 That list is divided into modules based on their functionalities.

Even IF a developer "#include ..."'s some class that they end up not using the compiler doesn't refer to it so none of it gets compiled into the executable. No harm. No foul. In later releases, as the case often is, reference to the unused class is made and the methods and properties referenced get into the executable, but nothing else.

2. Oh lord its the sound issues again... .

Beginning to sound more and more like an ISO sum check or CD burn issue.

3. OK as i stated in #1 i hate plasma and i hate widgets so what do i do. go to the "folder view" setting, so it looks a little more like a desktop i like, but a rather annoying thing has started. (started with KDE 4.3 to be exact) ok surfing the net... see something i want so i download it... and save it to desktop... so i minimize firefox and ........... there is nothing on my desktop....

You are running KDE 4.3. You don't need the "Folder View" widget. Just right click on a menu option and chose "Add to Desktop" or "Add to Panel". Move it where you want.

which at 1st left me a little puzzled now i will admit with KDE 4.2 when i saved to desktop it showed up on desktop.... so here I am looking at my desktop and where is my file?.... its not there.... so i right click and refresh desktop and my file i just downloaded shows up... So now every time i save something to desktop i have to take extra steps just for it to show... (right click and refresh desktop) now that it 2 more clicks i have to make... again I like simple when i download something to desktop I want to be able to min FF and there it is... so now KDE 4.3 is making me have to do more work (more clicking) to just see a file on desktop.... oh it gets much better tho... after im done with this file I right click and delete. and the box shows up asking if i really want to delete (which is cool i dont mind... heck i may even change my mind and keep it after all lol) but ok I have decided to delete this file and i press ok on the dialog box. and the trash can shows items in it.. but wait.. the file still shows on my desktop.. again a bit puzzled i right click > refresh desktop and it goes byebye from desktop so now there is 5 steps now for me to delete a file from desktop..... instead of my normal 3 steps... again did we go backwards here? shouldn't this be getting simple taking less steps?

It's a different paradigm. Learn it or use another desktop. There are over dozen to chose from... from lite to fat. it's a poor workman who blames his tools.

4. ZIP,Tar,Rar... now this is just a minor issue but it seems when I right click and "extract" a zip/tar/rar it dose seem it takes alot longer to extract then it dose with gnome now its not that big of a deal but it is a little annoying.

"Takes longer" is a relative term. The bigger the tar file the longer it will take. Relative to a console? Of course a console may be faster, if it is not running inside a desktop, but that is a trade off even KDE 3.5 makes. These desktops are EVENT DRIVEN. That means that if you want to be able to do other things simultaneously or interrupt what you've started then you need to create an event in the event loop so the processor can see it and act on it.

5. Dolphin. I'll be honest im not a fan of Dolphin file manager. I just aint. I still prefer to file surf with Konq. it seems to me Dolphin is just a little to sluggish when starting up. but I do like how it always recognizes my 40GB backup HDD. so that is a +1 Konq wont.

I'll be honest too. I AM a BIG fan of Dolphin. And on my box it is FAST. I especially like how it has taken the "files, places, services" concept and extended it to include removable devices. It makes working with USB sticks, CDs and DVDs a joy. IF you really enjoy file surfing with Konq then perhaps you should install "mc" and file surf in a console. Talk about FAST!

6. Over all I do see KDE 4 getting a little better but a part of me dose feel KDE is taking some steps backwards. I would like to see a setting in KDE 4 where you can have a KDE 3.5 look (think win and its classic view) and have that setting if selected work like KDE 3.5 IMO if that was done I think some of us KDE 3.5 stragglers might move on up to 4. yea it would take some work but IMO i like simple and to me KDE 3.5 was simple and alot less "bloated" so how about that a setting in KDE 4 to make it work very similar to KDE 3.5? could it be done?

I've already explained your misconceptions about bloat.

The TrollTech dev crew, when discussing how to improve the Qt3.x widget had to decide to either carry along existing (legacy) capabilities and ADD new Classes to the list of existing ones, interacting where it was possible and creating new capabilities from the ground up, or start ENTIRELY from scratch with no legacy burden of all. IF you think Qt4 is bloated I can only imagine your complaints when you would have started ranting about QtHybrid.

Imagine you have this house you've been working on for years. You started it from scratch on a new hole in the ground, into which you put a new foundation. It was a simple foundation., Then you added floors and rooms as the environment changed. You added new rooms, remodled old ones, ran pipes through walls to new parts and put bends in existing pipes to make room for new paths, windows, doors, etc .... After a few years your house was working nice. It had a good facade on the front so its street view was "pretty", but it was becoming increasingly difficult and labor intensive to add the new solar panel requirements, or the new non-incandescent light bulbs, or replacing old fashion insulation with the newest and best stuff. Sometimes it required lifting the entire house so a foundation wall could be added, removed or remodeled The resulting cracks all over the house took years to patch.

