I haven't done it yet, but I think I can easily identify with the kind of guy that shouts that in a forum. Maybe I can try to explain my position in a slightly more constructive way. I have been a user of KDE3 for quite a few year, starting with Debian, switching to Kubuntu at some point. In time I noticed a continuous improvement of stability, usability and performance. I got used to many little things and features that I found extremely useful. I sticked with Hardy for a long time, not sure but I guess it had 3.5 on, I think that was the most stable, quick and useful desktop I ever used. I postponed the time of switching to KDE4 for hardware reasons, I had the feeling it was too eye-candy bloated for my system, but I was also worried by some of the comments around. A few months ago I made some small hw upgrade and decided to make the big step, and switched to Lucid, with KDE4. That was a big mistake.

The result is that my machine now looks more like a Mac, or Vista, or whatever. Personally I could not care less about eye candy. In change of this, all the features that made me stick with KDE in the first place are either lost, or can only be digged out after a long research.

What I find frustrating is the feeling that KDE is following the big "we have more RAM, let's fill it up with eye candy" wave, and leaving behind usability, especially those things that have a small "market" of users. For example I have the feeling that Konqueror is being left behind, simply because most people use Firefox. I have more examples, but I decided to stop shouting at my computer, and start making some more constructive criticism, so I'll bug you later

I would like to thank the developers and
everyone who contributes more actively than
me, but please keep an eye on non-constructive
and offensive rants as well, when they grow in
number they may convey some interesting information
as well..

ermonnezza wrote:I haven't done it yet, but I think I can easily identify with the kind of guy that shouts that in a forum. Maybe I can try to explain my position in a slightly more constructive way. I have been a user of KDE3 for quite a few year, starting with Debian, switching to Kubuntu at some point. In time I noticed a continuous improvement of stability, usability and performance. I got used to many little things and features that I found extremely useful. I sticked with Hardy for a long time, not sure but I guess it had 3.5 on, I think that was the most stable, quick and useful desktop I ever used. I postponed the time of switching to KDE4 for hardware reasons, I had the feeling it was too eye-candy bloated for my system, but I was also worried by some of the comments around. A few months ago I made some small hw upgrade and decided to make the big step, and switched to Lucid, with KDE4. That was a big mistake.

The result is that my machine now looks more like a Mac, or Vista, or whatever. Personally I could not care less about eye candy. In change of this, all the features that made me stick with KDE in the first place are either lost, or can only be digged out after a long research.

What I find frustrating is the feeling that KDE is following the big "we have more RAM, let's fill it up with eye candy" wave, and leaving behind usability, especially those things that have a small "market" of users. For example I have the feeling that Konqueror is being left behind, simply because most people use Firefox. I have more examples, but I decided to stop shouting at my computer, and start making some more constructive criticism, so I'll bug you later

I would like to thank the developers and
everyone who contributes more actively than
me, but please keep an eye on non-constructive
and offensive rants as well, when they grow in
number they may convey some interesting information
as well..

You do realise that you can disabled all that eye candy. But alos, do remember that not a lot of users like the same boring things for long in like you would get with GNOME, Windows, Mac. I personally get sick of the same things over and over with no change.

KDE4 was a major rewrite due to limitations in Qt3. Qt4 fixed those and made it possible for KDE4 to be what it was today. I have followed KDE4 all the way from 4.0.2 and seen it go through good and the bad. I left KDE3 a long time ago and never have looked back. I wasn't really a fan of KDE3, that's why I was a GNOME user back then. But I didn't like the way GNOME was going, and it's development libraries were a pita to work with, so I started messing with Qt4 and simply enjoyed development with it.

Just remember, development is not easy, especially at a Desktop Environment. KDE3 was stabled, I can agree but it lacked potential in my eyes. KDE4 changed it by completely rewriting it. While I understand that you didn't like loosing the stability of KDE3. It had to be broken to give you what it is now. KDE4 is very stabled in almost every way. But, development is always hard. Things will break, be fixed, but it might not be always when you want it to, but developers try their best for their work. You will not please everyone, you might please so and so user now by adding X feature and lose users for that X feature. It's just the way it is.

kde4 takes some time to get used to when you switch to it from kde3.

But when you do get used to it and learn about the features that replace the ones you used in kde3, i'm sure you will appreciate the new kde and what it can do more for you compared to kde3.

in my experience, kde4 is not more resource hungry than kde3. At least not on my systems. i use kde on a 5 year old laptop, on an aspire one netbook and two newer laptops. ram usage remains below 400 mb and the desktop is responsive and snappy as it should be.

ermonnezza wrote:<snip>

What I find frustrating is the feeling that KDE is following the big "we have more RAM, let's fill it up with eye candy" wave, and leaving behind usability, especially those things that have a small "market" of users. For example I have the feeling that Konqueror is being left behind, simply because most people use Firefox. I have more examples, but I decided to stop shouting at my computer, and start making some more constructive criticism, so I'll bug you later

<snip>

While I'm normally the first to jump in and +1 this, I've actually voiced how impressed I am with the speed of KDE currently. Is it the fastest thing under the sun? Nope. But lightyears ahead of old versions, and fast enough where it does not irk me in the least, and I'm used to Xfce, PekWM, and Openbox. I'm severely impressed.

Konqueror has improved as well, as has Rekonq. I think they're both very usable.