Anyone else using KDE4 full time? [Archive]

jayson.rowe

Mar 23rd 2008, 03:03 PM

I'm running Hardy Beta w/ KDE 4 full time now - I don't think I could go back to KDE 3.5.x now!

I know most peeps either love or hate KDE 4, but I'm definitely a lover.

BTW, if you are like me and prefer to browse the web w/ Firefox (I can't get flash working in Konqueror w/ my AMD64 system under KDE 4), I have found a nice Firefox theme that will make Firefox 3 look a little better under KDE 4:

Classic Compact
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3699

It's a nice compact theme w/ small icons, and it fits well into the default Oxygen style.

dibl

Mar 23rd 2008, 03:15 PM

Yep -- trying to, anyway LOL.

It is starting to hang together better since the recent update to kdm-kde4 (I just got it this morning).

I think the KDE4 KMenu introduced more mouse-clicking that the previous KMenu -- I don't see that as an improvement. But, I park my frequently-used apps on the panel anyway, so that mitigates the loss of efficiency somewhat. Otherwise it's all good -- little adjustment required to desktop behavior and icons on the desktop and things like that, but it works fine and it just takes a little getting used to. :)

jayson.rowe

Mar 23rd 2008, 03:16 PM

BTW, here is a screenshot of that Firefox skin running under KDE 4 if you are interested:

jayson.rowe

Mar 23rd 2008, 03:18 PM

dibl - I kind of like the new menu - it just takes some getting used to...There is an "Application Launcher Menu" you can add to the panel instead of the new menu, which switches to a more "Traditional" K-menu.

dibl

Mar 23rd 2008, 03:20 PM

BTW, here is a screenshot of that Firefox skin running under KDE 4 if you are interested:

That looks good -- I may just give it a spin. I left my FF 3 set on defaults, but these teeny-tiny fonts are hard on my old eyes -- thanks!

mafitzpatrick

Mar 23rd 2008, 03:25 PM

Not yet, but I tried it and it wasn't anywhere near as bad as I'd imagined. The big problems for me were

a) Fugly Firefox (I spend most of my time looking at it)
You've fixed this: I'm pretty sure there weren't any Firefox 3 themes when I looked 2 days ago! Thanks for the tip.

b) No dual panels
I have my desktop setup with a taskbar along the bottom (with additional Desktop (left) and Media Devices, Printer, Trash (right) buttons) and everything else along the top along with app launchers etc. (I did use the MacOS topbar for a while... I like the idea but ran out of space) ....Trying to create new panels editing the config files killed plasma, which because it does everything now left me with not a very functional desktop and I promptly gave up :)

c) I find the new Launcher/Start Menu/thing horrible to use.
I don't think its the section breakdown but the fact the *menu* has a *scrollbar* in it... It seems insane to use a scrollbar when you have a whole screen of space to expand into. I found that if the menu is big it was a case of click, move to scrollbar, click, scroll, move to list, click application, out pops a side bit, move to scrollbar, drag down, click. Sigh.... just seems a really bad design decision and makes very frustrating. Fiddly stuff like this gives me the rage ;) I know there is the alternate one which is fine: I think part of the frustration is that the new menu is clearly "better" in every respect but navigation!

It was tricky adding stuff to the panel & dragging desktop>panel didn't work (although I've read elsewhere that it should). Also annoying that it didn't seem possible to drag things around the panel... but these are all minor (rarely done) things.

Anyway I tried, failed, and went and installed 64bit Kubuntu/KDE3 instead (got to have *something* to play with right).

I think if a&b were fixed I'd do it... Overall it just needs some interface work and plasma will make that easier to achieve.

Monster_user

Mar 23rd 2008, 04:12 PM

I run KDE4 from time to time. Unfortunately, a recent update broke my gadgets/widgets. I also seem to have regained that Nvidia black screen bug. Which means I have to run Compiz in order to regain any of the functionality.

Since the 4.02 update, I plan on running KDE4 more often, as it has fixed many of my complaints regarding the earlier releases.

Bongo5HH

Mar 23rd 2008, 08:50 PM

I run KDE4 full time, with one slight exception. I have to use the KDE3 version of Dolphin to reach my second internal HDD. Something about system policies don't allow for automatic mounting of internal drives. ???

Kev

MatheoDJ

Mar 23rd 2008, 09:07 PM

:D I've been running KDE4 full time for a couple weeks on 8.04 alpha. Tried FF3 alpha, but after a bit the bug or two I ran into (inability to run flash especially) became obnoxious... back to 2.0.0.12 for now.

