Learning to like KDE again

Back in July I made the rather silly proposal to 'fork' KDE 3 to using Qt4. I made that proposal based on my negative experiences with KDE 4.0, before actually checking out the KDE 3 code and performing even a cursory review of the code base. I eventually performed those actions and came to really understand how complex and convoluted the KDE 3 codebase had grown over the years. And I came to appreciate, as others had warned, how difficult a task it would be.

It was only a short matter of time after making that announcement before KDE 4.1 was released. And with that release have come new releases of distributions that use it. An excellent example of a KDE 4.1 DE/distribution release is, in my opinion, Mandriva 2009. The more I work with the latest version of Mandriva and KDE 4.1.2 the more comfortable I am with the entire distribution. I honestly haven't felt this good about a Linux distribution using KDE since openSUSE 10.2 and KDE 3.

I believe the best course of action now is to work within the KDE 4 environment using Qt 4.4 and later, and add back in those features that are missing or adding new features that would have been difficult to add to KDE 3. Yes, I like the direction that Mandriva and KDE 4.1 is taking. I like it a lot.

Comments

  1. Now im using mandriva 2009 , BUT with kde 3.5.10
    Why?
    I create another toolbar to put incos and surprise no way to hide !!! total useless

    No quicklauncher integrated in the panel !!! , one exist in the cd but is arkane

    No multiple rows in the task manager , wow taths its advance

    For me i will wait unti kde4.2

    ----------oh , an whwn i try to remove the useless new panel created , the other panel dont work!!!

    but all other stuff its working like alt f2 (mmmm)

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  2. I'm liking KDE4 more and more, it is still not at KDE3 level of stability and completeness, it is better looking and that matters a lot, to me.
    I'm still waiting for KDE on OpenSolaris, I've checked their official website http://solaris.kde.org/ but didn't find anything useful.

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  3. I keep bouncing back and forth between KDE 3.5 and 4.1 now. Usually its the little things in 4.x that bother me, like an unconfigurable line spacing in Konsole (which is set to too large of a value).

    Of course the latest annoyance is new mail notification in KMail/Kontact. In KDE 3.5, the Kontact taskbar item would change color when there was a new message. In 4.1, nothing. There has to be a solution not requiring an external checker-app, but its not completely obvious.

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  4. Reading your last post while using KDE svn, I knew with kde 4.1 you will change your mind.

    BTW, I am still using daily SVN builds.
    Since last update, taskbar allows us to have multiple rows and can now group tasks.
    4.2 which will be released in Jan 2009, will be earth shattering good.

    I don't know how it will effect Gnome user base.
    But it will make Open-source REALLY popular. I see BBC and others writing nice articles on kde 4.2.

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