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:More than just a mockup or two (Score:5, Informative)
Re:More than just a mockup or two (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:this is crap (Score:2)
It looks cool, so it is cool? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh...Shiny!
BTW, the link is Schiavo.
Re:It looks cool, so it is cool? (Score:5, Insightful)
Incidentally, you are, in fact, part of the "general public". Regardless of what you tell yourself, you are not better than the rest of us. Take my word for it, you just aren't.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, I do! (Score:3, Funny)
(deem enclsing sarcasm tags implied)
Re:It looks cool, so it is cool? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It looks cool, so it is cool? (Score:2)
Re:It looks cool, so it is cool? (Score:2)
But we're talking about a desktop environment here: an application suite whose purpose is to give me an interface with the computer and system software that is easy to use and attractive.
That, incidentally, is why I use windowmaker [windowmaker.org]. It is stable, looks good, and throws in GNUStep as a bonus.
Re:It looks cool, so it is cool? (Score:2)
Re:It looks cool, so it is cool? (Score:2)
Agreed. But they appear to be working on some significant usability improvements. If they do what was outlined in this [imageshack.us] (which I believe is a design mockup, article is slashdotted already so I don't know) they'd be a lot closer to winning me over.
Schiavo? (Score:2)
Re:It looks cool, so it is cool? (Score:2)
Coral Cache (Score:4, Informative)
have [nyud.net]
appeared [nyud.net]
(that first one was working for me, but I haven't been able to get the second to load yet)
Re:Coral Cache (Score:3, Insightful)
The thumbnails load fine... (Score:3, Funny)
Screenshots from article (Score:2, Informative)
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/2962/components 31jm.png [imageshack.us]
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/707/possibleui1 3ke.png [imageshack.us]
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/5343/fake5bo6pi
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/2605/fakepanels etup7wv8km.jpg [imageshack.us]
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/8478/desktop1vn 1co.jpg [imageshack.us]
Re:Screenshots from article (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Screenshots from article (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Re:Screenshots from article (Score:2)
Re:Screenshots from article (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, that's a mockup, not a screenshot. Seriously, there's not much to show at the moment, the work on KDE4 is concentrating of the libraries and porting. There can't be no screenshots of some whiz-bang KDE4 GUI, because that GUI does not exists. I bet that if you could get KDE4 to compile and run, it would look 95% identical to KDE3.5.
Other screenshots (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Other screenshots (Score:2)
I haven't seen the screenshots mentioned in the original post, but I have a feeling that they too are just mockups or extremely early screenshots of pre-beta code that does not in any shape or form reflect the final product.
OOooo, Peerrrrtyyyy (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh ya, let's hope they ditch the two part windowsish looking start menu thing. First thing I did in XP was disable that... Instead lets see smart toolbars / menu's / buttons / etc.
mirror (Score:2, Funny)
I can't access this site yet!
New Slashdot gimmicks (Score:2, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Cultural differences? (Score:5, Insightful)
The loaded comment at the end of the news snippet is literally engineered to create this controversy. The more people that come on here to troll, the more money Slashdot gets.
"I don't know what the Gnome guys are up to, but KDE is starting to look seriously cool."
Puh-leeeeease. Could it get more obvious?
Re:Cultural differences? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Cultural differences? (Score:2)
Re:Cultural differences? (Score:2)
Stable release date? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yawn (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:Yawn (Score:3, Insightful)
KDE is bloated with options, compared to what? I assume you are referring to Gnome which has virtually no options, and little possibility to make it work the way I want it to? A long time ago I was a Gnome user, but one day I started toying around with KDE... and I couldn't bear to go back into Gnome after a while. I could make this desktop work just the way I wanted
KDE might not suit
Re:Yawn (Score:2, Insightful)
i hope they get to sound (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:i hope they get to sound (Score:2)
Of course, this changes once dmix is stable enough. And I hope that its latency and accuracy is not as bad as esd's.
Re:i hope they get to sound (Score:2)
You don't know JACK! (Score:2)
If we can get Firefox (last holdovers) to support Jack Daemon, then my audio platform is sweet and complete.
Nothing like multiple channels being independently mixed using a patch panel.
