Let me say this. Even for a release candidate, I'm not particularly cheerful. Oh well, applications might be better than ever, granted. The piece de resistance however is the desktop. And honestly, I hate it. Oh goodie, desklets. Wow. Useless crap I tell you. Kicker bar or whatever it's called today? Useless. New K menu? I hate it, it's hard to navigate. Give me the old one anytime...
So please anyone, tell me, how is this an improvement over the current state of affairs in KDE3??? I'm not getting it.
28 comments:
Not a particularly useful blogpost!
Quote: "Kicker bar or whatever it's called today? Useless. New K menu? I hate it, it's hard to navigate."
Constructive criticism is good, it gives the developers something to work with, and users an idea what to expect. Spewing bile, however, helps no one, and makes you look silly.
People are putting a lot of work into KDE 4, so If you have something helpful or interesting to say, say it. If not, don't. Or at least mark your blogpost "rant", hmkay ;)
Although I agree that this blog entry is not entirely helpful and more 'bile filled'... I have to admit, my first experiences with KDE4 were exactly in line with this. My thoughts, over and over, were that this is a failed Vista copy.. Useless widgets and a horrid menu navigation system. I have tried it several times now and I am sure I will get used to it when it goes mainstream, but, just like Vista, I am hesitant, reluctant, and angry that people feel the need to change an overall working, successful design scheme 'just because' or because others have done it and so will we -- or worse yet, some survey of people who do not use KDE said that a menu is easier if it is done in a particular way.
In conclusion, I will definitely label my comment as a Rant... Ruurd started it and said exactly what I was thinking! Ruurd, thanks for not kowtowing to the hype and telling us how you really feel.
You know, when you start rewriting something from ground-up, usually the first release is inferior to what was there before ...
But the iterative process will make it better and better, and the rewriting has an objective of allowing this iterative process to go beyond what was feasible before ...
So yes, KDE 4.0 is probably inferior to the current release of KDE 3, but KDE 3 had years of iterative improvements whereas KDE 4 is just at its first iteration ...
What you have to see is what is now possible, not what is available right now ...
Not sure I follow.
What was so easy to use about the KDE 3 system? I did a usability study on it a few years ago and there was definitely confusion related to what buttons did what in both konqueror and kmenu.
Any UI where activities are sorted by tasks is way easier for users to get used to.
For power users, the run menu is a good example... here you can type in the name of the app you want to run (in a similar fashion to Quicksilver or Aza Raskin's Enzo). It's always going to be much faster to type the name of the app you want to run than to find it by drilling through menus, regardless of them being in the kde 3 or kde 4 style.
I don't want to rant but in particular I find the Kickoff menu a step backwards. It's taken me a while to work out why but it is this: it breaks UI guidelines.
It is a menu. Menus pop up and then have sub menus. They expand to show all the items on them up to the limit of the screen. They are designed to be navigated by mouse. Kde3, Gnome, Windows and Mac all have them.
Kickoff fails in my opinion because it fails to act like a menu. It does not expand and remains trapped in its little square. Yes you can re-size it but that takes time.
Hover buttons are just odd and run counter to the normal way buttons are used in KDE.
Yes you can search and use keys to navigate the program "menu" but quickly; but powerusers have always been able to use keys or ALT-F2 or Katapult to quickly launch apps.
I hope this is perceived as constructive. I look forward to the alternatives being suggested but something simple like Kmenu might need porting for Luddites like me!
Kevin
(this is not going to be polite i'm tired of this shit, so welcome to the new world of hurt. if you want respect from others, then start by offering it. you failed at that, so here comes the reply.)
"Oh goodie, desklets. Wow. Useless crap I tell you."
at least you managed to completely miss the point of any of the technology involved. hooray for scraping-the-surface-analytics.
"Kicker bar or whatever it's called today? Useless."
offer details and proposed solution or just fuck off. you pick.
if you're basing your perls of wisdom off of rc1, don't bother with either, just grab recent svn and be a bit happier.
