[gentoo-amd64] Re: Obligatory KDE4 question.

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

"Mark Haney" <mhaney@ercbroadband.org> posted
47D921FE.6030809@ercbroadband.org, excerpted below, on  Thu, 13 Mar 2008
08:45:50 -0400:

> I swear I think I missed the threads on KDE4 after it was released.  I'm
> sure by now at least some people are using it, so how is it on amd64?  I
> know it's buggy and all that, but is it functional?  Are there any
> showstoppers you've seen?
> 
> I'd like to throw it on my dev box, but I'm not sure I want to spend a
> lot of time mucking with compiling it if it's not at least somewhat
> usable.

Well... I've been compiling KDE-svn from the overlay for some months, but 
unfortunately hadn't really had any time to decently test it until this 
last week.  Because I was doing the SVN version, it was more crashy but 
more featureful than the current 4.0.x release will ever be.

Here, after actually getting a bit of time to test what I had been 
compiling, I gave up.  Due to lack of what I consider necessary features, 
it's simply not worth any more of my time until at /least/ pre-4.1.x 
feature-freeze, and at this point, honestly, it could easily be pre-4.2.x 
feature-freeze.  

Individual applications may have a bit of eye candy and be worth running, 
but the desktop as a whole isn't, at least not for "power users" like me 
that tend to use the powerful customization and productivity elements of 
the mature KDE-3.5 desktop such as multiple panels and personalized 
hotkeys and colors.  Huge swaths of GUI customization simply isn't there 
or doesn't work as originally advertised that KDE-4 would work.  True, 
users that are as comfortable configuring text files as clicking a button 
or dragging a slider can already configure a lot of that stuff manually, 
but what's the point of spending time in a GUI if you can't even 
configure itself with itself?  (That BTW is one of the points I've 
brought up against GNOME any number of times, advanced GUI config can 
only be done by editing text files, or worse yet for those of us who 
still have MS nightmares from time to time, registry edits.)

Granted, there's the bit of limited functionality there that GNOME style 
users who prefer NOT to have advanced GUI config options to worry about 
(either because they configure them manually or because they just accept 
the defaults) should appreciate -- they may in fact /love/ it -- but for 
those KDE-3 users who've grown to love its GUI tweakability, there's a 
LONG way to go yet before KDE-4 gets even close, let alone has all the 
fancy new KDE-4 features we were sold as worth the long wait.  It may 
indeed ultimately be worth the wait, I certainly hope and expect so, but 
if so, that wait isn't over yet.

So put simply, I recommend staying put with KDE 3.5.9, for now.  There 
will be time enough to try out KDE 4 after 4.1 comes out this (northern 
hemisphere) summer, or 4.2, early next year I'd guess.  Right now, the 
rumors saying it's little more than a developer's preview and base on 
which to build are all too true.

As an example... remember all the talk about plasma and the ability it 
was supposed to have to move apps seamlessly from floating to panel to 
desktop and back again?  Well, desktop to panel sort of works, but 
there's no way to move stuff around in the panel at all without deleting 
it and re-adding it, let alone back to the desktop, and there's no hint 
of the formerly promised moving between a floating app and either the 
desktop or panel.  That, coupled with the fact that there's no way to 
create additional panels, and on dual-head displays, the panel can 
apparently move to any side -- of ONE head -- it can't move to another 
head at all, means the desktop is essentially useless for me with my five 
separate panels each with separate functions and configuration on KDE-3.  
It was nice to be able to move applets from the panel to the desktop and 
I tried using that as a bit of a workaround, but it's not the same, and 
there then seems to be no way to remove the panel.  Further, even just 
being able to set the size of the panel at all is a feature brand new to 
KDE-4.0.2, and not much older in SVN-trunk.

As I said, there's a LONG way to go!  No way could I recommend it at 
present, except for those (like myself) that simply have to see for 
themselves, and have the time and the energy to do so.  It'll be nice 
when it gets there, but it's not there yet.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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