KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 Released

Crobain writes "The first alpha release for KDE 4.1 is out, and bugs aside, it looks promising. The KDE Plasma desktop shell now has preliminary support for Mac OS X dashboard widgets and SuperKaramba, and panels can be added and removed via contextual menu items. 'This alpha release marks the start of the 4.1 feature freeze, so virtually all of the remaining developer effort between now and the official 4.1 release in July will focus on bug-fixing, polish, and stability. Despite the current breakage, the actual feature set that has been stubbed out for this release is pretty darn good. If the developers can deliver on all of this functionality and make it stable and robust, version 4.1 will offer a much better overall user experience than 4.0, and Plasma will come close to achieving functional parity with the KDE 3.5.x panel system.' The KDE Techbase wiki has a full list of the features planned for the 4.1 release."

Re:Plasma again...

[lbbros]

If you read also Aaron Seigo's blog, you'll see that this API change had been expected *way* before KDE 4.0 release. Libplasma is scheduled to go into kdelibs at some point (~ 4.2) so the API must be OK because then it'll be frozen. Besides, Plasma was reaborn from ashes (breakage wise) in just a week. This should tell something.

Feature freeze, no new features only bugfixing?

[Edulix]

That's not true my friend, I think you misunderstood the 4.1 Release Schedule [kde.org]. We're in soft feature freeze, but planned features can still be added to the code until May 19th ;-)

Re:Feature freeze, no new features only bugfixing?

[lbbros]

Shameless plug on the Plasma FAQ (which I, among others, work on):

http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Plasma/FAQ [kde.org]

The first three questions should answer at least part of your doubts.

Re:Essentially A Win2k Clone?

[GreatBunzinni]

Also, open source software doesn't have a good track record when it comes to ground up usability designs. Compare GIMP, Pidgin and Blender with their commercial counterparts. Then look at how long Linux has taken to get to a point where it's considered barely usable by the every day user.

Your comment is a bit silly, to say the least. After all, in order to try to prove that all F/LOSS is somehow inferior to all commercial software, you picked up the GIMP and Pidgin, which are two of the most god-awful UI examples there is. Nonetheless, you failed to cite what the commercial counterparts are. In fact, if you compare Pidgin, which is a god-awful mess, to MSN Messenger, the "commercial counterpart" isn't exactly great either. Not by a long shot.

If that wasn't enough, you try to use Blender as an example of how F/LOSS is somehow always inferior. Well, that is a stupid example due to Blender's origins as a closed-source, proprietary, commercial product which only ended up being liberated by pure luck. And yet, there are quite a few users swearing by Blender's UI. You see, just because it is different to all that crap you got used to it doesn't mean it's bad.

But the biggest issue you chose to ignore is that F/LOSS presents us with quite a lot of examples of superb usability when compared to proprietary, closed-source, commercial counterparts. For example, both GNOME and KDE are leaps and bounds above and beyond any desktop environment that Microsoft has been pushing for the last two decades, not only in UI design but also in technical prowess.

So care to rethink your silly argument?

Re:I like KDE

[bh_doc]

There is always time taken in loading the supporting libraries, which really only affects the starting time of the first app that uses them. For subsequent apps that also use them, they're already loaded. Have you ever tried to start gedit while running a KDE desktop? It might give a similar result.