KDE 4: the good, the bad and the broken

[Draciron Smith]

On the Good side I'll say features they are working to implement. It
sounds like the Plasma thing is the right direction if they ever get
it really working. Right now it really is not ready for prime time and
switching reduced configuration and functionality. for no gain.

On the bad side.
Dropping of some beloved apps like kedit.

On the broken side.
This could be a really really really really long list.  For starters
picking up non-KDE apps in the menu. It took 2 updates before Firefox
finally showed up in my menu and 3 updates before the add application
function actually worked.  Yet I still can't get Gimp added to my menu
much less my task bar. Every attempt fails. It looks like I added it
but I go to look and it's not in the menu and if it's not in the menu
it cannot be added to the task bar. Who knows if this update whether I
can actually drag and drop. Sometimes I can drag menu items to the
task bar and they actually go there, other updates I can drag all I
want but I still cannot add an app to the task bar.

An easy replacement for shortcuts is needed. One of the many things
which once the Plasma desktop is actually working as described will be
nice but right now there's no reasonable method to create one.

Better distro support. Last time I tried to install KDE under Ubuntu
it was an abysmal failure. I used the Ubutunu repositories and nothing
worked. Gnome worked fine on that machine and was the default from the
installation. No sound under KDE, menu options gone, the logout log
off functions broken, no way to change the graphics resolution but I
could under Gnome. I forget half the problems but it was the most
botched KDE install I've ever attempted. Since it wasn't my machine I
just set the user up with Gnome instead of going thorugh dependency
hell trying to install from tarballs.  The Fedora install of KDE
worked out of the box but as I mentioned I've had problems with
updates adding and removing core functionality.  Don't have any SUSE
machines running at the moment but I'm sure I'd have similar
complaints about SUSE. Between Fedora, Ubuntu and SUSE your talking
over a third of desktop installs and that's at least a third of
potential KDE users running into serious problems just installing or
maintaiing a KDE system.

Memory usage. There is a memory leak and a big one somewhere. Since
moving to KDE 4 on this machine I've had to restart KDE multiple
times. Something I normally only do a couple times a year. KDE 3 could
be counted on to work and work great until I had to reboot for other
reasons. While I've not had to reboot I've had the system just crater
and run out of memory and electing to stop KDE causing me to have to
log back in. Which means 5 minutes or more of waiting for all those
apps to reopen. Some of which I have to reopen the specific file I was
editing/working on.

Pulse audio only sort of works under KDE 4. With Audacious I lose the
last 30 seconds of every song, with QNMP I suffer serious volume
issues, with other sound players I suffer conflicts as they default to
non-Pulse audio.  It'd be really nice to have Jack integrated into KDE
if possible. I know Jack is a complete pain to work with but so many
audio apps require it yet Jack is notoriously fussy under KDE, even
more so than under Gnome. I don't even bother installing it on most
machines because it conflicts so badly with KDE especially with Fedora
based distros. There was an OpenSUSE distro which actually got Jack
working great under KDE so it's possible. Unfortunately nobody is
maintaining that distro. Tempting to take it apart to figure out how
they got Jack to work and play well with KDE.  The importance is
simple. If you are a musician or intend to make movies or do any heavy
audio editing under Linux you need Jack because so many apps like
Audour, Rosegarden and even drum machines require it. I personally
don't like it and have complained to the authors of that software but
I don't see them switching away from Jack any time soon.

The loss of the ability to use a different image for each desktop.
Initially I thought this a minor annoyance but I didn't realize how
much I depended on this to keep track of what desktop I was actually
on.

Side bar proportions and editing of task bars are really awkward at
best. Given up on having a side bar and just have a top and bottom
bar. The applets are so badly distorted on the sidebar that things
like a calendar cannot be read.  I'd love to move very uncommonly used
items like netorking over to secondary task bars but it just
duplicates them not removes them. If I remove them from the primary
task bar they go away on ALL taskbars. I use the networking icon maybe
twice a year. It's however handy to have on a secondary task bar since
the ifup and ifdown commands no longer work on so many distros. Having
it required for the main taskbar makes no sense. Why would it remove
it from other taskbars if I remove it from the main task bar?

The grouping on the taskbar fails to fade if you don't choose anything
and change your focus. The tooltip doesn't go away obscuring what your
trying to choose. The tooltips should be on the side not over the
grouped items.

The reporting tool is broken. Even when I install the debugging libs
it still says they are not installed. If I click the install link on
the reporting tool it's broken. Not sure how much of this is Fedora
KDE specific or if it's more KDE specific. Don't have any current
Ubuntu machines up at the moment.  Still using KDE 3 on my laptop.

There's more, that's just what I'm remembering off hand that's bugging
me this week and that I haven't found a work around for that's become
habit.

On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 4:07 AM, Dotan Cohen <dotancohen at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am performing a lecture for my LUG on KDE 4: the good, the bad and
> the broken. These are my current topics, I would like to solicit ideas
> for further good, bad, and broken aspects of KDE 4:
>
> The Good
> Okular, Konqueror, Dolphin, Kate
> I need ideas about what is exceptionally good about Plasma. I like
> Krunner and Lancelot. Anything else?
>
>
> The Bad
> Currently the Plasma menus are very confusing to my users, I plan on
> discussing this. Special attention will be given to menu depth and the
> Cashew. Also, some key features of KDE 3 are not yet available in KDE
> 4, and as applications get ported to KDE 4 and Akonadi they lose
> features as well. Accessibility is also a mess in KDE 4. What else is
> just bad about KDE 4?
>
>
> The Broken
> I suffer many Kontact bugs, and some design ideas seem broken in their
> current implementation (activities, which will be addressed for KDE
> 4.5). What else is broken for you in KDE 4?
>
> Thanks!
>
> --
> Dotan Cohen
>
> http://bido.com
> http://what-is-what.com
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