I still fail to see the similarities between a default vista desktop and a default kde 4.2.2. desktop... Can anyone explain me? :-S

AleX777 wrote:I still fail to see the similarities between a default vista desktop and a default kde 4.2.2. desktop... Can anyone explain me? :-S

My guess is the glossy black panel

Kryten2X4B wrote:

harakiri wrote:Thanks to all people here. It is good to see that I got nice answers. If I understand it right I would have to edit the theme to make my panel the way I want it? And if yes,why make it this way when we where able to just do it easy through right-click-menu on the panel before?

Yes, although some times adapt themselves to your colorscheme. If the one you'd like to use doesn't, you can mix and match themes quite easily. You'll find options for that in system settings->advanced->theme details. Not quite as straight-forward as in KDE3, but more flexible.

harakiri wrote:Anyway... Kryten2X4B: you said that people now complain about that a new theme looks like win7 and that there are people that never gets pleased. Well,first of all, I did not say it was bad that it look a bit like vista,but before did windows steal from Linux not the other way around.

Sorry. I didn't mean you. You, after all, only mentioned the look in passing and had more pressuring problems then the look.

I only meant people who seems to like to badmouth KDE everytime a new feature is implemented - and features a lot of people are happy to have - in the way of "More useless stuff" or "More bloat" or "Vista/Win7 wannabe" or "More eyecandy" and the like. The same people who apparently has no problems in running compiz with a lot of bells and whistles turned on (or making Gnome look like Vista or MacOS X...). It just gets tiring.

Again, I apologize for making it sound like it was directed at you.

Oh,sorry. I did not get the feeling that you talked about me,but since vista was brought up by me I thought that I should at least clear up what I meant. But anyway,thanks for your answers. Its very helpful... Btw, you could as well have been directing the last things about making things look like vista or MacOS X, since I just have tried installing "ksmoothdock" .. hehe.. But in my "defence" I did not get it installed. hehe.. maybe its destiny..

harakiri wrote:The Desktop folder is back and interact with the "container"

you can make /home/Desktop manually (its just a folder) or make the window (called folder view) display any other place

harakiri wrote:It is starting to look more like windows vista, is it only my opinion?

to me it resembles more os x - which i really dont like. i think kde can make its own style which is better than anything seen before. looks like someone decided to jump on some1 else's hype and too much designers followed

if i'd design the default themes for kde 4 i'd make it

qt widgets - some lightweight and flat and sharp theme (similar to polyester or plastik but lighter)

window borders - crystal handpainted

plasma theme - panel background from oxygen 4.2 + taskbar items from oxygen 4.1 (just copy /usr/share/apps/desktoptheme/default from a kde 4.1 computer) + everything else from naked

desktop background - landscape with a feeling of dream and night and clouds or stars / planets and sharp and high resolution

harakiri wrote:2. Plasma. What is the point of making something this?

lets take that apart

whats the point ? it still looks simialr to our older desktops but may eventually advance into something better. plasma is the tech that will allow that. that advance may be harder to achieve with kde 3 desktop and kicker and karamba

it takes too much cpu - all of kde 4 takes way more cpu than kde 3 at the same tasks. its not only plasma. i dont like it - just like you

i think its cause of all that eye candy implemented everywhere and the need to render it all the time. with a lightweight theme you get a tiny bit less cpu use. i think the load that remains is kinda 'support' for eye candy inside every tiny bit of the desktop and applications. in kde dev's place i would remove it (and make desktop with less eye candy but faster - like kde 3)

so my request to the kde devs - make it possible to disable completely the small effects like gradients and nice painting and transparencies (use pseudotransparency instead or simply no transparency at all) and smooth scrolling (not only in konqueror) and round corners and smooth scaling of icons and sliding of tooltips along the panel and smooth changing of colors in places highlighted when the mouse is over them and so on. option to make kde 4 look like kde 3 and use cpu like kde 3

harakiri wrote:I did unpack a file and when it was done it did not show correct size,and I had to close all dolphin windows to get it right

that sometimes happens in konqueror and in konqueror of kde 3 too

harakiri wrote:And one more thing I remember was when I did try copy files that had been on a computer with usage of ISO- and not UTF-8 well he would not copy files that had 3 special letters we use in norway. Ok,so I wanted to rename them,but it did not work either. The files could not be copied or changed.