I agree with mafitzpatrick, the new launcher causes waaaaay too many clicks. Simplicity, people! Why the panel lost most of it's functionality between KDE 3.5 and 4 is a mystery to me, I look forward to getting that back. To top it all off, since upgrading from Hardy Alpha 4 to Alpha 6 I can't delete anything from the panel anymore and can't move anything, the launcher is screwy (taking up 120% of the screen first click after boot up and then disappearing thereafter) and everything deleted from the desktop reappears after logging out and back in so I'm stuck with every widget I've ever tried... after upgrading to 8.04 beta today I'm going to purge and reinstall KDE 4 and see if that fixes it.

Other than that I really dig 4 over 3.5... the wireless functionality is much better, and I really like the feel of things. I'd like to see a lot more plasma widgets and compiz integration (I miss my cube!). The desktop effects run well but take a long time to load on boot-up - like 30-45 seconds - so I have them turned off. I like the themes. I'd like to have the 3.5 functionality of deleting something from the desktop and having it gone from my desktop folder, but I imagine this is an option I haven't found yet or functionality that's screwed up on my particular computer.

All in all, I give it 3 out of 4 stars... should be awesome by the next major revision. I'd give KDE 3.5 about 3.5 of 4 stars, but I like being on the bleeding edge :)

Nate

Mar 23rd 2008, 09:43 PM

To mafitzpatrick: about your concern "c", you can actually set the height of your menu to be much larger, and get rid of some of the scrollbars. Right click on the K menu, choose "Application Launcher Settings" and then change the number of visible items to a larger number.

I really like the Favorites menu. It actually makes finding most programs much faster than the old kde 3 menu for me, and I don't have to stick them on my taskbar. And if you increase the size of your new K menu you can add a lot more programs to your favorites. For me this means less clicks than before.

klerfayt

Mar 24th 2008, 12:10 AM

BTW, if you are like me and prefer to browse the web w/ Firefox (I can't get flash working in Konqueror w/ my AMD64 system under KDE 4), I have found a nice Firefox theme that will make Firefox 3 look a little better under KDE 4or you can install gtk-qt engine (http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=3090068.msg121562#msg121562)

seamuso

Mar 24th 2008, 12:20 AM

I've been full time for a while now. here's my desktop ..

http://info.bluefrogcs.com/images/computer/kde4.png

squirrel

Mar 24th 2008, 01:56 PM

I intended to replace my 7.10 with the new 8.04 remix beta, but now I changed the boot-menu entries. I'm not sure whether it's the beta version of 8.04 or KDE4 itself, but

* My laptop (M1330) get's way hotter than under 7.10 => fans are all the time on and at higher speed
* I'm feeling somehow "limited", where are all the administration options (maybe a stupid newbie question)?
* Are the remaining KDE3x apps inflicting KDE4 at any time? What happens after an app gets ported?

While in many ways KDE4 looks way better and feels faster, there are unresolved things. Ie. the Adept Manager does just not fit in KDE4-theme anymore. As ordinary user my impression is that KDE4 is not yet ready. This may change until end of April, but I guess the ordinary user has to wait until KDE4.1...

Newbie question: How can I select and delete let's say 5 items on the desktop (directly, no terminal, no file-manager)?

mafitzpatrick

Mar 24th 2008, 02:10 PM

Nate
You can actually set the height of your menu to be much larger, and get rid of some of the scrollbars. Right click on the K menu, choose "Application Launcher Settings" and then change the number of visible items to a larger number.

Doh... :) I guess I should have looked for that... thanks for the tip! Going to give KDE4 another go when the next release comes around. It's good watching progress and will be even better once I can start helping out with bug fixes/etc.

Exciting times.

MatheoDJ

Mar 25th 2008, 11:25 AM

Yeah, as something of a n00b, I can say that KDE4 lacks a lot of the intuitiveness I felt immediately with KDE 3.x

As cool looking and great as it is, right now KDE4 feels like Vista to compared to KDE3's XP - awesome looking but not ready for prime time, difficult to use and not yet user friendly.

