KDE Beta 4 User Review (feature)

Mike Haas has recently installed KDEB4 and written an excellent review of it. KDE is far ahead of gnome right now in terms of ease of use and flexibility, and is worth a look for almost anyone with time to download it. Anyway, for more details about KDE, read on...

The following is written by Slashdot Reader Mike Haas

KDE Beta 4 - A User Review

by Mike Haas ([e-mail])

I suppose the following review will receive a fair amount of negative feed back for several reasons; KDE's use of Qt, its similarities to that other OS, etc. I won't address that here.

What I will address, is the pleasure of running a WindowManager that is not only "hands-off" with regards to editing .rc's, (save for setting the LD Library path in /$User/.profile, and adding "startkde" to /$User/.xinitrc), but is surprisingly complete and STABLE for a "beta" WindowManager. But one only has to use KDE for a few minutes to understand that it is far more than just a "WindowManager", and has features you simply won't find in other popular WindowManager distributions.

With the plethora of K-applications which come with the distribution, KDE has all or most of the features you would expect to find in other full-blown OS's and pound for pound, has far more flexibility than CDE, which I've used, and can honestly say is FAR from what its cracked up to be.

The Beta 4 distribution installed itself well over my Beta 3 distribution, leaving my desktop settings intact. I would like to point out a few tips to beginners, to make their usage of KDE a more pleasurable.

1. Wallpapers

KDE can change wallpaper on the fly. However, KDE's desktop manager will NOT overwrite a root window you create if you chose to stick XV or xpmroot in your.xinitrc! You can add all the images you want to /opt/kde/share/wallpapers in .gif, .jpg, or .xpm format. Start KDE raw, with no external root window image. KDE will start with its default background color. You can then insert Wallpaper on the fly with the desktop manager. KDE comes with its own assortment of images, and you can add to these to your hearts content.

2. KSoundManager

By default, KDE starts with its CD player and mixer running. If you hit the "X" widget to close them, they don't - they are swallowed by kpanel and show up on the panel in a manner similar to Win95's Systray.

Shut 'em off. You will notice a *remarkable* improvement in speed if you disable this default setting. By all means, use KDE's CD player and Mixer if you wish, they work fine. I believe that its the Kpanel "swallow" feature that is the culprit here, and not necessarily any "bloat" from these two K-applications. Once I turned this feature off, KDE became quite snappy on my Pentium 166 MMX w/ all of 24M of ram.

3. Installing applications and Icons

You're gonna love this. The installation of applications and icons is a breeze and is performed in a manner similar to Win95. You can even drag an application right out of its directory on to the desktop as a link, but this is the least flexible method.

KDE stores its menu information in /opt/kde/share/applnk, in associated sub-directories such as "Applications", "Graphics", "Internet", etc., much in the same manner as Win95 uses c:windowsstart menuprograms. Applications installed in these directories show up in the "K" menu, whereas applications installed on the desktop have their respective location in /$User/Desktop. Either location takes the same form - *.kdelnk. Right clicking on a distribution-installed application will give you an idea of what information you have to enter, basically the name, location (if the app isn't in your path), and what you want in the pop-up hints. The .kdelnk dialogue is much more flexible than that, including commands for iconifying and running the app swallowed in Kpanel.

Icons? This is the best part. Under the "Execute" tab of the .kdelnk dialogue, is the icon button. This defaults to /opt/kde/share/icons. You'll get a pop-up window which shows thumbs of all the .xpm formatted icons you have to choose from, and again, you can add icons here to your hearts content (as of 4/24/98, the Incoming directory of ftp.kde.org has a file called kdeicons.tgz, which has a nice set of addtional icons copied after NeXT, Win95, and BeOs, etc.).

The cool part is this: Say you simply dragged the Netscape icon from /usr/local/netscape and placed it on the desktop as a link to get things started, then later, decided to install Netscape with an appropriate icon in either /$User/Desktop, or /opt/kde/share/applnks/Internet. The linked icon would have showed up on the desktop as the "gear" icon. After installing Netscape and restarting Kpanel, voila - your original linked icon appears on the desktop with the new icon image! Oh, the joys of mime-types... In fact, mime-types are handled so well in KDE that I can see the day when KDE might even use a full-blown mime-type database. I just hope they call it something other than a "registry"...

4. KFM

KFM has improved significantly from previous releases and behaves in a manner similar to Win-Explorer. In fact, whereas is previous releases, .html was handled through the "help" application, it is now handled through KFM. I've used both QTScape and KFM to browse the web, and KFM, as of the writing of this review, handles things at least as well, if not better, than QTScape. Both applications will certainly continue to improve, but its nice to have *TWO* other Web Browser choices than Netscape!

Right-clicking on a application in KFM will allow you to pull up properties - you can set the permissions of the application on fly here, which is quite handy. All of KDE is drap-n-drop enabled (NOT dndlib-based!) and "cut and paste" copying/moving of files works very well.

5. Desktops

I only have one slightly negative comment here. By default, KDE allows you to scroll through desktops by moving the mouse above or below the desktop window - convenient for some, but with my particular PS/2 mouse, I find it annoying...

6. KDE applications.

They rock - I just can't describe them any better than that. I run RH 5.0, and because 5.0 does NOT come with ppp-on or ppp-off scripts, you generally have to run the control-panel and turn on dial-up networking from there. Kppp works very smoothly, although I had to enter a script - I couldn't get PAP login working, not that I really spent anytime playing with it. My login script is simple enough that I was able to enter it and get Kppp running in minutes.

KDE comes with a host of very decent Internet applications. Kmail works extremely well and is very configurable, as is its Usenet Newsreader, Krd. KDE even comes with a network utilities application (ping, traceroute, etc.).

In conclusion, KDE Beta 4, with all of its onboard applications and utilities is not only a fine choice for any Linux user running X., but is an excellent candidate for inclusion into a Linux Distro as the default WM. For the first time, a freely-available WindowManager which requires NO external editing of script files and is more powerful than, IMHO, any other WindowManager on the market (including the commercial CDE) is available for Linux. I've literally run 'em all, with WindowMaker being my favorite - until now. Any first-time user who can run Win95 with any facility can make great use of KDE.

Perhaps my opinion will change when Gnome hits full-blown (but running in E???), or when the GNUstep project produces its first Beta WindowManager, but its like the old saying goes - "don't knock it until you've tried it".

Mike Haas
4-24-98