report a bug

harakiri wrote:So,Dolphin could be a lot better,but before it does,it should not be made as the default file manager. And YES I know I can change,but its not the point what I can do.

i think we have to drive the caterpillar into konqueror and not dolphin

konqueror 3.5 is great file manager and surfboard with many capabilities

dolphin 4 is another file manager. it has some new features and lacks many of those of konqueror 3.5 and some of those of konqueror 4. and overall i dont see why make dolphin as application and not as profile in konqueror (it will look and work exactly the same for the ones who like dolphin)

konqueror 4 is not too far from konqueror 3 as surfboard but is very heavily stripped down as file manager

i would like to have ALL of the capabilities of konqueror 3 and dolphin 4 in konqueror 4 file management profile. that includes

detailed tooltip on filenames like in konqueror 3

move to / copy to browser menus (where you can get to anywhere from the right click menu)

file size view and photobook view

detailed list and info list views (for example in a folder with mp3 files you can display a list with file size / permissions / dates etc like in any folder or a list with track lengths / codecs / kbps / artist names etc) like in konqueror 3

dolphin side panels (places and the preview panel)

choice between text address bar / the dolphin path bar

show files in groups (like in windows xp / dolphin)

open-in-new-tab okular / dragon player etc (like with kpdf in konqueror 3)

better drag and drop (lacks in some places in konqueror 4)

ability to open file / open destination / retry failed downloads / select text with the mouse in the download progress baloons (i like the concept of the plasma ones but they really lack too much functionality at the moment)

harakiri wrote:I could change colour and transparency easy with right click and so on before

there is no way to change the color only

transparency depends on the theme and desktop effects (the heavy composite effects) enabled. there is no way to use the lightweight pseudotransparency like in kde 3

if you have kde 3 installed you can use kicker from there in kde 4

choose bare naked theme and edit the wanted color into the background image of the desktp with kolorpaint

harakiri wrote:I cant really see the reason for the major changes that came with KDE 4 and above

they changed something and it broke. it happens and without risking that you'd be stuck in the last release of kde 1.X forever

what was indeed done wrong was ignoring what users say. and by users i mean all of them and not only those who seem to be the most or the ones with the opinion that the decision makers like the most (it reminds me of apple and their hyping crowd. i have seen a picture of this crowd somewhere in kde. perhaps in the splash of new amarok)

we are allready in kde 4.2.2 and konqueror is still bad as file manager and there still is no compact mp3 player (noatun style). and kde still attempts to follow the gnome way of less config less confusion allthough what pulled users to it is exactly the possibility of configuring the small settings (example ? there still is no option to set countdown in seconds in kdm. thre is no straightforward way to disable akonadi in systemsettings other than selecting the wrong settings for it to make it fail to start. but then there is error message everytime kde starts without a dont show again option). and kde is still unusable if you have a very early pentium 4 or pentium 3 computer (and feels noticably slow if you dont have a dual core) but you cant throw away the eye candy

harakiri wrote:Another thing that I think is bad is the way people that has an opinion about KDE 4.X is talked to

i still see some of that get lost attitude though

without names lets just stop it once and forever

harakiri wrote:And I still like it,but there are things that I liked better with the last ones before 4.x came.

in some linux systems you can install both and they work perfectly with each other

the problem with the broken settings in kde 3 in arch linux (if you use it) is easy to fix

harakiri wrote:said something like " I just hate to see desktops people have with icons all over the desktop"

thats an excuse to prefer kde 4 while actually there is no need in excuse

there are many solutions to the problem. one of them is known as New Folder

Alec wrote:

AleX777 wrote:I still fail to see the similarities between a default vista desktop and a default kde 4.2.2. desktop... Can anyone explain me? :-S

