Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-factory (673 mails)

[MH <haagmj@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm a long time user of KDE--ever since the 2.x release. I'm also a long time 
user of SuSE before they became SUSE and openSUSE. I've also used a wide 
variety of other distros, but most of them only briefly. I started with RH 
6.x and stayed with them until 8.x. When they stopped supporting KDE, I left.

I've NEVER liked GNOME. And though it's not near as ugly as it used to be, I 
still find it confining. What I like about KDE most is it's configurability 
and it's stability.

I've played around with KDE4.0 (which was early beta at best IMO) and 4.1 
(still beta). These are the things I don't like about it:

Unable to hide the panel (I've loved this feature since it was first 
implemented in Windows. Reduces clutter, increases screen area);

Unable to locate "launcher" icons on the panel where they will stay;

"Launcher" icons radomly change location on the panel even at "default" 
locations;

Unable to resize icons;

Unable to keep icons in designated areas of the desktop without constantly 
locking and unlocking them (with 3.x you could "align to grid" and be done 
with it); 

Unable to assign different backgrounds to virtual desktops to make them easy 
to identify;

Lack of stability. KDE4.1 has crashed on me repeatedly;

Lack of key native applications. Yes, the 3.x series variants can be installed 
and run, but not without a great deal of extra libraries and assorted cruft 
(isn't removing cruft and "bloat" one of the design goals of the 4.x series?)

Maybe it's possible to do some of the things I've listed above, but I couldn't 
manage after several hours of experimentation. In any case, I will not move 
to KDE4.x until the above items are fixed/implemented, or made as easy to use 
as they are in the 3.x series. If the 3.x series is dropped without 
addressing the above issues in 4.x (11.1), I will stay with 11.0 until 
another distro offers a better option. As a user I just don't see any advance 
in the 4.x series at all (at this point) other than a slightly more 
consistent look.

PS--in reference to usefulness of Compiz, maybe--if I could ever get it 
enabled. I did manage once under 10.3 but it wasn't stable. Have yet to 
figure out how to run it under 11.0. None of the instructions I've seen have 
worked.

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