OpenSuse 11 & KDE4 - What were they thinking?

English Soapbox
#1

Using new (separate) partitions, I have installed 11.0_x86 with KDE4 and KDE3.5. Stock installs. As far as I can tell, the 11.0 part of the release embodies continual improvements from 10.3. KDE4, however, is an unmitigated disaster.

  1. Most importantly, font display in both KDE 4 and 3.5 are horrible … fuzzy, reedy, worse than (say) Win98. Firefox3 is even worse, if that is possible. By comparison, my 10.3/3.5.9 production installation displays text on my Samsung 213T in Suse and Firefox2 as if it were printer on paper by a postscript lazer printer. Yes, I have done the freetype2 fixes that I did in 10.3, but these had little or no effect.

  2. While 11.0 boots a bit faster than 10.3 on my 3600x2, the overall desktop experience leads one to believe that 11.0 is a slug. Firefox3 is, of course, even worse and purely a slug on valium.

  3. The best (and perhaps only) benefit of 11.0 is package management. Having lived through 10.0 days up to 10.3, I have high regards for the openSuse developer efforts in this area.

  4. KDE4, however, earns only dismay and the phrase, “what were they thinking?”. A desktop where one cannot adjust the font size of the clock? Icons (which at 1024x768) are best described as “Titanic” in size, and non-resizable; some may be temporarily, but all aren’t? Useless sub-icons within the desktop icons that are a total waste of real estate, and whose functions and options in prior versions of KDE could be accomplished by a simple right-click?

A completely different desktop metaphor full of glitz and bling, but impractical for everyday productive use? A “peanut” in the upper-right corner that occupies valuable real estate, gets in the way of virtually every mouse action, and which could have been implemented cleaner by a simple right-click on the desktop? Is the lemming instinct to emulate useless (but blingful) functionality like in Windows Vista so strong that there is a well-worn path to the cliff?

A “new and improved” KDE control panel that is sure “new”, but retrogressive in scope of functionality compared to 3.5x? A "new and improved file manager (Dolphin) that crashes or hangs repeatedly, while rendering the Konquerer file manager incapable of retaining settings (i.e., “save view profile” doesn’t work)? Missing mouse clicks, particularly in an expanded (second layer) menu situation? No way to change the desktop resolution to (say) 1024x768 from the monitor’s native 1600x1200, despite specifying the lower resolution at (non-automatic install) setting time? And the KDE Display applet with 1024x768 as a presented drop-down option, but “apply” is grayed out? Wonderful.

A “KDEnetworkManager” that sits in the tray wasting space, and doesn’t even show when traffic is occurring, unlike Knemo. And if Knemo is installed, it disappears into the voids of KDE4, so that I still don’t have an icon in the tray to show network traffic.

So much for KDE4 and its wonderful new desktop metaphor. I have no doubt that KDE developers and volunteers worked long and hard on it. But until removal of this blight upon usability becomes a (working) option, I’ll leave KDE4 to to “widget kids” and other absorbers of the latest and greatest “bling factor”. Usability remains a key objective in my value system, and KDE4 just doesn’t cut it. Not even close. And as for reliability, this KDE 4.04/5 is alpha/beta quality at best. Stick with 3.5.9, folks, if you must upgrade to 11.0. As for me, I’m staying with 10.3 and 3.5.9 for (probably) a long time, because I don’t want to ruin my eyes with 11.0’s fonts and I expect it will take a long time, if ever, for KDE.org to come to its senses and provide a switch to turn off Plasma (or whatever this new and wonderful desktop metaphor is called).

And before everyone thrashes me for not posting these KDE4 observations over at KDE.org, I’d just like you to go over to the forums there and see (1) how little posting there is over there, because, (2) no one from KDE seems to answer or participate there.

#2

moved to soapbox, as it appears more of a rant than a request for help

Andy

#3

I think the OP does not realise that a. KDE4.x is a work in progress, b. highly experimental and c. bleeding edge.
So don’t complain, use KDE3.5 and pareticipate in making KDE4.x better !

Also I notice that in this post a number of things are mentioned that all others in this forum seem to have ‘solved’. Read !

When I started playing around with 4.0 at the beginning of this year it was terrible :wink:
Now it is almost finished, but takes some ‘getting used to’.

#4

Well, maybe it’s the user :stuck_out_tongue:

Just kidding.

With the release of OS11 I decided to give KDE 4 a try. In all honesty, I did expect to do a fresh install within a day or two and keep using KDE 3.5. To my surprise, I’m still using KDE 4 and don’t expect to look back. The only problem I had was that a right click on an icon launched the program. The day after I installed, a couple updates came through that fixed it and updated Firefox to 3.0.

