KDE 4 Just Isn’t Doing It For Me

When it comes to Operating Systems one of the most important parts is the interface. If the GUI is not easy to use it destroys the entire experience. This is where Windows 7 is excelling over its shunned predecessor, Windows Vista. When it comes to operating systems, Windows does catch the most flak from critics but Linux is starting to receive some as well for one of its most mainstream interfaces, KDE.

I have been a fan of KDE for a long time, in fact pretty much since its original release. It was the first one that I used with Linux and I really enjoyed using it for a long time. Even with this newest release (KDE 4) I was at first happy with it but then something happened, I used Dolphin, KDE’s file manager. I tried quite a bit for the several months to ignore Dolphin and other little quirks with KDE 4 but the more I used it the more I found other things that just grated on me. It even caused me to admit Windows 7 was far superior and to switch to it full time on my primary machine.

In the process of trying to see if it was just me that was having difficulties with it I installed it onto my wifes computer. This was when I knew that there were usability issues with it. She demanded I remove KDE and install anything else except it. She said that she could not explain why she disliked it but that it was just a horrible experience.

Part of me still loves KDE but it does clearly have some issues. So why did I just now decided to write about it? I was reading today over at Toolbox a post by Locutus “Goodbye KDE. Its been nice knowing you”. Granted he is a much heavier user of Linux and KDE than I am, but his experiences are almost identical to my own with KDE. His article expresses his dissatisfaction with KDE 4 and his desire, but inability, to return to KDE 3. In the long run he found himself switching to LXDE and Gnome, abandoning KDE all together. Then continuing to read the comments I saw that every singly commenter had the exact same problem, KDE let us down.

When the Windows 7 GUI was first introduced in the Betas it was blasted by many KDE fans stating that it was a blatant rip off of KDE. After a closer examination it is easy to see that there are few similarities between the two interfaces. IF in fact the Windows 7 interface is taken from KDE 4 then why are people raving about Windows 7 and NOT KDE?

I hope that the KDE team can get back on track and give their fans and users what they want. Competition is good and it would be a terrible thing to see them go away just because they made a few poor mistakes.

5 Comments

Stephen!

Said,

Blasphemy. KDE4 is nothing like Windows ME.

Troy Unrau

KDE 4.0.0 was a bleeding edge release. Unfortunately, due to user demand, almost every distro out there dropped their KDE 3.5.x support immediately when 4.0.0 was released, stranding a lot of users. KDE 4.2.4 is pretty good though, and for most KDE 3 users, 4.2.4 is a solid release. Hell, slackware is going to ship KDE 4.2.4 with slackware 13, so something must be going in the right direction.

Please describe specific complaints, so that we can try to address them, and make sure you’re using a version newer than 4.0.0 – many things have been fixed (unlike windows me…). Also, make sure you’re using a distro that provides a decent KDE install. Some distros present KDE 4 very poorly, due to bad decisions on their part.

Posts like this are light on the details. If you would care to elaborate on specific things, we’d be happy to address many of them.

Cheers

The Geek

My point with the title was obviously to draw your attention. As far as things I would like to see changed with KDE, that will require a separate post next week sometime. For the next couple of days I will be preoccupied with classes. The release I most recently used was KDE 4.2 however I will upgrade to the latest release and give you feedback based of off that. As I said in my post above I have been a long time KDE fan and really would like it to continue to succeed.

fred

For many people, KDE 4.2 is the release that is quite complete, that make them jump from KDE 3.5, or back from any other DEs (or even those who’ve never used KDE). But it is not complete yet, there are some missing features that are being implemented by the devs.

For me, I’m very impressed by KDE 4, it is well designed, and has a great potential (of course, a good design takes time to implement).

But I have to say that KDE 4 is almost a completely different experience than KDE 3, means that you need to re-learn some new things again. But the new experience is worth learning.

But in the end, it returns to everyone’s preference. Like me, if Gnome were the only DE, I’d rather go back using Windows :-P

Joel the real estate guy

I too have switched distros. From SuSE to Ubuntu due to the fact that in kde 4 I lost half of the features I used on a day to day basis. I tried reverting back to kde 3 for the longest time, but finally just bit the bullet and changed to something with 80-90% of the features I originally enjoyed and a stable platform.

In my opinion, KDE 4 should have been just a fork and a different interface altogether rather than a stepping stone for kde 3.

KDE 4 Just Isn’t Doing It For Me

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