KDE Announces 4.9 Beta1 and Testing Initiative 134
jrepin writes "KDE released the first beta for its version 4.9 of Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing new and old functionality. Highlights of 4.9 include, but are not limited to: Qt Quick in Plasma Workspaces, many improvements in Dolphin file manager, deeper integration of Activities, and many performance improvements. The KDE Community is committed to improving quality substantially with a new program that starts with the 4.9 releases. The 4.9 beta releases are the first phase of a testing process that involves volunteers called 'Beta Testers.' They will receive training, test the two beta releases and report issues through KDE Bugzilla."
I was recently forced into installing GNOME 3 (who knew printing required removing GNOME 2); after trying for a while to get Sawfish working again in the deprecated fallback mode, I gave up and tried KDE again. I have to say that I was surprised: KDE 4.5 was unpolished and painful to use whereas 4.7 is pretty slick. With the GNOME 3 developers catering to some seemingly mythical user, it's nice to see the other major desktop using user feedback to make design decisions.
Minty Cinnamon Goodness! (Score:5, Interesting)
With the Maya release (aka Mint 13) they've left behind Gnome for a choice of MATE or Cinnamon. I installed the latter, and I'm liking it a LOT.
Lots of good, simple usability, and a decided lack of annoying flash and gadgetry.
Nonetheless, I'll likely give the new KDE a look.
Re:Desktop bling vs Fluxbox usability (Score:5, Interesting)
"if the desktop bling gets in the way of a smooth user experience then the deskop is not doing its job."
Agreed, which is why KDE is the only desktop I'll use. Everything else has had too many features ripped out mercilessly to be a productive environment. KDE is the only thing left for power users, it seems. It lets me, from the GUI without having to fart around with some obscure desktop-specific config tool:
* Control which desktop newly opened windows go to as a function of the app. E.g, all email windows go to desktop 2, editors and shells to desktop 1, and so on.
* Provide regex-based configurable clipping behaviors when selecting text from any app.
* Provides an extremely rich set of GUI-settable key mapping and key macro prefs, such as mapping caps lock to control (a necessity for touch typists), where this requires some xmodmap stuff in most desktops. In KDE, it's just a checkbox. Or the key bindings *I* want for changing between virtual desktops.
* Provides keyboard controls for everything.
* Is endlessly configurable, for adding new task bars, putting what I want in them, and having them where I want them to go.
And so on. Sure, somebody is bound to say, "hey, but you can do that one in this desktop!" but it's missing the point. Any time I've tried another, it's inevitable that sooner or later I look for some feature which just isn't there. KDE, what I want has always been available.
Re:Does it still have the deal-breaker? (Score:2, Interesting)
I too was a long-time KDE user (at least since the 2.0 days) -- the entire 4.x release has been one colossal fuck-up. It's at 4.9 and NOW they're focusing on usability and bugfixing? I got sick of it. I moved to xfce on my workstation and for the most part I'm very happy. My wife bought an i7 macbook air for me for Christmas and that's been my main machine. Before that was Kubuntu.
Sorry KDE, you've lost me. I was one of your biggest and longest fans. Your 3.x releases were the pinnacle of your design. 4.x was a long and tortured release for your followers, and I am willing to bet you lost almost all of them. From what I understand Gnome went and did the same thing to their faithful. Hopefully xfce stays true to its roots.
Re:uhh why is the post talking about gnome3? (Score:4, Interesting)