When it comes to Linux, I'm smarter than the average bear. I did some basic Java in college and I have an heuristic understanding of programming and its concepts...but some of the higher-end stuff confuses the hell out of me. I started using Linux in the Summer of '07 and I've been on GNOME 95% of the time.

The problem with GNOME is that it's stagnant. They FINALLY got around to adding the ability to restore from the trash...in 2008. That's totally unacceptable. KDE 4 seems like a more ambitious project and it's supposed to be easier to use compared to KDE 3, so I thought I'd try it out and give you guys some feedback. I'll try to be as constructive as possible and I'd appreciate it if you'd do the same in return.

Things I like will be denoted by pluses (+). Things I don't will be denoted by minuses (-). If you want me to clarify something, just ask. This is going to be a LONG read, so I hope you've got spare time.

THE DESKTOP ITSELF

+The Oxygen icons look fantastic. It makes GNOME look that much more dated.
+Kickoff looks snazzy.
+Being able to display a folder other than "Desktop" on my Desktop rocks my world. With that, KDE 4 has redefined the desktop.
+The plasmoids/widgets look very impressive.
+The single-click concept won me over. Double-clicking is so yesterday.
+When you go to "open with", it lets you directly select programs on the menu. I LOVE this! In GNOME, you have to search for the link to the program manually and I don't know where to look.

-Moving the bar at the bottom should be made more obvious. Maybe you could click on the cashew or the bar itself, hold, and drag it to where you want it?
-Lancelot beats Kickoff hands-down at functionality. Maybe you could adopt some of its features, such as a "click-free" interface, the "breadcrumb" navigation, or being able to drag 'n drop components onto the desktop.
-You could also take a page out of GNOME's playbook and allow users to have separate icons in the bottom bar for each Kickoff tab.
-Kickoff might look more appealing if it displayed two columns rather than just one.
-In the Lancelot menu, you can put its components on the Desktop as Plasma widgets. If all KDE applications could do this, think about how cool that would be if you could drag and drop stuff from all KDE applications to the desktop! IE, move the System Monitor graphs to the desktop, move a KTorrent info display to the desktop, etc...
-In GNOME, their desktop pager is set up be default so that each desktop only displays its own windows. This seems like a logical choice, so I think KDE should adopt this.

AMAROK 2

+Being able to add little widgets to the middle tab is a really great idea. It has a lot of potential.

-When I choose to have it sort my collection by Album, that does NOT mean I want it to display separate albums for each composer in an album. I'd like to be able to turn this behavior off.
-I liked the play buttons and everything on the bottom, but I don't think I can move them in Amarok 2. Maybe this has changed? I haven't used it in a little bit.
-It's gray to the point of looking boring. Maybe you could make the buttons blue for an extra splash of color.

ARK

+It looks very nice and uncluttered.

-It seems slow. File Roller in GNOME is definitely faster. I hope Ark will speed up.

DOLPHIN

+Being able to have many panels open at once is nice. In Nautilus, I can only ever have one open at a time.
+Having a terminal panel available is really cool.
+"Copy to" and "Move to" on the right-click menu are handy.
+Unlike Nautilus, I can customize Dolphin's toolbar.
+The Folders view adjusts automagically. Very nice!

-Being able to right-click on a file and choose "Open in new tab" would be great.
-Nautilus now has little "eject" symbols next to devices which can be unmounted. I'd like to see Dolphin have this.
-In Nautilus, it automatically displays previews of files just the files I'd want previewed, such as pictures and videos. I'd like to be able to do this with Dolphin...to select which types of files I want previewed.
-As I said above, Nautilus previews videos by showing a frame from the movie file. Why can't Dolphin do this?
-I'd like to be able to customize the "Information" tab so that I choose what information it displays.
-Why can't I right-click on an archive to "extract it here"? Why can't I right-click on a file(s) to create an archive with Ark? Why can't I right-click on a file and have an option to e-mail it to someone? I'd like to see these three commands added for convenience's sake.

DRAGON PLAYER

+Very clean interface.

-A little lean on features right now, but it looks like it's getting the attention it needs in 4.2.

KATE

+Puts GEdit to shame.

KONQUEROR

+It's more than just a browser.
+I like the tree structure of its "Settings". It makes things really easy to find.

-It's noticeably slower than Firefox 3.
-There's no "Cookie Button" available if I want to regulate cookies, nor is there a "Java/Flash Button" like NoScript if I want to regulate content. If it's possible, I think adding those two would do a lot for Konqueror.