"New K menu? I hate it, it's hard to navigate. Give me the old one anytime..."
holy hell people. write a god-damned menu, submit the fucking thing and be happy.
seriously, pool all the time you as a group of people have spent bitching, moaning and pissing about the most stupid things and write the few hundred lines (at most!) of code it would take instead. then you wouldn't be upset, you'd be happy.
and i wouldn't be upset, we'd have more code and less bitching to listen to.
"So please anyone, tell me, how is this an improvement over the current state of affairs in KDE3???"
oh, i dunno. maybe a more flexible run dialog, a proper "show desktop", scripting language support, much more flexible presentation capabilities ... on and on. but you don't care do you? no, you just want to bitch and moan about your precious menu.
"I'm not getting it."
well, i don't get your bitching either. seriously, seriously disappointing.
and perhaps if you don't get it, maybe it's because the ideas either aren't apparent to you or are simply beyond you. i'll bet it's "not apparent" but who knows.
"it breaks UI guidelines"
and then people who have no clue what they are talking about step up to the mic. good job.
btw, here's a neat little reality check for all of you: for every one of you little bitter people i've run into probably 2-3 who are loving it.
so why not try and figure out what it is exactly that you're not getting, define the gap and fill it.
To be frank I love the way the new KMenu is implemented. I gets me quicker to the most important ones - run command(app search implemented in the menu), local disks, log-off/shutdown, most importantly the bookmarks. Its a great feature that was lacking in kde3.
One good thing that I have noticed in the new menu is that, it doesn't fill the entire screen on low resolution screens. If there are more menu items, you can use the scroll bar to navigate - now a days most ppl who use a graphical desktop certainly has a mouse with scroll bar ;) . If it gets you that mad, then you can add your favourite app to the bookmarks which is the fastest to access from the menu.
Also, its a pleasure to move the mouse over the categories.. it blends well with other new KDE4 goodies.
I agree that KDE4 is still not mature enough but its amazing the rate at which KDE developers have put so much great stuff into rc1 in such a short period of time..
Buddy, if you'd like to help, give us your suggestions.
someone needs to make a bitchaboutkde4.com website for people to moan and complain about all the little things. Not one single developer has ever said that kde4 or even kde4.0 is ready for use at this exact second in time. The devs are starting from the ground up on most things and what I see is wonderful well-thought out architecture and planning. Not to mention ultra-cool new features. KDE4.0, to me at least, is all about the underlying technology.
Everytime I read a dev's blog about how they are hacking on this or that I'm simply blown away at the sheer collective genius behind the kde project.
And the best part of all of this is the fact that it's your CHOICE to run what YOU want on YOUR computer. If you want to run Vista, go out and buy a copy and be happy. If you want to run a Linux distro with Gnome, go for it. If you want to stick to KDE3, do that. Heck, you have the source, you can even modify it if you want. If you want to try something new and fresh, try KDE4.
No one is forcing kde4 down your throat. No one is holding a gun to your head and telling you that you MUST USE KDE4. We actually have freedom here. And to bitch and moan that some people are doing things not to your liking but that don't need to affect you at all is just plain stupidity.
>If you want to stick to KDE3, do that.
Oh yeah, with thousands of bugs which will never be fixed because everyone at KDE is koding KDE4
sure
What a bunch of Nazis you are people.
"Dare critic KDE4 and I'll kill you"
What a bunch of childs, starting for the president.
KDE 4.0 is and will be dissapointing., you can take my words.
BTW - I was trying to be a bit constructive. Perhaps not the best place to comment here! I love the rest of KDE 4 so far. My only gripe was with Kickoff. Never liked Kickoff in KDE3. Not bitter just a bit concerned...
I have bought a book on C++ from Amazon. It is in the post! I think there is a steep learning curve ahead of me...
ramsees wrote:
> you can take my words.
Yep, I'll take them and throw them in the bin. Do you ever have anything positive to say, or is it your mission to seek out KDE blog posts and add your useless complaints to each one?
Michael Tabolsky wrote:
> Oh yeah, with thousands of bugs
> which will never be fixed because
> everyone at KDE is koding KDE4
3.5.8 was released recently and AFAIK 3.5.9 is being worked on right now. "Thousands" of bugs? Care to cite your source?