When I want my KDE artsd-fartsdy sound daemon on LOW, I don't want MPLAYER volume slider to suppress KDE sound or FSCK the
Re:i hope they get to sound (Score:2)
Huh? All those shots remind me of..... (Score:2)
Am I the only one seeing odd similarities between KDE4 and Gnome screenshots? Well, isn't all that important to me, as I use KDE not because of its optics, but because its tech is so much better than Gnome's. I mean, kioslaves vs. gnomevfs, konqueror vs. nautilus etc. (Also, I don't know if a gnome counterpart to KParts exists). The underlying systems are much better integrated and designed. The UI itself is a matter of taste.
Re:Huh? All those shots remind me of..... (Score:2)
Other than that, I agree with the gnome-dumbing-down-point.
There are NOT screenshots! (Score:5, Informative)
There are no interesting KDE4-screenshots to show because there's nothing to show really. The work on KDE4 is going on at the library-level at the moment. The actual GUI (if you could get it work that is) would propably be almost identical to KDE3.5.
Move along, nothing to see here.
Some _real_ screesnhots of KDE4 (Score:4, Informative)
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/1358/screen8qt
Not that exiting yet.
Nothing to see here... (Score:2, Informative)
These mock ups and their kind have been appearing on kde-artists.org for months now and are the work of artists trying to concenptualise ideas the devs could be working on.
AFAIK the developers haven't gotten up to doing anything remotely visual for KDE4 yet and are still working on the underpinning libraries.
L.
Looking good (Score:2)
Half the posts on this thread are redundant. KDE is entirely voluntary: no one has to run it. If it doesn't do what you want, use another desktop environment, or no desktop environment. On Linux at least, we are spoiled for choice in this respect.
In addition, some of the comments about eye candy are misplaced. Good design is extremely important: good design helps me do what
Screen Shots are nice (Score:2)
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:2, Insightful)
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:2, Flamebait)
I'm posting because I'm genuinely interested in what is being done for the sake of usability. I do not wish to debate what the current problem are... I don't have time for that right now.
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:2)
The parent asked for you to be specific...You could have saved a whole lot time on your post if you just wrote one word: "No." :)
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:2, Informative)
How about the stupid kwallet and multiple email accounts? Add some account settings and kwallet doesn't know about it because you've closed it? Oops, can't get email for that account. Quit kwallet - can't get email for all the accounts. AND the passwords are all permanently gone. Nice "feature."
Or in kontact - try to chang
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong I don't hate KDE, and I don't personally care what is more open or that one has a more restrictive license or whatnot, all I care is to get my job done. One of t
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you have some good points, in fact, it reminds me of a Slashdot article a while back that basically said that the more complex an interface is, the more intimidating it is to most people. If you have a zillion widgets to click and boxes to look at, people tend to get lost and give up. In the comments of that article, several people made good points. For example, putting common tasks in the front and hiding the advanced stuff in another tab or window with a button to access it.
I think one of the key issues surrounding KDE is choice: you choose to run KDE, or you choose not to. Unix-based systems give the user/admin the choice of which window manager to run. Don't like KDE? Try a different one. Hell, you can even contact the KDE team, report bugs, and give feedback. While most large OSS project teams are busy as hell and aren't always the most receptive to outside communication, they are a lot more receptive than, say, Microsoft. Think it's too damn complex? Give constructive criticism to the KDE team. The other beauty of it is that besides the KDE core, a lot of "KDE" applications are third-party software that is just written for KDE and follows a specific set of guidelines. Odds are for some of the problems people have, they can contact a lone developer who has less to worry about and can dedicate more time to each problem.
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 k
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:3, Informative)
I have never had that problem. Kwallet is happily running in the system-tray, managing my passwords and such. And I have never had any problems with it.
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:2)
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:2)
Wmii is great though. Try it.
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:That's all well and good... (Score:2)
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:That's all well and good... (Score:2)
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:3, Informative)
focus follows mouse - window focus is whichever window the mouse touched last, but can be 'stolen' by explicit actions such as opening new windows, popups etc (if you launch a shortcut etc)
focus under mouse - window focus is whichever window the mouse touched last, and cannot be stolen.
focus strictly under mouse - window focus is whichever window the mouse is hovering over, and if
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:2)
You're missing Shift+F1 the universal way to get context sensitive help in KDE. At least in 3.5 the resulting tooltip should answer all your questions =)
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:2)
I'm with you on KDE. Personally, konqueror is the 'killer app' for me; being able to have an sftp tab, samba share, local file and several browser tabs open in one window really rocks, and something I really miss in my day job on Windows.