KONTACT

+Overall, it's miles better than Evolution. It's definitely my favorite part of KDE 4.
+It looks FANTASTIC.

-When I create a journal entry, why would there be attendees? That doesn't make any sense. It's supposed to be private, you know?

KOPETE

+I like how conversation history is on by default.
+It's really nice to be able to customize the chat window so much. It makes conversations easier to read than in Pidgin.

-What the point of a "subcontact"? I can't see much use for it.
-The little flag that shows "Service Messages" should be more clear. What is a "service message" and why does a flag represent it? Is it really necessary to have it there?
-When I choose to have Kopete show contact photos, they should be bigger or I should be able to resize them. They're nice and big in Pidgin, but they're teeny in Kopete.
-In Pidgin, the big button at the bottom of the contact list displays a different icon depending on your status. In Kopete, all I've got is a little blurb of text. It might be more aesthetically pleasing if Kopete's buddy list window had a big contextually-sensitive icon display.
-I didn't notice this at first, but I can't add any effects to my text like bold or underline. This should be put in.
-Under the "Settings" menu, "Configure" should be "Configure Kopete".

-When you right-click on a contact's name, do the options to send really need to be under "Other actions"? They might be better off under their own "send" submenu or right on the regular right-click menu.

-When you right-click on a contact's name, I don't like the submenu at the bottom. It has most of the same commands as the regular right-click menu except for a few. It looks awkward to have so many overlapping functions, so ditch it and move its few unique actions to the regular right-click menu.

KTORRENT

+Easily the best Linux P2P client I've seen so far.

SYSTEM MONITOR

+It does the job just fine.
+I like the "tree" structure of the worksheet options.

-"Worksheet" isn't very clear. Rename it "Display Panel"? IE, "New Display Panel", "Import Display Panel"...
-"Physical Memory" and "Swap Memory" could be condensed into one graph.
-Load Average doesn't seem all that useful. Remove it?
-The GNOME's Sys Monitor has a tab which displays basic information about your computer, such as what version of GNOME you're running, how much RAM you have, et cetera. It would be nice for KSysGuard to have that.
-GNOME Sys Monitor lets you see what devices you have attached, but KSysGuard doesn't.

SYSTEM SETTINGS

+The "back" arrow navigation is nice.

-I took a look at "KControl", the previous KDE settings manager, and I like it a lot better. The tree view sets it apart and makes it easier to find what you're looking for. I'm sorry, but I think KControl's tree organization is superior.

If you're determined to stick with System Settings' way of doing things, don't be afraid to experiment with having more than a few tabs up top. Maybe you could give System Settings many tabs to make it work more like KControl. You know, an "Appearances and Themes" tab, a "Desktop" tab, et cetera.

-The "General" tab ought to be renamed "Basic". Basic is a more descriptive word.
-A simplified tool to configure users should be available in the General tab.
-"Computer Administration" should NOT be a category in the General tab. It should be a category in the Advanced tab.
-There should be a "Hardware" category in the General tab.
-There should be an entry for the Printer somewhere in the General tab
-Move Date & Time to the Personal category?
-Rename Font Installer to "Font Manager"? It doesn't just install fonts.
-Move Font Installer to the Advanced tab? I doubt average users would bother with installing or configuring fonts.
-Move the Power management settings to their own separate General tab entry?

-The Advanced tab is messy. It's got two categories, "Advanced User Settings" and "System". Neither is particularly helpful as a grouping.
-"Computer Administration" would be a good group name in the Advanced tab.
-In File Associations, why can't I easily set an application as the default for all files of a certain type? Say, for example, I love Totem and I want it to be the default for ALL of my audio files.
-Move Digital Camera to the General tab under a new "Hardware" category?
-Login Manager is a more complicated tool, yes, but it seems like it might fit well in the Look & Feel category of the General tab.

Nice analysis, lot of thought put into it

Need to remember it's still a work in progress, especially the kde4 apps

Amarak 2 - still missing much from the kde3 version

Ark - FileRoller definitely the best Gnome app I've used (assuming Gnormalize is a GTK app)

Dragon Player - is a new app especially for kde4, Kaffeine when ported will be very full featured (old versions just blows Totem away)

Ktorrent - what a kde app should be, slick and full featured

Kate - just the best

System Settings - bad redesign choices, unfortunately assigned to the Kubuntu folks (true?) and is a copy of their version of Kcontrol from kde3

Excellent post - some very astute observations.
Probably the only point I disagree on is with Amarok2: I hate the new panel layout but love the new highly visible play butons.