I’m good to go.:slight_smile:

#5

I don’t really like the title of this thread. “What were they thinking?” They were trying to reach bleeding-edge users that want to try out an actually quite stable version of KDE4. I found it very usable indeed. I am quite glad they included 4 desktop managers. That is quite a lot of development! I really give them kudos for making KDE4 as stable as it is in OpenSUSE 11. I’m sure it was not an easy task.

I honestly believe the KDE developers should have kept KDE4 out of the scene for a while longer so that people wouldn’t become so anxious yet disappointed with the new release.

#6

Oh and do yourself a favor and enable the KDE 4.1 factory repo (sometimes its better to go even bloodier on the edge). It allows you to upgrade to 4.1 which in my opinion is a universe better than 4.0. The desktop icon foolishness has been somewhat resolved in 4.1. Instead of having useless widgets in place of each icon, you now have a Folder View widget that displays your desktop folder in your /home directory. Once you get used to the idea, its brilliant, as it allows you to have other folders on the desktop as well. For the other issues that you have posted, I have never run into those problems, so I am afraid I can not help you there.

#7

I wonder what was said about KDE3 when it was new?
Personally, after updating to 4.0.8 the only problems I have is that the screensaver freezes(not big),the mixer pops up on each startup or reboot(irritating but I can live with it) these’ll get fixed. The only other problem is that I lost Geeko as the application launcher but that’s another thread.

#8

I haven’t tried KDE3 under OS11, yet only KDE4

  1. Most importantly, font display in both KDE 4 and 3.5 are horrible … fuzzy, reedy, worse than (say) Win98. Firefox3 is even worse, if that is possible. By comparison, my 10.3/3.5.9 production installation displays text on my Samsung 213T in Suse and Firefox2 as if it were printer on paper by a postscript lazer printer. Yes, I have done the freetype2 fixes that I did in 10.3, but these had little or no effect.

I don’t find fonts to be a problem at all.

  1. While 11.0 boots a bit faster than 10.3 on my 3600x2, the overall desktop experience leads one to believe that 11.0 is a slug. Firefox3 is, of course, even worse and purely a slug on valium.

My experience is that 11.0 is an order of magnitude faster than 10.3. I have both installed and go back and forth from time to time. Firefox3, I’ve found is likewise an incredible speed improvement, irregardless of os10.3, os11, or windows. I wonder if perhaps there’s a problem with your swap partition on the 11.0 install?

  1. The best (and perhaps only) benefit of 11.0 is package management. Having lived through 10.0 days up to 10.3, I have high regards for the openSuse developer efforts in this area.

Package management on OS11 is, so far, so much better than 10.3 that it’s almost like they kept only the front-end and rewrote the back end from scratch.

  1. KDE4, however, earns only dismay and the phrase, “what were they thinking?”. A desktop where one cannot adjust the font size of the clock? Icons (which at 1024x768) are best described as “Titanic” in size, and non-resizable; some may be temporarily, but all aren’t? Useless sub-icons within the desktop icons that are a total waste of real estate, and whose functions and options in prior versions of KDE could be accomplished by a simple right-click?

Not to mention that I get random KDE crashes when I go to add and then remove desktop widgets, and the occasional white screen of death with desktop effects enabled on my nvidia machine. It’s pretty though.

A completely different desktop metaphor full of glitz and bling, but impractical for everyday productive use? A “peanut” in the upper-right corner that occupies valuable real estate, gets in the way of virtually every mouse action, and which could have been implemented cleaner by a simple right-click on the desktop? Is the lemming instinct to emulate useless (but blingful) functionality like in Windows Vista so strong that there is a well-worn path to the cliff?

ummm… it’s pretty, though.

A “new and improved” KDE control panel that is sure “new”, but retrogressive in scope of functionality compared to 3.5x? A "new and improved file manager (Dolphin) that crashes or hangs repeatedly, while rendering the Konquerer file manager incapable of retaining settings (i.e., “save view profile” doesn’t work)? Missing mouse clicks, particularly in an expanded (second layer) menu situation? No way to change the desktop resolution to (say) 1024x768 from the monitor’s native 1600x1200, despite specifying the lower resolution at (non-automatic install) setting time? And the KDE Display applet with 1024x768 as a presented drop-down option, but “apply” is grayed out? Wonderful.

Much like Vista… it’s pretty, though. Maybe they were thinking… what the heck, it works for microsoft!