My guess is the glossy black panel

One thing I noticed was how the desktop icons looks. The way an icon becomes a square when the mouse is touching it. If am not wrong this was not the case in KDE-pre 4.
What I was talking about was anyway mostly related to the Desktop and how it works.
In KDE before users often had to choose to use (superkaramba) to add things to the desktop,and when vista came with a picture-changer,calendar,clock and God-knows what more I felt that they had to got some inspiration from karamba. And then KDE4 came,and now those same things was added as default there as well,not as karamba anymore,but as a part of KDE.
Maybe I am wrong,but this is just some small things I feel that is now "stolen" back from windows,as they stole from the KDE with karamba. I dont think this is bad,but as I have stated I have my issues with plasma,not its look.

As far as I know, the default behavior in Windows Vista (I haven't used it myself) is to put the widgets in a sidebar, and not on the desktop. In that sense, isn't Plasma rather "copying" KDE3 with Karamba?

ash wrote:it takes too much cpu - all of kde 4 takes way more cpu than kde 3 at the same tasks. its not only plasma. i dont like it - just like you

KDE4 runs fine on my netbook with a 1.6 GHz Atom processor, with most bells and whistles enabled.
Most problems I've seen with a sluggish KDE4 has to do with graphic drivers.

ash wrote:and overall i dont see why make dolphin as application and not as profile in konqueror (it will look and work exactly the same for the ones who like dolphin)

Because many just need a file manager, not all features Konqueror offers.

ash wrote: choose bare naked theme and edit the wanted color into the background image of the desktp with kolorpaint

That's what I do in KDE3 :shade:
(paint the panel on the wallpaper and make Kicker completely transparent).

ash wrote:

harakiri wrote:The Desktop folder is back and interact with the "container"

you can make /home/Desktop manually (its just a folder) or make the window (called folder view) display any other place

harakiri wrote:It is starting to look more like windows vista, is it only my opinion?

to me it resembles more os x - which i really dont like. i think kde can make its own style which is better than anything seen before. looks like someone decided to jump on some1 else's hype and too much designers followed

if i'd design the default themes for kde 4 i'd make it

qt widgets - some lightweight and flat and sharp theme (similar to polyester or plastik but lighter)

window borders - crystal handpainted

plasma theme - panel background from oxygen 4.2 + taskbar items from oxygen 4.1 (just copy /usr/share/apps/desktoptheme/default from a kde 4.1 computer) + everything else from naked

desktop background - something with a touch of dream and night and clouds but sharp

harakiri wrote:2. Plasma. What is the point of making something this?

lets take that apart

whats the point ? it still looks simialr to our older desktops but may eventually advance into something better. plasma is the tech that will allow that. that advance may be harder to achieve with kde 3 desktop and kicker and karamba

it takes too much cpu - all of kde 4 takes way more cpu than kde 3 at the same tasks. its not only plasma. i dont like it - just like you

i think its cause of all that eye candy implemented everywhere and the need to render it all the time. with a lightweight theme you get a tiny bit less cpu use. i think the load that remains is kinda 'support' for eye candy inside every tiny bit of the desktop and applications. in kde dev's place i would remove it (and make desktop with less eye candy but faster - like kde 3)

so my request to the kde devs - make it possible to disable completely the small effects like gradients and nice painting and transparencies (use pseudotransparency instead or simply no transparency at all) and smooth scrolling (not only in konqueror) and round corners and smooth scaling of icons and sliding of tooltips along the panel and smooth changing of colors in places highlighted when the mouse is over them and so on. option to make kde 4 look like kde 3 and use cpu like kde 3

harakiri wrote:I did unpack a file and when it was done it did not show correct size,and I had to close all dolphin windows to get it right

that sometimes happens in konqueror and in konqueror of kde 3 too

harakiri wrote:And one more thing I remember was when I did try copy files that had been on a computer with usage of ISO- and not UTF-8 well he would not copy files that had 3 special letters we use in norway. Ok,so I wanted to rename them,but it did not work either. The files could not be copied or changed.