1cewolf wrote:
-Moving the bar at the bottom should be made more obvious. Maybe you could click on the cashew or the bar itself, hold, and drag it to where you want it?

Resizing/moving the panel from the configuration bar has been greatly improved in 4.2 already.

-Lancelot beats Kickoff hands-down at functionality. Maybe you could adopt some of its features, such as a "click-free" interface, the "breadcrumb" navigation, or being able to drag 'n drop components onto the desktop.

Breadcrumb navigation would be great for Kickoff. My dad actually got lost in Kickoff because the back button wasn't obvious enough...

-You could also take a page out of GNOME's playbook and allow users to have separate icons in the bottom bar for each Kickoff tab.

Yeah, that would be neat. Lancelot has a config option to do this, I know.

-In GNOME, their desktop pager is set up be default so that each desktop only displays its own windows. This seems like a logical choice, so I think KDE should adopt this.

I assume you meant the task manager? The pager is the virtual desktop switcher type thing, whereas the task manager shows window entries for running applications.

Anyway, I agree with this point. This would be logical, though power users may want to be able to access any application on any virtual desktop at any time. It'd make a sane default. Perhaps distros could incorporate this option as default.

AMAROK 2

-It's gray to the point of looking boring. Maybe you could make the buttons blue for an extra splash of color.

Agree with you there.

DOLPHIN

-Being able to right-click on a file and choose "Open in new tab" would be great.

Agree 100%

-Nautilus now has little "eject" symbols next to devices which can be unmounted. I'd like to see Dolphin have this.

I usually use the Device Notifier plasmoid to eject my media. I can see the use of putting the symbol in the Places sidebar, since right-click menus are indiscoverable. (Currently you can only unmount the media from the right click menu in the Places sidebar)

-Why can't I right-click on an archive to "extract it here"? Why can't I right-click on a file(s) to create an archive with Ark? Why can't I right-click on a file and have an option to e-mail it to someone? I'd like to see these three commands added for convenience's sake.

In KDE 4.1 Ark doesn't have the functionality to handle such a service menu. Ark in KDE 4.2 is able to handle it though, so 4.2 has this feature. Blame Ark.

KATE

+Puts GEdit to shame.

Amen to that.

SYSTEM MONITOR
-"Physical Memory" and "Swap Memory" could be condensed into one graph.

I think that'd just make it more cramped, since swap is usually a lot bigger than physical memory. Physical memory, which is the most important, would look cramped if graphed on the same graph as swap.

-Load Average doesn't seem all that useful. Remove it?

Maybe not useful for you.

-The GNOME's Sys Monitor has a tab which displays basic information about your computer, such as what version of GNOME you're running, how much RAM you have, et cetera. It would be nice for KSysGuard to have that.

I believe you are looking for an app like KInfoCenter.

In regards to System Settings, I think that the Advanced tab should be removed, and the categories in the System Category should be placed in Computer Administration. You could display the Advanced User Settings in the now-tabless main window.

In my own personal experience, I have found several things that could stand to be moved/grouped together. I think Language should have it's own module. The Time and Dates tab from Regional and Language should be moved to the main Date and Time module. In my experience everybody who wants to change the default 24 hour clock to a 12 hour am/pm one looks in Date and Time first and can't find it since it's in Regional and Language.

I think there should at least be a link to System Notifications from the Sound module, since, to the normal user, the most logical place to find how to change audio notifications would be the sound module.

You've definitely put in quite a bit of thought into this, and I must say you've summed up quite a lot of what I had to say about KDE 4 (or at least what I've tried of it, I haven't checked out Ark in detail, KTorrent, Dragon Player, nor Amarok 2 at all)

@JontheEnchinda: Thank you for that screenshot! That definitely shows a huge amount of improvement.

[quote=JontheEnchinda]In regards to System Settings, I think that the Advanced tab should be removed, and the categories in the System Category should be placed in Computer Administration. You could display the Advanced User Settings in the now-tabless main window.[/quote]

Definite agreement with you there.

Very nice analysis - if we take out all of your "Pros", then this is a good example of constructive criticism - thorough, detailed, precise with a suggestion how to "fix" each issue (and, as a bonus - civil!)

I'll quickly comment on:

As I said above, Nautilus previews videos by showing a frame from the movie file. Why can't Dolphin do this?

