Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (1840 mails)

[Sven Burmeister <sven.burmeister@xxxxxxx>]

Am Samstag, 5. Dezember 2009 17:48:41 schrieb Istvan Gabor:
> OFF:
> > I have made mistake to install new 11.2 to all the user PCs in my
> > company and now everybody is crying to get them back KDE3, because KDE4
> > is so much slower (all desktop effects turned off, newest NVIDIA
> > drivers, dual core CPUs with 2GB+ RAM), and much more complicated, and
> > has all those unneeded stuff (like plasma - I still cannot find what is
> > it good for), and does not have some tihings that were good in KDE3
> > (like little "hide taskbar" icons on the left/right).

> I am happy to learn that I am not the only one who is very unsatisfied with
>  KDE4. I also have to confirm that KDE4 is really much slower than KDE3. I
>  have tried it several times on openSUSE 11.1 but would not use it for
>  everyday use; sorry I have to correct myself, I would not use it for
>  anything but testing. I even don't know why is it called KDE. It should
>  look alike or resemble at least in something to conventional KDE, but is
>  does not. I would rather call it a dulled gnome ("DGNOME from the KDE
>  team"). It may sound disrespectful but during my more than then years
>  linux experience I never met anything so unattractive as KDE4.
>  Functionality and usability is very far from those of KDE3. Once I raised
>  at this forum the issue of the abovementioned hide taskbar buttons  but
>  Sven Burnmeister has told me off and said that if it would be really
>  wanted it had been already included. He also said that KDE3 is past but
>  KDE4 IS FUTURE. And - maybe the most important point - if KDE4 is KDE why
>  one has to learn to use it from scratch? The experience from KDE2, KDE3
>  doesn't lead you anywhere in KDE4. What does it has to do with KDE at all
>  then?

From scratch is certainly exaggerated but yes KDE4 includes opportunities and 
changes that demand the user to learn new things as one has to in the real 
world every day. And yes, I still claim that if those buttons would have been 
crucial for a considerable group of KDE users somebody would have spent time 
or money on them. Yet even those that claim to need it really bad are not 
willing to do so. And none of those that still praise KDE3 and claim KDE4 to 
be unusable cared enough about KDE3 to take over the repo maintenance. Go 
figure.

Nobody ever claimed that KDE's users are a static group so while KDE4 attracts 
new users it will also drive away those that do not like the change and put 
off most things they do not need as bling, as e.g. the magic lamp effect which 
animates the minimising of a window. Yet the latter is a good example of how 
effects are more than bling because for new computer users clicking on 
minimise would just make the window disappear without any hint where it went. 
That's bad usability! For experienced computer users it is not worth 
mentioning that minimising means that the window is put into the taskbar, yet 
for new users? The magic lamp effect links the minimising window with its 
destination and does not simply make it disappear.

This is just one little example of how claiming that effects are just bling is 
wrong as all generalisations concerning "KDE4 is all about bling and features 
nobody needs" are simply wrong by definition. Another one would be the 
magnifying glass effect or sharpening etc. Some people even claimed that 
compiz was superior to kwin effects because it could do the cube effect...

When claiming that KDE4 puts one off because of changes one should never 
forget that KDE4 attracts new users as well and as long as more users are 
attracted than put off it's community will grow. One might ignore that fact 
and wonder why oneself gets ignored but hey, that's life. Everybody has the 
right to make their own decisions and if they don't like KDE4, fair enough.

Putting 11.2 on all computers in a company a few weeks after it was 
released...I better don't comment that and its implications.

BTW, KDE4 with desktop effects enabled runs _very_ smooth on a MSI Wind 
netbook with intel graphics here and even better on an Athlon 4000+ with 2GB 
RAM and a NVIDIA 7600. Go figure.

Sven
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