...you get what you need:shade:

While some may claim that the KDE Desktop is a disaster, and others may consider it a work in progress, I prefer to take the middle view, and consider it a disaster in progress. It's slow and it's constricting. Considering that KDE3 was nimble and liberating, I guess that does make it sort of groundbreaking.

RIght? I know there are lots of people who say KDE4 runs great, and I can only assume they've either got awesome computers, or awesome weed. Well, I'm running Kubuntu Jaunty now, and there is good news to report,

The applications, man! :thumbs_up: The best Linux applications are KDE applications, and KDE applications are better than ever. A Debian baby, I started out using Gnome, and got turned onto fluxbox. Gradually, I strated plugging KDE applications into fluxbox, until I started to get interested in the KDE desktop. As late as last week, while I was using Slax, I was discovering how awesome the KDE3 desktop was, how it was so easy to make links by dragging and dropping... so easy that it I could make desktop links just to satisfy my needs of the moment, and then I could clear them away.

Well maybe that's all over, and maybe it isn't, but when I decided to plug the KDE4 applications into fluxbox, especially Dolphin, it was like falling in love all over again.

i like the kde 4 way in most places but dont like its bad performance and lack of some features

i like the kde 3 way in few places and its great performance. and that its with you whatever you do and its capable of. i dont like the lack of some kde 4 improvements and lack of support and maintenance

what keeps kde 4 from taking the pikachu role is just performance and few features. if we believe that it can be fixed and help (as we can) it will be fixed

ash wrote:i like the kde 4 way in most places but dont like its bad performance and lack of some features

i like the kde 3 way in few places and its great performance. and that its with you whatever you do and its capable of. i dont like the lack of some kde 4 improvements and lack of support and maintenance

what keeps kde 4 from taking the pikachu role is just performance and few features. if we believe that it can be fixed and help (as we can) it will be fixed

I believe that whatever is necessary is what's going to happen, but I just can't go there anymore. Everybody who knows me considers me to be easygoing and forgiving, people are always commenting on it-- but at this point, 20 minutes of KDE4 equals murderous rage.

You know what makes me crazy? I can't stop looking for the filter bar in Konqueror. I'm in File Manager mode, but for some reason, the most useful tool in Konqueror for locating files in PWD has been replaced by a Google searchbar. I repeat: I'M IN FILE MANAGER MODE! It makes me so incredibly angry that I have to be sure that the filter bar is missing, and so I go over all the toolbars, and I go to google, and I go the the KDE website... Over and over, back and forth, hour after hour, month after month. I'm like the ghost of Anne Bolynn desperately searching for her head, growing angrier and angrier. It's gotten to where I just tense up at the sight of the cashew. I'm 51 years old, with occasional high blood pressure. At this point, I'm just not sure if I'm going to care if they fix it or not.

I'm seeing anecdotal evidence that large numbers of users are rejecting KDE4. But more to the point, if that was actually happen, I'm not sure that the KDE team would be able to acknowledge that reality. The rhetoric has become sort of cultish, and the thinkijng insular. It's all starting to remind me of the Iraq War. We had some problems, but we've come a long way, we're fixing it, no mistakes were made. We remain confident...

I don't see why they put themselves in this position , where they're under this pressure to fix everything so quickly. Why did they push it on us so aggressively. I thought everything Torvalds said was right on the money. Of course, a lot of the blame goes to the distros, who totally screwbuntued us. There's no doubt that this is important work, what the developers should be doing, but the system has broken down somehow. We're being forced to abandon rock solid solutions, for stuff that just doesn't work.

I dunno. I'm no great seer of the future, but I see one of two things happening... a fork, or a branch. A fork is where KDE3 becomes it's own community. A branch is where it's maintained as part of the KDE community, and integrated with KDE4. What I would like to see is KDE3 mainainted, and taught to launch KDE 4 applications. The only thing I would keep a version of is Konqueror 3.5. I'd call it something else (Liberator) and let Konqueror 4 go its way, filter bar or no. I don't think that would be too difficult, and it would bring the community back together.

Just an FYI, but I have a filter bar instead of a google one in File Manager mode in Konqueror.
I have had it since KDE 4.2 at least, and I think it shows itself automatically in KDE 4.3 ( may need to erase configuration though )

bcooksley wrote:Just an FYI, but I have a filter bar instead of a google one in File Manager mode in Konqueror.
I have had it since KDE 4.2 at least, and I think it shows itself automatically in KDE 4.3 ( may need to erase configuration though )

Are you using opensuse? Opensuse's had it since 4.1.3

Anyway, I don't mean to complain so much, and I think I'm getting a little redundant. What I said in the beginning is what counts: whatever needs to happen will happen. Maybe that will be me being completely wrong, and everybody loving KDE4, even me, and that would be wonderful. I love being wrong. I never learned a goddamn thing in my life without being wrong first.

Whatever happens, the imbalance will correct itself, and all will be well. The developers will have exciting and important work to do, and the users will have cutting edge or stable software, according to their wants and needs.