You guys are so stupid.
The devs are doing a wonderful job.
Of course things are still broken, and buggy and features are missing.
But they are doing their best to make kde4 the best kde ever.
So as has been said tons of times, nobody is opposed to criticism, if it is productive criticism.
Saying stuff like "kde4 sucks" "give me back the old menu" blabla doesn't help anybody.
Can't make good comments, don't make comments at all.
The devs are working their ass off, and doing so for _FREEEEEE_ so stop this bullshit pleeeeease, before you piss them all off and make them stop what they are doing.
pfff
I'm of two minds about this... on the one hand, bitching never solved anything and does nothing besides hurt morale, on the other hand, what happens if KDE 4.0 is released, and every review of it ends up bitching the exact same way, about the exact same things? Wouldn't be fun... basically, just because they're downers, doesn't mean they don't have a point.
Right now I'm cautiously optimistic that you can pull it off (the recent progress has been immense), but I'm also concerned... at some level, I think most of the whining and bitching only shows that those people really care about KDE4, and want it to succeed (ramsees doesn't fall into this category), but are very afraid that it won't, and this is how they respond emotionally. Yeah, logical it ain't.
p.s. goddamn, is blogger still a giant pain in the ass. only had to to type the captcha like ten fucking times...
>I think most of the whining and bitching only shows that those people really care about KDE4
most probably you are right, or at least I think you are.
most of us just can't wait it to happen...
I'm an outsider (but longtime KDE123 user) and I read kdeplanet. I even tried kde4 recently (rc1 livecd). I also posted/commented on several bugreports for kde.
My own impression of KDE4 is that it appears very nice, but rough looking GUI groundwork with a very limited, little tested GUI. I had exactly the same feelings (but less negative) about KDE4, probably because my long time kde3 use is making me biased.
The kickoff thing looks nice, but I agree that it's a confusing part of the desktop interface, because the menu remembers where you were last time, which makes it harder to navigate to something else. Is this a bug? The old kicker menu is at least predictable.
I hope all this will turn out well for KDE4.1, I've lost most of the hope that KDE4.0 will be usable for me.
Like someone else mentioned, I hope that KDE4 doesn't drown under need for bling, since most people just use KDE for getting stuff done. Requiring to learn a totally new interface (even if it will be better in the end) is not going to help people switching from kde3.
So my advice is to design a migration path for people coming from kde3, so they will still feel at home in kde4 and can slowly learn all the new goodness while staying productive.
BTW, I'm almost physically hurting from seeing aseigo going mental about this post, I thought he was a nice guy, a worthy representative for KDE, I'm starting to doubt that :-(
I hope it was an imposter!
Cheers
Simon
I feel sympathetic with aseigo. How do blog posts like this end up on kdeplanet?
jeez, who died and made you god. If this is your KDE contribution, then please go away.
Aaron,
You are way out of line. No one disrespected you in the criticism of the new Plasma system. If a person thinks it sucks, a person thinks it sucks, and that has nothing to do with you. You are getting personally insulted when you don't actually have a right to be so.
Also, "fix it yourself" and "propose a better solution" are not appropriate responses. I don't have to know how to fix my car to point out that it is broken. One doesn't have to have a suggestion to better the situation to know it sucks.
The only thing I agree with you about is the lack of detail. It would actually be more helpful if people would say WHY the new systems aren't up to snuff. WHAT is wrong with it, and why is that thing problematic? Those details would help make things better. So all you KDE4 sucks people should put some details up if you want to see some change.
A lot of whiners and moaners here. They don't seem to know the difference between looking at "problems" and looking for "opportunities". This KDE4 has a lot of potential, like any new born has a lot of potential. There will be lots of "opportunities" to develop that potential. And there will also be the Scribes and Pharisees.
