[GofBorg]

Well this probably needs to be moved to soapbox, and I
suspect it will be, but to me the whole pile of moaning
about KDE4 is silly. Nobody forced you to click on
KDE4 and install it as your desktop. You took a gamble
and you lost when it didn't turn out to be all you thought
it was going to be. So for now, install KDE 3.5 and
wait until 4.X impresses you so much that you can't live without
it...or don't. I'm sure there are still OS2/Warp folks out there
wondering what people see in a Start Menu. Logically every application
icon should be available on the desktop. ;^)

I think one difference with open source and corporate software is that when
a company takes a new direction there's not much that can be done from a
users perspective other than continue to use the old stuff until you no
longer can. There's nobody moving the platform forward and the IP
ownership prevents anyone else from moving it forward.

With open source it's possible to keep an active group carving on
KDE 3.5 until the end of time. So in a way KDE has already forked.
Does it even matter?? From what I have seen on the KDE devel group, they
have every intention of making KDE4 everything KDE3.5 was with the added
benefit of some new tech...that IS NOT FINISHED...read the fine print on
the installation screen...'less mature'..maybe next time they should
put 'Ass broken. Install at your own peril' and avoid the whole debate.
I think what has everyone's gnads frosted is that they are working more on
the new tech and less on 'making it KDE3.5'...but 3.5 functions are coming.

In the meantime if you don't like KDE4, pretend it doesn't exist.
I'm sorry for the folks out there having problems
with 4.X stability, but it runs flawlessly on my P4 2.8 with 1GB of memory.
It also runs flawless under a VM which has only 512MB of memory allocated
on my AMD 3800+ 2GB rig at work. KDE isn't your problem, it's the drivers.