Karol Krizka

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