I don't like KDE 4, but if you think that KDE 4 is fine as it is, no matter if some other people like it or not, then you don't need to read this posting. But in this thread I want to list some of the reasons why I don't like KDE 4, and if you want to know about them, then read on. If you think that my issues with KDE 4 have a chance of being fixed by the developers, please tell me if it makes sense to file a usability bug about it.

1. The panel.

In my opinion it is the purpose of the panel to contain as much stuff (information, abilities to control things etc.) as possible while taking up as little scarce screen real estate as possible.

I prepared a picture to compare the panels of KDE 3, KDE 4 and Windows XP in this respect:

Picture

Windows XP: The best of the bunch. The panel is only 30 pixels high. Thanks to the small yet very well readable font the clock takes up very little space. Also the icons are very small and the best: the system tray folds itself in on its own! At the same time the panel looks very good.

KDE 3.5.10: I have to make the panel 50 pixels high in order to get a system tray with two rows. I believe, in earlier versions of KDE 3.5 even 48 pixels were already enough for two rows. These two rows are necessary to take up as many icons as possible, while still leaving enough space for the taskbar. The icons are larger than in Windows XP.

KDE 4: The panel is 35 pixels high in this picture. The cashew on the right - whose function, in my opinion, could easily be replaced by an entry in the context-menu when clicking the panel with the right mouse button - takes up valuable screen real estate, then comes the huge clock. The panel is higher than necessary and the system tray begins farther to the left than necessary, because the system tray is drawn in a box which takes up further screen real estate.

I saw a picture by somebody who made his panel high enough for a two-rowed system tray. The height required for this was 65 pixels on his picture.

So, in my opinion, KDE 4 wastes a lot of screen real estate for the panel compared to other DEs, without adding functionality. It would be better, if 1. the cashew on the right would be removed, 2. the system tray would not be drawn in a box anymore and 3. the system tray would fold itself in automatically like in Windows XP.[hr]
I am sorry. I just learned that the cashew in the panel can be removed by clicking "Lock widgets". Sorry, I should have acquainted myself better with KDE 4 before complaining.

However, the other points I raised, are still valid, I think.

The size of tray icons is determined by the fd.o spec regarding system tray icons, therefore the size of those is outside the control of KDE.

As a result the panel has to be a certain height even for one row of icons, which causes the clock to expand its text so that it optimally fits.

The system tray has to be drawn in a system themed box, otherwise we end up with severe icon corruption unless a hack is implemented which causes Gtk applications to crash ( and the Gtk devs refused to fix it, stating that KDE was breaking the expected behaviour of X with the hack ) The only way around it is to provide a widget without the alpha channel ( which if it used your panel colour would look terrible )

I've heard it said that KDE wants to eventually get rid of the system tray. I don't know how that is possible, since there are very many non-KDE apps that have systray icons. I do agree though, that far too many apps are using the systray when they don't need to be.

I don't get the point. Is it about comparing a 2 row KDE system tray with the 1 row XP tray?
A bit unfair, don't you think?

But okay, just for the fun of it, i made my panel 25px high. System tray still looks good.
http://imagebin.ca/view/zjqu6p.html
As you see in this picture, the box is just a matter of the used theme.

Just try to make your XP panel exactly as high as you want. Not possible. With KDE4 you can set it to whatever height you want, in exact pixels.
So i don't see where there is missing usability.

XP is "primitive", "old" and "outdated". I rather like the font rendering Vista has rather than XP's clear type smoothing.
If you want to have that kind of font, sure you can.
Assuming the font is Tahoma. If you have a debian based distro, install the package msttcorefonts
Otherwise, copy the font from your windows path c:WindowsFonts (the TTF file) to your ~/.fonts folder (a .font hidden folder in your home folder).
Now at KMenu -> Appearance -> Fonts, You can select tahoma, select the appropriate size and set "Use anti-aliasing" to "Disabled". That way, you have a similar font that shows in the Windows screenshot.

Also, regarding the 2 row task manager, I'd agree with neverendingo. How can you compare the KDE 4 taskbar with XP taskbar when XP does not enable 2 level until the taskbar is twice the size? Also, the XP taskbar is and will be what it is. You have a system tray in that place and you cant move it, nor can you move the digital clock which can be replaced by anything (say an analog clock or a binary clock in KDE4), you can "choose" to have what menu you want in KDE 4 (lancelot, KMenu, classic KMenu) or not to have a menu at all.
I find the XP taskbar incompetent.