On the other hand, we can hope that these kde4 bugs will get cleaned up relatively soon, and then we’ll get the best of both worlds-- looks, and brains too!

#9

I’ve had some trouble with fuzzy fonts too, only in kde4 (even with kde3 apps launched from kde4). I found out that it was an antialiasing issue. After setting the hinting style to complete (or full) all is fine.

For me kde4 is usable sometimes there are a few bugs but that is what I expected. I’m looking forward to 4.1 release which will be much more usable than 4.0 and with less bugs :slight_smile:

Firefox 3 runs as expected no problems so far. As already mentioned it is much faster than ff 2, so i like it :wink:

#10

I think KDE4.0.4 in opensuse is the best you can get at the moment. KDE4.0 was never meant to be prime time and it shows. KDE4.0.82 in the buildservice is already MUCH better and more stable even if the officially call this a beta and 4.0.4 stable.

I too had serious issues with KDE4.0 fonts. I read elsewhere that it is because antialiasing in KDE4.0 is disabled upstream. It might be my imagination but I do believe that in 4.0.82 fonts are also much improved.

that said I run 4.0.82 and now that I am used to its potential I will not look back. maybe go back to XFCE but I am not sure yet. I do love dolphin so much and gwenview oh yeah Konsole is also fabulous i do not even use putty anymore

I just really dislike plasma, the widgets, the cashew and the fact that I cannot move panel items around, I want to know myself where I put my stuff so come on and let me!

stefan

#11

Sorry to anyone that likes it or was involved in making it but personally I think KDE 4 looks like it was designed by a child…or like it belongs on a Mac (same thing?). I think it looks really horrible and definatly won’t be using it

I wish people would stop trying to be like Windows Vista with all the stupid graphical effects…oh well at least I haven’t seen any of those horrible tacky looking glass reflection style toolbars yet with the white gradient although I’m sure they’ll be in there somewhere because it seems to be the current lame trend.

Is OpenSUSE 11 still as usable with KDE 3.5?

#12

I agree entirely. 4.0.82 (4.1 Beta 1) is significantly better than what came with 11.0.

#13

I think it looks really horrible and definatly won’t be using

Sure, 4.0 does look horrible.

The biggest change in kde 4 is not a simple “graphic remake”. The biggest change in kde 4 are not artworks (phonon, solid, plasma concept, qt4, better internalization…).

Is OpenSUSE 11 still as usable with KDE 3.5?

Why wouldn’t it?

You can use xfce too, if you want.

#14

And nobody here is trying to tell you otherwise. What you decide to use is your choice.

I’m sorry that it’s not your preference. Please keep in mind that some people actually like it.

Yes. KDE is just a graphical interface for all the wonderful things the command line has to offer. :wink:

#15

FYI There’s a rather heated thread on the mailing lists regarding this subject.

Please bear in mind amongst this there is some trolling.

[opensuse] 11.0 KDE 4](http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse/2008-06/msg01904.html)

But for the ones who aren’t receiving 4.0/1 favourable this post may be relevant.
Re: [opensuse] 11.0 KDE 4 {first impressions}

#16

darvr: Yes, KDE3.5 works well on 11.0 as it did on 10.3 but has one additional advantage (apart from not having that KDE4 plaything) of not having Firefox3. It now turns out, BTW, that FF3 is not only a slug on Valium in x86 Linux, but also a severe risk to disclosure of your surfing history to all and sundry websites. Way to go, Mozilla! We only thought Microsoft was clueless. BTW, workarounds for this disclosure only make YOU feel better; it doesn’t actually change FF3’s disclosure behavious.

Incognito9: I have 2 gigs of DDR2, and a 500 mb swap file (it’s never used). Works fine in PCLOS, OS 10.3, TinyMe, Puppy, Mint, etc. And FF3 on x86 (32 or 64 bit) is reported in the forums and the media as being both a slug and a terrible renderer of fonts … something to do with their new Cairo thingy, it says. Your MAC implementation is different, no doubt.

Benjamin_Xiao: The “folder view” workaround is just that … a workaround, or kludge at best. I don’t want to have to open a folder to have desktop icons. I want the KDE3.5 behaviour, as an option. “aseigo’s” blog documents the frustrations of many testers and users of KDE4 to the developer and prime defender of the “new and improved” KDE4 metaphor. So far the KDE folks are being intransigent, which leads one to ask the question, “where are they getting their wish lists from, and what mechanisms are there for tempering this runaway embrace of fanboy bling by KDE?”.

