I've just tried KDE on Windows for the first time and I'm very impressed. It is great that I can use the same set of well designed and well integrated programs on both Windows and Linux.

My favorite application so far is Kate.

Konquerer looks good, but that isn't relevant for me - it would take me a lot to get me to leave Firefox.

The weak points that I've encountered so far are the Windows installer and Dolphin.

I think Dolpin is well designed but it has lots of bugs and crashes (I have reported the major ones). Dolphin is better then the Windows explorer so I'm looking forward to using it eventually.

The installer is not very good. It reminds me of the cygwin installer and I suspect it uses the same code. Here are some thoughts:
- It should have an option to automatically pick the best source. I looked through the list for the mirror closest to me, but that mirror turned out to be extremely slow. Couldn't there be an automated process that chose the best mirror based on available bandwidth, number of hops, etc.
- It should show me what applications I have installed so that I can choose to uninstall them, or to install others.

Thanks for KDE,
Tom

First of all, thank you for your feedback;
about the weak points:
Dolphin itself is rather new so it might have some more bugs in the Linux release too.
Also it relies on a very complex system, which is not very stable on windows (the gui doesn't represent that correctly ).
About the installer: it is under heavy development too and the last thing you mentioned will probably get changed in one of the coming versions.
The testing of the best connection is rather hard to code and so I guess it won't come that fast.
And last about the cygwin installer: although it is inspired by it, we don't share any code with it.

One other comment about the installer. To install KDE apps I download the installer to some temporary folder and then I run it. For most other applications I will never use the installer again. But in this case - for the KDE installer - I will want to re-run the installer application occasionally.

Therefor, I think that a copy of the installer application should be installed with the rest of the KDE applications, even though it is not a KDE app. This copy of the installer would live in "c:program fileskdeinstaller" (or something like that) and there should be a shortcut to it in the root of "KDE 4.2.00 Release" folder of my Programs menu (in addition to the 'help' shortcut which is currently the only shortcut there).

SaroEngels wrote:The testing of the best connection is rather hard to code and so I guess it won't come that fast.

Out of curiosity, is the list of mirrors contained in a resource file of the installer application?

qwavel wrote:Out of curiosity, is the list of mirrors contained in a resource file of the installer application?

the list is fetched from here http://winkde.org/pub/kde/ports/win32/mirrors.list

Yeah the only thing I didn't like about the installer was there is like no drop down for like developers, or end users to pick different pre-defined settings like to choose the full KDE desktop. It would pick it for you instead of you having to do it. The BIN checks. Is going. It should be named different. Since it is for developers. Shouldn't it already be checked by default when you choose the developer end?

I've had no problems with KDE on windows except cosmetic changes. Like the Vista Style is very ugly. It doesn't use the colours Vista uses and its grey. Is there a way to automatically select the oxygen style by default instead of Vista?. Because I have to create a shortcut to the desktop to append --style=oxygen just to do that. And my application which is barely started uses KColour button and its so tiny you can't even see the colour you picked unless you use the oxygen style.

ComaWhite wrote:I've had no problems with KDE on windows except cosmetic changes. Like the Vista Style is very ugly. It doesn't use the colours Vista uses and its grey. Is there a way to automatically select the oxygen style by default instead of Vista?. Because I have to create a shortcut to the desktop to append --style=oxygen just to do that. And my application which is barely started uses KColour button and its so tiny you can't even see the colour you picked unless you use the oxygen style.

Since 4.2, systemsettings is available on windows too. So you can set the style just the regular way
After installing, you will find "KDE Systemsettings" within the windows system control panel.

Oh okay that is good to know now ^_^. But what is strange though. Qt with Vista theme is perfect. But why is KDE4's Vista theme not?

dtritscher wrote:Since 4.2, systemsettings is available on windows too. So you can set the style just the regular way
After installing, you will find "KDE Systemsettings" within the windows system control panel.

That's good to hear. I've been looking for that and have been rather disappointed when it wasn't in the previous installs (one of the first things I do after installing any environment is go through the configuration and tweak everything to my personal preferences).

My first feedback on KDE 4.2:
The plasma desktop won't render backgrounds. When it comes up, it only has a solid blue-grey-green background. When I open up the desktop settings, the backgrounds dropdown doesn't render any of the images (the previews are all white). I can change the solid color, though.

Is there a way to close the plasma desktop without killing it (via task manager)? I realize that ideally it is to be used as an explorer shell replacement, but right now I am only a part-time user experimenting with it on the windows machine at work (looking for ways to integrate the KDE applications into my work). Right now the closest thing would be "log out" which would end up being ambiguous, as it means log out of your windows session (at least if you had completely replaced explorer shell with plasma).

Lastly is a question of 'enhancing the experience'. Our company is a software development shop, and we use subversion for version control. Normally we use the TortoiseSVN client which integrates with Windows Explorer, allowing things like status overlay icons and svn actions through context menus. From what I've heard around the web of konqueror (and dolphin, I imagine) you should be able to set it up to do similar things (at least the svn actions through context menus). Can someone point me in the right direction for how to set that up?

Is there a way to close the plasma desktop without killing it (via task manager)? I realize that ideally it is to be used as an explorer shell replacement, but right now I am only a part-time user experimenting with it on the windows machine at work (looking for ways to integrate the KDE applications into my work). Right now the closest thing would be "log out" which would end up being ambiguous, as it means log out of your windows session (at least if you had completely replaced explorer shell with plasma).

You can call "kquitapp plasma". At least that works under linux, should be the same with windows, but you have to cd to the kde bin directory.

Lastly is a question of 'enhancing the experience'. Our company is a software development shop, and we use subversion for version control. Normally we use the TortoiseSVN client which integrates with Windows Explorer, allowing things like status overlay icons and svn actions through context menus. From what I've heard around the web of konqueror (and dolphin, I imagine) you should be able to set it up to do similar things (at least the svn actions through context menus). Can someone point me in the right direction for how to set that up?

That would require a port of kdesvn and kdesvn-kio to windows. AFAIK this is not done yet. But at least kdesvn is fully ported to kde4, so it should be possible to port it to windows.

dtritscher wrote:You can call "kquitapp plasma". At least that works under linux, should be the same with windows, but you have to cd to the kde bin directory.

Thank you. That worked.

That would require a port of kdesvn and kdesvn-kio to windows. AFAIK this is not done yet. But at least kdesvn is fully ported to kde4, so it should be possible to port it to windows.

Ok, looking forward to it.

dtritscher wrote:That would require a port of kdesvn and kdesvn-kio to windows. AFAIK this is not done yet. But at least kdesvn is fully ported to kde4, so it should be possible to port it to windows.

Yeah the point is the svn in it which is not easy to integrate on Windows. Might still take us a while.

My feedback relates to the installer: the final dialogue box states that the components installed on my system will appear in the programs menu: I have checked the programs menu but there is no sign of any programs from KDE.

Please advise.