I've Had It With KDE4 ... Finally

English Soapbox
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I don’t know why I persist in abusing myself by testing out the 'latest and greatest" version of The Slug, a.k.a. KDE4. Sure, it’s not quite as rough, unfinished, unpolished, totally aggravating and mind-numbing as KDE 4.0, but that is not saying very much in it’s favour. Yet I keep getting seduced by falsehoods, you know, the whispers of, “It’s really great now, try it out and you will be surprised!”. Yeah, sure.

We all know why KDE4 came about … Windows Visa look and feel … and, of course, the obligatory noises about how KDE3 was broken, unmaintainable, etc. Having spent a career in IT management, I’m more than familiar with these excuses for a total rewrite, “to provide a better foundation for the future”, bladda-bladda. Fine and well, but one approach might have been to provide all the functionality, stability and goodness of KDE3 first, before moving on to put the latest and greatest self-admiring Bling **** into KDE4. Moreover, lying about the stability, functionality and timing of equivalency of KDE4.0/01 with KDE3.5 wasn’t an especially thoughtful move either. Still isn’t.

Nonetheless, I did a totally clean install of 11.3 RC2 KDE4.4.4 onto my hard drive. No pre-existing home used, etc, totally stock install. Only one “pro” to mention … Okular is kind of neat as a front-end to everything else, but it could have been implemented in KDE3.5 just as easily/well, But the “cons” include:

  1. Probably a Suse thing, but the Kicker Slab is a total waste of of time, versus the Classic Menu setup. Much like the Vista/7 “slab” approach, but at least Microsoft’s doesn’t take up much of your day searching for common applications!

  2. The Personal Settings thingy is, no doubt, rich with 2,496,312,882 settings, but do you think that after all this time we could have a clock that have a user-settable font size, rather than what the KDE developers think looks good (it doesn’t) with off-native display resolutions? KDE 3.5 could be adjusted.

  3. Do we really need 3 or 4 “branding” icons for KDE4 on the desktop. What’s with the stupid peanuts … get rid of them! What happened to right-click functionality, which has the distinct advantage of not getting in your way until you need to do something, unlike the peanuts, big right-hand-side bars on desktop icons, etc. Funny, I can do everything that KDE4 does with icons, in KDE3.5, without the intrusiveness of KDE4’s “massive bling trip”. Even Microsoft is blingless compared to KDE4. And what’s up with KDE4 maximizing a window every time I move it over the top-right peanut or right edge of the screen. Is this a bug, or a default setting that can be changed somewhere amongst the 2,496,312,882 settings?

  4. There probably is a way in Personal Settings to adjust icon text size line so that “Computer” doesn’t show itself as “Compute” in one line, and “r” on the next but, obviously, I must have missed it amongst the 2,496,312,882 settings there … life’s too short, really, folks, to deal with simple things this way. And it looks like ****, strictly bush league.

  5. Resize and Rotate may or may not be a Suse or KDE issue, but isn’t there any way to make a resolution setting persistent between logoffs and reboots? There used to be a neat “use this setting every time KDE starts up” (or similar wording) tickbox in RandR, but not now, because “it’s better/improved”. I really like setting this over and over each time I go into KDE4! Builds character.

Of course, having a lesser number of resolutions available, compared to KDE3.5 is a joy too, so I end up with either electron-microscope sized text, icons and games, or a display that has to be viewed at 30 feet. Nice move, RandR developers, KDE, X11, or whomever.

  1. The panel settings functionality is poorly designed, period. What’s with “More…” which is useless?

  2. Not content with abusing myself after each login by having to reset screen resolutiuon, spending 25 minutes after every install to turn off all the notifications that have been preset is an absolute joy. Either that, or be “notified” to death. Folks, the objective is to get work done, not to have a rich dialogue with every developer/program in the system.

  3. On a more serious note, and this may be strictly a transitional issue, the X11 configfile changeover and removal of SAX functionality is a major step backwards. Even Windows,Vista/7 has better display functionality WITH A VGA ADAPTER than Suse/KDE/RandR/Xorg has with their “latest and greatest” user non-friendly or non-working ****. Desktop bling and “fuzzy/wobbly” windows that bring a 4770 to its knees, even a 5770? Give me a break, take a step back, and realize what’s happening, KDE developers!