The TrollTech dev crew took the path which allowed them to leave KDE 3.5 alone (it is good, why mess it up making a Rude Goldberg apparatus out of it?) and create a NEW widget set which took advantage of new technologies, improved methods and also, most importantly, made it modular so changes in the future don't require re-inventing the wheel.

I got into Qt programming at the tail end of the Qt3 widget life. Application development using the Qt3-Designer was a ROYAL PITA. Your application building began and ended with the designer and you had to learn how to stuff every library, every icon, every resource into one of its many drop down combo boxes or edit lines, then it generated the cpp files. It was GUI but it lacked the "R" part of RAD. If I did not want to use the Qt3-Designer that meant that I had to write my GUI component as a hand coded XML file that the MOC (Meta Object Complier) could understand and convert to a ui_somefilename.h file. Hand coding xml files? Not me. I almost quit using it to return to Python & Boa, but then Qt4 came out. It was a total breath of fresh air! Qt4 returned to classic C++ programming where the Designer did just forms and dialog creation and nothing more. I could use Kate and Kdgb and "R" returned to RAD.

Now this post aint a bash KDE 4 post, its just me posting my thoughts on 4. Hopefully KDE 4 will become a little more better in my eyes. but time will tell with that.

Looked like a bash to me, but maybe I am extra sensitive to KDE4 bashes. Have you posted any bugs on the KDE bugzilla or have all you done is post msgs like this in forums? Have you made a concerted effort to learn HOW to effectively use the KDE 4.3 desktop? You took the time to learn KDE 3.x. I KNOW for a fact that you were not born with an A Prori knowledge of how to run it, so you must have either learned it over time using practice and experience, or you studied documents explaining how. You'll have to learn KDE4 the same way.

**Melcar** · Nov 22, 2009, 04:10 PM

Re: some things that annoy me with KDE4

I kinda' like plasmoids. I'm just waiting for a lm-sensors one that actually works.

**skunk** · Nov 22, 2009, 05:45 PM

Re: some things that annoy me with KDE4

Originally posted by W2IBC

5. Dolphin. I'll be honest im not a fan of Dolphin file manager. I just aint. I still prefer to file surf with Konq. it seems to me Dolphin is just a little to sluggish when starting up. but I do like how it always recognizes my 40GB backup HDD. so that is a +1 Konq wont.

Enough people prefer using Konqueror over Dolphin that Karmic has an option in the System Settings to choose whatever file browser you like

**GreyGeek** · Nov 22, 2009, 08:32 PM

Re: some things that annoy me with KDE4

Originally posted by skunk

Originally posted by W2IBC

5. Dolphin. I'll be honest im not a fan of Dolphin file manager. I just aint. I still prefer to file surf with Konq. it seems to me Dolphin is just a little to sluggish when starting up. but I do like how it always recognizes my 40GB backup HDD. so that is a +1 Konq wont.

Enough people prefer using Konqueror over Dolphin that Karmic has an option in the System Settings to choose whatever file browser you like

IIRC, the Systemsettings option to set the default browser/filemanager has always been there, even before people expressed a preference. Tony Urar wrote an article on the KDE website about it in the Spring of 2007 when some ranter complained that he didn't like Dolphin and "didn't have a way" to make Konq the default.

**groenem** · Nov 23, 2009, 04:44 AM

Re: some things that annoy me with KDE4

I must say that KDE4's Plasma is way cooler than Gnome and I prefer it above Gnome, but...

After I installed KDE4, my laptop was slower. When I used Alt+Tab to switch between applications, I had to wait a few seconds (more than 5) before I can see the list of open applications. The only widget I have on my desktop is to randomly show photo's.

I switched back to Gnome and experienced much faster response times.

My laptop had 256MB RAM, which I upgraded now to 1GB. I booted up in KDE again and found that the response time is now much more adequite.

So, in the end it seems that you need more memory for KDE4 than for Gnome.
KDE4 is soooo cool, I will sacrifice a little bit of performance, but not that much. Windows is so boring.

One thing I must admit, Gnome is more user-friendly for beginners than KDE, as there is a lot of "wizards" popping up to assist you in doing things.

KDE4 has its positives and negatives, so does Gnome. You choose which one is best for you, depending on your system.

**GreyGeek** · Nov 23, 2009, 01:16 PM

Re: some things that annoy me with KDE4

Originally posted by groenem

....
After I installed KDE4, my laptop was slower. When I used Alt+Tab to switch between applications, I had to wait a few seconds (more than 5) before I can see the list of open applications. The only widget I have on my desktop is to randomly show photo's.

I switched back to Gnome and experienced much faster response times.

My laptop had 256MB RAM, which I upgraded now to 1GB. I booted up in KDE again and found that the response time is now much more adequite.

So, in the end it seems that you need more memory for KDE4 than for Gnome.
KDE4 is soooo cool, I will sacrifice a little bit of performance, but not that much. Windows is so boring.

One thing I must admit, Gnome is more user-friendly for beginners than KDE, as there is a lot of "wizards" popping up to assist you in doing things.

