Less than impressed with KDE4

My first Linux window manager experience was with fvwm - a step up from twm but hardly fancy and barely, just barely, functional. I forget the names of the window managers we used on the Decs and Suns used back in the mid-90's, but they weren't particularly fancy either. Since then I've used fvwm2, early versions of Enlightenment, Gnome (version 1), KDE2 and KDE3.

And over the years there has generally been progress, and progress by definition is good. Progress until now, that is.

I switched to KDE after experiencing major dissatisfaction with Gnome 2, and now that KDE4 is out I'm contemplating switching window managers again. Only it can't be the latest version of Gnome, as I have that on a spare laptop and don't like that either.

My first experience of KDE4 was on Kubuntu 8.04, an upgrade from 7.10 on an old Dell Latitude C400. That didn't last long enough for me to get a taste of KDE4, as the machine started freezing for no obvious reason after relatively short uptimes. A wipe and fresh install of Fedora 8 with KDE3.5 and the laptop worked fine once again. Was it Ubuntu, or KDE4?

Upgrading my home desktop to Fedora 9 (with KDE4.0) was the first real experience I had with KDE 4 and I was not impressed. Yes - I've read the blogs that discuss the fundamental reasons for chucking out vast amounts of the KDE3 code and rewriting things like the panel from scratch. Maintainable, extensible code is good.

But when the panel clock widget can't even handle displaying seconds you begin to think of KDE4 as a major step backwards. For an application as simple as a clock the KDE4 folks failed to provide the same functionality as KDE3. How the hell did this happen?

As for adding a terminal launcher to the panel - what happened to "Add Application Launcher?" I can add a widget - there seem to be an large number of widgets, most of which are thoroughly useless - but I don't want a widget. It took at least 30 minutes of messing around to work out that items in the launch menu (Kickoff its called, replacing Kmenu), when right clicked on, give an option to add to the panel. But you can't click on the panel itself and add an application launcher from there, even though its (a) the way KDE2 and KDE3 worked and hence the way KDE users expect, and (b) the old was more intuitive.

Oh, and don't edit the launcher's setting because the terminal icon will disappear and be replaced with a question mark. Progress, I tell you.

And transparent Konsoles (terminals) - we used to have those. Except now we can't have that. Sure, we can make the whole window transparent, including the writing, but that makes the writing hard to read.

As for the new panel (Plasma), well, hum, I totally agree that the power to add widgets to the desktop as well as the panel really makes up for the major lack on control over the panel appearance and lack of old panel (kicker features). That's what Linux is all about. Eye candy. No one really uses it because it is (or used to be) more functional, that is just a lie we tell the Windoze fanboyz.

Yes, I'm being sarcastic.

Its enough to make you suspect that major parts of KDE4 were written by 13-year olds whose Ritalin or interest ran out before they'd finished coding even the most basic of applications.

Now I'm a patient kind of guy. KDE4 and Fedora 9 came out ages ago and I refrained from complaining because I expected these "bugs" to be ironed out. "Yes, all very unfortunate to roll out a product clearly not ready for prime time, and that is functionally inferior to its predecessor, but I'm sure it'll get better" I thought in my typical latte-sipping, elitist, East Coast liberal mode of thinking...

So I waited. And lo and behold, the clock widget now does seconds. Hallelujah Brother! Can I get an Amen? Except the damn Konsole launcher in the panel is now failing, and takes a minute or two to tell me "KDEInit: can not launch /usr/bin/konsole". Acting on a hunch I remove the --enable-transparency option and it works again... for now.

So KDE4 remains on probation as far as I'm concerned. I have a lot of experience invested in KDE, which I am loath to lose by switching to Enlightenment or XFCE, but I'm warning you KDE: Mess me around some more and it is over.