I’ve been with Suse/OpenSuse since v7 or so, and have grown to dislike the MS offerings. But let me tell you, I installed Win7 the other day on another partition on this computer, and it just whizes along, stock, out of the box, twice as many resolutions available compared to this 11.3rc2/KDE4.4.4 slug. With the ATI driver, Win7 flies! Telling, isn’t it, compared to this slug!

The bottom line is this. The KDE interface engineering isn’t oriented to 99% of the users, it’s responding to 1% of the user base that loves Bling, but does no useful work on KDE. They do that on a Windows machine. Compared to KDE3.5, KDE4 remains a regression, and less usable than KDE3.5 in day-in and day-out work. Yes, there’s now some spiffy weather applets, and social applets, but so what … much of that was available in KDE3.5 … oh, I forgot, there’s not enough visual bling to those old KDE3.5 things. Sorry, let me grovel before the gods of Web 2, blingness, and “enriched” (but unusable and useless) functionality.

KDE developers, keep your eyes on the basics. Your considerable talents have accomplished so much in a comparatively short period of time but, FWIW, I’m either staying with 11.1 KDE3.5, going to 11.3 Gnome, or retreating back to Windows … whatever has the lowest pain threshold at the decision point. Because the following truism now colours the competitive OS landscape:

a) Windows Home Premium is $89 in Canada, and it certainly has 95% of what folks need, including video drivers that work out of the box! It will last me probably 8 years, same as Win2000 did for me.

b) There’s now free anti-virus software, CD/DVD burning software, Office Suites (e.g., OO), defraggers, photo suites, e-mail programmes, browsers, you name it, that are every bit as good or better than that available in Linux, and certainly less intrusive and bling-like, than KDE4.

c) So the cost proposition (considering my time and self-inflicted abuse in KDE-land) is equal or better in Windows now. Everything is written/designed for Windows, and it works straight-off, versus (maybe) a 50% level in Linux. Yes, there are virii problems, but that’s mitigated by free anti-virus suites, emerging browser functionality, vendor awareness, and prudent user practices.

So it’s a difficult road, KDE developers. Do you continue to develop for 1% of the Linux user base (Gnome probably has the other 99% because corporations prefer its “simple, just works” functionality to KDE’s Bling approach), GUI-wise? Dead-end, as far as I can see, unless some End-User actual usage requirements are catered to, not the 1% of the target marketplace.

P.S. Dolphin still looks like **** out of the box. Who is KDE Developer Land loves ugly grey slabs of windows programs? Even Nautilus never looked THAT bad.

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That’s what’s so great about Linux; you can finish with KDE and you’ve still got Gnome and xfce.

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Sigh…:sarcastic:

