Since I watch Planet KDE it was easy to get caught up in the excitement around the launch of the new version of KDE (the announcement is here). I was unable to resist giving it a try on the laptop! So this post is coming from Konqueror 4.0.0.
I tried an early Beta of the KDE 4.0 Live CD, but it was still using the KDE3 Kicker and was also a bit unstable. I wasn’t sure if it was the fact I was running in a virtual machine that made the graphics a bit flaky or whether it really was beta-quality code making things a bit funny. The KDE team put a lot of effort into bug-swatting in the weeks leading up to 4.0 being tagged, and it’s a lot better now!
This announcement from the Kubuntu folk shows how to get the KDE 4 packages installed on Gutsy. KDE 4 installs in a different path to KDE 3, so you can try out KDE 4 without affecting your existing environment.
I did have a bit of a heart-starter with this though, as apt-get wanted to remove a package called “kdebase-bin-kde3”, which looked risky! It’s okay though, as equivalent binaries are provided by “kdebase-bin-kde4”. In fact, if you follow Kubuntu’s instructions exactly, you should not see the issue: it happened to me because I did a system update after adding the Kubuntu PPA repository but before installing KDE 4. The system update brought a bunch of updated KDE 3 packages out of the PPA, one of which was to replace the standard “kdebase-bin” package with a “kdebase-bin-kde3”.
First impressions are that Oxygen (the new artwork for 4.0) looks great — it’s a very modern look. Some might think it borrows from Vista, but to me it’s got as much of Mac OS X’s appearance as that of Aero. Plasma (the desktop shell) does some interesting things, like turning desktop icons into widgets, but I’m yet to spend enough time with it to experience the other improvements it brings.
The biggest thing I’m looking to trying out is the compositing built into the window manager, KWin. Unfortunately the laptop is a bit old for this to work well (or at all in fact), so I’ll either have to find some magic Xorg setting or get the KDE 4 packages on the desktop machine. I’ve had trouble running Beryl and Compiz thanks to something about the terminal program Yakuake tickling a long-lived bug in X11 (I think part of the reason it’s long-lived is that the X11 folks don’t accept it as a bug but rather a fringe case that Yakuake shouldn’t be exercising, hence a stand-off) so it will be interesting to see if KWin has the same kind of issue.
As for bugs, well there look like plenty. 🙂 As I’m keying this, Konqueror is chewing 100% CPU and the characters are delayed by a couple of seconds (and of course, now that I observe this, it stops doing it). Still with Konqueror, this is about the third time I’ve tried to post this thanks to Konqueror segfaulting for strange reasons. Also, the Alt-F2 program launcher reports that it was unable to launch whatever you told it to, even though it does so successfully.
There has been plenty written by the KDE folks about the “1.0.0 release of KDE 4”, and they’re copping a fair amount of stick from people who think they’ve done the wrong thing by releasing as 4.0.0. I’m on KDE’s side. Although many KDE folks have used their KDE 4 builds as their daily desktop for months, I haven’t seen anyone who wears a KDE hat recommending that others do so. The term “will eat your children” has been used to describe KDE 4 by folks from the KDE team, so there has never been any pretense that KDE 4.0.0 would be a daily desktop for the majority of users. I’ve never really participated in large-scale software development, but I can see their motivation for releasing what they had as 4.0.0 — I’m proof of it. As long as it was a beta I was not really all that fussed about trying it out; even after there were release candidates I wasn’t all that keen. As soon as you call it a release, however, your early-adopters rush in and kick the tyres and your real testing can start.
By being open about 4.0.0’s status (and I don’t think you can get more open than “will eat your children”), they can make sure that subsequent releases are a lot better than they would be if they dragged on in perpetual beta — the model that Google and the Web 2.0 fraternity seem to insist is better, plodding on for months hiding behind beta status and its implicit “get out of jail free” card.
Instead, KDE has shown the courage to take their code, along with its bugs, and hold it up as something they are proud to give to the world. It’s the foundation not only for future releases of KDE, but possibly the start of new ways that people work with their computers. By working with the community, instead of closeted away from it, I believe the KDE team will succeed.
Okay, so that finished a bit more ra-ra than I planned! Seriously, give KDE 4.0 a try… but if you aren’t happy to suffer a few bugs then by all means wait until 4.0.1 or even 4.1. Oh, and be free. 🙂
Crossed Wires 