Congratulations to KDE 4.0 Developers
KDE 4.0 was released just a few hours ago and it marks a milestone for the KDE project and desktop computing in general. As someone who has been using the SVN KDE version for several months, I have to say that I am impressed by the changes that the latest release includes. The Qxygen artwork looks great, the widgets looks great and most of all I love the built-in support for composition in KWin. So if you have worked on KDE4 in the last year, I would like to thank you! The following are my favourite additions:
- Phonon is a much better sound server than Arts
- The new sound effects are much more pleasing, I actually left many of them turned on
- The Compiz-like effects without Compiz are great. Now I can enjoy eye-candy without loosing any functionality of KDE
- The whole thing is much much faster
- Most of the new icons are very modern looking
- KickOff is much easier to use than the old KMenu
- The “New Device Detected” plasmoid was much needed feature on KDE
While it is true that KDE4.0 is not a release for the average user, the changes have been tremendous. But as most KDE developers are promising, we should have a fully usable desktop in KDE 4.1. I think that it is a possible goal, because there is only a few things standing in the way. I will list them, just to tell you what not to expect from KDE4.0.
- A good toolbar
- Dolphin does not support most of the network KIO-Slaves. For example, Konqueror is still launched if I try to access an FTP server or Samba share.
- Amarok does not have a KDE4 stable version yet
- K3B CD Burning does not have a KDE4 stable version yet
- No video player in KDE4
- Plasma still need a bit of work
- The desktop icons are just widgets and so are a bit hard to move around or they have the large ugly background.
- bringing the desktop to the front is still a bit slow