Cinq-Marquis: If you think any of the items/defects/bad design decisions that I have mentioned, have been “fixed”, I’d appreciate your pointing out the threads.

darvr: “I wish people would stop trying to be like Windows Vista with all the stupid graphical effects”. Well said. I suspect that this KDE4 schmozzle (the “new and improved” desktop bling thing, not the rewrite of KDE’s underpinnings which has probably been due for some time) is all about the Vista wannabe lemming instinct. Certainly has nada to do with day in and out productive use of a computer.

Anyway, to end my critique, let me just say that I will stay with 3.5.9 on 10.3 until openSuse and/or KDE.org sort out this mess (a.k.a. come to their senses). OpenSuse did shake off the shackles of the Zen/Novell crowd (mandated a disasterous package management tie-in at R10.0 that persisted in its effects upon users until 11.0), so I have some hope.

But if they don’t come to their senses, and 3.5.9 looses its support (as it will, you can be sure; they will want to do a “Microsoft” and push the KDE4 turkey a.k.a. Vista-Revisited), then I will move to another distribution or (shudder) Gnome or Xfce. That’s how much I hate KDE’s new 4.0 poorly thought-out desktop metaphor for screwing up ordinary user productivity. Maybe PCLOS? TexStar certainly has user’s best interests at heart; not the overwhelming urge to foist the latest bling-machine on ordinary users.

#17

can kde 4.1 and kde 4 coexist on the same install in the same way that kde3 and kde4 can?

#18

I’ve read the posts in this thread and chuckled some — mostly because I too felt the pain (and witnessed the all-too-frequent crashes) of KDE4.

I installed OS11 with KDE4 on 2 different machines. Neither of these machines are slugs, in fact they are both less than 3 months old and very fast (1 is an 8-core, 3.0 GhZ, 64-bit machine with 12GB RAM, the other a 2-core, 2.8 GhZ, 64-bit laptop with 8GB of RAM). While the base OS just flew along and seemed orders of magnitude faster than OS 10.3, running KDE 4 brought both machines to their knees. When I enabled compiz and all the bling, they went from their knees to being sliced off at the gut.

And yes, I used the 1-click install for the nvidia drivers – nothing helped.

Oh, and what about things like:

*highlighting an icon (or whatever it’s called now on the desktop) then hitting delete crashed KDE.

*dragging an icon from the K menu to the desktop resulted in an icon with a question mark until you logout and back in

*sometimes sound worked, sometimes it didn’t. Guess it all depended on if there were sunspots that day

*Adding things to the system tray (amarok, kcpuload, kbiff to name a few) sometimes worked and other times they just went into the void (though ps -ef shows them running)

*kontact performance was abysmal. Deleting an email caused the hard drive to thrash, and took 2-3 seconds for the message to go away

*kopete doesn’t have all the plugins (specifically, meanwhile)

*clicking on the lizard (or k-menu icon) … then waiting 2-3 seconds for the menu to appear after a LOT of hard drive thrashing.

In the end I went back to OS11 on both machines and KDE 3.5.9. Wow, what a difference in performance and stability. NONE of these problems exist on KDE 3.5.9, so I’ll be staying with it for awhile. I know it’s not the fault of the OS devs, it’s the schitzophrenia known as KDE4.0 that’s causing me problems, but here’s hoping for a better 4.1. I’ll try it then – but only in a VM. I’m glad it’s working for some people out there, that gives me hope, but as a business user who uses Linux on all of his machines (from home to office) it’s just not ready.

#19

That’s not an issue to me, never liked Firefox, don’t even install it. Opera all the time.

Yeah and that’s good, but I don’t think it needed a dodgy looking graphic remake to go on top of it. Same with Windows Vista to be fair, i’m sure they probably did improve it a bit in ways but they didn’t need to develop the world’s worst GUI to go with it…saying that I hated all of the graphical “improvements” of win xp nevermind vista :smiley:

I agree, I actually find graphical effects and things on the desktop to be counter productive, when I click on something I want it to open as quickly as possible, not do a stupid animation while it opens. If I wanted to put my graphics card to use I’d play a game.

I think KDE 3 looks good and isn’t counter productive in the process but it looking good isn’t of great importance to me.

#20

Congratulations, you have won the “No Way Jose” award of 2008 for the most senseless comment on these forums so far. Not only is FF3 vastly faster than FF2, it also consumes less memory and is extremely stable.

Also the fonts are not an issue when you make your own fonts.conf - it makes FF look very nice, even on a KDE setup.