Plasma4 is better than Plasma5. [detailed list]

[mbohets]

It is the same as the kde3-4 transition.
At first kde4 sucked, and it got better.
Just skip a few releases and you'll be happy.

[xennex81]

Thanks for the writeup, that was informative.

[claydoh]

And back to Klipper (yes, there still is Klipper in Plasma 5):
I re-discovered an interesting bit here:

If one does not like the plasma widget, one can the original Klipper quite easily:
simply run klipper - type or find it in the Kmenu, and it will open up in your system tray. It will look like you have 2 clipboard tools running, because you do, until you turn off the widget based one in your System Tray Settings.

[rybnik]

Be sure to watch his "Linux doesn't suck" video, too.

Absolutely! I've even watched his "Linux for Hank" video. (animated kids' book)

And back to Klipper (yes, there still is Klipper in Plasma 5):
I re-discovered an interesting bit here:

If one does not like the plasma widget, one can the original Klipper quite easily:
simply run klipper - type or find it in the Kmenu, and it will open up in your system tray. It will look like you have 2 clipboard tools running, because you do, until you turn off the widget based one in your System Tray Settings.

That's great news!!

[rybnik]

It is the same as the kde3-4 transition.
At first kde4 sucked, and it got better.
Just skip a few releases and you'll be happy.

As recently as a few hours ago, I would have replied to this by saying, "But my touchpad only works in 15.04 so I don't have that luxury!"

But I just tested a live system of 14.04.2 (previously, the recent releases I had tried were just 14.04.0, 14.10, and of course 15.04) and although my touchpad didn't work automatically as it does in 15.04, I was able to get it to work after fiddling with gpointing-device-settings. So now I'll be able to run the LTS after all! I get to have sweet sweet Plasma4 until 2019!

Appropriately enough, I made this discovery right as I've hit 100 posts on KFN.

[otisklt]

It is the same as the kde3-4 transition.
At first kde4 sucked, and it got better.
Just skip a few releases and you'll be happy.

This is my plan for now
Hopefully but kind of doubting it currently, plasma 5 will be in better shape for the next LTS.

[ubersoft]

The transition from KDE 3 to KDE 4 was, in fact, an absolute nightmare. It was so horrifying that it drove enthusiastic supporters away from KDE. But they eventually fixed everything and KDE 4 became almost everything the developers said they wanted it to be.

The Plasma 4 to Plasma 5 transition has been better but still not great, and I'm a little worried about what the future of KDE is supposed to be based on what I'm seeing. One of the core philosophies of KDE has always been "customize it to work and look the way you want" and while there are parts of Plasma 5 I really like there are parts I don't and I can't do anything about them. Also, you still can't freaking customize folder icons on a Plasma 5 Panel. Seriously? I mean I know that's not a really important piece of functionality but icon customization has been something you were able to do since KDE 1! And you could do it anywhere!

[xennex81]

I was reading the Plasma 5 announcement (back in july 2014) just now to see what it was about. I don't really understand much of what was being said. I guess it was all for good reasons. I'm happy there was a decent announcement and a decent rationale.

[GreyGeek]

The KDE 4/5 landmark will exhibit the same dichotomy of feelings and preferences that the previous 3/4 landmark caused. I suspect that some group will continue to maintain KDE 4 just the way a group is maintaining KDE 3. The KDE developers do not have enough resources or people to maintain & develop both versions, so they will focus on bug & security fixes on KDE 4 and development of KDE 5. Eventually the number of KDE 3 users will diminish towards zero. As more and more distros install Plasma 5 the user pool of KDE 4 will decline and so will bug and security reports. Eventually very few will be using 4. Such is life. I remember when Linux distros offered nearly two dozen desktop interfaces. All were marginally successful until KDE 1.0 Beta was released as the default desktop in SuSE 5.3 in September of 1998.

[xennex81]

Interesting GreyGeek. I think it bodes well for KDE. I hope KDE4 will keep being developed (bugfixed) as long as KDE5 is not up to par. In general I'm not one to stick to old versions, but.. I'm quite fond of 4 compared to 5 currently still. My desktop PC back home still runs Kubuntu 14.10. I was in love with the visuals from the beginning. Not so with Breeze. Breeze was described as high contrast. I consider it very low contrast.

[Qqmike]

I resisted the KDE 3 -> 4, but am glad I finally got off 8.04.3! I have 15.04 installed (twice on this HDD) for boot-testing, and it just isn't "there" yet. My main OS, Kubuntu 14.04, feels soooo nice (vs 15.04, Mint, and Debian, so far). Kubuntu really has a lot of good things going for it, especially the LTSs.

[GreyGeek]

The reason why the KDE dev team dropped Qt3 and moved to Qt4 is because Toltech, the creator of the Qt API was faced with a choice. They could build on top of Qt3 and make Qt4 a monsterous kludge or they could scrap Qt3 and start fresh with their plan to modularize Qt4 and standardize the development process developers used working with Qt4. I began using Qt with version 3 and had Toltech not brought out Qt4 I would have dropped it. Developing under Qt3 was a nightmare. Under Qt4 it is a joy!

Toltech did not have the resources to maintain and develop both versions so they only support otter bug & security fixes on Qt3 for a while and put the majority of their effort into Qt4. The KDE dev team could NOT maintain and develop both the Qt3 API and KDE 3 so they HAD to go with Qt4 Converting Qt3 apps to Qt4 was not easy because a lot of Qt3 depended on kludge that wasn't in Qt4. Like the rest I found it better and easier in the long run to re-write my Qt3 apps in Qt4 starting from scratch.

Qt4 was so powerful and easier to program that the KDE developers experimented with a lot of desktop design ideas before they settled on what KDE 4.1 became.

[xennex81]

I remember from the sideline about Toltech but never knew anything about it. I was always invested in Delphi (their toolkit) and Java (minorly, Swing). Delphi VCL (visual component library) was excellent from my perspective. It just wrapped the Win32 (graphical) API in easy to use components that you could easily composit and create your own as well, while not having to deal with C-strings and other Win32 caveats. Pascal was just a marvellous language for development of GUIs - of course, you could not go beyond what the system allowed, e.g. what Winamp did was not possible but Delphi allowed direct access to the Win32 api as well, not hard and many examples around. In Java I came across the issue of grid-based layouts (auto sizing layouts) which never worked quite well and put me off of interface design, while it had been so much fun in Delphi. I never got to anything else and stuck to backend stuff (or PHP) and let desktop development far behind. In fact I didn't program for 7 years because my head was so bad.

[xennex81]

I haven't done much work for 9 years. From december 2005 till July 2014 I couldn't program, only doing some background work in WordPress as a test or an experiment to see if I could get going again.

[xennex81]

Delphi allowed event handling and event handler writing that was just so easy. Borland's online help (Windows help files) was also excellent and complete. You didn't need to go anywhere to get your answers. The IDE had field completion and context help. Traversing units (and forms) was fast, compiling was easy and you'd instantly have an executable.