KDE UI more user friendly?

[life0riley]

According to this the KDE Devs are working to make the UI more user friendly.

http://m.slashdot.org/story/207469

[whitepine]

This is a complaint about KDE that I really don't understand. To make changes in other DEs it's often necessary to enter arcane commands from a terminal, with KDE you can usually find a setting in System Settings that you can just click on, if you change your mind it's just as easy to change it back. I've never used Kmail so I can't comment on that.

[life0riley]

I really didn't think KMail was that hard to setup up once I figured it out. There are quite a few posts about it on this forum.

I don't want to loose configuration options, but I'm fine "bending toward simplicity" as long as they adhere to this principle.
Simple by Default, Powerful When Needed
There is an interesting discussion thread at the bottom.

[GreyGeek]

There are a LOT of things the KDE dev team could do that would be more profitable than dumbing down the KDE interface. They could fix the bugs that still exist, and make dialogs consistent across the desktop. As illustrated by this video:

Remember when KDE4 was released?


The developers opened it up to any and all suggestions and because of the power and rapid ease of development using the Qt API they went through a whole series of experiments with the interface and applications. One volunteer, who was in grad school at the time, offered a web page to explain the new apps and features. He was crucified by those who abhorred change. Their attacks got personal and vicious. Some of the attacks were drive-by shootings by people masquerading as KDE users. He quit in disgust and devoted that time he used to his wife and graduate studies.


I suspect that the same thing will happen with this venture. My recommendation is to continue to polish the KDE UI and remove conflicting dialogs, fix the things that don't work properly, or don't work at all. But above all, DON'T dumb it down. Or, if the KDE dev team dumbs it down, then I hope the Kubuntu team removes those cosmetics and restores full power. IF I wanted to run a dumbed down and annoying interface I could use Unity or go back to Windows.

[life0riley]

OMG! I love this video. Does it still work that way?

[DoYouKubuntu]

Remember when KDE4 was released?

Yes, indeed I do! And I HATED it! In fact, its early days drove me to GNOME, that's how disgruntled I was by the sweeping changes to my beloved KDE 3. Then, at some point, I said to myself, "you're not a GNOME person, you're a KDE person!" and decided to check it out again. By then it had matured enough to lure me back--and now, I wouldn't stop using it for anything. I think its development team has done an amazing, awesome job.

My recommendation is to continue to polish the KDE UI and remove conflicting dialogs, fix the things that don't work properly, or don't work at all. But above all, DON'T dumb it down. Or, if the KDE dev team dumbs it down, then I hope the Kubuntu team removes those cosmetics and restores full power. IF I wanted to run a dumbed down and annoying interface I could use Unity or go back to Windows.

Very nicely said, and I can't add a thing to it.

[claydoh]

Anyone who remembers KDE3 knows that their things has been moving this way for some time now. This is a non-story, imnsho. My take is that they are not dumbing down, they are changing what where and how the extra options are presented. Which is good. As long as that is the case, that they don't take away something, even if they make it a little bit hidden away, we'll all be fine and happy.

As much as I Iove KDE and being able to do all this fancy stuff with it, the real truth is that the perception is that KDE is complicated and difficult, and therefore bloated due to all the options, blah blah blah. And to be honest, it is for a good number of people. (not the bloated part, though, that's BS). Making the super cow powers available in different way by keeping the basics up front and the complex a bit further in is IMO a great compromise between the starkness of Gnome and the Menu Frenzy that was KDE 3, and still is a little, relatively speaking. 90 percent of us won't see anything life-threatening, 5 percent will not care, and the last 5 will scream bloody murder no matter what happens.


I say all this while trying to reproduce the dialogs in the video in KF5, and ...... there is no option to add files and folders, etc to the Folder View desktop atm lol!!!

[life0riley]

There are a LOT of things the KDE dev team could do that would be more profitable than dumbing down the KDE interface. They could fix the bugs that still exist, and make dialogs consistent across the desktop. As illustrated by this video:
...

After watching that video I agree.

...
Remember when KDE4 was released?
...

I started in February 2014. I might have had exposure to KDE3 with Slackware, but I didn't do much with it. I missed that whole transition.

...but I'm fine "bending toward simplicity" as long as they adhere to this principle.
...

Thanks for not running me out of town for this one!

Truly, the last thing I want is a dumbed down interface like Unity or Gnome3. That's why I switched from Ubuntu to Kubuntu in the first place.

[MoonRise]

Interesting Video. As far as the oddities in the Trash portion, they still seem to exist. The New Folder and New File portion appeared to be improved upon. Love seeing videos of those type of oddities.

[GreyGeek]

..... (not the bloated part, though, that's BS). ....

Indeed. "Bloat" in code is also called "kruft". It is code that "apparently" has been logically bypassed by successive additions to the code base, but attempt to remove it crash the OS. Microsoft has been fighting its bloat for a long time.

More than 200 programmers are working concurrently on slimming down the Windows kernel for Windows 7, the next version of the operating system. Called 'MinWin', it consists of just 100 files and weights in at 25 MB compared to Vista's 5,000 files and 4 GB core.

Now you know why VISTA was so big, bloated and unstable.

I began coding in Qt and C++ at the end of the Qt3 API. Trolltech, the developers, were debating whether to add Qt4 code to Qt3 or to start fresh. Bloat played a huge role in the decision to leave Qt3 and start fresh with Qt4. Even more so, Trolltech wanted Qt4 to be modular and polymorphic from the ground up, with the users being able to subclass base classes to add their own functionality. Doing that with Qt3 would have produced Rude Goldberg type of code. Qt4 was a MASSIVE improvement in the Qt code base and is the main reason why KDE4 is so powerful and flexible today.


A LOT of people confuse adware for bloat. Other terms for adware are bloatware and crapware. Adware, and its pseudonyms, are not part of the operating system, bloat is.

[kubicle]

I really didn't think KMail was that hard to setup up once I figured it out. There are quite a few posts about it on this forum.

I don't want to loose configuration options, but I'm fine "bending toward simplicity" as long as they adhere to this principle.
Simple by Default, Powerful When Needed
There is an interesting discussion thread at the bottom.

Just for clarification, the screenshot is not the "next version of kmail", but a mockup of a mail client geared towards tablet users for Plasma Active.
They're not "dumbing down" kmail for desktops.