[blackbelt_jones]

I'd been running 4.1 beta2 on Kubuntu, and it was horribly slow. I installed opensuse11 from the KDE4 live CD, and it was a lot faster and much more responsive, but YAST repeatedly crashed when I tried to install an RPM that wasn't in the repositories. I uninistalled KDE4, installed KDE3, and everything is beautiful.

I expect that to be fixed in time, but I have a big big problem with the way Konqueror's role has been stage-managed. I'm used to using Konqueror with fluxbox, and it's a wonderful way to fill in the limitations of a window manager. They said that Konqueror would not be affected, but that's not what I'm seeing. There's no filter bar. Maybe the filter bar will be restored, but I don't like waiting to find out.

Being a web browser/file manager means Konqueror is the only file manager that can be operated by html links. This is a terrific capability that no one ever talks about, and it makes Konqueror indispensible to me.

My idea for a KDE fork is relatively modest, but it would be big enough. I say: don't fork KDE, just fork Konqueror. I'd like to see a standalone version of Konqueror that is meant to do what Konqueror was origininally meant to do, i.e. everything., and not to conform to someone's idea of a managed desktop experience. It's only purpose would be to be the most powerful desktop application ever. I would call it "Liberator". Of course, it would require KDE libraries, but it would be free of the demands of KDE desktop organization. I don't really have the right to expect Konqueror to be designed with my Window manager in mind. A forked Konqueror would be a way of claiming that right.

There may be other, simpler solutions, e.g. plugins.

I intend to tenatively pursue this, but I don't know anything about programming and development, so it's liable to take a long long time (e.g. never) if no one else is interested. I wonder if this would addresses anyone else's issues with KDE4.