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1.) Right click on Application Launcher, Switch to Classic Menu. Done.
2.) I do agree, you can only adjust fonts. But probably just to adjust to the Panel Size (if you’re talking about the one on the panel).
3.) They’re called desktop widgets. The bars that show up when you hover over a widget lets you either resize, rotate, or click into the settings of the widget. The “peanuts” are ways to get to the Toolbox of either the Panel or the current activity. As for the resizing, it’s a feature of Windows 7 as well. When you drag a window to the right border of the screen, the window automatically takes up the right half of the screen; if you then drag another window to the left border of the screen, the window automatically takes up the left half of the screen - this can be useful for quick comparisons between windows. If you drag the window to the top border, it maximizes the window. Sure you can just hit the maximize button, but it’s also another quick feature. You can turn these off by going to Configure Desktop>Desktop>Screen Edges. Uncheck Maximize windows by dragging them to the top of the screen, then uncheck Tile windows by dragging them to the side of the screen.
4.) If you’re talking about using the folder view in desktop, right click the desktop then choose Folder View Activity Settings. Go to Display and under Icons move the slider to choose the icon size, it even has size: from Small to Large to help you along the way. If you’re talking about in Dolphin, then you can simply move the slider on the bottom.
5.) RandR? Why not just use the Display configuration in Configure Desktop? It’s under Computer Administration>Display. Also, I use a 32" HDTV as a display monitor, so I can feel your pain on the small fonts, but seriously, just go to Configure Desktop>Look and Feel>Fonts>Force Fonts DPI (I use 96 and it works great).
6.) The More settings option lets you choose whether to auto-hide the panel, have windows cover it, or windows go below it, or always have it visible, align the panel left, right, center, or Maximize the Panel in case you shrunk it. All which seem to be quite handy to me.
7.) If you right click on the System Tray you can configure which notices to see.
8.) As for using VGA adapter? I use one with my Nvidia card on my desktop. The same one on the 32"HDTV. Works great. I too have Windows 7 Professional on this computer. It works great as well and is definitely lightening fast. But I hate not having more than one workspace (I only use 2 though) and sure there’s a lot of bling in KDE4 but I use a lot of the effects to my advantage. How about Present windows? That’s a time saver if I’m using the mouse at the moment. Even Desktop Grid is great when I’m using both workspaces and need to figure out where a windows is or move a window to the other workspace fast and easy. Don’t even talk about Vista though. Had that on my laptop and it was slow as heck. Windows 7 is definitely worth mention though as it’s everything Vista should have been.
8a.) Windows 7 Home Premium is $119.99 in the US. OpenSUSE is free, and works for me and my computer illiterate parents.
8b.) This is very true. I myself use Avast! along with Malwarebytes Antimalware (the best tool I’ve ever found for getting rid of basically anything harmful on the computer). But I can do all of that stuff in openSUSE AND KDE4. You’re talking about the aesthetics of KDE4 hindering you from using a program in which kd4 does not hinder in any way. I’m using google chrome, firefox, OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Gimp, DigiKam, etc, all in KDE4 in blazing fast speed (using a pentium 4 @ 3.06 GHz and 480MB of recognized ram). My Desktop computer with a quadcore @ 2.55 GHz/core and 4GB of Ram can handle it no sweat.
8c.) This may be true for you but many users can and are using KDE4 effectively. I myself have set up computers for numerous amounts of people who LOVE the KDE4 functionality and look. This is something that varies from person to person. So for you (and since I’ve seen these kinds of posts before there are others), KDE4 doesn’t feel like something you’re use to, but for others like myself and many people here, it’s great! You just have to get use to it and find out where the settings and features are. Most are apparent, some are not, but that’s why you ask for help here or take the time to get to know it.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you sound like a typical Microsoft user coming into Linux to find it doesn’t do everything they want the way they want it. Obviously you’ve used linux before since you said you use KDE3, but I just took care of most of the problems you had, had you simply went into Configure Desktop and poked around, or right clicked on the Desktop and checked the options out. It’s not rocket science, and just like anything completely new it takes time and patients to get use to. You always have us here at the forums to look to for help as well. I’m very sorry your experience was so horrible, and I understand people have lives and just want to use their computers, but at least ask for help here or read up on the KDE website for documentation or SOMETHING. Otherwise it’s like going from an automatic to a standard and wondering why you can’t even get out of park.

Take Care,

Ian

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and LXDE and FLuxbox and IceWM and …KDE3

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Most of your points were responded to so I won’t bother with a duplicate effort. I love KDE4.4 (actually 4.5 rc 2). I like bling. Lots of it. That’s what brought me to linux in the first place, choices and KDE. I use it in my work and in the social net. I have had problems at time, but the old rule of backing up your data has allowed me to run the cutting edge releases. Frustrations? Sure. Lots of them. But linux is only now beginning to come in to its own as a serious alternative among the masses. With the porting to the mobiles, more and more people are being exposed to the true control that linux allows.And most of those folks like bling: hence the popularity of droid, google and maemo devices. The KDE4 series is a major rewrite in a short time. There are some issues but it is a collaboration Instead of giving up, do the bug reports, submit ideas, get involved on the development channels. If you try to help, then your comments are complaints. If you don’t try to help you are just whining. There’s been a lot of that. If you want kde 3.x then get involved with the folks who are trying to keep it going. But my question is why Windows 7? If you want the old stuff you should have gone with XP.

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In as much as I can, I’ll try to go through your points, one by one. Don’t mistake this for a KDE 4 enthusiast trying to tell you that KDE 4 is now good, and you should now adopt it, because that is not how I feel.

