Review: KDE 4 Live Preview

I must say (and sorry for the language) that this is the most fucked up, biased review i’ve ever read. I understand that it’s your blog and not PCMag or ZDNet or CNET, but man, have at least a bit of journalistic integrity. That being said, my take on the review/KDE4:

First, my take on KDE4: It’s better than KDE3…I think it’s sexy as hell, but it offers little useful functionality or improvement over KDE3 and i agree that it was developed a bit too long for this which is a half-done Desktop Environment. Also, for the record, I think KDE4 is better than Vista will ever be…and yes, i have used Vista and i even know the lead developer of the Vista kernel team who says the OS sucks and doesn’t even use it himself. Is it better than XP? I’m gonna say yes, but just by a hair.

Now, my take on the review: As far as the size of the panels and clock, you can customize that by editing a few settings (in the GUI)…That’s one of the advantages of KDE. As far as the main menu, i prefer it organized like that instead of 1 list of every category and that being it, Is it as good as was “advertised”, no, but is it not bad, yes. As far as the icons, i prefer elegantly made icons that are insanely scalable over shininess any day…Maybe it’s cuz the artists/graphics guys thought their audience was more than hick-ish idiots who are amused by shiny stuff… For prying people away from Windows or Mac, there are 3 levels of people:
1. The grandma…Uses it for checking email, doesn’t know much about tech.
2. The person who knows enough to be bothered by the slowness of Windows but has a decent tech background.
3. The experienced person who knows how to do what they need with what they’re using and they have a damn good knowledge of tech.

The first 1 and 2 don’t care about sexiness…As long as they can use the thing to get on Yahoo Mail/GMail/YouTube/Myspace/Facebook/Word/etc, that’s all they care about and if it’s faster than Windows with less maintenance required, all the better. Which Linux is already. For the 3rd category, they already prolly know about linux and have a valid reason for not using it (no hardware support, no Photoshop, no decent video editing software) or use it already, but they don’t count.

As far as the Widgets…meh…I was looking forward to 1 widget (KDETwitter which wasn’t $%&^&%&$ shipped), but i find widgets stupid and i even turn the dashboard off on all 3 of my OS X systems (I also don’t recall ever using Vista’s Sidebar).

Now, i understand that you don’t hate linux, but there is plenty of a use for it. If you don’t do hardcore stuff that is OS-specific (as i mentioned above), Linux is the perfect OS…It’s pretty (prolly prettier than Windows with about 5 minutes of customization), it’s fast, no need for any maintenance tools or anti-virus/anti-spyware working in the background, and simply put, there are no security risks associated with linux…Only about 15 viruses exist for the OS (compared to about 1 million for Windows) and Spyware for linux doesn’t exist. and if you’re gonna bring up that Mac doesn’t have security issues either, don’t…Not everyone wants to/can spend $600 on a low-end system to run an OS where Linux is free and runs on almost any hardware you throw at it.

One thing you also must remember…Linux didn’t have a decent GUI till about 1998…Windows had one in 1993 (or earlier if you call Windows 1.0 and 2.0 a GUI) and Mac had one sometime in the 80’s. I think with that comparison, Linux has come a LONG way in 10 years and within another 5 or 10, it’ll be 100% perfect for everyone.

Now, from your last paragraph, flaming is easier than helping, i agree, but as far as linking people to an easy guide to make their desktops sexy…I can’t help there…The closest thing to a guide i can offer is this (I’m a GNOME user, so i’m giving this on the GNOME side…Also, that’s what most distros use by default):
1. Go to http://www.gnome-look.org and find a GTK Theme and/or Icon theme you like.
2. Go to System-Preferences-Appearance and drop the theme you downloaded onto it.
3. Select the theme.

Guides are useful if it takes a bunch of work to make your OS look the way you want it to. Unless you want to see a guide of how to make your Linux look exactly like OS X/Vista, the steps i mentioned above are all you need.

Can’t say I didn’t see that one coming. I don’t think your points are really all that valid though.

Linux’s GUI is so far behind because it’s only been in the biz for 9 years? By that logic wouldn’t the first iPod have sucked compared to a Rio?

