kde4.2 - my feedback

[Hans-J. Ullrich]

Dear developers, 

I just tested kde4.2, using debian-live cd. This is my first feedback with my 
very, very personal impressions.

Tested on a Acer Aspire 9300 WLMI, dual-cpu with 2x1,8GHZ, 2GB RAM, Nvidia 
Graphics card with 512MB (7300Go). 

Starting:

First, I liked the new splashscreen. Looks very fine. After the first icon 
appeared, nothing seem to happen (about 30 - 45 seconds), then suddenly it 
went on, and kde started. I saw no wizard, for the first configuration, but 
this might be normal, as it is a live cd.


Settings:

Of course the first thing, I wanted to change, were the personal settings. 
Keyboard and language are the most important thing. As German (my native 
language) was not available, I could not set it, but this was normal. It was 
just a live-cd.

Setting for my keyboard was fine (in my case it is Acer Laptop). 


Critics

Look and Feel:
First I took a look at the launcher. At the first glance it seemed good 
structured. When working with the launcher, I was happy, to see, that at 
every start of the launcher, you now always begin with the starting points of 
the menu, and no more with that point, you have ended at the last time. Nice!

Clicking on a menu like "graphics" let me see and choose the application, but, 
when hovering back to the left, I expected, to get automatically back to the 
menu choices (graphics, multtimedia and so on), but nothing happend. I have 
to click at the left on the "back" arrow to get back.

Hovering over the tab-icons did me neither bring back, too, nor back top the 
starting points.

This behaviour is a pain in the ass.

Please let me explain out of my view, why:

At KDE3.X it is that way: When I am looking for an application, and I do not 
exactly know, where I find it (for example a graphics application might 
either be in "Graphics" or "Multimedia"), but I know its name, I can hover 
over the menues, and as the submenus appear, I just can see and find my 
required application very fast. With KDE4 this is no more possible, I have to 
click into every menu, click back, click into, click back, click into... A 
paine in the ass, really (sorry for that)

I wish for me an option, to open submenus by hovering over the menus. This is 
really missing! I saw, you can activate and deactivate this for the tab-icons 
in the applauncher settings, but I found nothing for the menues itself.


Taskbar
Another point, I am not fond of is the taskbar. Not the taskbar itself, but I 
dislike the very small areas for the virtual desktops. As I am very often 
switching among the desktops, IMO the buttons should be much bigger. It was 
o.k., as it was in KDE3.


Logout:
Logging out did not work. Although I configured it in that way, to show all 
options and pressing "Logout"-button, to shutdown the machine, this did not 
work. Either the machine could be shut down (KDE4 always restartet), nor I 
could choose the option "shut down" in the logout window. This might be a 
bug!


General:
I like the new optical style. It looks very modern and KDE4 seem to run faster 
on my machine than KDE3. Applications I use (i.e. kmail) are fine, I found no 
problems. In comparison to KDE3 (and I am using KDE since version 1.x), IMO 
KDE4 has got marked lesser usability than KDE3! KDE3 is more usable to 
unexperienced people than KDE4. Changing the points, I described above, might 
improve the system significantly. 

My description and critics are my very personal view and may be not important 
for the folks at all, so please don't anger with me, but I hope it will help, 
to improve the system at all.

I know, this is a lot of work! Thanks for this!!!!

Best regards

Hans