It is true enough that kde4 has improved massively from its first release (which, to be fair, the devs never claimed was going to be a real, fit for end users, release, but, on the other hand, they never said that 4.01 wouldn’t be a ‘good for end users’ release) and it is a good point that if you start off from a position that is terrible enough, you can make massive improvements without ever reaching ‘good’.

  1. Probably a Suse thing, but the Kicker Slab is a total waste of of time, versus the Classic Menu setup. Much like the Vista/7 “slab” approach, but at least Microsoft’s doesn’t take up much of your day searching for common applications!

Disagree: anything that allows me to find an app by typing the first few letters is worthwhile. You can install the classic ‘columnar’ menu rather than the slab, if you want. You do lose the ability to search for apps with the first few letters (that is a SuSE thing and with the change to 4.x from 3.x SuSE only seems to do that on the ‘slab’ rather than the ‘columnar’ menu). Sometimes I install both, but as, eventually, I end up only using ‘slab’, I haven’t done that recently.

  1. The Personal Settings thingy is, no doubt, rich with 2,496,312,882 settings, but do you think that after all this time we could have a clock that have a user-settable font size, rather than what the KDE developers think looks good (it doesn’t) with off-native display resolutions? KDE 3.5 could be adjusted.

Got that, but it may be a function of my rather non-standard set up. I have the bar thingy on the left hand side of my screen, and, as I adjust the width of the bar, the font size adjusts and I change the width of the bar until it does what I want.

  1. Do we really need 3 or 4 “branding” icons for KDE4 on the desktop. What’s with the stupid peanuts … get rid of them!

3 or 4 branding icons? I have two ‘cashews’, one in the top right hand corner and one in the bottom left hand corner. OK, I’ll agree that this is (at least) one more than is necessary.

What happened to right-click functionality, which has the distinct advantage of not getting in your way until you need to do something, unlike the peanuts, big right-hand-side bars on desktop icons, etc.

Not much. Right click in an appropriate place and it does the kind of thing that it used to do.

And what’s up with KDE4 maximizing a window every time I move it over the top-right peanut or right edge of the screen. Is this a bug, or a default setting that can be changed somewhere amongst the 2,496,312,882 settings?

Pass. I’ve not had it happen. Maybe its a feature that I haven’t been adventurous enough to try/stumble across.

  1. There probably is a way in Personal Settings to adjust icon text size line so that “Computer” doesn’t show itself as “Compute” in one line, and “r” on the next but, obviously, I must have missed it amongst the 2,496,312,882 settings there

Where does this ‘compute’ ‘r’ thing happen? I don’t have it.

  1. Resize and Rotate may or may not be a Suse or KDE issue, but isn’t there any way to make a resolution setting persistent between logoffs and reboots?

Know nothing about Resize and Rotate, whatever that is.

Of course, having a lesser number of resolutions available, compared to KDE3.5 is a joy too…

‘Just works’ for me. OTOH, if it decided to just not work, I have no idea how I’d fix it.

Nice move, RandR developers, KDE, X11, or whomever.

X11, and I think its a side effect of other useful changes that are going on (and we are in a somewhat unsatisfactory intermediate situation right now).

  1. Not content with abusing myself after each login by having to reset screen resolutiuon, spending 25 minutes after every install to turn off all the notifications that have been preset is an absolute joy. Either that, or be “notified” to death. Folks, the objective is to get work done, not to have a rich dialogue with every developer/program in the system.

I get one notification when NM reconnects the network. On kde start up (rather than return from hibernation) I get a ‘spurious-ish’ notification about ‘new software updates being available’ (its spurious in the sense that it hasn’t yet checked and gives the old status while it is still checking…but software updates will not have gone away all by themselves, but then, nor, probably, will my intention to deal with them right now).

So, thats one or two max, for me.

  1. On a more serious note, and this may be strictly a transitional issue, the X11 configfile changeover and removal of SAX functionality is a major step backwards.

OK, but not a KDE issue.

I’ve been with Suse/OpenSuse since v7 or so, and have grown to dislike the MS offerings. But let me tell you, I installed Win7 the other day on another partition on this computer, and it just whizes along, stock, out of the box, twice as many resolutions available compared to this 11.3rc2/KDE4.4.4 slug. With the ATI driver, Win7 flies! Telling, isn’t it, compared to this slug!

