New year

Happy year 2008. I would like to say that blogging more often is not one of my formal resolve for the year.

I will be happy if I consider I'm still blogging by the end of the year. All my other attemps at blogging regularly have failed.

KDE 4.0 has been released

Everyone following tech blog know that KDE 4.0 has been released this friday. I'm quite happy about that since I've been a KDE user since I'm full time on Linux. What has changed over the years is that I'm not longer a strong KDE advocate. I will always prefer KDE over GNOME, but I can't say I would argue strongly for KDE against GNOME. Both a 2 very complete and excellent desktop environment.

The following is my opinion on KDE 4.0. I have tested the Ubuntu Gutsy remastered LiveCD for KDE 4.0. I'll admint it's probably not a complete experience of KDE 4.0, but what I've seen is enough for me to say that I will not use KDE 4.0 until a while.

I don't understand people saying they don't like KDE because it looks too much like Windows. I don't really care about how my system look if there is a good operating system under the hood.

The look of the environment for me is not a good reason to dislike a desktop environment, be it GNOME or KDE. I've got good reasons to dislike GNOME, and most people probably have good reasons to dislike KDE.

Both environment can be themed to change several aspects of their graphical appearance. Also, you can change components of the system until you find the look that suits you. Once that is done, you are left with what really matters in the environment: the quality of the software suite. That is, I believe, the only worthy point of comparison.

The subject has already beaten to death so I'll keep the following short. This is not an exhaustive list of my opinions about KDE.

The good: it's KDE 4.0

KDE 4.0 is the next step for the KDE environment. It will get all the development and all the cool apps. If I stick to KDE in general, I will eventually use KDE 4.x, but maybe not KDE 4.0.

The bad

Unstability

I expected nothing else of KDE 4.0. It's a dot-zero release and thus as many shortcomings and bugs.

When I tried the SuSE LiveCD for KDE 4.0, I badly wrecked my system to the point I had to shutdown my virtual machine. Don't ask me what happened, I don't remember. It was with an older version anyway.

With the Ubuntu LiveCD, Gwenview crashed twice, one time right at the moment it was starting.

This is not unexpected. I'm used to living on the edge with very recent software so I am familiar with applications crashing. Sometimes I will even fire-up the debugger and try to fix the problem.

Lack of KMail

I'm a KMail user. I know I could use KDE 3.5 KMail in KDE 4.0 yes, but I can also run KMail in KDE 3.5.8 too if there is not more reasons to switch to KDE 4.0.

The ugly

There is one thing that keeps me from using KDE 4.0 right now. If someone instructs me how to fix that, I'm a taker.

The huge taskbar

It's huge. Like, 5 times the size I would want it to be. To maximize screen real estate, I have configured my KDE 3 kicker to be minuscule. It's current 630 pixel wide, and just 30 pixel high, on a 1600x1200 19 inch screen. There is no taskbar, just the system tray, a small set of shortcuts icons, the clock and the desktop switcher. I've become used to switching between tasks using Ctrl+Tab and other shortcuts.

I'm not gonna install KDE 4.0 packages and run a KDE 4.0 session on my system until this taskbar can be shrinked to the size I want.