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_nobody_ has the right to say "kde4 sucks" at this early stage
At this early stage? The first release candidate is out, surely that means it's not an early stage any more!! It means what's out there might be the one which goes productive!

And there's only a few weeks until Jan 11th, if they plan on sticking to that release date.

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At this early stage? The first release candidate is out, surely that means it's not an early stage any more!! It means what's out there might be the one which goes productive!

And there's only a few weeks until Jan 11th, if they plan on sticking to that release date.

 

Open Source projects seem to have a disregard for the terms alpha/beta/RC. Rarely, if at all will you find a project that will release on it's first RC. Take as a prime example, the kernel. By the time you run 2.6.23, it's typically been through 6 or so rc's. rc1 never had a hope of being released, and would be more correctly labelled beta - but that's inconvenient.

 

Look at KDE3... _that_ is years old and has been through many iterations. KDE4 has yet to have a stable release, so it has barely even entered it's release cycle.

 

KDE4 has not had a stable release, so by definition, it's unstable and things will change. It's been delayed once too, so we might not see come Jan 11.

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For a start, they probably won't entirely remove the old Kmenu, as it would have a large following. But why don't you try kickoff before you diss it? From what i've seen, its a different way of organising what's already there. A really old flash video here looks impressive: http://home.kde.org/~binner/kickoff/sneak_preview.html

 

Also if you had read the thread above you'd note that the dolphin engine was remarked to be as capable as konqueror.

 

The many comments listed in the post above is what makes me worried. There was no mention of keeping the old Kmenu as an option, and many of the things people did not like about kickoff didn't seem to be adequately addressed as far as I could see.

 

I wouldn't mind dolphin if the things it can't do could still be done by konqueror. My cause for concern was that it was said above that konqueror would use the same engine. Therefore, if dolphin can't do something, presumably konqueror wouldn't be able to do it either. If konqueror retained its old functionality then I would have no problem.

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Open Source projects seem to have a disregard for the terms alpha/beta/RC. Rarely, if at all will you find a project that will release on it's first RC.

KDE4 has not had a stable release, so by definition, it's unstable and things will change.

I agree that these terms are misused, and I don't expect all RC1s to be released. But I do expect that by the time they say "here is a candidate for release" then at least the major functionality is frozen and only unexpected bug fixes, tweaks, minor changes and so on will be made from here on. That means to me that it should be FAR from "unstable" and very very much time to start criticizing it as though it were very nearly finished.

 

You can't have it both ways, either it's an RC1, in which case people are entitled to express their opinion that it sucks (and will suck when released), or it's a beta (with a projected start date very probably later than Jan 11th), in which case it's too early to write it off. I don't see where the pressure comes to release it so soon if it's not yet ready, why not just push the release date back? There seem to be enough concerns and issues to warrant that. It would impact 2008.1 and Hungry Hippo and other distro releases, but they didn't have problems releasing both KDE3 and KDE4 with 2008.0 so they can do that again, surely?

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I agree that these terms are misused, and I don't expect all RC1s to be released. But I do expect that by the time they say "here is a candidate for release" then at least the major functionality is frozen and only unexpected bug fixes, tweaks, minor changes and so on will be made from here on. That means to me that it should be FAR from "unstable" and very very much time to start criticizing it as though it were very nearly finished.

 

You can't have it both ways, either it's an RC1, in which case people are entitled to express their opinion that it sucks (and will suck when released), or it's a beta (with a projected start date very probably later than Jan 11th), in which case it's too early to write it off.

 

I couldn't have said it better. Further to that you find that most projects do follow that ideology. The argument that the "alpha/beta/RC" labels are "commonly" misused is no defence, although I'd have to argue that the misuse isn't really common in the general sense, but definitely common when talking about badly managed projects.

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Why a flash video for kickoff, when 2008.0 has it, just right click the kmenu and choose kickoff menu...

 

And there's lancelot (if I recall correctly), the kde4 implementation of the old kde menu.

 

I read quite a bit by now, and it seems that many people are really convinced that the kickoff style menu is the better one, basing on usability studies by Novell.

There seem to be videos of these studies as well, so you can have a look.

 

What I don't get, why this sliding thing, why not the regular openup style?

 

For browsing at least, kickoff bites the dust compared to kmenu.

 

When it comes to having direct access to the few apps that are used regularly: that's why you can put those programs on the panel, just drag the icon.

 

In any case, for me it's quite moot, I launch most apps from the cli, and since cf I can put kicker and my external taskbar onto a widget layer, so I normally don't even see them. More screen space for me!

Edited by aRTee
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Why a flash video for kickoff, when 2008.0 has it, just right click the kmenu and choose kickoff menu...

Not using Mandriva until they deal with my long standing installation regression that I filed on the bug tracker months ago.

 

In any case, for me it's quite moot, I launch most apps from the cli, and since cf I can put kicker and my external taskbar onto a widget layer, so I normally don't even see them. More screen space for me!

likewise. I've got gmrun on a shortcut key, and important apps on their own shortcuts, so most things are just a few keypresses away.