Ok, you "nothing can be wrong with KDE 4, you're all just whiners" folks want specifics? kwin pegs my CPU at about 75% at all times. Mouse movement jerks from one side of the screen to the other, no granular control or smooth movement. As far as I can tell, there is no way to make menus expand on mouse-over. You have to click-click-click to go to different levels. It's asinine. I can't figure out what those stupid semi-transparent floater icon-with-no-text things are supposed to do. That's as far as I got with it. It sucked too much to pursue.
kde4 was like getting an iphone, with no touch screen. all the work I spent getting it on the first day of its official release......wow, though opensuse's rpms are nice, I feel I can compile things easier on my own, in half the time.
I realize that it's not easy to write the source for something like kde 4.. But it's still the developers responsibility to make a product that i want to use. I loved kde before kde 4.. I've used it since '98 i think... To emphasize until this release of kde, i didn't think that gnome or any other desktop manager had a fighting chance.
Now.. Gnome is all i use.. I'm using Ubuntu right now, so when it has an update for a kde related package, i'll check it out, and find that it's still not what i'm looking for.
The menu is a huge gripe, I tried this menu out a while ago and saw that it was crap, I can't believe it was actually seen as useful ever. If they want a Windows xp/vista type menu.. then freaking make a Windows menu.
The other thing is less focused.. i haven't really tried to find out what's causing it, but overall performance of kde 4 is WAY worse then any previous version.
Anyways.. that's all i have to say..
What I've seen so far are many comments attacking those who point out the fail KDE 4 turned out to be.
KDE has always relied on functionality. Many GNOME users don't like KDE <= 3.5 because of its interface. That, in fact, is subjective, but what is really objective and something to point out is the fact that KDE has always had much more functions and options than GNOME. Until now...
You want to know why I, as an end-user, didn't like KDE 4? Some of you dismiss us, the users who didn't like this version. Now, imagine that the developers of KDE 4 were just like you and dismissed us in the same way. They would go all blinded, thinking of KDE 4 as unmatched, and developing without recognizing why many didn't like it. In the end, they would go so blinded, they wouldn't recognize why the new releases lost the support of previous regular KDE users.
So, to prevent this, because I do like KDE, and wouldn't like to see it fall, I do my own contribution by pointing out how did it fail.
KDE 4 lacks functionality. By the way, didn't I tell you functionality has been the main feature of KDE?
You want examples? Getting icons into the desktop and from the desktop was never so tedious. There is no quick option to add an application launcher, except those...useless (at least to me) apps that make KDE 4 "rock".
Where is the "show desktop" feature? There is a show dashboard one, which is activated by Ctrl+F12, but which helps me not. This function actually shows you the desktop, and that's cool, isn't it? But why would it be of any use to see the desktop if you can't do nothing to it this way? I used "show desktop" to add icons when I had many windows open, to run an icon from my desktop in seconds, to minimize everything so I could maximize only the window I was to use, etc. Now I can't, and I'm left to only see my desktop and the widgets on it.
The new KDE menu is not efficient. For efficiency I require speed, but having to click-and-browse for so long simply slows my experience. I'm not lazy, but, again, I require speed. This has a solution, and it is going back to the classic style. It works. But it should be default if the project aims for usefulness and efficiency.
Lack of options? Sure there is. When clicking "Configure desktop", from the context menu of the...err... desktop, you don't get even half of the options you had with its KDE 3.5 equivalent.
"Panel settings" has the same problem.
Many more settings are missing, as there is a general lack of customization capabilities.
KDE 4 tried to have much more eye-candy, but, in my opinion, it simply killed functionality and, the worst of all: didn't even achieve a good look when it comes to mixing themes. That is mediocre. It seemed to me as a project where nobody knows what the look is to be. The new theme for the windows is original (I love it, and also love the redesigned interfaces for many programs), but it doesn't fit with some other graphical changes, like those made to the panel. Black for the desktop and grey for the windows. And in the end, a match I, personally, didn't like. But that is just me and maybe others. What really affects me as an user -and thus, many more who are used to the previous KDE features-, is the awful lack of personalization the environment offers, the poor settings and configuration management and this brand new feature: no use for intuition.
That is what I saw when working with KDE 4. That is my opinion.