The previewing of files happens further down the stack than Dolphin, and requires a thumbnailer for each mime-type. In KDE3, there was indeed a previewer for video files (so the KDE3 versions of Konqueror and Dolphin previewed videos) distributed with kdemultimedia, but this has not been ported to KDE4 yet. I had a quick look into this issue myself, and decided that I wouldn't tackle it for the time being as the old previewer was hard-coded to use xine, which seems a little inelegant for a Phonon-ised KDE4.

Unfortunately, stable releases of Phonon just don't really have the capability to generate thumbnails, and even the "experimental" versions have some flaws. For example, one can only snatch frames in "realtime", and no faster - given that the original thumbnailer worked by grabbing 3 seconds worth of frames as fast as it could and deciding which one worked best, a straight port to Phonon would take at least 3 seconds per video(!) to thumbnail (all of which time your CPU would be idling close to 0), making it not especially suitable.

I think there's an mplayer-based KDE4 video thumbnailer somewhere on kde-apps which you might want to look into in the meantime

-Why can't I right-click on an archive to "extract it here"? Why can't I right-click on a file(s) to create an archive with Ark? Why can't I right-click on a file and have an option to e-mail it to someone? I'd like to see these three commands added for convenience's sake.

You can do this with Service Menus which you can find on kde-look.org

For example:
Extract And Compress KDE4
Root Actions Servicemenu
KDE4-servicemenus (This script will make all your KDE3 service-menus available under KDE4 (Dolphin and Konqueror))

Perhaps we can have a video previewer that uses ffmpeg? Otherwise I agree that Phonon would be the best choice.

JontheEchinda: Can you perhaps resize your screenshot to fit the width of the forum? It's a good post, and the image blows the layout.

1cewolf: Great work on constructive criticism! One thing, I think the subcontacts, if we mean the same thing (meta contacts), is for you to group persons that have more than one messenger account into one unified entry in the contact list. I very much like that feature, because a lot of my friends have got Jabber, ICQ and MSN accounts and I don't want three seperate entries.

1cewolf wrote:KOPETE
-What the point of a "subcontact"? I can't see much use for it.

Those are rather useful, if you want to merge a contact's different accounts (like 2 msn, icq and jabber accounts) into a single contact list item

-When I choose to have Kopete show contact photos, they should be bigger or I should be able to resize them. They're nice and big in Pidgin, but they're teeny in Kopete.

It you choose 'Detailed View' in 'Contact list style' -dropdown list, the pictures (and icons) will be bigger.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

@google, I wonder if Kaffeine will replace Dragon Player when it's ported. I've seen the KDE 3 version before and it did look pretty impressive.

@Jon, KDE 4.2 is really shaping up to be a blockbuster release! I agree 100% with your suggestions for improving System Settings.

@General, thanks for clearing that up about video previews in Dolphin. I'll have to look into that mplayer-based alternative!

@SeaJey, YOU WIN THIS THREAD! Seriously, what a relief to have those actions available again. EDIT: It looks like the Extract & Compress download link is broken...guess I'll have to keep looking for it.

@Andre & kubicle, I see what you guys mean about subcontacts - it's just someone's alternate account. That's a really clever concept, but Kopete refers to it both as "subcontact" and "meta contact". When you right-click on a contact's name, you can "Add a subcontact". If you choose the submenu at the bottom of the right-click menu, you can "change meta contact". Obviously, one term or the other needs to be chosen.

I'm not sure I like either of them, since neither is particularly descriptive to a user unfamiliar with the concept, but if I had to pick one or the other I'd choose Meta Contact.

Speaking of ambiguities in Kopete, when you right-click on a contact you can "remove contact" to take it off your list. In the bottom submenu of the right-click menu, there's an option to "delete contact". Remove Contact actually removes the contact, while Delete Contact...appears to change the status icon to something I don't recognize and makes the contact unreachable. I don't see a way to undo Delete Contact unless I use Remove Contact, which doesn't make any sense at all. Why should I have to delete AND remove a contact?

What does Delete Contact actually do? If it serves a valid purpose, it should be renamed to something else to avoid confusion with Remove Contact.

1cewolf wrote:I see what you guys mean about subcontacts - it's just someone's alternate account. That's a really clever concept, but Kopete refers to it both as "subcontact" and "meta contact". When you right-click on a contact's name, you can "Add a subcontact". If you choose the submenu at the bottom of the right-click menu, you can "change meta contact". Obviously, one term or the other needs to be chosen.