Should be interesting to
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 w
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:5, Insightful)
So people like the advanced options, the glimmer and the numerous widgets. Those people pick KDE. Some people just a basic, day-to-day desktop environment. Those people pick Gnome.
The availability of both seems ideal to me.
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:2)
But in the first release after the switch, they wouldn't even give you that tickbox.
The browser is minimal,
Erm, no it isn't. It's just as slow and bloated as the KDE one.
KDE just has a lot more that seem useless to me (focus under mouse, focus follows mouse, focus strictly follows mouse, etc).
Personally I couldn't live without the ability to switch to focus under mouse. There are options that seem useless to me, but I'm sure they're vit
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:2)
Yes.
Re:Great way of starting a flamewar (Score:3, Insightful)
I want to know what, if anything, is being done to correct these issues and many more without scouring mailing lists. That's all.
Re:Great way of starting a flamewar (Score:4, Insightful)
The one with broken kde packages?
To me, it is a nightmare of redundant options,
They're only redundant if you don't use them, otherwise they're vital
unpredictable behaviour, and completely hideous defaults.
What're these? The defaults seem fine to me.
(Why they can be resized so small that they're useless in the first place I don't know.)
Because there are people who want to resize it that small. It's the Ritchie thing about "Do not try and prevent users doing stupid things, for you will also prevent users doing clever things".
Re:Great way of starting a flamewar (Score:2)
Re:Great way of starting a flamewar (Score:2)
I'm glad to see there is a usability team. Hopefully as time goes on they'll steer KDE the right way.
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:2)
The cdrdao on some distributions does not burn data dvd+rw 's that others can read while drawing data from my vfat ie w98 partition .
eh? My mother language is not English, so please can you explain? Do you mean something like "if I burn a data dvd+rw with data read from a vfat partition, the resulting dvd+rw won't be readable by other operating systems?"
And, is it a K3b or a cdrdao issue?
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:2)
Re:That's all well and good... (Score:2)
Bob
Re:Coral cache links (Score:2, Offtopic)
Setup proxomitron or middleman to rewrite abs-url's on coral pages and then you're rocking.
Re:sources? (Score:4, Interesting)
hmph.
Re:no offense... (Score:2, Offtopic)
Its hard for me reply because I don't see what you are driving at. Are you saying we should all run OSX?
I know a few Linux people who also own an Apple laptop. I recomended one to my sister as well. But people aren't abandoning Linux, unless they are non-technical people satisfied with an alternative.
I run NetBSD on my web servers because I can update the OS without havin
Why is this moderated up? (Score:3, Insightful)
More than a few people from my local LUG have installed a bootlegged copy of the OSx86 beta. One of our me
Re:Why is this moderated up? (Score:2)
Wow, it's startling to me how many words you can use and say nothing.
But, even though he says nothing, he says it so well.
Re:no offense... (Score:5, Insightful)
By the way, I started with Linux in 1992. I started with Linux in 1992 because I loved Unix and wanted it on my PC.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:no offense... (Score:2)
I've run KDE on OpenBSD as well as Linux. It seems to run just as well on OpenBSD.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:no offense... (Score:2)
Re:no offense... (Score:5, Insightful)
It does? I have Mac Mini with OS X, and I have been using it for about a year now. I also have a tower-PC running KDE and Linux. And while OS X does have all kinds of nifty eye-candy, and I used it exclusively for few months (to find out what the noise was all about). But after that time I noticed that I simply enjoy using KDE more. It does what I want it to do, and it does it in a way I want it to be done. In OS X, I have to adjusts my workflow and expectations to meet the OS, in Linux and KDE it's the opposite. I can change the GUI and the system to meet my expectations.
OS X is a nice OS, no question about it. But it's not the Holy Grail of OS'es or GUI's (despite the fact that some people try to claim that it is just that). For me, OS X does NOT do it better. I do love the hardware, and I'm planning to install Linux on that Mini.
Re: (Score:2)
X Server question (Score:2)
I have Mac Mini with OS X, and I have been using it for about a year now. I also have a tower-PC running KDE and Linux.