I hope you don't tell me to add my own features or solutions. First, I'm not a developer, I'm an user (would you go telling every compelling user to go and re-program every single thing he doesn't like? -the vast majority would go away-), and, if you ask me for solutions, I can go and review KDE 3.5 and give you a comparison between it and KDE 4, and from that comparison I would get my "features needed" list.
The new K Desktop Environment has a lot of potential, but needs many positive regressions, while also keeping its new advantages. For now, I stay with KDE 3.5, which, in my opinion, is the best desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems, and hope intensive work is done with the forecoming versions of the K Desktop Environment.
I find the KDE4 menu system awkward to use in that moving about the application menus, the largest collection of sub-menus, is not mouse position driven, but "click" driven. The lower row of icons are too big, and its hard to see haow to modify their size. The conbination of left and right and up and down scrolling, sometimes needing mouse clicks may be ingenious, but demolishes the overview of what could be a comprehensive solution. There is no convenient history tracking mechanism. As has been pointed out, this is the first released version and I think is inferior to what exists in kde3 at present. The concept of kde4 is I think too complicated as a steering wheel/joystick to drive the underlying applications. It's certainly quite novel.
Command line still rules for size and efficiency. How would a developer draw down source code into a GUI application to hack it, configure, make and install?
KDE4 interface is aimed at run of the mill users who only need a small subset of applications with the odd utility now and then.
KDE4 has it's pluses and minuses yes. The developers would like to know both +/-'s so that they can make it the way ppl want it. I loved the way you can change/theme items easily in KDE3 but in KDE4 this is not working, maybe because openSuSE team broke it? I can't figure out how to theme anything except my background, all the theming tools don't work or it's too new and there are no updated themes out there. Dolphin, I wanted to regurgitate it when I found out it replaced Konquerer but after taking time to learn to use it it is great need a few add-ins which are on the way but fully functional. KDE4 seems faster than KDE3 when displaying items. Bluetooth not fully functional in KDE4 worked fine in KDE3/Gnome. I like the new widgets for icons but really don't need other stuff, and yes I know the new kicker is a widget and no I can't theme that f'er either. KMenu (widget again) is ok, but I liked kbfx better as a menu, BTW you can use the old style menus if you add that widget for the guy up there^ that likes the old style. They dfinately aren't done but since it is only version 4 and a remake/facelift/whatever they need time to get it all worked out and going they way we/they like it. I'm in for KDE4 I will learn to use it like I do all technology if they want me to like it more they need to add docs on how to theme it at least if the theming community hasn't caught up yet. YES I LOVE THEMES... So good job guys keep up the good work. And hopefully the community will list things working or not good or bad and WE can get KDE 4 UP TO PAR with what we expect in a DM.
I don't think is even near to something called cheerful, its rather painful. I am using linux from last three years.
I loved ubuntu with kde3. Recently I upgraded my old ubuntu to latest KDE4. It was very painful experience.I Its fancy but useless. After struggling for two days I gave up and downgraded again to KDE3. KDE4 is like Vista of Linux.
I think a lot of you on both sides of this issue are missing the big picture. Change can good when when change is incremental and for the better. If Linux ever hopes to make serious inroads into the business desktop world the UI folks need to remember this. Microsoft is falling into this same trap. In the business world, especially in this economy, there simply isn't time or money to re-train employees for a new UI. XP still reigns in that arena simply because people are used to it. Does anybody out there want to re-learn to drive every few years at the whim of the auto makers? The answer is no. But if changes are made incrementally giving folks time to adjust, that's OK. I've been using Linux with KDE for almost 10 years now. It has evolved and improved quite impressively over that period. I recently built a web server for a customer and went with the Suse 11.1 and installed KDE 4 with the assumption that it would continue incrementally, the way it had for years. After the installation it was if I was paralyzed. Nothing was where I was used to and the desktop features that I was accustomed to were gone or different. I reverted back to 3.5 simply because I didn't have time or the mind-share to learn a new UI. I will investigate KDE4 when I have time, but that probably won't be for a while and in the meantime I'll continue to install and use 10.3 or maybe 11.1 and won't even consider 11.2 when it comes out if KDE 3.5 is unavailable.
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