KDE4 has its positives and negatives, so does Gnome. You choose which one is best for you, depending on your system.

Your last sentence is spot on! Both are good desktops and to each his own.

Are you running the 32bit Kubuntu 9.10 with KDE 4.3.3?

I am running the 64bit Kubuntu 9.10 with KDE 4.3.3 on my Centrino2 notebook with 3 GiB of RAM.

My Alt+Tab switching response is instantaneous.

**KeithZG** · Dec 09, 2009, 07:52 AM

Re: some things that annoy me with KDE4

I have doubts about the "bad .iso" hypothesis, since I've noticed similar problems on certain installs I've done and 95% of the installs I do have no physical media involved; my primary PC runs a TFTP server and thus I tend to just install using PXE booting. The "bad .iso" hypothesis is yet another reason for downloading the releases via torrent, though. And as for his plasma problems, I even STILL have problems like that from time to time on my primary desktop and the install there has been going since Dapper if I recall (just dist-upgrading along the way).

As of Karmic + 4.3 it seems a LOT better for me, but I still sometimes eschew plasma even if only for the fact that then I get file copy dialogs, which I cannot figure out how to force otherwise (the "as notifications" idea seems like a good default, but I don't like it for many reasons like the current bug that doesn't show file copy speed, so I'd prefer to be able to change it!). Plus it does still sometimes start trying to use 100% of my CPU power, although at that point I tend to just hit F12 to bring down yakuake and run either "kquitapp plasma-desktop" or "killall plasma-desktop", then "kstart plasma-desktop" when I feel like I want it back again.

Actually speaking of "You choose which one is best for you, depending on your system":

-> Right now I'm running OpenBox (it's a nice blank slate).

-> Then within it I have Kicker from KDE3 (good fully-featured taskbar, and nothing comes close to its movement functionality when it comes to two asymmetrical desktops; if I only had one monitor or didn't move the taskbar so often I'd just use KDE4's panel, but the panel just can't cut it here) and I'm using Konqueror-KDE3 for some file copying. KDE3 has WAY better handling of copy operations; using Dolphin from KDE4 I've lost files trying to copy them onto a partition that was running out of space. I assumed it'd just give up when a file wouldn't fit, but instead it copied as much as it could but copied over the remaining files too . . . except that, since they wouldn't fit, they disappeared. Ctrl-Z did nothing, the files were forever gone. So from then on I've avoided cut-and-paste using KDE4's apps . . .

-> Yet, many of KDE4s applications are brilliant. I'm typing this in KDE4's Konqueror, with KTorrent open in the other window. I also started KRunner, which in fact on my netbook (before it broke, gahh) was part of my otherwise extremely stripped down desktop environment, because it does so much with so little, and as someone who was obsessed with using Alt+F2 back when I was using it in KDE 3.2 and FluxBox I can't imagine not having KRunner. Also on my "essential programs" list is Yakuake, which is pretty much the perfect implementation of Konsole.

-> As I'm fiddling with packages trying to figure out why I get blank screens on videos when libavcodec-extras-52 is installed rather than libavcodec-52 (and sadly the former is the requirement for most video editing programs; catch-22!), I have Synaptic open. Furthermore I started an instance of Nautlius to provide the desktop background. Meanwhile I'm running Handbrake to make backups (in x264/mkv format, with properly named chapters even) of a DVD set I own.

So to sum up, even having just woken up and turned my computer back on after a crash (longer story, I think it's a kernel bug) I'm using OpenBox, KDE3, KDE4 and Gnome/GTK simultaneously . . . and I couldn't be happier!

And that, in a nutshell, is why I'm obsessed with Linux, and why KDE4 doesn't annoy me (even though in theory my list of annoyances could stretch quite long). I love so much about KDE4 (hell I've even written little stuff for it, like some plugins for the comics plasmoid), and for the most part I can just take what I like and leave the rest.

Okay, that was long-winded . . .

**GreyGeek** · Dec 09, 2009, 02:30 PM

Re: some things that annoy me with KDE4

I have doubts about the "bad .iso" hypothesis,

That's why I said "almost all" the problems I see on this forum are because of failure to check the md5sum on a downloaded ISO, or to check the CDROM after it has been burned.

The other kinds of problems are usually on installs which have some unique feature which the OP didn't mention until a dozen messages into the thread. "Oh, didn't I tell you that I was using wicd to connect to my adsl service?"

But, while some software is better, sometimes MUCH better, than other software, NO software is perfect. While one package may work perfectly on my hardware it may not run at all on someone elses hardware. This Sony VAIO notebook came with VISTA Home Premium and even it barfed a display lung every so often.

That's why I can use flashplugin-installer to install flashplayer from the repository but others have to download the Linux flashplayer from Adobe's website. The 64b flashplayer from Adobe's website plays videos fine on my notebook ... until I move my mouse. The video freezes until I stop moving my mouse.

Okay, that was long-winded . . .

Hey, Keith, I'm notorious for long-winded posts!

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