Anyway to avoid KDE4.x?

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1

Hi all,
An old SuSE User for many years, but by no means a “pro”.
Last year I upgraded to 11.1 and got into the mess they called KDE4.whatever it was.
Hated it. Toys, bells, whistles, good god you’d think Balmer and Jobs had joined the development team. GOBS of problems and I ran like heck from it.
Been loving 11.1 with KDE 3.5.10 since January, but I see support for 11.1 is dying already.

Can we still install 11.3 or something with an option for KDE 3.5.x like we did with 11.1?
I have loved using Linux for years and I am humbled and I feel privileged to be engaged with the opensource community, but I’m getting older and slower and … as Sonny & Cher used to croon …" the cars keep a going faster all the time…" it’s getting harder and harder to keep up. lol yeah and I grew up with a party line phone… :FIM
Thanks for any info on this topic.

2

I’m not going to get in a debate about this, but maybe worth having a look at these:

KDE 3

KDE3 - openSUSE

Good luck.

3

Best answer I could have expected.
Thanks for the push.
And thanks for your service to the community.

4

I’m not going to say you are wrong, but keep in mind that later versions of kde have fewer problems. They’ve still got all of the flash and eye candy though (but kde has always been very configurable, so you could probably configure it into a not-very-eye-candy state, but it would still be kde 4).

In any case, you are certainly right that early versions of KDE 4 were a bit of a disaster, and even later versions divide opinions strongly. There are always choices, of course…

Can we still install 11.3 or something with an option for KDE 3.5.x like we did with 11.1?

AFAIK, kde 3.x is no longer available from official repos, but see this page for the updated situation, if you are prepared to go unsupported.

You might also like to try Gnome or Xfce or LXDE. You can install those alongside kde and select which to use for any session at start-up time.

5

To illustrate what @markone wrote: A customer of mine recently did make the switch to KDE4, he switched off the desktop effects, applied some personal theming. Where he ranted about KDE4 only two weeks ago (he has a sandbox machine), he now is praising all kinds of new found functionality.
I’m moving an office network from KDE3 to KDE4, users generally are very pleased by KDE4 now. It’s stable, smooth, ultimately configurable.

6

openSUSE 11.1 was shipped with KDE4.1.3 (hope I researched that right), which still had quite some bumps and holes. The current version of KDE4 is 4.5.3 and it became mature with version 4.3.

7

I for one was a “KDE4 hater” in OpenSuSE 11.1. Also hated Dolphin compared to the KDE File Manager.
At the time I found KDE4 bloated, slow, the “new” File Manager (Dolphin) a serious downgrade in capability.

Today, I’m a KDE4.5 happy camper. Only continuing complaint is that Dolphin still isn’t as easy and seamless to use as the old KDE3 File Manager (particularly the lack of DragNDrop support… I hate having to browse or define the path for every file move, it’s almost easier and faster to just switch to CLI.

In general, I’ve found that KDE4.5 is a good choice of Desktop, for every complaint I have it also has at least one very useful new feature that <works>.

Tony

8

Drag and drops works for me???

9

I can’t even remember having problems with drag’n’dropping in KDE4.

10

Hello SomeSuSEUser,

Another long term user of Suse/openSUSE of some years :slight_smile:

Falling short of throwing stones and poking it with some long stick, I also did not enjoy the prospect of switching to KDE4 (very early version), LOL the feeling was little different to having to leave my home country, to work on project in Britain… OK, maybe not so bad :slight_smile:

Although I did test KDE4. Both my findings and the comments that I read on various forums, kept me away from using it as the main DE. So, I held on to KDE3.5.10 as long as I could.

Early KDE4 was, IMO and others, failure. However, over later releases, especially KDE4.4, it has become much better and usable. Comments on various forums I read, became more positive. That said, I decided to run 4.4 as my main DE, without many problems as previous.

Now, having just one week past, upgraded to KDE4.5.3, I am very happy with it, to the stage that I now have all my systems (and their users) running it.

As for Dolphin being the default file manager. No, I am not fan of it. In system settings, I set Konquera as default. My only very minor irritation with Konquera is, not having bluetooth browsing as found in the 3.5.10 version. The latter is no great loss, as I/we simply connect my/our mobile divices via USB.

Drag and Drop works well, as do many other things for me. IMO, I no longer miss KDE3.5.x, as all the needed functionality, applications for my work (and pleasure) are there.

My post, I know, does not state how to avoid KDE4, the subject of the OP.

11

Hey, OP. Don’t know if it’s too late for you but yes, there’s a way to run 3.5.x on 11.1, 11.2, and 11.3:

How-To: Install KDE 3.5 with OpenSUSE 11.3

How-To: Install KDE 3.5 with OpenSUSE 11.2

As for 3.5 on 11.1, there’s a live CD! It’s at : Derivatives - openSUSE — about 10 lines up from the bottom. I’ve used it, and once the live CD is booted up, you can install to your HDD, so this may be a quick way to install. After install, update via Yast in the normal way.