 

Reiver_Fluffi, neddie: Just stating my observations, there's a lot of projects that abuse 'rc' and many that release blindly unstable things as rc's just to get extra testing. It's not as uncommon as you think, some projects treat rc as the "feature complete" stage, enact a feature freeze, then do the bug hunting through the rc series. kernel is one example which follows a similar pattern.

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The foundation libraries are stable (or so they say) and that's a good sign. Maybe there's no way to e.g change your wallpaper from a menu but the needed C++ functions are ready.

 

KDE4 was already postponed twice. Originally it supposed to be ready about the time Mandriva 2008 came out but they postponed it to December. Then they postponed it again to January.

 

Lancelot doesn't seem like a kmenu implementation to me. Reading the blogpost which ilia linked, in the second post in this topic, simply there won't be kmenu in KDE4 because nobody cares. There are two other menus being developed for KDE4: Lancelot and Raptor. But since only Kickoff is ready that will be the default in KDE4.

On the usability side. Usability not only depends on how the menu works but the structure of the menu too. And current Mandriva menu really sucks in this point of view IMHO.

Edited by dexter11
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  • 2 weeks later...
I agree that these terms are misused, and I don't expect all RC1s to be released. But I do expect that by the time they say "here is a candidate for release" then at least the major functionality is frozen and only unexpected bug fixes, tweaks, minor changes and so on will be made from here on. That means to me that it should be FAR from "unstable" and very very much time to start criticizing it as though it were very nearly finished.

 

You can't have it both ways, either it's an RC1, in which case people are entitled to express their opinion that it sucks (and will suck when released), or it's a beta (with a projected start date very probably later than Jan 11th), in which case it's too early to write it off. I don't see where the pressure comes to release it so soon if it's not yet ready, why not just push the release date back? There seem to be enough concerns and issues to warrant that. It would impact 2008.1 and Hungry Hippo and other distro releases, but they didn't have problems releasing both KDE3 and KDE4 with 2008.0 so they can do that again, surely?

Yup...

 

Trying RC2 from Gutsy now, things are looking a bit better but are far from what can be considered a release candidate. At least now I managed to get Dolphin to show hidden files but there are still many obvious bugs everywhere, like graphical glitches in the style, no obvious way to configure the panel, incompleteness of oxygen, kwin is dead slow etc... etc... etc.. and these are all obvious after just 5 minutes testing. It looks promising for an alfa or beta but for an RC it's very disappointing...

 

Konqueror will be there too but it will use the engine of Dolphin for file management. However they promise it won't loose any functionality.

 

file size view seems to have gone, one of my favourite konqueror functions...

Edited by ffi
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C'mon, it has been said in the past that KDE 4.0 will be very buggy (pretty much like KDE 3.0, or Gnome 2.0, or XFCE 4.0, or... name it here)...

Only after version 4.1 things will start running smoothly. Please understand that 4.0 is a HUGE step ahead of 3.5X, and as such many things will not work as expected.

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C'mon, it has been said in the past that KDE 4.0 will be very buggy (pretty much like KDE 3.0, or Gnome 2.0, or XFCE 4.0, or... name it here)...

Only after version 4.1 things will start running smoothly. Please understand that 4.0 is a HUGE step ahead of 3.5X, and as such many things will not work as expected.

 

They said 4.0 wouldn't be (new) feature complete yet but I expect all the major old features working. I know no software is bugfree but this is just

unworkable, I hope they postpone the release past jan 11 because as it is kde4 will hurt kde's reputation.

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My first look at KDE4 is Mandriva's Spring Alpha.

 

As a gui thing, I really like it. I thought I was waiting for E17 to come about, but KDE might beat them to it. But, I lost the widgets in the "panel," and can't get them back. I can launch new plasma widgets, but the panel is just an empty thing at the bottom of the screen.

 

It is promising, but not working. Anybody know how to restart the panel? I mistakenly tried "kicker," but launching it brought the old panel on top of the new one! :lol:

 

(aside from deleting the hidden directory, of course. That works but what else can be done?)

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Hey, if you want plenty of eyecandy and little real usability, have a look at fvwm-crystal.

Of course fvwm can be tuned in one gazillion different ways, but it simply is too much fuss (at least for me...).

Currently I am using the good, stable XFCE4 as default, and toy a lot with KDE4.

E17 will probably NEVER come out as official stable release.

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  • 4 weeks later...

well I did give a burn of kubuntu with kde4 earlier to give it a shot...

but I am not impressed right now.

It seems too limited, a big taskbar you cant change the size of, little to none really impressive effects (heck even kde 3.5 runs circles around it in terms of looks)

It just looks.... amateurish.

I personally see no reason to use it in its current state, the black panel just screams vista and overall it looks cheaply done...

I will give it a chance yes but not for the foreseeable future.

KDE 4.1 might be where I look at kde4 as a viable choice, but who knows.

 

But I just hope KDE4 isnt forced on us, I really dont want it at this point and time

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  • 4 weeks later...

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