KDE 4.5.1 rocks

[kraftman]

Use the originals: Amarok and KRunner, not the copies

And I'd disagree with you about the buginess of Qt. I've developed with it for many years, I don't remember running into a single bug. KDE only got the reputation for buginess after the release of 4.0, which took far too long to stabilise. Before that, it was the epitomy of stable.

KDE project is at least few times bigger then Gnome, so it's natural there are more bugs. Qt/C++ is wonderfull for desktop applications. It's fast!

[BlackStar]

Qt is wonderful until you start receiving bug reports on odd behavior on different platforms. It doesn't help that every new version tends to break in some new, exciting way!

As for fast, no, not really. Text and image rendering tend to be very slow but there are other areas that don't perform very well. Check this series of blog posts it offers some interesting insights into how Qt works.

[yotambien]

Well, maybe I don't have an eye for (certain kinds of) detail, or maybe I was quite lucky with KDE 4.4, for I don't see what the new awesomeness is about. In any case, there are still typical KDE annoyances here and there. Even after the re-organisation of sytem settings I still find it difficult to guess where each thing is. Of course, I'm used to it since the 3.5 series, and I value more the possibility of changing things to my liking without dwelling in the 'registry' than anything else, but it still is in my opinion an obstacle to usability.

The panel...this is a minor point, but seriously, who designed the way the panels are set up? If you move your mouse a bit the whole thing dissapears, that just doesn't make any sense. On top of that, it's quite slow and counterintuitive.

I quite like kwin, I really do, but its performance in composite mode is not satisfactory. I run gtkperf with kwin's compositing, with compositing, with compiz, with the classic r300 driver and with gallium. Basically there's an order of magnitude difference between kwin's composite performance and any of the other combinations. Not at all surprising, this doesn't translate into an unusable experience (this should put into perspective the minor importance of the relative differences between synthetic benchmark results such as Phoronix's, by the way), but you can still notice it. But this simple test makes me think that kwin developers should sort out their house first before complaining to others: the damn drivers work.

And yes, it could load much faster. What is it doing all that time?

[kayosiii]

It certainly doesn't feel like a modern browser. UI-wise it follows Netscape Navigator which is *not* a good thing. Browser design has evolved the last 10 years and Konqueror has been left behind (no Ctrl-Enter to add www and com automatically, no search through the address bar, awkward widget layout).

Not so on the search through the address bar. The defaults could be configured better though (Konquorer has had this feature longer than any other browser but it work a little bit differently). there are shortcuts for many search engines the one for google is

gg:

You can do this without the shortcut for one protocol but you need to set it as the default.

In general though I find myself using another browser (either Chromium or Firefox as these tend to work better for a lot of the sites I visit). The only thing that bothers me is the file save dialogs (gtk?) which I am not particularly fond of.

[kraftman]

[QUOTE=BlackStar;148721]Qt is wonderful until you start receiving bug reports on odd behavior on different platforms. It doesn't help that every new version tends to break in some new, exciting way![QUOTE]

But I don't care at all about other platforms. :>

As for fast, no, not really. Text and image rendering tend to be very slow but there are other areas that don't perform very well. Check this series of blog posts it offers some interesting insights into how Qt works.

I didn't mean graphic part actually, but startup times and overall applications performance. This blog is interesting, I thought many problems are just drivers related, but it seems it's not only the case.

[BlackStar]

Impressions after one week:

• KDE SC 4.5.1 is still pretty buggy. For instance, trying to adjust the time on my clock applet causes a crash. The list desktop effects locks up when using the search box. There's a 50% chance that some random crash report will show up as soon as I log in.
• Kwin is slower than Compiz. However, unlike Compiz it obeys my vsync setting which is psychologically uplifting to the extreme. NO SCREEN TEARS!
• The integrated mouse gestures do not work well at all. Great idea, but the execution sucks. Easystroke to the rescue!
• The App Launcher is nice but pales in comparison to Gnome do. Again, great idea, mediocre execution.
• The taskbar really needs to gain dock-like abilities. Or just the ability to disable name display on the task manager.
• Gnome (AWN + disabled panels) feels much less cluttered and much speedier than KDE. Going back feels like a breath of fresh air - until Compiz starts tearing again, argh! (Using nvidia, btw)
• The beast is huge. 2.7GB without even an office application. 100MB of wallpapers out-of-the-box. It could really use some trimming.

In conclusion, KDE needs to tighten up their quality control and become leaner and faster. Add some polish and we have a winner.

[grigi]

Odd, KDE takes about 5 seconds to start up on my 2 year old notebook.

And yes, kde 4.5 is a very nice improvement over 4.4 (which regressed quite severely).

Another interesting thing I noted, a colleague of mine is running Kubuntu, and I have Gentoo. We both run 4.5.1, but his desktop has more bugs than mine. Our laptops are not identical, but quite close, so...

I suspect the Kubuntu guys are not testing their builds properly.

[BlackStar]

Odd, KDE takes about 5 seconds to start up on my 2 year old notebook.

And yes, kde 4.5 is a very nice improvement over 4.4 (which regressed quite severely).

Another interesting thing I noted, a colleague of mine is running Kubuntu, and I have Gentoo. We both run 4.5.1, but his desktop has more bugs than mine. Our laptops are not identical, but quite close, so...

I suspect the Kubuntu guys are not testing their builds properly.

I'm testing KDE on Arch, which is as vanilla as it gets. Ubuntu/Gnome is significantly more stable here. I don't think Kubuntu shipped with KDE 4.5, though, so your friend's issues might have something to do with the that (backports aren't that well tested - or even supported).

I've made a few changes and KDE loads in about 4-5 seconds here, now. Still too much, consider I have a SSD that can boot Gnome in <2 seconds (~6-7 seconds from Grub to desktop).

I should add that KDM + KDE splash screen is prettier, though.

[grigi]

I'm testing KDE on Arch, which is as vanilla as it gets. Ubuntu/Gnome is significantly more stable here. I don't think Kubuntu shipped with KDE 4.5, though, so your friend's issues might have something to do with the that (backports aren't that well tested - or even supported).

I've made a few changes and KDE loads in about 4-5 seconds here, now. Still too much, consider I have a SSD that can boot Gnome in <2 seconds (~6-7 seconds from Grub to desktop).

I should add that KDM + KDE splash screen is prettier, though.

Yes, Arch is quite vanilla. Regarding Kubuntu, it always seems to just have more problems to me, *shrugs* I don't know...

So, out of curiosity, I tested my notebook. Boots in 17s from powerup (15s from post). where about 4s is spent waiting for the nvidia drivers to initialise (I checked on bootchart, for 4s the system does NOTHING! Grrr)

Still 7s boot sounds tempting... I want to get an SSD, but right now I have so much better stuff to spend my money on, like my house :P

[pingufunkybeat]

KDE SC 4.5.1 is still pretty buggy. For instance, trying to adjust the time on my clock applet causes a crash. The list desktop effects locks up when using the search box. There's a 50% chance that some random crash report will show up as soon as I log in.

I haven't had a (non-driver-related) crash in a long time. I guess people have different experiences. I've never had the crashes you mention.

The App Launcher is nice but pales in comparison to Gnome do. Again, great idea, mediocre execution.

Out of interest, what does GNOME Do do better?

The beast is huge. 2.7GB without even an office application. 100MB of wallpapers out-of-the-box. It could really use some trimming.

You didn't REALLY install all of it? Nobody does that.