I am new right now to Linux and trying to learn. One thing that I have noticed is that many people here seem to have some very strong opinions of KDE 3 and KDE 4. Some people have even tried to fork KDE 3.5, while others believe that the KDE 3.5 fork will never take off.
My question now is, exactly what does KDE 3.5 have that KDE 4 doesn’t?:
-Are certain features or applications in KDE 3 not available in KDE 4 (presumably such features would be considered important if they provoked such a strong reaction)?
-Is it a lot less usable (subjective; I suppose that people who are “used” to KDE 3 would have a hard time adjusting, just as people who are used to Windows Aero may have a hard time adjusting to Linux or Mac). Some combination of the above?
Is it because KDE is immature?
-Does KDE 4 crash a lot? (I am using KDE 4.3.5 and have had Plasma crash on me at least once)
-Is KDE 4 a lot harder on system resources? (hopefully this will improve with time)
Please don’t flame me. (Note: If this question stirs up a very strong emotional reaction, you probably should not respond).
I have not had any crashes with 4.3.5 except for kwrite but kwrite has been that way for years.
I loved 3.5. It was elegant and efficient. I was not so sure about 4.0 or 4.1, but it has matured and is a great and very modern desktop environment. Even compositing seems to work better for me than it used to.
What is old and new territory around here? Having only started using Linux in January and joined this forum for barely a week now, I wouldn’t know what is new and cool and what is in the dustbin.
He’s just talking about the fact that we have been arguing about 3.x V 4.x for a long long time around here. Threads like this tend to turn pretty ugly.
I have a min so like a dog that’s been thrown a bone…
‘kde3 is/was a great desktop option. When kde4 was introduced and it worked like a plastic screwdriver, all hell broke loose, with folk ranting about what the heck are kde playing at! kde4 was lacking in every way.
But at that time kde3 was still part of the install options in openSUSE.
Now though, kde3 has been dropped by openSUSE and kde are only maintaining it as it is, no work on it at all.
However, (and some would argue here) now, kde4 is well up there as desktops go. I would say it is the trend setter for the desktop world and it is IMO better than kde3 even if it has one or two problem areas.
Some people have been arguing that kde4 is copying ‘winders’ - NO, actually it’s the other way around.
You can still install Linux OS’s with kde3, they will work fine. Just that no development or bug fixing is taking place in kde3. For folks that use Linux this is boring. We are progressive, forward moving!
Just one or two folk are finding it hard to let go of their precious kde3.’
To add insult to injury, some of the more prominent distros (like openSUSE and Fedora) rushed in offering KDE4 as main option, at a time when KDE devs clearly stated that it’s still not mature enough and is mostly a development/beta/preview release. A lot of people either installed it during install or upgraded to it. Fedora made a severe mistake by fully replacing KDE3 with KDE4 when the latter came out, offering KDE users a totally borked experience and they couldn’t revert (see Linus dropping KDE4 in favor of GNOME due to Fedora’s stupidity).
That said, things are much much better now, and although there are some who still miss certain functionality/features and complain about, there are a lot more who agree that at this point in time, KDE4 is certainly at a point where it’s highly usable. We’ll always have complainers and this is not only in the desktop camp, but also on application level, distro level, etc. You just can’t please everyone and often compromises are needed and done.
It does that fine… Just drag it from your kicker menu or desktop folder view (the transparant window you’re talking about) to your plasma desktop and it will install it as a ‘widget’… so now you can use KDE 4 as a ‘old’ desktop…
He didn’t say GNOME is better, he just had little choice when Fedora threw a borked KDE4 at him. And since he’s very pragmatic, he’ll use the tools currently available and working, so GNOME was the obvious choice. I dunno if he switched back to KDE4 ever since then
I was reading an article here and one thing that the article pointed out was that KDE 4.3 was not as user configurable as KDE 3.5. Does anybody agree or disagree? Perhaps giving the user more control would be one way of making KDE 4 a better GUI.