report a bug

harakiri wrote:So,Dolphin could be a lot better,but before it does,it should not be made as the default file manager. And YES I know I can change,but its not the point what I can do.

i think we have to drive the caterpillar into konqueror and not dolphin

konqueror 3.5 is great file manager and surfboard with many capabilities

dolphin 4 is another file manager. it has some new features and lacks many of those of konqueror 3.5 and some of those of konqueror 4. and overall i dont see why make dolphin as application and not as profile in konqueror (it will look and work exactly the same for the ones who like dolphin)

konqueror 4 is not too far from konqueror 3 as surfboard but is very heavily stripped down as file manager

i would like to have ALL of the capabilities of konqueror 3 and dolphin 4 in konqueror 4 file management profile. that includes

detailed tooltip on filenames like in konqueror 3

move to / copy to browser menus (where you can get to anywhere from the right click menu)

file size view and photobook view

detailed list and info list views (for example in a folder with mp3 files you can display a list with file size / permissions / dates etc like in any folder or a list with track lengths / codecs / kbps / artist names etc) like in konqueror 3

dolphin side panels (places and the preview panel)

choice between text address bar / the dolphin path bar

show files in groups (like in windows xp / dolphin)

open-in-new-tab okular / dragon player etc (like with kpdf in konqueror 3)

better drag and drop (lacks in some places in konqueror 4)

ability to open file / open destination / retry failed downloads / select text with the mouse in the download progress baloons (i like the concept of the plasma ones but they really lack too much functionality at the moment)

harakiri wrote:I could change colour and transparency easy with right click and so on before

there is no way to change the color only

transparency depends on the theme and desktop effects (the heavy composite effects) enabled. there is no way to use the lightweight pseudotransparency like in kde 3

if you have kde 3 installed you can use kicker from there in kde 4

choose bare naked theme and edit the wanted color into the background image of the desktp with kolorpaint

harakiri wrote:I cant really see the reason for the major changes that came with KDE 4 and above

they changed something and it broke. it happens and without risking that you'd be stuck in the last release of kde 1.X forever

what was indeed done wrong was ignoring what users say. and by users i mean all of them and not only those who seem to be the most or the ones with the opinion that the decision makers like the most (it reminds me of apple and their hyping crowd. i have seen a picture of this crowd somewhere in kde. perhaps in the splash of new amarok)

we are allready in kde 4.2.2 and konqueror is still bad as file manager and there still is no compact mp3 player (noatun style). and kde still attempts to follow the gnome way of less config less confusion allthough what pulled users to it is exactly the possibility of configuring the small settings (example ? there still is no option to set countdown in seconds in kdm. thre is no straightforward way to disable akonadi in systemsettings other than selecting the wrong settings for it to make it fail to start. but then there is error message everytime kde starts without a dont show again option). and kde is still unusable if you have a very early pentium 4 or pentium 3 computer (and feels noticably slow if you dont have a dual core) but you cant throw away the eye candy

harakiri wrote:Another thing that I think is bad is the way people that has an opinion about KDE 4.X is talked to

i still see some of that get lost attitude though

without names lets just stop it once and forever

harakiri wrote:I have used KDE since 2001, don`t remember the version. And I still like it,but there are things that I liked better with the last ones before 4.x came.

in some linux systems you can install both and they work perfectly with each other

if you use arch linux there is some problem (kde 3 does not work after kde 4 is installed) but is very easy to fix

harakiri wrote:said something like " I just hate to see desktops people have with icons all over the desktop"

thats an excuse to prefere kde 4 while actually there is no need in excuse

there are many solutions to the problem. one of them is known as New Folder

I see we both share some issues here. And its good its not only me that in a way fail to see the meaning of the "total" change that is done with KDE.
It still runs good and fast on my laptop with an Intel Centrino M 1.7 ghz,but that said, plasma seem to wanna kill my cpu sometimes. My laptop has a very silent fan,but after I got plasma it sometimes need to fire up the fan to its maximum,and that sounds bad when it happens to a laptop that almost never makes noise.