Still, I'm not gonna switch back. ;D I know all of this stuff will get fixed soon enough... that's just my faith in Open Source and the great people working on the Ubuntu Linux and KDE projects - and of course the awesome folks doing Kubuntu.

maestrobwh1

Apr 4th 2008, 09:26 PM

Bongo5HH

Apr 5th 2008, 02:39 AM

Not sure how knowlegable you are, but did you look at your /etc/fstab entry for that drive? There should be an 'auto' in the options section of the line. If you have a folder for the drive in /media but can't do anything other than read, so a sudo chmod 777 /media/hdax (or sdax) where x is the drive number assigned. If a folder doesn't exist for that drive, do a sudo mkdir /media/"name you want" and make sure that is the mount point in fstab. Then sudo chmod 777 /media/"folder"

I run KDE4 full time, with one slight exception. I have to use the KDE3 version of Dolphin to reach my second internal HDD. Something about system policies don't allow for automatic mounting of internal drives. ???

Kev

I've been playing with my fstab a lot.. but what I didn't know was the three letter drive id's keep changing - especially when you unplug your drives as I have to do sometimes. So I needed to use the UUID to mount the drive.

The fix I reached with much help can be found here UUID=2a3b71d4-7362-4b00-bc95-227d8aab516b /slimmy ext3 defaults 0 0

maestrobwh1

Apr 5th 2008, 11:53 AM

I am. I find that it is less "toy like" than kde 3.5. The Oxygen theme and icons look very "professional" along with the taskbar. The widget thing is hard getting used to, but looks slick.

It isn't Vista-ish at all. If anything, it is a bit Mac-ish, but it really has a look unto itself.

I have always been a fan of KDE over other window managers.

There was some comment regarding the kmenu and I do agree that it is more cumbersome than the original menu, however; there is an option under widgets to put another kmenu on your taskbar that is more classic.

One comment, on the new kmenu, one is supposed to be able to right click it and change the amount of items that show, and I change this from 10 to 15, and there is no change even after logging back in. On logging back in, if I do the same thing, the setting is back to 10. I would like it to be "taller" as I have a large enough screen for this.

mafitzpatrick

Apr 5th 2008, 05:00 PM

maestrobwh1: If you want the new kmenu taller, open it up and drag the top right hand corner (it has dark bands on it to show that it's grippable). That allows you to make the menu as big as you want...

...I missed this at first too, and it makes all the difference. The default is much too small imo.

maestrobwh1

Apr 6th 2008, 12:11 PM

Yeah! Funny how I missed that but I tried to grab the edges of the menu once and I didn't see a change in the cursor, so I figured that would not work.

Monster_user

Apr 6th 2008, 05:24 PM

Yeah, I thought the same thing,... :-[

saturnus

Apr 6th 2008, 11:36 PM

Finally the upgrade Kwin deserves. Simple, good composite effects that integrates well with the desktop. It's already quite good if want composite effects but don't need the full bling of compiz/compiz-fusion.

mafitzpatrick

Apr 7th 2008, 11:55 AM

What I really like (took me to find this by accident) is the quick-switching using the mouse in the top left corner. With composite effects on, and two (or more) apps open, push your mouse to the top left corner of the screen. You get a display of all currently open windows you can switch by clicking.

As I said, found it by accident, but really useful when multiple windows open and you don'y want to let go of the mouse. The taskbar becomes less and less useful by the minute ;)

Bongo5HH

Apr 7th 2008, 03:26 PM

Nice find!

Kev

maestrobwh1

Apr 8th 2008, 12:21 AM

Ahhh, I missed that effect (expe) with compiz on my kde 3 install... I am glad that someone was smart enough to incorporate such a useful effect.

Monster_user

Apr 8th 2008, 05:11 PM

There is also another Effect, that lays out your Desktop in a grid, similar to the "Expo" effect in Compiz (Meta+E).

1 2
3 4

I still haven't gotten it to work right,...

Nate

Apr 9th 2008, 03:52 AM

Ctrl-F8 is the default shortcut for that one. It's called the Desktop Grid.

Ycarcomed

May 3rd 2008, 01:06 AM

I've been using KDE 4 and yeah, I completely love it, no problems yet, and it's gorgeous.

MoonRise

May 3rd 2008, 11:29 AM

Completely on KDE4. Took some getting use to on the Desktop behavior and the new KMenu, but it's all flowing real good for me now. Yea, I'm loving KDE4. No real big issues, just minor display annoyances.

Moopere

Jun 2nd 2008, 02:50 AM

As cool looking and great as it is, right now KDE4 feels like Vista to compared to KDE3's XP - awesome looking but not ready for prime time, difficult to use and not yet user friendly.

Still, I'm not gonna switch back.