Thanks for the answers.

@bcooksley: Sorry, there is one thing I still don't understand: Why can the GNOME panel do without the box around the system tray, without causing their applications to crash? Is it because they use Gtk whereas KDE uses Qt?

Could the XP functionality of a system tray which folds itself in automatically be implemented? What do you think of this idea?

@neverendingo: In principle I find a 1-row tray preferable, because the panel is smaller then, but in KDE the panel becomes just too crowded that way. Maybe it would be a solution, if the system tray folded itself in automatically, maybe the KDE developers have another solution in mind, as Brandybuck said, I don't know.

I agree that the option to make the panel exactly as high as one wants to, is a plus. However, default settings are extremely important, too, as many users never get around to reconfigure their desktop in every possible way, but take the default instead and then either accept or reject it as a whole. So KDE must make a good first impression.

It is also necessary that KDE markets good default settings on its own instead of leaving it to the distributions to tweak them. Many distributions decide to ship software as close to the original version as possible, which, I think, is ultimately in the interest of upstream, too, as it avoids unnecessary bugreports by confused users.

This brings me to the issue that KDE (apparently both 3 and 4) displays a bouncing icon near the cursor in order to indicate that the system is busy starting up a program. I dislike this bouncing icon and several times read others disliking it, too, it looks silly. You can switch it off, if you know how (at least in KDE 3, with KControl), but it shouldn't be there by default. It gives a bad impression.

@LinuxIsInnovation: Calling XP names is really not a good idea, given its success in the market in spite of Microsoft wanting it to die. I know, if I have the font, I can set it up in KDE, too. But the font is not the problem, I just wanted to explain why the XP panel is so functional.[hr]
2. Konsole "New tab" and "Close tab" icons vs. these icons in Konqueror.

Why are the "New tab" and "Close tab" icons different in Konsole, compared to Konqueror?

I made a screenshot illustrating the issue here:
Image

GNOME, like KDE 3, uses RGB visuals, which is what the fd.o spec specifies. KDE 4 uses ARGB visuals ( RGB visuals with Alpha channel ) instead, which is what provides the transparencies, etc, without requiring hacks.

Previously, Plasma would perform a change to the application through X, which allowed them all to not corrupt in the system tray. However Gtk applications would revert this change and crash because you cannot do RGB on ARGB without specific conversions.

As a result KDE 4 must provide a RGB area ( the box ) to position the icons on, which allows all applications ( including Gtk ) to provide corruption free icons

I just wanted to explain why the XP panel is so functional.

I still don't see a single point how? I personally feel that XP has been the best Windows OS ever, and I'd undoubtedly use it over any of it's successors (though I haven't tried Win 7 to say anything).
But if you talk about functionality of the XP taskbar, I don't see a single point how is it superior to the KDE panel.

melkart wrote:It would be better, if 1. the cashew on the right would be removed,

Cashew is removed automatically when you lock widgets which is supposed to be "normal" setup.

3. The System Settings dialog

Celeste Lyn Paul already wrote in detail about it, but I want to repeat the issue and add my own opinion.

Here you can see how the System Settings dialog presents itself to the user in the latest (4.1.85) KDE 4-Live CD from openSuSE. I made some annotations:
Image

1. What is this weird shadow over the upper part of the window? In order to see it, you must look carefully, it's a lighter grey than the rest of the window. Other windows have this, too, not just System Settings.
2. Between the "Overview / Search"-bar and the "General / Advanced" tab buttons, there is wasted space. Other windows have this wasted space, too. Why is it there? It looks ugly, too.
3. The search bar should be in the upper right corner, not in the center. It is also in the upper right corner in all browsers.
4. As Celeste Lyn Paul explains in more detail in her blog entry, it is a bad idea to separate the icons from the heading which they belong to with a horizontal line, while having no such separator between icons and a heading which they don't belong to. It creates confusion.
5. The icons for "Input Actions" and "Keyboard & Mouse" are the same. I don't know, maybe openSuSE is to blame for this, not KDE.