You haven’t left nepomuk enabled, have you? That, more-or-less turns my laptop into a brick. I had tried leaving it running in the hope that it might settle down once it had everything indexed. This might happen after a time, but, as far as I can tell, that time is probably in excess of the current age of the universe. And it does less for me than locate/updatedb and is more intrusive. So, I got bored and switched it off.

Apparently, when it is finished it will do something. I’ll look at it again then, but whether it will ever do something that I want so bad that i’ll want my computer bricking in order to have it is another matter.

The bottom line is this. The KDE interface engineering isn’t oriented to 99% of the users, it’s responding to 1% of the user base that loves Bling, but does no useful work on KDE.

I think that’s just plain wrong. For me, if they could cure the bugs, that would be fine. But they can’t, and that’s the problem. It is not the bling, or lack of it, its bugs, bugs, bugs.

And, I have to point out that I have given up on KDE 4 several times, but I’ve also gone back to it several times (the last time because an update seems to have broken Enlightenment). If I liked Gnome, I’d have gone over to Gnome, but I don’t.

I can’t let KDE run for, say, two weeks and just use suspend and restore. After something like a week it will slow down and I’ll have to log out and back in again to get rid of the cruft. I could ‘cure’ this by adding RAM, but its a fault and its not a fault that I see in KDE 3.

P.S. Dolphin still looks like **** out of the box.

What’s a Dolphin? (Actually, I guess I know, I just have no need for it). No, it doesn’t help if it looks like a line of asterisks.

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… and LXDE ! :slight_smile:

Edit - beaten to the punch by Knurpht …

… there is also SOAD with Enlightenment.

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@ijbreakey:

  1. Already done, but why the Slab? Copy-cat Windows?

  2. We agree

  3. Desktop Widgets: ever had the need to rotate an icon?. Peanuts: how many ways does one need to do this? … at least four (that I know) exist. Resizing: not what most users expect as default behaviour; Win7 doesn’t; nice to know where to turn the sucker off, or what was cqusing it … thanks.

  4. Yeah, I always do FolderView, and already had. I saw the slider, but it was under Icons … thought it pertained to icon size (go figure, eh?). IIRC, there used to be a second slider, solely for text … it ain’t there anymore, so that’s what I was talking about.

  5. I used both RandR and the personal display entry. No difference on my install … still non-persistent. Besides, why should one be different? And how’s a user to know? I always force to 96 anyways, and this does squat to solve the resolution/crispness issue.

  6. How did we ever do without the “more button” on every other OS desktop in the world? Personal preference, I guess.

  7. Notices: Yeah, that’s what I did, which was 25-30 minutes out of my life that I will never get back, just to avoid social dialog with a developer’s masterpiece.

  8. Well, the Radeon driver is a slug, with the proprietary one (if it was available for RC2 … it didn’t install in RC1) not much of a difference. Should not cripple a 4770, nor a 5770. Had Nvidia stuff but, after only being able to RMA one of three 8600’s that bought the bumpgate ticket, I gave up onNvidia. As for the cost of Windows, it’s a paltry sum that offsets the grief of KDE4, milestones, RC’s and having to spend hours and hours to get Wine to run 5 year-old Win progs … where there is no Linux equivalent. Everyone’s mileage may vary.

The rest is personal view, which I won’t argue with, but merely say that I’ve been using Suse et al since 93-94 or so (prob RH at that time), and I don’t loath change, just KDE4 which (IMO) is Bling for Bling’s sake. My view is also that the desktop should be fairly intuitive (Linux is arcane enough), so if it doesn’t work stright-off for me, then the KDE developers must obviously have another target audience in mind. So be it.

@caf4926: Yeah, I’ve read your comment(s) on other KDE3/4 threads. Sorry, but IMO KDE4 is a turkey in search of a miniscule audience. Gnome, OTHH, has it correct.

@john_hudson: Quote: “That’s what’s so great about Linux; you can finish with KDE and you’ve still got Gnome and xfce.” Really, really true. Suicide is also an option, but hardly viable (at least in my case). But life’s too short. Certainly to put up with Bling4.4.4

@onemystic: Did you read my whole post?