I also understand you can configure the OS to look a million ways, but first impressions are what counts. If it looks like a toy OS when I first boot it, I am not likely to spend hours on end tweaking it.

Again with the Virus stuff..I have never, ever ever, had a virus on Windows or Mac….on Linux. Your likelyhood of catching viruses is directly related to your knowledge of computers. I would say with much confidence, if you are smart enough to keep a linux box up and running the way you want it, compiling apps, modding xorg files, etc….then you are smart enough to NOT get a virus on Windows. I would sure hope so.

Lastly, I think you missed my boat on cost. If you want a Linux computer today, you guy buy a computer (very few sell sans OS) so you are either dual booting, or deleting Windows or OS X (unless you are buying from a select few Dells, etc. that come with Ubuntu) So if you already have a license for Windows on the box that you just deleted to install Fedora or Suse, how can you say that Linux is free but Windows costs? You had it and deleted it.

I know your arguments, I agree with many of them, but they are two sided and can usually be countered with just as compelling an argument for the converse opinion.

The point of my review is simply that Linux has to have an edge to get people’s attention if it’s going to make any stab at the desktop market. Not for you or me, but for my mom and my sister, and the 711 clerk that just does fantasy football on it. If out of the box it looks that vanilla and odd, they aren’t going to invest the learning required to make it any better.

Comment ninja no worky

@Vlad Gerasimov:

Great job with the wallpaper Vlad, how did you create it?

Quick reminder : http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3174

For those who don`t want to many tabs or windows :
” * KDE 4.0 is not KDE4 but only the first (4.0.0 even non-bugfix) release in a years-long KDE4 series to come.
* KDE 4.0 is known to have missing parts or temporary implementations (eg printing, PIM, Plasma).
* Most changes happened under the surface and cannot be discovered in a “30 minutes usage”-review anyway.
* User interfaces being unchanged in 4.0 compared to 3.5 may be still changed/improved during KDE4 life time.
* KDE 4.0 will not be the fastest KDE4 release, like for KDE2 most speed optimizations will happen later during KDE4.
* Most applications (many are not even fully ported yet) will take advantage of new features which the new Qt/KDE libraries offer only later.
* Don’t measure portability success (eg MS Windows) by current availability of application releases, they will come.
* KDE 4.0 is only expected to be used by early adopters, not every KDE 3.5 user (and IMHO KDE 4.0 shouldn’t be pushed onto other user types like planned for Kubuntu ShipIt [btw said to have only 6 months support for its packages]).
* KDE 4.1 development will not require the same amount of time as the big technology jump 4.0, expect 4.1 later this year.

Last, again: KDE 4.0 is not KDE4.”

Hi
why do you compare KDE 4.0 with Windows XP or Vista and that too with only looks?. If you think Vista or XP is better stick to it. Also, this is not the final KDE4.

Chris » That wasn’t my logic, read up in the comments. And visually, it is WAY behind without 3rd party packages and a lot of hard work, not even considering how fragile and flaky but Compiz and Beryl are once you get them running (this is speaking with experience with both on Ubuntu and Fedora with nVidia hardware.)

About Jason Burns
Note 1/7/2008] I want to disclose that I now work for Microsoft. I will still maintain my OS Agnostic viewpoint, but per Microsoft’s policy, I want to make sure that it’s public knowledge that I am a representative of their company now.
For a real KDE review thats shows pros and cons, and is not biased go to.
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/kde-40-review.ars

Agnostic viewpoint, yeah right!

LOL

Wright Better Reviews » Oh I agree, but you are still ignoring the point. This is a time when the look and feel of the OS is a major selling point. If Linux is going to make up any ground against the other two, it’s first impression when you boot up a new machine can’t be this.

Wright Better Reviews » Do you really think Linux as a desktop OS can survive on geeks alone?

I started using linux with slakware in 1995. It takes some time to configure things and that has never been problem for me, but lately im not sure wtf is up, alot shit just isnt working. Im starting to get the feeling that we have just had a migration of windows developers somehow enter the code base. Sorry about my attitude.