And the work that is being done now will lead to some awesome stuff, and yes that has already happened. I am a huge fan of Dolphin, because it goes farther than anything else I've ever seen in integrating the CLI and the GUI. You can now right-click on konsole, and a menu appears that will open Dolphin in the pwd. That is so wonderful! I believe that combining the CLI and the GUI is the secret of Linux success for end users. These days, you can run Linux as if it were Windows, but the best you can hope for that way is... Windows. People who fail at Linux never grasp the bull by the horns with the CLI, and they come away what wondering what the fuss is, and the distros are treating the CLI like it's a dirty little embarassment, hiding it away in the menu. They don't even put it on the desktop panels any more. It's not that hard to learn over time, and once yu learn it. it's like being able to walk though walls.

I consider Dolphin's attention to cli/gui integration to be a much needed step in the right direction. Kudos on that. No matter how much I complain about the rollout of KDE4, I have a huge respect for the awesome work that is being done. It's just that the work that HAS been done should not be discarded lightly. Software is not just a bridge to newer and groovier software. It has other uses.

While I am using openSUSE, I compile KDE Trunk myself though.

bcooksley wrote:While I am using openSUSE, I compile KDE Trunk myself though.

Heh, I don't even know what that means.

Well, if they fixed the filter bar in Konqueror, I'm going to be a lot less murderous the next time I venture into KDE4. I keep telling myself that I'm done with 4, but I can't stay away. I am drawn like a moth to... I don't know, something that is bad for moths. Moth balls. okay?

I may have to change my avatar. I am loving Slax as my new desktop distro. I booted the default disk in text mode, that's the minimal Slax disk with no added modules, I added the "slax2hd" module from the site, and installed Slax to my hard drive. The iso for the original disk is less than 200 mb. It's a very spare but sufficient Slackware/KDE3 system. When you boot Slax into text mode, and then you install with this module, the instlled system boots into text mode, and you use the startx command to enter KDE3, just like a regular Slackware system.

Almost everything I've added I compiled from source, but I'm not bragging. People who've never compiled their own software from source may be impressed, but I'm pretty sure you could train a chimp to do it... most of the time, Like so many things in GNU/Linux, compiling from source is really easy-- except on those rare occasions when it it isn't. Mostly, I've been compiling additional KDE packages, and when you've already got your basic KDE system in place, you've probably got all your major dependancies for KDE already provided by definition. Even so, I love the hands-on interaction that I get from compiling myself. And maybe it'll help me commit to my system. I'm a notorious distro-hopper and serial reinstaller. I find that I get more done with Slackware, the no-nonsense layout seems to lend itself to productivity instead of **** around.

But the weird thing is that this may be my first true KDE desktop since back before i knew what KDE was, though I've been using KDE applications with fluxbox for most of that time. My first Linux system was Mandrake 8.1, back in 2002. I din't know it, but that must have been a KDE system, possibly KDE2. Man, this Desktop GUI is so agile and powerful! Do the words "out of my cold dead hand" mean anything?:-P

Slax may also be a great place to plant my freeK flag if I want to avoid KDE4 as long as possible. The KDE4 modules for Slax total almost twice as much space as the default iso, and a lightweight CD is an essential part of Slax's approach. Slax may bow to the inevitable, but I don't expect it to callously abandon it's KDE3 fans the way 1 distro did, (I won't mention that distro's name, no matter how much I wunto.)

My, but I seem to have drank from the waters of loquaciousness this evening.

just wanna say love the topic title

bcooksley wrote:Just an FYI, but I have a filter bar instead of a google one in File Manager mode in Konqueror.
I have had it since KDE 4.2 at least, and I think it shows itself automatically in KDE 4.3 ( may need to erase configuration though )

I stopped using Konqueror for file management - too many issues in the early kde4 series and have gotten accustomed to Dolphin, still think konqueror kde3 file management was the best.

I also haven't able to get the filter bar back in konqeror (had it once but no more), it didn't even show on a new user account.

blackbelt_jones wrote:

bcooksley wrote:While I am using openSUSE, I compile KDE Trunk myself though.

Heh, I don't even know what that means.

This means compiling the current development version of KDE, where all the current magic happens.

assassin66 wrote:I am still trying to change my avatar from a kubuntu one to an opensuse one, but have been unable to do it as of yet!
Tried in windows, but no luck. Have asked for help, but no one has offered any yet!

If anything springs to mind, let me know please!

Uhmm, sorry, i don't get what you mean. What sort of avatar are you talking of? The system avatar? The forum avatar? Kopete?

Lots and lots of Kubuntu users have reported much-improved performance on upgrading to KDE 4.3. Of course, for some strange reason, performance was never an issue for me - and I've had KDE 4 on 5 different laptops and 4 different desktops, including one with 256MB of RAM(!) and no graphics card to speak of. Even on the latter, it ran perfectly fine on Kubuntu...