I can't any longer be bothered waiting for this type of thing. After following the linux distro's for years, more then a decade now (mainly Debian after a rough start) I'm getting worn out dealing with issues that are always going to be solved in the future. Having reached a certain level of weariness I just want something that works and is reasonably integrated. KDE 3.5.9 seems to be it. Can't see any major missing bits and the integration is lovely.

I can't possibly imagine the KDE folks dropping support for kde 3.x any time soon, if they do what does this really say about the new reality? Shiney is better than functional?

Don't get me wrong, new and fabulous stuff is worth pursuing. I was really impressed with KDE4, but its so broken with even basic functionality missing. By v4.5 it will almost certainly be something really special. You've got to pursue function parity before taking something like this seriously surely?

Moopere

rnojonson

Jun 13th 2008, 08:01 PM

Hi all, been tweakin lately?? I been up and running Hardy 8.04 Remixed with KDE4 for a week and I must say it is different from 3.5...... but where's the trash bin, drag and drop on the desktop and how do you sudo to get root to do superuser stuff?? It all worked so easy in 3.5. I like the look and feel of my new desktop, plasmoids have great potential but I already miss the little things that matter. There's nothing like a change to bring out the noobie in yah! My major beef is that there is no docs to explain how to do the little things you need to do, that I am aware of, but that's why I am here. To probe and interrogate the community.

dibl

Jun 13th 2008, 08:12 PM

Yep, "full time" meaning "all the time that I am booted into Kubuntu" -- I have a notebook that runs sidux, and at my day job the make me use Windows.

KDE 4.1 Beta has only a couple of serious issues, for my purposes (other folks have other issues with it):

- no Alt-F2, so you have open a Konsole and "kdesu Dolphin"

- Dolphin and Konqueror crash when you right-click on white space in the file system, like when you plan to paste something. So you have to use "Edit>Paste", and not the right-click menu.

That's it. Otherwise it works fine for me. :D

PhilT

Jun 14th 2008, 06:34 PM

I've been using KDE4( with its initial glitches, crashes and reduced features) and now KDE4.1 (significantly improved - much slicker) for several weeks; I am generally very impressed as it now seems pretty stable. I had some initial problems with the new KDE4-PIM Kmail - now sorted and I think the new Kontact 1.2 interface is much improved. All the desktop effects seem to work well for me (Switcher, Grid etc + wobbly windows if you want). The beta Firefox 3 works well. Have not had any trouble with ALT-F2 or KDESU. It opens perfectly on my system (don't need the full filespec.), and remembers previous use in the drop-down list. VirtualBox runs perfectly with USB support.

I'm using the 2.6.24.19-generic kernel which seemed to set up my 64 bit system by itself.

Don't have any problems with Dolphin or Konqueror crashes either when clicking on white space. I must be lucky! ;D I think the KDE4 team are doing a terrific job. Haven't used the earlier desktop for several weeks; I am very pleased with the KDE4.1 desktop now and wouldn't go back.

For comparison: my system is three years old but OK: Intel Pentium4 630, 3GHz, 64 Bit; 2048MB RAM; High End ASUS motherboard; 160GMSATA drive; 256MB Radeon 9600 PRO graphics card.

lazer

Jun 18th 2008, 11:03 PM

I've got KDE 4.04 on my Sony Vaio under Kubuntu 8.04. Things are a bit buggy.

-Dolphin will crash from time to time.
-Needs a package manager like Adept.
-Fn+F3,F4,F5 don't work set sound volume and mute
-Battery monitor needs work
-KDE4 wallet doesn't work for KDE3 apps (should be backwards compatible in my opinion)
-NVIDIA goes nuts on shutdown or restart...white screen black lines...fade from corners....weird
-No Admin mode for KDM control panel
-Samba control pannel crashes on attempting to run

Besides that it's not bad. I need to reconfigure the touchpad so it's not so sensitive or remove the tap to click option.

RevNomad

Jul 25th 2008, 12:28 AM

No, it is far too slow on my laptop. This might be a memory issue but since I cannot afford to add memory I'll stay with KDE3.

NTP

MoonRise

Jul 25th 2008, 12:49 AM

I've been using 4.0 since release of HH 8.04 and have moved that on through the releases of 4.1 beta to 4.1 RC 1. Use as Dibl mentioned there are a few things not quite right, but nothing that has prevented me from using all the time.

claydoh

Jul 25th 2008, 01:51 AM

I just got a used Compaq Evo N610c laptop for my birthday (P4 mobile 2.0, 1GB ram, 32mb Ati video) and I decided to give Intepid a whirl, and am sticking with it. Performance is fine, some things seem a tad slower than in KDE3, but as I am comparing laptop to desktop I can't really say. The laptop is in no way sluggish, but as is usual in Ubuntu early alphas, performance increases as they get further along and lock things down, so some slowness is to be expected.