Well,thank you for sharing your concerns with me (all of us), and I totally agree that the kde-devs should listen more to people that not only likes the "new" thing but also people that has other opinions about it.

Before I forget it: Another thing that makes it feel more like windows is the way they have removed a lot of the easy configuration options. Yes yes, I know people would now come here and ask: "what is it that you cant configure?" and so on..but no...I am talking about the EASY way. So lets say Its ok to change things and even a lot,but why take away the options to the user?

Hans wrote:KDE4 runs fine on my netbook with a 1.6 GHz Atom processor, with most bells and whistles enabled.
Most problems I've seen with a sluggish KDE4 has to do with graphic drivers.

you may have higher tolerance to slow system. i dont have one

my experience with few boxes

pentium 3 450 mhz 256 ram - kde 3 slow kde 4 freezing and completely unusable

pentium 3 1000 mhz 256 ram - kde 3 fast kde 4 still unusable

pentium 4 1.7 ghz 512 ram - kde 3 very fast kde 4 slow

celeron 4 2.6 ghz 512 ram - kde 3 lightning fast kde 4 noticably slower

pentium 4 3.06 ghz 512 ram - kde 3 lightning fast kde 4 noticably slower

core duo 1.6 ghz 1024 ram - kde 3 lightning fast kde 4 lightning fast or close to that

Hans wrote:Because many just need a file manager, not all features Konqueror offers.

there allready exists a desktop for those users. its called gnome

Kryten2X4B wrote:

tekwyzrd wrote:It was mentioned after the release of v4.0 yet as of v4.2.2 we're still stuck with the annoying lack of a split panel and tree view to make things easier. Granted, some may like the current system settings functionality but I and many other KDE users don't. Just give us the OPTION of using a tree view panel similar to that of KDE 3.5. I think this little gesture would show many users that they ARE being heard.

I think this is what you want:

call-for-testing-k ... 38819.html

Thanks for the pointer. Thank you. Built and installed. There are some icon duplications but the tree view is definitely a major improvement.

kcontrol4 snapshot

ash wrote:you may have higher tolerance to slow system. i dont have one

Or maybe it's just that my brain is slower, because my system doesn't feel slow at all.

ash wrote:my experience with few boxes

Not to defend KDE4's slowness, but you should really consider upgrading RAM memory on the slower computers. It's quite cheap nowadays, and will most likely make a noticeable difference.

Regarding effects, you could try to disable ARGB visuals. I don't know if there's a GUI option for it yet, but you can read more about it here.

ash wrote:there allready exists a desktop for those users. its called gnome

So only Gnome users have the right to use simple applications? Aight, no compact mp3 player for you - here in KDE we use Amarok. Or, if we first make a KPart, we could make a Konqueror profile that behaves like Noatun. [/tease] :-P

In order to see the slowness of KDE4, try running it on a VirtualBox with 512 MB main memory, 12 MB graphics memory and 3d-acceleration not activated. I compared several desktops in this configuration: Windows XP is very very fast. All Linux desktops are somewhat slow, but KDE4 tops all in slowness. I can even see in detail how everything is drawn. This is with effects turned off. Loading the latest Mandriva KDE4 LiveCD takes 5 mins or so. I also tried antico (aims to become a lightweight DE based on Qt4). There is very little functionality implemented yet, but what I saw was quite fast.

I don't care much about effects and eye-candy, I want functionality, usability and speed. I wonder if the design of KDE4 will ever allow it to compete speed-wise with more lightweight alternatives.

