KDE is great!

[BrownieCat]

I now am completely impressed by KDE.
I started out as a GNOME user, then decided to try KDE, and I haven't looked back since.
Of course, the choice of the desktop finally depends on the user, but still... I think KDE is simply GREAT!
That eye-candy desktop cube, those cool effects, and many other things... Another thing I like about KDE is that it contains better (in my opinion) applications than GNOME.
And that desktop cube... Well, it's so good I can't say anything enough for it.

[mmarif4u]

Yup, no doubt in that, specially KDE4.3 onwards (exclude 3.5).
The great thing is, that how openSUSE integrate and implement KDE.
Mentioning Kubuntu here, KDE looks awful there but in openSUSE its really great implementation.

[BrownieCat]

Originally Posted by mmarif4u

Yup, no doubt in that, specially KDE4.3 onwards (exclude 3.5).
The great thing is, that how openSUSE integrate and implement KDE.
Mentioning Kubuntu here, KDE looks awful there but in openSUSE its really great implementation.

The whitish Air theme in KDE 4.3 is, in my opinion, much more 'open-looking' and good-looking than the previous KDE 4 versions. The Oxygen theme, although very sleek and stylish, was kind of buggy and seemed very Vista-ish.

[Knurpht]

Funny, this is always about the cube and other eye-candy. Never about how all these beautiful programs can talk to eachother, how they basically all work the same, about what fantastic phenomena Plasma and Phonon are.

On theming:
- Try the Aurorae window decorator. Themes aren't too many yet, but looking very good, Aurorae is stable.
- In what way does Oxygen look like Vista?
- A last one: almost anything is themeable in KDE4, just look for it and you'll find more than you can use.

[Confuseling]

I love KDE apps, but I actually prefer compiz to kwin, although I note that kwin have plans to introduce some of the stuff I feel it's missing (like tiling).

But for me things like 'scale' just work better than the kwin equivalent 'present windows'.

Should probably try KDE with compiz on at some point...

[BrownieCat]

Originally Posted by Knurpht

- In what way does Oxygen look like Vista?

That black look is very similar to the Aero look. Although Aero does include an Air-type theme too...

[john_hudson]

Even on a low spec machine which won't support most of the bling, it looks good.

Whenever I have the misfortune to have to look at someone else's Windows machine, I am reminded just how good it is and how different it is from most other conceptions of what a computer interface should look like.

[gecko-guy]

I like KDE 4.3 a lot. The only things I don't like is the lack of drop shadows on top placed panels, the lack of a CD/DVD burner built-in into dolphin (not as a context menu, but built-in like in nautilus/MacOS finder), and the inability to use both "box" and "flip3D" switchers simultaneously (compiz sets flip3D to win-tab and the traditional switcher to alt-tab).

[Confuseling]

I am going to have to pull you up on that...

Why, on God's green Earth, would you need both? Isn't that just... greedy?

[gminnerup]

However, even in its 4.3.2 incarnation (which I use), KDE is still very much a "work in progress": the plasmoids are either useless, underfeatured, buggy or (mostly) all three (except Folder View). Which reduces the appeal of "activities" over virtual desktops to the different wallpapers... Assigning activities to desktops is possible, but currently at little more than alpha stage. Kwin remains slow with NIVIDIA cards at least, and using Compiz with KDE4 instead opens up new cans of worms. True translucency still hasn't arrived for KDE4 window decorations, and don't get me going on dual monitor support. The "to do" list is rather long...

AND YET, I use KDE4 because it's like a breath of fresh air compared to Gnome and (even more so) the Windows GUI. Plasma has so much potential and looks so good, but I reckon it will be another two or three years until it's mature.