@markone: I’ll just respond to one of your points, since most of them were also addressed by ijbreakey. On my desktop, regardless of the resolution, the Suse/KDE installed icon/text “My Computer” appears on 3 lines … “My”, followed by “Compute”, followed by “r”. Samsung 213T, 1600x1200, 21.3" LCD monitor (older, but rather high quality, in fact).

@oldcpu: despite my respect for you, IMO Enlightenment is the epitome of useless Bling. Makes the KDE developers look like pikers.

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This could even be placed into ‘new users - howto section’ with maybe a title ‘kde 4.x.x customizing tips’

For me, I’m definately not done with KDE … KDE 3.5.x did fashionably Ok, and KDE 4.0.0 to 4.2.x gave lots of grief. but I am using KDE 4.3.x and my only issues (which I haven’t checked into yet) are sometimes my touchpad reacts very sensitively resulting in my desktops switching from one to two to three to four when not wanted and I have to go down to bottom set the desktop back to one I was working on. The other issue is an occassional screen going black right in the middle of typing and a moment later it’s back just as though nothing happened. Being that I use my Linux for real work at over 14 hours per 24 and have to maybe spend a total of 60 to 120 seconds waisted per day on the above issue’s it’s not a show stopper.

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sorenson, you misread the post. Clearly. Did I quote you? No. ???

So my post was not at you. BUT you decided to take it as such. … :\

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I must admit that, having gone through the same dramas as many others with the introduction of K4, the useless initial offerings, back to 3, try it again, and through the it works:), its broken again:( cycles I have come to quite like the feel of K4. But, given that 4.5 is coming up fast, I do feel that at this point of release compared to 3.5 K4 still has an underlying feeling of ‘not quite right’. There are many things to like, but many to loathe as well, yes, Dolphin and Knetworkmanager I’m looking at you.
I agree with the ‘that what choice is all about’ and ‘the beauty of Linux’ arguments, but I still feel that K4 has become too bloated, and just isn’t ‘right’ yet. There are lots of things that can be argued and countered, but it has been my feeling from the start that, for all the good things that have been introduced, K4 has gone in the wrong direction, and the developers (who I thank for all their efforts) are oblivious to some quite constructive criticism. It is all a bit Jobs and “Well, don’t hold it that way then!”.

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I believe that Dwarfer99 has put it very politely. So I’ll close off with this comment:

Has anyone seen this infamous “Semantic Desktop” that “promised” so much, and got everyone so excited? Does anyone know what a semantic desktop is? Does anyone care anymore, given that we have all been suckered in?

Good night, Alice.

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sorenson2743:

Glad to see I could at least help with some of your issues, even if this was just to vent (it is in the soapbox section after all), and I hope you see, if you had just asked earlier, we could have at least helped you with some of the solutions before you decided to rant (believe me, I’ve spent a lot of time figuring all this stuff out too).

1.) The Kickoff Application Launcher provides a lot of functionality for me. I don’t even have to use the other tabs in most cases - I can just start typing in the name of the program and it shows up. What can be easier than that? Not only that I can, after finding the program, right click it and add it to my favorites so when I first click the application launcher it’s right there! I find this highly intuitive. Of course you can just put icons in the panel or desktop as well, but I have a habit of going to the “start” menu from windows so this feature was actually very helpful and beneficial to me (I’m a Vista convert).

3.) Very good point about really ever needing to rotate an icon, except I do it for the sticky notes widget when I leave stuff on the computer for my parents, just to give it a sort of genuine touch. Sure it’s an aesthetic thing, but anything that’ll help my parents feel more comfortable using the computer is a good thing in my eyes (they’re the epitome of computer illiterate). The Windows 7 resize function? It was default on my version. You might need the Aero functionality in order to have the resizing functionality. Unless you turn off all the bells and whistles in Windows 7, then you have that functionality.

4.) I’ve never used KDE3. I came in at KDE 4.0. Horrible. But friendly to me, being a vista convert. And at the time I didn’t NEED it to work fully because I was dual-booting with vista. So forgive me for not knowing about some of these features that KDE3 had that’s lacking in KDE4. After a quick look however, if you go to Configure Desktop>Appearance>Fonts, you can change the size of the Desktop fonts from here. I’ve never had to do this before since forcing DPI to 96 always worked for me. But there’s a way.