There are much fewer bugs as those using Hardy are seeing in Konq and dolphin, and kwin effects are good unless you load up too many of them :) This is my first experience with ati graphics as well as my first modern Intel setup.

kontact is very buggy, but the individual apps work just fine, so I run them that way insteaof using the Kontact 'wrapper'.

So far in the week or so I am very happy with KDE4

CVPunk

Jul 29th 2008, 08:23 PM

I've been running Kubuntu 8.04 KDE4 Remix for about 2 weeks and I love it.
Took a day or so to get use to, only complaint I have is with the Trash Bin. It was a lot easier to get to and empty with 3.5. But, other than that...only minor things which I am sure will get better with more updates and releases. ;D

dibl

Jul 29th 2008, 09:09 PM

I got tired of the niggling issues I had with KDE 4.1 on Hardy, so I installed Intrepid RC1 last night, which comes with KDE 4.1 only.

First impression -- it works, more or less, and requires still more adjustments by Mr. User. It's nice to have Alt-F2 working again, but "kdesu" and "kdesudo" are kind of erratic in their operation. No kooka. But gimp offers a sane module that works, so I can scan. FireFox 3 works great -- I got all the hard sites except cnn.com playing videos already, even this one:

http://www.elsevier.nl/web/Video.htm

The worst problem I have with it is VMware Player doesn't have updated modules for the new kernel, so no VMware for the moment. That's the stuff that happens to "early adopters" -- I'm not complaining.

I noticed the CPU utilization going kind of crazy last night, with nothing special running. I forget which process was going at 100% of the CPU, but when I went to kill it, it wouldn't die! That told me that the OS is still a little incomplete, as the kill command should never fail, when issued by root.

Anyway, it's a functional system -- Dolphin and Konqueror work like they are supposed to, which is refreshing. There have been a lot of packages updated today -- I've run dist-upgrade three times and got three new loads of packages, so it's definitely a work in progress at this point.

:)

claydoh

Jul 29th 2008, 09:38 PM

I am finding Konqueror has many little features I used to find in Firefox, such as the right-click context menu to Google highlighted text., and bookmarks seem much better than in previous versions. I am using it as my primary browser at the moment and not missing much - yet :). if you install the konqueror-plugins (in Intrepid) you get back the separate search bar and other plugins found in kde3x

as to scanning, kooka is not there anymore, but the new Skanlite is available, a somewhat lighter scan tool I rather like

Unfortunately I don't see ksirtet (tetris clone) anymore, looks to be replaced by kblocks. My wife loves ksirtet, and is rather fond of its looks, doesn't like any other tetris game even in windows :(

dibl

Jul 29th 2008, 10:27 PM

My wife loves ksirtet, and is rather fond of its looks, doesn't like any other tetris game even in windows :(

@claydoh:

1) thanks for the tip on skanlite -- I'm gonna give it a spin

2) did your wife try "same game" in Windows? I wouldn't call it a tetris clone, more like a lobotomy, but my wife loves it. ::)

MoonRise

Jul 29th 2008, 11:38 PM

Just upgraded to full 4.1 release...two problems still are there and really may be related that this is HH KDE4 remix originally. Those being that 1) the start sound gets cut off before finishing when first logging in from cold boot. If yo log out and back in it works. 2) Alt-F2 still doesn't work with kdesudo without specifying the full path. Still testing. Thought those two at least would have been fixed.

claydoh

Jul 30th 2008, 01:06 AM

2) did your wife try "same game" in Windows? I wouldn't call it a tetris clone, more like a lobotomy, but my wife loves it. ::)

I found various tetris versions both for windows and linux, she absolutely dislikes all of them except for ksirtet. She kind of likes the sparse, clean, simple, non-eyecandy look to it. If she would take up kblocks, she should be able to get that for Windows eventually :D. She also likes Koffice over OOo or MS Office, actually wishes she still had her MS Works suite from circa 1998, if that gives you any idea of what her tastes in software run to :)

She hasn't used KDE4 yet.........
My main system is still dead, she hasn't given this laptop a try yet. I wonder what she will think of it, as I do have a moderate amount of kwin effects enabled.