Another question here - are people who are unhappy with KDE 4 unhappy with the desktop environment or the applications on KDE 4?
Judging by the initial problems like stability, I think that it was because of the scale of the project. Bugs and the like were inevitable given the complexity of KDE 4. I suspect that by the time KDE 5 is introduced, KDE 4.X will have all of the functions that KDE 3.5 had and more. But back onto topic, what does KDE 3.5 have that KDE 4 doesn’t?
If anyone is interested, here is a rebuttal that KDE 4, although it has flaws, is overall, a more productive suite that KDE 3.5. People who switch from KDE 3 will likely see a temporary drop in productivity as they learn the new interface and then in the long run, see it rise again.
Stability if you ask me, KDE 3.5 is rock solid and KDE 4.3 is still crash city.
My biggest gripe with the KDE4 series is its focus on flashy effects over something that is actually workable.
Its like the Vista of linux, all flash and no substance.
Now granted its gotten a little better over time but KDE4 still feels clunky in some areas and plasma crashes more then a drunk driver on speed.
And I may note I am not liking where KDE 4.4 is going, the new plasmoid browser is a total joke, I rather have the little window back then deal with that BS.
Its cumbersome and rather unintuitive and not to mention its buggy as he double l, and every other aspect of the interface is a mess.
Like changing the plasma theme, its now in the control center, what a croc as it was just fine where it was.
Why dont they just merge the control center with the wallpaper loader next time and get it over with?
I dunno about KDE anymore, sure it looks nice but looks are not everything.
This is why I still use Gnome on the side, its not that attractive but at least its stable…
Until Gnome 3 rolls out, oh for the love of pete!
Guess I will turn my eyes to XFCE or the upcoming LXDE when that day comes.
>
> Stability if you ask me, KDE 3.5 is rock solid and KDE 4.3 is still
> crash city.
> My biggest gripe with the KDE4 series is its focus on flashy effects
> over something that is actually workable.
> Its like the Vista of linux, all flash and no substance.
> Now granted its gotten a little better over time but KDE4 still feels
> clunky in some areas and plasma crashes more then a drunk driver on
> speed.
> And I may note I am not liking where KDE 4.4 is going, the new plasmoid
> browser is a total joke, I rather have the little window back then deal
> with that BS.
> Its cumbersome and rather unintuitive and not to mention its buggy as
> he double l, and every other aspect of the interface is a mess.
> Like changing the plasma theme, its now in the control center, what a
> croc as it was just fine where it was.
> Why dont they just merge the control center with the wallpaper loader
> next time and get it over with?
> I dunno about KDE anymore, sure it looks nice but looks are not
> everything.
> This is why I still use Gnome on the side, its not that attractive but
> at least its stable…
> Until Gnome 3 rolls out, oh for the love of pete!
> Guess I will turn my eyes to XFCE or the upcoming LXDE when that day
> comes.
I can’t quite take it to the level you so eloquently describe, but I think
you do make the operative point - is this a toy/hobby or a tool? I want
neither myself nor my users spending any more time on the desktop than
absolutely essential. They get paid to produce results, not play, and the
desktop contributes virtually nothing to productive work once a standard
configuration is attained. There are a few things in KDE4 that are
improvements over KDE3 but gain is lost in gimmickry - even when it works
as it is supposed to.
After considerable dicking around, I have managed to reduce the clutter on
the desktop to approximately that of KDE3 but from an admin point of view
there needs to be one additional button on that bloody configuration
screen, one that requires root privileges and does one distinct thing:
disables user access to the rest of the configuration without root
privileges.
I have relegated 11.2 and KDE4 to the sandbox. The latest builds of KDE4
show promise but the current shipping level is not something I want to have
to support until the 11.3 or 12.0 versions ship. If 11.3 doesn’t show a
quantum improvement, I’ll probably join you on XFCE/LXDE and hope those can
resist the feature creep that seems rot so many products over time.