5.) I believe your problem is with your ATI driver. In my experience I’ve always had trouble getting ATI drivers to work right in openSUSE. But as I said before, I was a vista user. A GUI kind of guy. So my first instinct would be to go to Configure Desktop and then I see Display. So that’s how I’ve always done it. Do you have the Radeon drivers properly installed? You would have had to do it “The hard way” as this release is still in the RC2 phase, and remember that we don’t have Sax2 anymore to configure things so it’s kind of a bumpy ride if the automatic configuration doesn’t get things right the first time. If you search the forums this has been addressed and I believe you can use xorg-configure or something like that to get your card recognized properly (IF it’s not already).

6.) I believe you just talked about how KDE4 is copying windows, but now that it has an extra feature you ask how we live without it on any other OS? I believe it’s a handy feature. Mostly, because of this bug in windows 7. When I watch a movie Fullscreen with vlc player, when I go to adjust the volume or maybe even pause the movie - The Windows 7 panel shows up and blocks my ability to click anything on the vlc panel that shows up. So now I have to double click out of fullscreen then adjust volume or pause the movie (I know spacebar, but still annoying). With KDE4, I just click on the cashew, hit More settings, then choose Windows can cover. Just an example of where this functionality can help.

7.) But you were able to stop the notifications. So if there is something wrong, a lot of the time you can adjust a setting to get rid of it. 25 minutes? Just like any other new OS you have to learn it and get use to it. Since KDE4 is a complete rewrite with a new look and feel, treat it as a new OS. Obviously 25 minutes is quite a bit of time, but you can also ask in the forums since a lot of us are already adapted to KDE4.

8.) As I said above, I hate ATI cards in linux. That’s why I choose Intel or Nvidia. Intel works out of the box (with a select few exceptions) and once you get the Nvidia drivers installed you’re set! I know that doesn’t help you with your problem, but maybe something to look for in the future.

As for wine, I know how it feels to have incompatible programs. But I also know how it is to have things work with wine. I work in the IT Department of a Hospital in the summer (I’m still in college). I’ve been giving linux a go on my computer there to see if things will work, and to try to get openSUSE to work in an office setting. Being as I’ve only been using linux since last year, it’s been quite the uphill battle, but once I understand things and search for tips and tricks, it gets easier and easier. There are plenty of proprietary programs that we use, mostly because they’re worth the price. Some of them work, some of them don’t. But if there’s anything I’ve learned, winetricks is a very handy tool. All you have to do is open a terminal and type winetricks and a window comes up that helps you install things that your windows application may need. MScorefonts? Done. DirectX? Done. Check it out, it can be very useful.

I do agree that the rest is personal view and I cannot change your view (no matter how hard I try :)) but I at least hope you see that if you ask for help here we can at least try to sort out some of your grievances with KDE4. It’s really not all as bad as you make it sound out to be. For you perhaps, but with your first post, I showed you ways to fix a lot of things and discussed possibilities for resolving other issues. In my opinion if you want to see things changed then go to the KDE forums or mail the devs. You do bring up some points for usability and I think we should, as suggested by techwiz, get a wiki or how-to together for learning KDE4.

If anything I believe we got some great insight on the difficulties a new KDE4 user may have, and even though you had a lot of complaints, it still helps the whole community to see the different possibilities and approaches to resolve these complaints. I believe everything I can cover has been addressed, so for now, use whatever suits you best. If it’s Windows 7, so be it, but remember that we’ll always be here in case you decide to switch back.

Take Care,

Ian

15

Works fine for me.

16

You can use KDE3 with 11.3

17

TROLL…

next!

18

On Fri, 09 Jul 2010 23:06:01 +0000, AdmiralFubar wrote:

> TROLL…
>
> next!

Let’s not engage in namecalling, please. Let’s keep things friendly and
non-personal.

Thanks,

Jim

–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator

19

Two words “Cloud computing” lol!

20

Gnome in 11.3 works very well; no issues; As a matter of fact, 11.3 is really well done, it is as good as any commercial OS I have ever used and compared to Redhat, it is a fantastic piece of work. Installing the latest R on Opensuse compared to Redhat, is like a walk in the park.