KDE 4 Screenshots 458
carlmenezes writes "Screenshots of the upcoming and much talked about KDE 4 have appeared at Planet Diaz. They include screenshots of the control panel, system tray, tabbed views, music and mail views, plus a mockup or two. I don't know what the Gnome guys are up to, but KDE is starting to look seriously cool."
More than just a mockup or two (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It looks cool, so it is cool? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:5, Interesting)
Lately times have been changing.
I still think GNOME is ahead in terms of "look and feel." KDE is usually touted as being eye candy, but you just can't convince me that GNOME doesn't look better. GNOME still feels comfortable to me, so what about it drove me to use KDE, my preferred desktop at the moment?
Functionality. Sometimes I get sick of looking at KDE, but I keep on using it because it does everything I like. I get to have windows that snap together as I resize them, a set of graphical tools that can actually be configured, a file manager that isn't almost useless, etc.
My largest complaint against GNOME right now is their philosophy that more features means less usability. Even if that were true, I don't see how that justifies dropping features to improve usability. Give me something slightly more challenging to use but does everything that I want.
Re:sources? (Score:4, Interesting)
hmph.
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:5, Interesting)
As for things like "focus follows mouse" and the like, I used to be an avid user of features like that. Not in KDE, but in GNOME and every other window manager. They can be quite useful, but I kind of got over that and settled into "click to focus." But whatever other people prefer is cool with me.
I think nautilus is pretty good, but for some reason I'm not very fond of using it. It seems to get in my way, and I don't like that feeling, but I do believe you when you say that I can change settings to fix it for my tastes. Of course, I still maintain that konqueror is a fine file manager in its own right.
Also, I find that you complaint about the configuration menus and whatnot valid. KDE takes a bit of customization, but I usually just sit down with a new install and go through the control panel until I'm satisfied. Most users shouldn't have to do this. So far the way the options are grouped together and how they present themselves in the UI is a bit of a mess. The latest incarnation of control panel suits my tastes less than the original idea, but hopefully they sort that out.
Re:More than just a mockup or two (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Kde 4 screenshots - don't belive it! (Score:1, Interesting)
So please people don't get confused. There's yet no single KDE 4 screenshot at all, because they're still working in the base libs which are getting ported to Qt 4 and developed. All those screenshots are just MOCKUPS from KDE users who want to contribute to the brainstorm...
If you want to see KDE 4 screenshots, keep an eye on dot.kde.org [kde.org] and who knowns, maybe around summer you will see something interesting
Re:Screenshots from article (Score:2, Interesting)
Gnome makes me want to reinstall WindowsXP. I am glad we are not all forced to use Gnome becuase I really feel that it is a backwards step from the interface shipped with Windows. Gnome might be polished to a mirror shine, but it is still clunky to use. I feel like i'm fighting it every time I use it.
KDE might be less polished, require more work to initially configure, and present more options (and hence confuse new users) but it is less clunky under the hood. It took me a day to configure KDE from the defaults shipped with my OS to a competely different set of options that make it just blend into the computer. I didn't set out to change the config and I just tweaked here and there until I was satisfied with how it used.
I could never get Gnome to work like that - there was always something wrong with it, no matter how long I sat in front of it trying to tweak it so it didn't get in the way all the time.
Anywho... to summarise: Gnome sucks compared to KDE if you really want a desktop that will just bugger off into the background and not wrestle with you.
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's been said before, but Gnome would do well to at least make available easy access to more advanced tweakability via an "expert" mode toggle (which is always-on in KDE).
e.g. To make best use of screen realestate in KDE, I set my kicker panel to "allow other windows to cover it", and to "raise when the pointer hits the bottom of the screen" -- something which isn't even possible in Gnome, afaik.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
widgetized terminals (Score:4, Interesting)
A great deal of kde users are heavy shell users (xterm,konsole,whatever)
I wish some kind of terminal apps could be held as a widget on the desktop showing
the actual text being displayed in the terminal (shrunk but visible and legible) and upon clicking or roll-over restores itself.
And here's the kick-ass feature.
a F-key expose that gives you all your terminals with the actual text displayed in real time and a history scroll bar that scrolls the history a typed commands not the displayed text. You roll over the terminals on expose and the take over the whole screen for 1 second and if you keep moving the mouse, returns to expose, if you stop moving the mouse the terminal remains in full-screen mode, if you right-click the terminal stays in full-screen mode. You press F-key and return to expose.
wait wait wait, when you select expose, the terminals are displayed and take over the whole screen from left to right top bottom in chronological last-selected time (like alt-tab) and you press anoter F-key and all terminals show the last 10 commands executed with the return text ALL IN SLOW MOTION!!
Now you picture this: You arrive at 9 AM with your coffee and your bagel all grogy, sit in front of your screen, log-in, press terminal expose, press history and voila! you get to see a little movie of all the crap you were doing the night before..kewl eh?
You got all that!! Now go tiger! go!
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:3, Interesting)
I just don't believe that anymore. Gnome has become a memory and CPU pig: There're reasons why gnome 2.13 [gnome.org] has so many performance improvements. KDE used to be a memory pig, but then gnome catched up and their memory usage went trough the roof. By the way, porting applications to QT4 (no functionality) improves the memory usage percentages with double-digit numbers, so there's a chance that KDE 4 eats less memory
The top post also asked "I don't know what the Gnome guys are up to". I wish to know that aswell. KDE is actively developing KDE 4 but Gnome 3 doesn't exist at all today. Some Gnome developers seem to think that gnome 3 shouldn't be developed because gnome 2 is already feature complete and that doing small improvements which don't break compatibility it's a beter option. That sounds good, but I'd say it looks scary: KDE people is actively developing a KDE version which will rock in many ways and Gnome doesn't seem to have nothing to compete against it, except that Fedora now includes mono and more C# apps can be developed. Noveel seem to be the one place where cool things are being done with gnome.
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:2, Interesting)
This may be a nit, but it is a bigger problem then window behavier (I am sure more non-power users adjust the mouse than the behavier).
The thing I like about KDE is that it forces you to copy, link, or move with every drag and drop. The choosing which to do behind the scenes is semi-random to the average person.