Just curious, but have you been trying out OS X's implementation of X11 to run applications remotely? I mean with the application running on the Linux box, using your Mini's GUI as a front-end. From what I've read on the net, I was under the impression that X11 on OS X can't handle it, but I'm really not too sure about that. I may have completely misinterpreted what I read. I'm very ine
Re:no offense... (Score:3, Insightful)
Am I? What makes you think that? In that case my wife is an exception as well. She has been using the Mac more than I have, and she's getting fed up with it as well.
So, because your personal experience says something, it must be universally true?
Um, no it doesn't. Sure, you can change the icons, style and the like, but it can go a lot deeper than that.
Free Beer! (Score:2)
I have to disagree with you. It has been my experience that free beer when consumed in prodigious quantities tends to encourage free speech.
Re:no offense... (Score:5, Insightful)
but let's be honest. "You've probably heard the quote, "BSD is for people that love Unix; Linux is for people that hate Windows."
Okay, I'm being honest. I actually never have heard that before. I hate Windows and MS because my first computer came with Windows ME and I feel that I was totally screwed. If I'd wanted a Mac I'd have gotten one.
"Many Linux users have no particular loyalty to Linux and would just as soon use something else. "
Funny, but I've been thinking the exact opposite, that too many of them are rather blindly loyal to their distro of choice. Mepis retail will require a serial number to update [newsforge.com] soon, for example, and the serial number is tied to the MAC address of your computer. This means that you'll have to fill out a form to update if you switch computers and that they can refuse to allow you uto update. It also means that you can only use your copy on one machine; even Linspire lets you use one copy on up to 5 computers in your home IIRC. We *nix users have been telling people for years that you don't have to put with this kind of treatment from MS but the Mepis folks are loyal enough to think this is a good idea for Mepis for some reason, even though Mepis has been known for some time as having problems with bug-squashing. As I posted at Distrowatch, why bother with this when there are other distros that are more stable and free? But the Mepis people are loyal.
Much the same can be said for the Libranet people; Libranet was more stable but it was also expensive, and the only original code the developers came up with they've refused to share with the Linux community even though their product was over 90% based on Debian's GPL code. Now that Libranet has been discontinued the adminmenu has remained closed-source. Why the lead developer's son refused to share with the community their product was based on, I don't know. But the Libranet users have remained quite loyal to them. And don't get me started about Mandriva.
"More than a few people from my local LUG have installed a bootlegged copy of the OSx86 beta. One of our members showed off his toshiba laptop running OS X, which was quite popular, even among the old school unix types."
Why they bother is beyond me. Oh wait, I do know - bragging rights. That's what a MAC is apparently all about as Apple fanboys spend so much time bragging on how great it is. One would think if it was so perfectly functioal they'd spend more time using it. "Plus I have a system that everyone envies!" was one post I read at Digg. C'mon, admit it- we all know that's really why people want a Mac.
"While we may protest that KDE or GNOME are better than OS X, the collective orgasm when Apple announced an OSx86 show that free (beer) beats free (speech)"
Really? I don't remember having an orgasm over OSX. I have had plenty of orgasms since it was released, but my thoughts at the time had nothing to with OSX (or even computers, for that matter). The media and people at Digg have been fawning over it and they seem to think that everyone in the world wants a Mac. They're wrong; give me a Mac and I'll sell it and use the money to upgrade my AMD running Linux, thank you very much.
"It doesn't really matter what features or eye candy KDE or GNOME add, because OS X does it better. "
I disagree. I don't like OSX's cluttered UI and I don't like vendor lock-in. With KDE I can remove the icons and have everything on auto-hide if I want to. And sometimes I do; if I wanted all this junk on my dekstop why would I bother using a wallpaer? Plus it's convenient to get everything out of my way when I'm multi-tasking. Apple has a lot of great eye-candy if you don't mind it being in your way, but I do mind. And when I want eye candy KDE has plenty enough of it to satisfy me. Plus I want freedom of choice, not what Apple chooses for me. Kde lets me choose when I wan the eye candy, how I want it to look, but only when I want it.
Re:Slashdotted :( (Score:2)
But then, you'd have been at risk to make a relevant post.
Windows = no choices (Score:2)
Choice is something I hate to be without, and it is for exactly this reason that I left MS a long time ago. Its their way or the highw