I'm not sure I like either of them, since neither is particularly descriptive to a user unfamiliar with the concept, but if I had to pick one or the other I'd choose Meta Contact.

Speaking of ambiguities in Kopete, when you right-click on a contact you can "remove contact" to take it off your list. In the bottom submenu of the right-click menu, there's an option to "delete contact". Remove Contact actually removes the contact, while Delete Contact...appears to change the status icon to something I don't recognize and makes the contact unreachable. I don't see a way to undo Delete Contact unless I use Remove Contact, which doesn't make any sense at all. Why should I have to delete AND remove a contact?

What does Delete Contact actually do? If it serves a valid purpose, it should be renamed to something else to avoid confusion with Remove Contact.

I'm not 100% on this, but I think 'meta contact' refers to the contact list item (and it's subcontacts as a whole), and 'subcontacts' refer to the the individual accounts under the meta contact. It's debatable whether these are used consistently in the ui, though, and I can see how it can be rather confusing.

As for the remove/delete, I think the first level menu item 'remove contact' removes the whole meta contact (Contact list item), while the second level menu item 'delete contact' removes one subcontact from the meta contact (which may leave the meta contact empty, if it includes only one subcontact). The menu item should be renamed to something like 'delete subcontact' to make it less confusing (perhaps).

Wow .. I'm amazed at how fanboys will overlook so much just for the sake of competition.

Kate vs GEdit ... GNOME = GNU Object Model Environment; Kate is an "advanced text editor", a programmer's swiss knife if you will.

GNU already has an advanced text editor, and it kicks the living daylights out of kate. (As much as I love Kate and used it quite a lot myself.)

KDE vs GNOME

KDE tries to be everything. GNOME is what it is.

Simply put, there are infinite posibilities for a user in a *NIX system, it's designed for it.
No matter how much GUI you have, a set of commands interconected by pipes, using stdin and sdout to communicate with each other will always be more flexible and powerful.

KDE tries to replace most of what can be done through the Terminal, and that's cool, since most users are dead-frightened about having to interact with it, and would throw away their *NIX boxes and sell their dog for a copy of Vizta the second they have to.

GNOME, following GNU's design guidelines, accepts the nature of a POSIX OS and just keeps to what users will need most of the time, requiring use of the terminal for most deep-layer configuration, and, as a result, IMHO, creates users more comfortable with interacting with a command line.
Of course, it also requires a user that is either experienced enough to begin with or has a lot of spare time, patience and determination to tame his OS.

KDE4

People .. Don't drool over stuff that's been around for ages. KDE4 stole most of it's "innovations in style" from OS X and Vizta. The fruit company steals from the *nix community, and Minisoft steals from everyone.

Call it "inspiration", it doesn't really matter, since it's not wrong nor it should be condemned .. But don't throw a party for incorporating a flashy element that nobody even knows if works.

I find the start menu in KDE4 (a less streamlined version of Vizta's) quite bothersome. Gimme some regular gnome or ubuntu-like menus anytime. (Which incidentally, of course, weren't invented by either of them.)

Configuration is taken from OS X, and, again, OS X's version is much smoother.
Not that I'm asking KDE, especially KDE4 -quite new and promising though full of stuff to polish- to meet those cruel ice-cold towering-high Fruit Company standards; It just feels funny to use something that's exactly the same though not-quite-as-good ..
However, free software/open source activists/supporters or poor mac-freaks without the dough to get an authentic OS X box; knock your selves out !

Overall, I think KDE4 is great.

I started out with KDE3 and switched to GNOME a couple of months into the experience. I didn't hate it, I just didn't love it.

I tried out KDE4 for some time, but I do love GNOME, and I don't think it has anything to do with "who's the biggest baddest mother-shucker out there".
I just like it more 'cause it's more me.
It's a matter of taste.

And personally, I think KDE guys have none.

Kidding ! =P *runs away after throwing the stone*

{fyi : I'm not an old-timer ad&d playing C coding IRC channel chating 8-bit video game loving code-geek. I'm 23 yrs old, and my sys has got to be about looks as much as functionality. I know how you KDE guys -not you thread starter- feel about GNOME's "dull-looks". Love the way KDE4 looks, but you can get pump a lot of juice out of Metacity/Compiz-Fusion. A heck lot of juice.}

Wow, what a rant. But I still don't quite get your point...

XiniX wrote:Wow, what a rant. But I still don't quite get your point...

XiniX wrote:Wow, what a rant. But I still don't quite get your point...

Same here, it is a reply for the recycle bin.