KDE 3.5 is like XP and KDE 4 is like Vista.

[sorenson2743]

The anology used in the thread heading is reasonable and accurate. KDE 3.5 "just worked, thanks!", like XP. No doubt Vista will too, some day (or maybe not).

KDE 4.0 was a "proof of concept" at best, 4.1 was an early alpha release and, according to today's glorious and wonderful press release from our glorious and wonderful KDE masters, 4.2 will be another beta. We are still a year away from KDE 4 providing the equivalent functionality and stability of 3.5.x.

Now we know why OpenSuse came out recently and said it would still support 3.5 in 11.1. Moreover, I fully expect this statement to be repeated for 11.2.

On a positive note, I see that the intelligencia at KDE are finally portraying KDE4 in KDE3 terms, visually. Unfortunately, they are still focusing and wasting time developing "neat" things that will be used by one out of every million users.

Myself, I will not even try KDE4 until I am shown that it has all the functionality of KDE3, that desktop and panel (etc) icons can be resized easily and globally (and that they stay in the order I want them), until they banish that stupid peanut, until they bring back the customizability that "Personal Settings" that 3.5 has (and not the brain-dead, Gnomish look-alike that they have now in KDE4), and Konquerer as a file manager is just as powerful as it is in 3.5, not crippled.

I will never - never - never forgive KDE developers for openly lying to us, sucking us in, etc., with the KDE4 is "production-ready" stance. It wasn't, nor is 4.1 and 4.2 (while better) isn't there yet either. You can fool/lie to me once, but after that your credibility is lost.

[sorenson2743]

@wnj92996: Quote, "4.0 had some bugs, and was not feature-complete, as the KDE devs stated time and again. The deal is, people clamored for it, distros offered it, and then people complained."

What. A. Crock. Utter revisionist history at its worst. KDE even withdrew its press announcement for KDE4 when users realized they had a proof-of-concept at best, in KDE4.0.

Utter rubbish revisionist history.

[dragonbite]

Is there a simple place to find out which KDE applications have been ported to 4 and which ones are pending, which is distro-agnostic?

I just read KDEnlive is ported, which is good news, but not sure what is the status on the other apps.

Once I can get a cleared hard drive/system I want to experiment with a KDE-centric system where if there is a KDE alternative, then to use that instead of some applications such as OpenOffice (KOffice), Gimp (Krita), Firefox (Konquerer), Inkscape (Karbon14), etc.

[StevenJ61]

Personally I like KDE 4.1 on my pc. It is very stable, insanely fast and does everything I need. Only a few dislikes, mainly you cannot save documents to the desktop. Well you can but you have to view with dolphin or konqueror. It won't appear naturally sitting on your desktop which is kind of odd really.

Oh yeah you also cannot open konqueror or dolphin as root from terminal which makes editing or adding to system files a bit harder but in a way I am thankful for that too. I screwed up my KDE 3.5 desktop environments multiple times while learning how to install native linux games and so forth. Well it was a learning experince that is for sure. Now I just put everything under /home/user where it belongs. I don't touch root directories any more.

I have used all three desktop environments. GNOME 2.2, KDE 3.5, and KDE 4.0 and KDE 4.0 is my current favorite. I think it is well polished and certainly stable. Looks very nice on the eyes too. No real problems or slow downs, works fast, faster than KDE 3.5 did on the same machine.

[zak89]

I actually posted this on another thread, but I think this is the thread I had in mind when I made the post (I couldn't find this one), so I'll put it here too. Hope that isn't a big deal!

KDE 4 is really trying to go beyond trying to match Windows or Mac guis. If you look at KDE 3.5 or GNOME, you'll probably notice that there are lots of features and behaviors that are just the same as in Windows, or, less often, the Mac. There is nothing wrong with that, there is often no need to reinvent the wheel, and it is good to keep things the way user expect. KDE 4 is a bold step beyond that. KDE is now trying to introduce paradigm shifts, and explore new ways of doing things. Some will not like this at all. And they may be right (the old saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" comes to mind), but then again, KDE has covered it's bases well. KDE 3.5 is, for the most part, "done" (whatever that means!). It is fast, stable and feature rich. It does what you expect, and it works. Now KDE is ready to venture ahead of Windows and Mac, and is well on it's way to becoming a "trend setter", rather than a follower. It's a risky step, but if they succeed (and I suspect they will), it will serve to gain attention for Linux in general. We may see (or rather, hear) people saying things like, "Man, that Linux stuff is looking really sweet, I gotta try it out!"

[dragonbite]

Originally Posted by zak89

I actually posted this on another thread, but I think this is the thread I had in mind when I made the post (I couldn't find this one), so I'll put it here too. Hope that isn't a big deal!

Not at all.

Wasn't there talk about moving KDE to the Windows platform? Is KDE 4 a different direction or will it help facilitate this?

[zak89]

I think the idea was to port the KDE libraries so that individual KDE apps could be easily ported to Windows. Don't know if KDE 4/Qt 4 bring anything new to that table.

[AlienHealer]

Originally Posted by dragonbite

Not at all.

Wasn't there talk about moving KDE to the Windows platform? Is KDE 4 a different direction or will it help facilitate this?

KDE is already available on windows.

The KDE on Windows Project - Welcome to The KDE on Windows Project