:shade:I like of KDE 4.2.2 it´s beautiful but in the moment i only use kde 3.5.10, next time i use KDE 4.x in version 4.3. It´s an small question of time, and i will wait... =D...

kde performance

there is really no reason why kde 4 has to be slower than kde 3

if the eye candy is thrown out it can be as fast as kde 3. or maybe faster if there are really so much optimizations in qt 4 which i read about in the kde 4.0 and 4.1 days

i'd like to start my kde 4.3 for the first time. go to systemsettings. remove all the small eye candy with few clicks. logout and login. enjoy kde with the performance i am used to from kde 3 AND the kde 4 way of thinking

noatun

i am not one who sorts his mp3s by albums and artists and keeps it organized with cover images. i want just a player like noatun or winamp 2.X

i know there are users who want some of those features. they can use amarok. or they cant cause if amarok 1.4 was Fast Forward then i'd call amarok 2 Rewind

let there be 4 audio players and 3 video players (or more !) with kde. or let there be 1 player that can be configured in many ways (but plz make it so that if i choose a minimal config it does not eat memory like the maximal one). as long as each user can find the one (player / config) that is really for him thats great. choice and options was allways the strong side of kde 3.X applications and thats what attracted many users to kde

dolphin

what i suggest to do with dolphin is

make dolphin a konqueror profile and discontinue it as app

allow the users who like dolphin to continue using 'it'. but actually when they start dolphin its konqueror that starts with the dolphin profile. you can make konqueror display 'dolphin' in the window name to make the show look more realistic

there may be other file management profiles. some possibilities i can think of

dolphin - dolphin as we know it
advanced file management - with another settings
storage media management - with extended attention to storage devices and mounting / unmounting and free space etc
krusader - for the ones who like that thing
minimal folder view - like the plasmoid but in konqueror
multimedia gallery - image / document / movie display in main part of the window and small icons / tree browser in side panel

the user can choose with which one to do file management by default (like now he can choose between konqueror and dolphin in the settings but still use each of them)

the user can switch profiles with a dropdown list in the toolbar (hidden in a small button)

implementing all the features in konqueror

but lets look into the case with no other profiles and see how to add all what i want to the dolphin profile without cluttering the application interface

detailed tooltip
currently the dolphin side panel is a stripped down version of it. lets give the user in konqueror settings
- when dolphin right side panel is visible (slider with label after it) : full tooltip / short tooltip / minimal tooltip / no tooltip
- show preview in tooltip (checkbox)
- when hidden (slider) : full tooltip / short tooltip / minimal tooltip / no tooltip
- show preview in tooltip (checkbox)
- in dolphin right side panel (slider) : show full / some / minimal / nothing
- show preview in dolphin right side panel (checkbox)

move to / copy to browser menus
thats in the right click menu. dont want - dont use. it can be made possible to disable in the settings

file size view and photobook view / detailed list and info list views
thats just more options in the existing buttons in the toolbar. dont want dont use. they are not extra buttons in the toolbar

dolphin side panels
that allready exists in dolphin. make them possible to add / remove / move (between 2 edges of the window) / configure their contents

choice between text address bar / the dolphin path bar
one more option in right click on the bar / in the settings

show files in groups (like in windows xp / dolphin)
that allready exists in dolphin

open-in-new-tab okular / dragon player etc (like with kpdf in konqueror 3)
activated only when the user right clicks something and selects open in new tab (in web surfing or in file management). otherways it opens the way chosen in the settings
filetype | open in New Tab / Current tab / External app when : 1.surfing 2.dolphin 3.advanced 4.folderview
video | E E E C
image | N E N C
pdf | N E E C
presentation | C E E C

better drag and drop (lacks in some places in konqueror 4)
dont drag and drop and you wont see it

ability to open file / open destination / retry failed downloads / select text with the mouse in the download progress baloons (i like the concept of the plasma ones but they really lack too much functionality at the moment)
thats few more buttons in the baloon + ability to select text

tekwyzrd i am sorry to hear of you being upset with your time on kde4, it sounds like you are going from one bad experience to another :undecided:

@ash

And what about users who do not like all-in-one applications like Konqueror ? I do not like Konqueror, neither as a file browser nor as a web browser. But I love Dolphin, and I wish we could simply get rid of Konqueror and get a dedicated web browser instead. But I know that some people like Konqueror, that's the reason why I do not ask its removal. So please do not do the same to the applications that I use. Do not like them ? Right ! Don't use them then...