In general I see a lot of wasted, empty space in this window. The icons are far apart from each other. Also I like neither the icons much nor in general the window decoration. It looks hard and cold to me. Of course, I don't know if it is just me or if it would repel the average user, too.

From the comments to Celeste's blog entry, I got this link:

Image

It shows the System Settings dialog looks like on a Mac. In general, there is much less wasted space there. There are no tabs for "General" and "Advanced", so there is only one row above the actual icons, not two. The search bar is in the upper right corner. The groups are clearly separated, and the headings clearly belong to their group of icons. The font is bolder, which makes it look more pleasant and the names easier to read. The icons are closer arranged to each other.

To me the System Settings dialog of the Mac is clearly the best, but the System Settings dialog from Kubuntu with KDE 3 is also still better than the one of KDE 4.

4. I run KDE 4-Live CDs in a VirtualBox. Why is everything so awfully (unusably) slow? Is it because there is still debugging information or runtime-checks compiled in? When I run KDE 3 in a VirtualBox it is not that slow.

About 2: As one gets the tab row in Konsole by default, anyway, the "new tab" and "close tab" buttons should be enabled by default, too. And they should look like the ones in Konqueror, because those look much better and waste less space.

KDE 4 is slow in VirtualBox for two reasons:

• Debugging information is included, increasing the size of the executables, libraries, etc. that get loaded from disk.
• all the scalable graphics have transparencies which must be drawn completely on the CPU, because graphics are not accelerated in VirtualBox.

melkart wrote:2. Konsole "New tab" and "Close tab" icons vs. these icons in Konqueror.

Why are the "New tab" and "Close tab" icons different in Konsole, compared to Konqueror?

I made a screenshot illustrating the issue here:
Image

Buttons in konsole are wider than they should be. So I agree with you here.

melkart wrote:3. The System Settings dialog



1. What is this weird shadow over the upper part of the window? In order to see it, you must look carefully, it's a lighter grey than the rest of the window. Other windows have this, too, not just System Settings.

I dont have it. So either it is fixed, or it is a Suse issue, not a KDE issue.
http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/8214/snap1hl1.png

melkart wrote:
2. Between the "Overview / Search"-bar and the "General / Advanced" tab buttons, there is wasted space. Other windows have this wasted space, too. Why is it there? It looks ugly, too.

I Agree. Do you have a better layout in mind that would have both the tabs, plus not waste space?

melkart wrote:3. The search bar should be in the upper right corner, not in the center. It is also in the upper right corner in all browsers.

A minor change in code can change that.

melkart wrote:4. As Celeste Lyn Paul explains in more detail in her blog entry, it is a bad idea to separate the icons from the heading which they belong to with a horizontal line, while having no such separator between icons and a heading which they don't belong to. It creates confusion.

Yes, I couldn't agree more on this. I never actually thought this as an issue, but well, if it's the other way around, it would definitely be better.

melkart wrote:5. The icons for "Input Actions" and "Keyboard & Mouse" are the same. I don't know, maybe openSuSE is to blame for this, not KDE.

Well, thats not distro specific as I also have them as same icons. Again, should be a minor but yet important change.
Perhaps, can be forwarded to KDE missing icons. Please see http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=missing+icons

melkart wrote:4. I run KDE 4-Live CDs in a VirtualBox. Why is everything so awfully (unusably) slow? Is it because there is still debugging information or runtime-checks compiled in? When I run KDE 3 in a VirtualBox it is not that slow.

For me, I remember trying Kubuntu beta release with KDE 4.1.2 LiveCD on my old laptop. Since my my GPU wasn't used up, that slows down the whole usage appreciably as it adds up to extra procesing for the CPU.

melkart wrote:About 2: As one gets the tab row in Konsole by default, anyway, the "new tab" and "close tab" buttons should be enabled by default, too. And they should look like the ones in Konqueror, because those look much better and waste less space.

I don't use konsole tabs so I'd not like it as default. Though I have no idea what the majority of users do.

I cannot even move a window/GUI screen when it opens. I HATE the new beta (KDE 4.2). Awful! :thumbs_down:

this has nothing to do with the topic, as this is about an obvious bug, not usability.

Wow penguin, well constructed post! Maybe, just maybe, something else is wrong if you cannot move a post. The problem might just not be KDE, but, err, yourself.....